Post Obama Speech Analysis

Unfortunately, I was not in front of a computer with sound so all I have is the transcript. I will just assume tha Obama was a charismatic and oratorically skilled as ever. Obama doubled down on his candidacy and if this speech is any indication he will try and thread a needle that is quite sharp and quite tight. With this speech he has now become the post racial, racial candidate. He will now attempt to transcend race by taking on all the past issues of race. To say this is a dicey endeavor is an understatement of the highest kind. Obama's speech was filled with a long and remarkable narrative of the manner in which race has lead us here

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still havent fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between todays black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of todays urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for ones family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

Now, Obama wisely invoked his racially mixed background to set himself up to be the one that can bridged the gaps between the races. This absolutely puts him in a unique place to bridge many of the gaps he talked about in this portion of the speech and many other places.

The problem in my opinion is that much of this narrative was used to explain, but NOT JUSTIFY, the comments of Reverend Wright. Frankly, Obama was stuck between the perverbial rock and hard place. If he had totally disavowed himself from Wright, his pastor of twenty years, it would have looked like the ultimate political calculation. The problem with not disavowing Wright is two fold. First, Wright and all of his incendiary language will continue to be major news. Obama's biggest problem is that no speech or slogan will do much to counter act the visceral reaction people have to the plethora of incendiary sermons we have been exposed to.

The second problem can be related from what I learned from being a fan of Law & Order SVU. In the show, the investigate and prosecute rapists, molestors and other sexual deviants. Many of the perpetrators in the show have their own troubled past. Yet, the show makes the point that many people have troubled pasts, but not all become rapists. A troubled past is no excuse for hate. Obama may have explained the roots of Wright's hate, however that doesn't minimize the hate, and now he has forever tied himself to it. The unfortunate reality is that most white people don't much care why Wright is so full of anger. The only thing that they care about is that he is, and now Obama has forever tied himself to that hate, fair or not.

The diciest thing is that Obama has now injected race front and center into his campaign.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wrights sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans dont feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as theyre concerned, no ones handed them anything, theyve built it from scratch. Theyve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when theyre told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments arent always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

While Obama intuitively tied racial issues to other themes of his campaign, this tactic is just as likely to work as it is to blow up miserably for him. I have pointed out previously that I find much of Obama's rhetoric to be nothing more than boiler plate class warfare. It worked for him because in the past he addressed universal issues and problems like expensive health care, education, and lack of jobs. Now, he has tied all of those things not only to the issue of race but to a hateful racist preacher, Jeremiah Wright. Whatever Obama does one thing he won't be able to do is to get the country to like his preacher. The country despises him, and they despise him on a visceral level. Now, he has made a connection between the themes of his campaign and that preacher.

Of course, it is not so much the speech that is dicey but rather the events that caused him to make it. This speech was a valiant and likely somewhat successful attempt at defusing an explosive situation. It isn't enough though and someone in his campaign needs to make that very clear. Here is another piece of the speech...

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as Im sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm werent simply controversial. They werent simply a religious leaders 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; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wrights comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

The fact is that the beginning of this snippet still doesn't pass the sniff test. Wright is not merely an occasional critic of the U.S. He is an America hater. Obama can say that his statements are taken out of context till his face turns blue, purple, red, and ever other color, but it won't change not only perception but in fact reality. Obama foolishly does what many of his surrogates have done. He tries to explain Wright's comments away by comparing them to other preachers. You know what. My rabbi says all sorts of things about politics that I disagree with. In fact, I find some of his sermons to be rambling and frankly boring. He criticizes the government plenty, but his sermons are NOT hate filled anti American diatrobes.

Furthermore, Obama is being disingenuous when he bemoans the fact that his pastor has been turned into a caricature by out of context sound bites. This is the same politician that was more than happy to pound John McCain because he purported to proclaim that we will be fighting in Iraq for a hundred years. Wright maybe more than anti American hate, but that is what Americans will know him for and Obama has tied himself to him. It may not be fair, but such is politics. Obama was more than happy to be on the other end of soundbites, and now is not the time to bemoan the reality we live in.

Finally, this speech still doesn't answer lingering questions. If Obama didn't know about Wright's more extreme rhetoric, why did he disinvite him from his invocation in April of last year? How could he know this man for twenty plus years and have no idea of his virulent anti American and divisive views? If Obama is to survive this fiasco it is going to take a lot more than one speech. I said yesterday he needs to do more to get out front of this story and he does. He needs to go on tough venues and answer tough questions. This speech may have helped a little, but it is not enough, and if he doesn't do more, ASAP, his Presidential campaign and possible entire political career are over.