The Value, and Values, of Barack: Why He Gave That Speech On Race

As a part of PBS' Frontline piece "The Choice 2008" (which I hear is a good look at the candidates), they interviewed Obama's chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod. At one point they asked him: "When the Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright comments came out and the whole hubbub happened, what were your thoughts? How did you decide to deal with it?" This is how he responded, and it blows me away to see the depth of value in Obama that it reflects:

"The Rev. Wright episode was one of those episodes in which I began to see a president in real stark terms, because the stories broke; it was a feeding frenzy in the media. He was in Washington voting until 1:00 in the morning. We had set up some editorial board interviews the next day in Chicago on a different, also challenging subject. So he flew back into the city in the middle of the day on Friday, and he issued a statement on Rev. Wright -- we had written one; he rewrote it. Went off to his editorial boards for three hours, went on television, sat for three or four different interviews on Rev. Wright, and then said that night, 'I want to do a speech on race; I want to put this in context.'

He had mentioned the desire to make a speech like this before, but this seemed like the right time. And he said, 'And I want to do it on Monday or Tuesday.' He said, 'But I have to write it.'

So he went off campaigning on Saturday and came home. At 9:30 Saturday night he dictated an outline to one of his speechwriters, who shot it back to him on Sunday. Sunday night at 10:00, he started working on it again, and worked until 3:00 in the morning. We took off at 8:00 in the morning the next day, on Monday. The speech was Tuesday. Campaigned all day in Pennsylvania, and then from 9:30 till 2:00 in the morning on Monday, he finished the speech.

Knowing his habits, I just went to sleep, thinking I'd wake up in the middle of the night because the speech would be there in the middle of the night. And that's what happened. And I read that speech, and I just e-mailed him back and said, "This is why you should be president," because it was so filled with wisdom and so profound in many ways that it just blew me away that a guy in the midst of all this chaos, with no sleep and in the middle of the night, could produce that kind of thought and that kind of work." (emphasis added)

Take a look at the speech he came up with, below, that offers a glimpse of the hopeful--yes hopeful--perspective that Obama has to offer our country on this issue (in addition to the undoubtedly important approaches he has to foreign policy, energy, civic engagement, health care, etc., etc.). By the way, I wrote a piece on this speech when he gave it back in March that highlights some of the parts that struck me the most. Here's the speech (with 5,056,568 views on You Tube so far, and that's only for this version of it):

Rev. Wright, Take Two: Maybe What Wright Needs is Some Empathy

Wright's interview with Bill Moyers, which I wrote about in my last post, was followed by a speech and in-depth question and answer session by Wright at the National Press Club yesterday. As I wrote in that last post of mine, Wright’s points in the Moyers interview seemed to be valid; Moyers also provided lengthy clips of Wright's sermons, offering a more complex view of some of his highly criticized comments. At the National Press Club however, mainly in the Q & A period, he talked a good deal more about the political side of things. I’ve been trying to sort through some of the videos of it all to make some sense of it, and while I may write more later, I have some more immediate thoughts here.

At first, after watching Wright's Q & A session and Obama's response (both of which I'll include video of below), I was a bit confused. Wright said a number of things that were slight digs against Obama, such as comments about how he (Obama) did not hear the hope in Wright's speeches, and did not go to church with great frequency. But the comment with the most potential for political damage was, appropriately, political in nature. Wright had mentioned on Moyers' show Friday night that, in distancing himself from Wright, Obama was "doing what politicians do," but left it at that. At the National Press Club however, he expressly said that Obama was doing what he had to do "to get elected."

That was, for me, plausible. As anyone whose candidate comes in the line of fire wants to think, my first reaction was that Wright's comments simply weren't true. But of course, thinking that doesn't make it so. So I asked myself whether the reasons Obama provided for distancing himself from Wright seemed valid to me, or not. My sense of the situation crystallized a bit when I looked back at part of the speech Obama gave when he first fully addressed the issue of Rev. Wright, along with the issue of race, in Pennsylvania last month.

Within that speech, Obama describes one of the key reasons he decided to distance himself from Wright:

"[T]he remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's efforts to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they professed a profoundly distorted view of this country. A view that sees white racism as endemic, 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 primarily rooted in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong, but divisive. Divisive at a time when we need unity..." (These comments start around the seventh minute in this video.)

But to return to our question about Wright's claim, is Obama just saying what's necessary to be elected? To claim that implies that Obama is lying, or at least intentionally misleading. Certainly what Obama has said about Wright has helped assuage the worries of many potential supporters, but does that mean he was lying, or being misleading?

Well, I haven’t heard the comments Wright made concerning Israel, but in terms of his thoughts on white racism, I do indeed think that some of those thoughts gave the impression that white racism is "endemic," as Obama put it. I looked up a short clip on a sermon of Wright's where he talks some about Hillary Clinton, along with whites in general. In watching it, I did get the sense that he was painting whites in a pessimistic, fatalistic fashion. He makes a number of comments about African Americans that are undoubtedly true, noting that whites do not know what it’s like for a taxi to pass them by because of their color, or to be pulled over by the police because of the way they look.

These points are ones that I think Obama was making in similar fashions in his speech, but the difference is that Obama clearly attempted to see things from both the black and white perspective. As I mentioned in my first post on Obama’s “race speech,” he accurately speaks about the black and the white perspective on race, without demonizing either. The above sermon of Wright’s that I watched, available here, does not attempt to see things from both sides, in my view, and therefore comes across as demonizing in ways. I don’t think that means Wright hates whites, or anything that extreme, I think it simply means that he, in some ways, was not attempting to see things from both sides; Obama even pointed this out during his Pennsylvania speech, noting that he never saw Wright treat a white person unkindly, etc.

To wrap my thoughts up here, I would say that the whole issue here may come down to empathy. Both Obama and Wright are looking at problems, not of race, but of races--that is, problems that involve both blacks and whites. In order to do so fairly and progressively, both sides need to be considered. Do not hear me wrong though, these problems began, and to the extent that they still exist, have in many ways been perpetuated, at the hands of whites. But of course many whites do not accept these problems, passionately wanting, along with blacks and others, to see things change. It seems Obama is looking hopefully (to use "his" word) at this reality, acknowledging the problems at hands, and saying, “let’s move onto solutions.” Wright, on the other hand, in some ways at least, appears to be focusing more on the problems. There may be more to this puzzle, but those are some initial thoughts. The key videos from Wright yesterday, and Obama today, are below.

Wright at the National Press Club for Q&A, part 1 (again, he gave a speech that preceded the Q&A session, but from what I saw, he talked politics for the most part afterwards in response to questions):



Wright at the National Press Club for Q&A, part 2:



Wright at the National Press Club for Q&A, part 3:



Obama's response to Wright's National Press Club comments:



Above photo credit: Chip Somodevilla for Getty images, all rights reserved.

Video of Jeremiah Wright's First Interview Post-Controversy

Bill Moyers of PBS got the chance to interview Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright last night for the first time since the controversy broke out a few months ago. The interview's well worth watching, as it's an in-depth discussion of the African American church in general, and Wright's church specifically. The short video clips that started the controversy are shown in their full context as well, offering a more complicated picture of what was said. Both parts of the video are below, together lasting about 45 minutes; the first part deals more with the historical issues, with the interview comprising most of the second.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Update: Please see my more recent post on this subject to read about my thoughts following Rev. Wright's appearance at the National Press Club: "Rev. Wright, Take Two: Maybe What Wright Needs is Some Empathy."

The Value, and Values, of Barack: Racial Acuity

Obama spoke today, and it was indeed unique. The topic was race, and his honesty was encouraging. I will not say much before pasting an excerpt of his speech and a link to the video of it, but will note that what stood out most was his ability and authority, as a man of mixed race, to speak to both the black and white community--and with a candor and conviction that was heartening, and so necessary in our country, divided racially and otherwise as we are under the surface. To hear a leader so moved by issues that politicians seem alternately blind and powerless towards, was in itself moving; and it was not simply moving because inspiration is nice, but because people need to be moved in order to move (i.e., to progress)--and clearly, with race, there is much need for progress still; or, as he put it in his speech, there is much need for us to continue the work of perfecting our union.

Lastly, I would note that this is the first of what I intend to be a series of pieces on the values of Obama. The word itself--values--has been too commonly reserved for the political right, and in a way that limits the meaning of the word to a single religious community's singular, narrow interpretation. The Religious Right's use of the word, in fact, has not only cheapened it for those outside of the Religious Right, it has gone so far as to strip the value for those within, removing phrases such as income equality, disease reduction, and shared humanity from the idea of "values."

Below, I pasted an excerpt from the text of Obama's speech, wherein he speaks directly to the black and white communities in the ways I mentioned above. I would urge you to read and consider the capacity such thinking has to propel our country in correcting directions. The link to the video follows the speech, and is worth watching in its entirety, as it is filled with concepts that I personally have not heard many politicians delve into in near this depth, with near this focus.

"In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've 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 they're 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 aren't 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.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

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 is 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 whose 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 the 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.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."

The speech in full (around 20-30 (worthwhile) minutes):