Word: wrighting
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Obama did what politicians so rarely do - acknowledge complexity, insist that the issue currently roiling the presidential campaign - the story of Jeremiah Wright's words - is not a story that is clear-cut between right and wrong, or between black and white for that matter. Having waged a campaign, with great success, on the notion that race as a political and electoral issue could be transcended, with a strategy that assiduously downplayed race, Obama declared today that the only way to transcend race is to focus on it rather than downplay it - to acknowledge its sometimes oppressive presence in American...
...simply declaring it transcended would be folly - even now, in the year 2008. That was the reality Obama both confronted and embraced today. "Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," he said. "We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality...
Instead, he challenged Americans to learn something about their country, to seek to understand those whose emotions seem threatening, wrong-headed, even un-American. He asked whites to understand that the anger behind Rev. Wright's comments, while paralyzing, was also valid, the result of decades and centuries of real discrimination and oppression suffered by African Americans. And he asked blacks to understand that whites who resent affirmative action and whose fears of crime lead them to stereotype blacks should not be dismissed as racists, because their concerns and fears are real and valid...
Obama's speech was profound, one of the most remarkable by a major public figure in decades. One question - perhaps the question -is whether its sheer audacity makes for good political strategy. By confronting the Wright controversy head-on, Obama ensured that it would drive the narrative about his campaign, and his race against Hillary Clinton, for days and perhaps weeks to come. He and his advisers no doubt calculated that nothing they could do would change that fact. But if one of the appeals of Obama's candidacy has been the promise of a post-racial politics, how will...
...Obama's speech was brave. He is trying to take an actual position, rather than just distance himself from the Rev. Wright, who is clearly a political liability. But I think he is being naive. There are just too many easy attack ads, piling up in the Republican library. (Michelle Obama: "For the first time in my adult life, I'm proud of my country." Rev. Wright: "God DAMN America.") Maybe it's a shame that you have to try to exhibit a treacly, shallow patriotism to be President. But John Kerry got hammered just for protesting the Vietnam...