Across the pond

Already there is a comment on the ‘Obama’s Wright is wrong’ blog I wrote earlier today. Lexi thinks that he has torn the scab off the wound in America’s race history by treating his old Pastor Jeriah Wright as a mistaken human being rather than the devil incarnate.

My own view could not be more different. When I read the full transcript of his speech on the New York Times website, it is clear that he has matured hugely in the last few weeks. He speaks as a statesman, not a politician who will stop at nothing to win the race. He uses the speech, not to fire rockets at his opponents, but to explain, why, however, much he dislikes the infamatory remarks of his pastor, he is still grateful to him for the encouragement he got from caring side of Wright’s ministry.  He also refuses to join the outcry against Geraldine Ferraro; like me, he does not think she is a racist. As I said in my earler blog, she is someone who got carried away in the heat of the battle, so that her commitment to advancing the cause of women in public life temporarily clouded her judgment.

Obama seeks to understand how Wright came to his views. And he explains how his own life trajectory has led him to different opinions. Obama does not go in for public relations. He makes no secret of the fact that he believes racism is still present today, quoting William Faulkner.

 “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.”

For those who don’t have time to read the transcript, I reprint a few paragraphs which reveal a lot about how the mind of the man who would be President works.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners ……I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” …..The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. …..At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” …. 

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America……As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; 

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith…He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; ….who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother….We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.  

(Wright’s mistake was) to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.

What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination.

That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations  The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

(Obama talked about other issues as well as race) 

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.  

It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.  

The final paragraph demonstrates that Obama is imperfect. Not clear what it means but I think it was an attempt to link back to his start which was a lengthy bit about the writing of the American constitution.

But I hope I have quoted enough here to demonstrate why I think Obama’s eloquence is not just tub-thumping.