Sunday Reading: Obama's March 18 Speech

For those of you with attention spans longer than ten seconds, see Senator Obama's much-discussed speech on race, Reverend Wright, and the pursuit of a more perfect union. The NY Times graphic provides the video and text side by side. For those of you who want to make sure you aren't being swayed by delivery, the NY Times also offers the transcript alone.

I was going to provide some highlights, but Frank Rich is right: Obama's speech doesn't reduce to sound bites. Tuesday's address in Philadelphia is a thoughtful, coherent address. Each paragraph feels naturally and tightly interwoven with its neighbors, the sign of one author working hard to develop a very complete idea, not a committee of advisors pasting together a collage of focus-group keywords. It deserves careful reading, from start from finish.

A friend of mine said the other day he wanted Obama to go further in denouncing whatever Rev. Wright said. I suggested that maybe Obama didn't feel the need to belabor the obvious. As I review the transcript, I find that Obama did address his former pastor's error... an error more profound than any racial impropriety:

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

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.

[emphasis mine; words Barack Obama's, address in Philadelphia, 2008.03.18, as published in the New York Times, 2008.03.18.]

On an earlier topic, Obama did offer one memorable sound bite for Professors Schaff and Deneen:

This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected [Obama, 2008.03.18].

No wild-eyed rejection of human fallibility or natural law there; just a belief that we can always do better.

Lots to think about. Read the speech, the whole speech, from his hearkening to the Founding Fathers to his closing story of Ashley Baia, sacrifice, and hope in South Carolina. Once you've read it, your comments are welcome.