Here also is the full transcript, made available in pdf via BBC: A More Perfect Union.
Not only does this speech touch on every single aspect of race relations in America, he spoke the truth, exposed the pink elephant in the room, grabbed it by its horns, and de-clawed it. It is now up to us, America, to decide if we want to let racism divide us as a nation or if we want to overcome it and join together in solidarity.
More than any other speech, this is the one that spoke to me personally. I was so sure he was done in with the Rev. Wright controversy, but here, Obama shows that he's got the wisdom and the courage and the temerity to call us to conscience! I know that I, for one, am not going to get anxious over his ability to win or not anymore. That no longer matters to me because now, finally, someone has found the courage to call us on our bullshit racial politics and get to the heart of the matter.
This is definitely a speech for the ages, and I most certainly will teach it in future classes! :)
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
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8 comments:
I'm so glad that you posted his speech. Somebody had to say it. However, I'm no zoologist, but please remember, you grab a bull by the horns. You grab an elephant by the tusks...and you declaw cats.
Aside from that, it was right on the money.
“The Days of Jeremiah Wright Are Not Over . . .”
Okay, so my initial reactions from his speech were joyful and hopeful because finally Obama said publicly in a media forum that attracts many people that racism is real. However, after pondering his words and historically contextualizing them, I must say that I am somewhat disappointed by his speech.
I’m disappointed because of how he characterized Jeremiah Wright as an “old uncle” who only knows protest politics and who knows only how to struggle against overt racial discrimination which is now according to Obama a thing of the past because we have progressed so far as a Nation. Whoever wrote his speech should be commended because it walked a very tight line of not alienating Black people because he did talk about racism and not alienating white people because he said we must all come together and because his “grandmother” is white and said many racist things too.
Obama: “For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of
humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.”
But what’s so troubling about this speech is that underneath the rhetoric of talking about racism in this country, he was saying very clearly that “the days of Jeremiah Wright Are Over.” He says that older black people and even white people who lived through Jim Crow need to move beyond their racially divisive screens and join young people both white and black who understand that racism is not the enemy by lack of health care, education disparities, college tuition are the things we must collectively fight against.
Obama: “What gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.”
I do not know what group of young people Obama is speaking of because often he speaks in two tones regarding white youth and black youth, but I know for a fact that Black youth just like the Jeremiah Wrights of the world feel racially alienated. So, I say “The Days of Jeremiah Wright Are Not Over.” And if people want to check my facts about how black youth feel regarding measures of racial discrimination check out Dr. Cathy Cohen’s Black Youth Project Study.
Furthermore, the type of discrimination young black people experience may not be overt lynchings or being raped by a gang of white men, but they do live environments that are whacked with educational inequalities (in which Obama mentions), the growing numbers of HIV related cases are among young black women not young white women (Why Obama, no mention?), the increasing number of black youth both female and male incarcerated (in which he mentions), those who have permanently been deported from the 9th Ward—do not tell me we have come far and that the time of Jeremiah Wright is over. The type of racism and marginalization that we experience today is just as insidious and systemic as it was in past.
What makes Jeremiah a modern-day prophet is that he talks about what is happening now!
Obama: “A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and
frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family,
contributed to the erosion of black families.”
Furthermore, it’s always telling when Black men like Obama give specific lip service to the ills that black men encounter and somehow forget to mention the issues that black women encounter like reproductive and sexual health or the increasing HIV infections among young black women, but that is another conversation for another day regarding Obama’s platform.
Sorry for the long post.
Well, considering that elephants aren't pink, I thought I could add to such a fantastical creature horns and claws, no?
Mixing up my metaphors, but hopefully you got my point? :)
Good points, fal, but I didn't hear exclusion of black women in this speech (no, he didn't mention specifics but healthcare is part of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and we could read ourselves into this vision, no?)
And say what you will about the Jeremiah Wrights of the world. If you're running for POTUS, you can't run on a "black radical" ticket and win.
I thought he did well to try and build back the bridge to the unity game he's playing, AND calling BIG MEDIA on their racism without telling them explicitly what big gigantic racists they are.
That was my reading of it.
I understood what you meant, ABW. I was confused at first, but I got the gist of it.
[Applause]
Anyway ABW, I'm so glad you mentioned the BIG MEDIA (or the Drive-By Media as Rush Limbaugh likes to call them) were instigating this story almost as much as Limbaugh himself, Sean Hannity and the rest of the Conservative Thug Life Radio Posse [one of my Hueyisms] were heavily fanning the flames.
They always think Obama just looks at the world through rose-colored glasses due to his several speeches about change, but those Conservative Thug Life radio hosts must live in rose-colored glass houses, the way they pretend that Jim Crow didn't exist, or downplay it as some systematically bigoted, practical joke.
I hear ya and understand ABW.
You're right he was not excluding black women in the way we use exclude, but I think he did it in a way that would seem acceptable by stating many times that both black men and black women encounter issues, but than he distinctly mentions how black men have it hard and how it negatively affects black families. This narrative of the endangered black man has not meant equal attention or resources for both black men and black women.
Furthermore his comments about black men and fatherhood are normative judgments that silence different family structures.
I think his speech was good for what it was, but I can't overlook some of the things that I thought were problematic.
Fal, I did notice the way that he constructed the black struggle through a masculinist agenda and heteropatriarchal structure.
Thanks for pointing this out, as obviously there are limits to just how "perfect" this union could be.
Still, I think it's a start and the ideals presented allow us to build on the issues addressed.
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