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"A More Perfect Union." Charles Murray at the Corner: Uh, did you see the same speech that I saw?
I read the various posts here on "The Corner," mostly pretty ho-hum or critical about Obama's speech. Then I figured I'd better read the text (I tried to find a video of it, but couldn't). I've just finished. Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols.... But you know me. Starry-eyed Obama groupie.
More reaction from the Guardian's Michael Tomasky:
David Corn:... I have to assume that many white Americans have been attracted to him in no small part because he seemed to offer a narrative that wouldn't take us into these discomfiting, cobwebbed corners of the American psyche. He seemed, as someone's one-liner had it, "just the right amount of black"; like he probably belonged to a genteel inter-racial Episcopal church.
Well, tough - he didn't. And yesterday he basically told us why. He did so with about as much honesty as we have any right to expect from a person seeking the presidency. I'm sure it helps us, as a society, to hear it all put out there with intelligence and subtlety. I'm less sure about whether it will help him.
... Unlike the black leaders of recent years, Obama identified with both the winners and losers of America: 'I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.' He is E Pluribus Unum. [...]
Obama ended up at an obvious point: can't we all just get along and "do unto others as we would have them do unto us." But the path he took was not without some courage. He dared to explain—and somewhat justify—black anger that can lead to comments that upset whites, while calling for blacks to move past such anger. And he did not dump Wright. He also dared to understand white resentment, but he chided whites (without castigating them) for dismissing or ignoring black anger. Events beyond Obama's control pushed him to make this speech. And, no doubt, political foes and conservative antagonists will continue their crusade to tar Obama with Wright's words. But with this address, Obama presented a candid approach to race. Still, there's no telling if this will help him in his fierce battle with Hillary Clinton—let alone in a general election, should he secure the Democratic presidential nomination.
While discussing his years of worship at the Trinity Church, Obama noted that by attending services there and imagining "the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones," he came to realize that "our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black." With this speech—and throughout his campaign—as he merges his own story with the story of race in America, he is presenting himself also as "black and more than black." And that is a story with no ending yet.