"Obama Blew It" - Democratic Underground

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Fri Mar-21-08 10:17 AM
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"Obama Blew It"

What the candidate should have said about race.
By Michael Meyers
March 20, 2008

(Snip)

In my considered judgment as a race and civil rights specialist, I would say that Barack Obama's "momentous" speech on race settled on merely "explaining" so-called racial differences between blacks and whites -- and in so doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used to be in America.

He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and a road map for new thinking about race. He should have depicted his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol of the dysfunctional angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye color.

In fact, I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.

I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-meyers20mar20,0,3898931.story

I think Mr. Meyers is both right and wrong. He's right that a "race doesn't exist" track is both true and more in keeping with Obama's general theme. But he's wrong if he thinks that Obama should have changed the entire tenor of the speech to coincide with that theme. The truth is we cannot get beyond the racial situation in America until we understand what it is. It's fine and dandy to look at a new generation where so many are blended-race and hope that they will lead us to the promised land of true harmony, but in the meantime, there are still plenty of people whose experiences are very race-determined, and that has to be acknowledged. "Color-blindness" has too often been an excuse for retaining the stagnant status quo for Obama to make that the theme of his speech and still be the visionary candidate that Mr. Meyers expects. In fact, it makes him more visionary that he can see beyond his own unique story to empathize with those whose story of experienced racism has happened over and over again.

Thoughts?