This week Barack Obama gave one of the best political speeches since John Kennedy spoke about this Catholicism in Houston in 1960, and it acquired power from something unusual in modern politics: a recognition of complexity, nuance and authentic grievances on many sides. It was not just a sound bite, but a symphony.
But the commotion over Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons show that Obama erred in an earlier speech—the 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention that flung him to fame.
In that speech, Obama stated that “there is not a black America and a white America…There’s the United States of America.” That is a wonderful ambition, and we are making progress toward it. But this last week has showed that we are not nearly there yet.
The fuss over sermons by Mr. Wright shows how much we need the dialogue about race that Obama tried to address with his speech Tuesday.
Barack Obama: Race Man
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aa0cd21b-0ff2-4329-88a1-69c6c268b304
Obama Address Race Divide
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23687688/
Media and Race in the News
http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/001188.shtml
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