One speech - two more columns

A WEEK has passed since a black man's burden was nailed to the podium. The burdens of white leaders are never nailed down.

The speech, which has gotten wonderful reviews, should be required reading in classrooms across the country - and in as many other venues as possible. With a worldview that embraces both justice and healing, Senator Obama is better on these issues than any American leader since King.

Unfortunately, what is more likely to happen is that the essence of the speech will be lost in the din that inevitably erupts whenever there is a racial controversy in the United States.

I am White, and I am not a prominent columnist.  The quotes are from two prominent Black columnists.  The first is from Derrick Jackson's The black man's burden in The Boston Globe, the 2nd from Bob Herbert's With a Powerful Speech, Obama Offers a Challenge in the New York Times. This diary will explore both.
Much of Jackson's column devoted to the reaction to the speech of Mike Huckabee and John McCain, with extensive quotations from both men. Jackson then notes pointedly

Even in their graciousness, McCain and Huckabee know they have a free pass. They and the Republican Party still associate with hysterical agents of religious intolerance and romantics of the Confederacy. Both competed for the endorsements of evangelicals who call the Roman Catholic Church a cult, blame Hurricane Katrina on homosexuals, and say it is America's role to destroy Islam. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was "happy" for the endorsement of Bob Jones III, the chancellor of Bob Jones University, which banned interracial dating until 2000 and still bans "militant" gay alumni from campus.

He then remarks that Hillary Clinton is similarly given a free pass, and reminds us of remarks by various surrogates she has had to dump, how she has lost her once substantial lead among Blacks, and yet despite all this had not been forced to reveal her own racial views even as Ed Rendell makes his remarks about Pennsylvania voter.  What he writes next, his concluding paragraph is what most caught my attention:

Once again, America's white leaders play footsie with white intolerance while Obama was pressured to bring the nation the head of Jeremiah Wright. Once again, a black person holds the nation's bag of racial burdens. Whatever discussions Obama started across America with his speech, the fact that Huckabee and McCain offer more comfort to Obama than Clinton is evidence that at the top, the conversation is tongue-tied.

To me the implication of that final paragraph is that Jackson perceives the Democratic party and its leadership as unwilling to address the still festering grievances of many African-Americans.  He asks, as I suppose do many Blacks, why the burden of race should be only theirs, when it is a societal issue.  The reader will note that Jackson pays little heed to the part of Obama's speech where the candidate acknowledged the grievances of working class whites.  Jackson is articulate, educated, and that final paragraph displays what I can only describe as a potentially devastating frustration, even bitterness.

Herbert chooses a different form of expression.  

The fundamental message that Senator Obama is trying to get across is that the racial madness that has perverted so many elections needs to stop - and stop now. Time and again, that madness has been employed to undermine efforts to create what the senator characterizes as "a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America."

Racial prejudice, ignorance, hostility - whatever - has caused millions of Americans to vote against their own economic interests, and for policies that have damaged the country.

Far more people will see the endless loop of Senator Obama's frenzied former pastor than will ever read or hear the sober, thoughtful, constructive words of the senator himself.

Herbert's connects Obama's speech with the remarks made by Bobby Kennedy in Indianapolis, to a largely Black crowd, informing them of what he had just learned - of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Rather than merely repeat those words, as does Herbert, I suggest you watch this:

"But that night there was calm in Indianapolis."   A White man who knew the loss hatred could cause was able to reach out to Blacks who had every right to be angry.

Herbert concludes his column thusly:

The nation can be proud of the distance it has traveled since 1968. But there are still millions peering fearfully or angrily across the chasm of misunderstanding. Politics aside, Senator Obama's speech is an excellent place from which to start the difficult work of bridging that divide.

It may be an excellent place to start, and it is certainly necessary.  But absent equivalent leadership from the White community we will lose this opportunity to heal a nation still bitterly divided by race.  We may, as Obama has himself told us, come very far, and thus SHOULD be more hopeful than aremany of those of the generation of Jeremiah Wright.  But what if Obama is defeated and the perception - both in the African-American and White communities - is that he was defeated only because he was Black, that this is yet one more example of racism being used to keep Blacks down? Last night Chuck Todd made the point that Bill Clinton's remarks about McCain and Clinton both loving their country had little to do with Obama's patriotism or lack thereof, but was a racial dog whistle:  Clinton was speaking at a gathering of white veterans, and the reference to all that other stuff was clearly code words for race, that by supporting Hillary they could avoid addressing the issue of race.

If this nation is ever going to heal we can no longer pretend that we have solved the issues of race.  It was an inevitable part of this campaign, as it remains an inevitable part of our society.  Had Obama not become what seemed the presumptive nominee of the party, perhaps the issue might not have come up.  After all, for quite a while Blacks supported Clinton, many afraid to believe that it was yet possible for a Black man to be nominated.  Now having seen the reality of that possibility, were he denied on the basis of race, the bitterness and frustration one sees in Jackson might soon seem mild.  There is real perception of a double standard.  And that is dangerous for our future.

We should be One America.   That is still an aspiration.   We still strive for a More Perfect Union - it remains and wil always be a goal towards which we reach, and not a final and ultimate resting place.  

It should no longer be acceptable for the use of race to divide, to suppress the hopes of any group, to divide up by fear in the hopes of gaining or maintaining power:  the dreams of one group cannot be at the expense of the aspirations of other groups.  As FDR told us, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Those who use fear to drive us politically are unworthy of leading us politically.  We acknowledge this about those on the Republican side who have gutted our civil liberties and bankrupted our nation with their nonsensical approach to what they have labeled  the "Global War on Terror."   Most Democrats would agree on that, as would many of the independents and an increasing number of thinking Republicans.  It is equally wrong to take advantage of deepseated fears about race and about economic class that are still used to divide and conquer.  

And it is despicable for any Democrat to resort to such divisiveness.  That adjective is equally applicable to those who seek to roil up minority communities and those who seek to use parts of those minority communities as boogeymen to obtain the votes of segments of the White community.  

I think Bobby Kennedy's remarks should be mandatory viewing.    And I agree with Herbert that we could do worse than require school students to watch (better) or read (acceptable) Obama's speech.  

It is the burden of ALL of us.  To remain silent in the face of evil is to acquiesce in that evil.  There is no justification now.  

This is beyond the current election, as important as that is.   This is about the morality of American politics and the culture in which it operates.

We should demand of our political leaders that they acknowledge this.  And we should insist that the media do more than analyze the short-term political impact of this statement or that action.  

It is the society of which we are all part.  Therefore we are all responsible.  

Jackson began by reminding us A WEEK has passed since a black man's burden was nailed to the podium. The burdens of white leaders are never nailed down.  White, Brown, Black, or any other shade, any gender or sexual orientation, any religion or no religion, we are part of One Nation, and if there is a God and S/He is loving, we are not likely to be viewed as "under God" if we treat ANY of our nation with less than full respect and full equality.

It is up to ALL of us.   We can and must disagree on elements of policy, and perhaps aspects of our vision for the future.  We will inevitably disagree even within our individual parties on the candidates we prefer.   But we must no longer accept any candidate, any party, any institution that seeks to demean or divide us on race.  Gender discrimination is important, as are other forms of discrimination.  But the unhealed wound in our society is still race, and unless and until we can come to terms with that, we will not be able to heal our other divides.

Peace.

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