Academic

Can We Handle It?

By Sherrilyn Ifill

Barack Obama?s speech today set the bar high. Maybe too high for America.  He offered the most cogent, clear and honest discussion of race I?ve ever heard by a mainstream figure in public life.  He addressed race and faith in all its complexity.  And standing in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Obama pressed the point that the struggle over race is as deep and fundamental to Americanness as the foundational documents that created this republic.      When he talked about why he would not disown his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, even as he condemned some of Wright?s words, it was the most calibrated and honest discussion of race and faith and family we?re likely to hear in a long time. This passage of his speech will, I promise you, stand the test of decades:

?I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.  I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother ? a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.?

Some pundits have questioned whether Obama?s speech was just an appeal to elites, not the working class in Pennsylvania, for example. But I think his speech was well targeted at this demographic.  It?s not the great un-churched in Manhattan and Georgetown he was talking to, when he talked about sitting in the pew hearing your pastor say things you disagree with.  He was talking to Catholics, most of whom disagree with their Pope and their parish priest about issues such as divorce, birth control and women in the ministry.  He was talking to parishioners in some black churches who struggle with rampant homophobia preached in the pulpit. And even to those white evangelicals who love their church, but don?t believe that voting Democratic guarantees a trip to hell.

It was a courageous speech, because Obama could have tried to just ride out the Rev. Wright controversy.  Instead, he stepped to it.  He learned over the last two weeks that in politics, a black candidate either frames the race issue himself, or his opponents will use it to frame him.

How will white voters in Pennsylvania respond?   I don?t know.  But I do know that voters like a show of strength.  Without the speech, Obama faced a sure trouncing from Pennsylvania voters who have been interpreting his defensive stance of the last few weeks with suspicion.  But beyond the political calculation, Obama?s speech was a challenge to America ? a challenge to individual voters, to the media, to pundits ? to stop acting as though we just started dealing with race.  We?ve been in this thing for a long time.  By now we should be able to appreciate nuance, context, perspective and history when we talk about race.  Obama laid it out today.  The question is, can America handle it?  See Obama?s entire speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU   Here?s Ron Christie and me talking about the speech on Farai Chideya?s News& Notes http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88487474 .

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Full post as published by BlackProf on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).