The Speech

The long-awaited (well, long awaited for a day) speech on race by presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was delivered today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is known as the "City of Brotherly Love," which seems an apt place to present a speech on race, and Pennsylvania is the state that votes next on April 22 in the Democratic presidential nomination race.

Senator Obama, who is of mixed racial heritage but identifies as an African-American, leads Senator Hillary Clinton of New York narrowly in the Democratic Party's total of popular votes and delegates. But the race is far from over and it is likely neither candidate will emerge from the voting with enough delegates to claim the nomination outright.

Today's speech was seen as a very important one for Senator Obama's campaign. For the past two weeks, he has been getting a critical press after months of adulatory coverage.
Now that he is the frontrunner, and after many complaints from the Clinton camp that the coverage of the campaign was biased towards the Illinois senator, the press began to look more critically at Sen. Obama.

After the press reported some gaffes and misstatements by the senator and surrogates, an old issue flared up with a vengeance. Video sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the church in Chicago where the senator and his family are members-The Trinity United Church of Christ-began showing up on network newscasts and on YouTube. The videos showed the Rev. Wright launching into invective that shocked most Americans. The Rev. Wright said that because of past racial discrimination, American blacks should not sing, "God Bless America," but "God Damn America;" the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima in World War Two led "the chickens coming home to roost" in the form of the attacks in New York and Washington on 9/11; and that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus for dissemination to minorities.

When confronted with these videos, the senator first tried to brush them off saying although he was a member of the Church for nearly 20 years, he never heard the Reverend Wright speak this way. And the statements, he told Jewish leaders, were like those of a "crazy old uncle," and while he disavowed them and repudiated them, he would not leave the church.

The answers proved less than satisfactory and he dropped five points in a presidential tracking poll in one night after this story broke. Reports surfaced that Senator Obama did not want the Rev. Wright present at the launch of his presidential campaign because he knew the reverend would be considered "controversial." Paragraphs about Rev. Wright popped up in Sen. Obama's books and it became clearer there was a controversy brewing that threatened to harm the campaign in the home stretch.

So, to the speech today in Pennsylvania.

In the speech, Sen. Obama condemned the inflammatory statements by the Rev. Wright, saying the reverend chose, "incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation, that rightly offend white and black alike."

But he said that Reverend Wright's comments shown over and over again on television and on the Internet do not do justice to the man, that he was: "more than snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube…[he] has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country" and has spent his time "housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS."

For the first time, Sen. Obama admitted that he had been present when these statements were made: "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed."

He added that the views expressed in this church were emblematic of African-American life in the United States, "The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America."

In attempting to put Rev. Wright's remarks in context, Sen. Obama said, "For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years…The profound mistake of Rev. 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."

He would not disassociate from the church saying he could not leave it as much as he could not disavow his own grandmother (who is white) even though, she was "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 confessed 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."

There were other parts of the speech in which he talked about the fears of whites who, "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."

In the end, he concluded that, "…today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."

The speech has caused a great deal of reaction in the press. Many have praised its eloquence and its frank and open approach to the discussion of race in America-a topic that many try to avoid in any honest terms given the freight in carries in the American experience.
Words like "courageous" (Paul Mirengoff, Power Line) and "a marvel of contemporary political rhetoric;" (Mark Ambinder, Atlantic) "the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime," (Andrew Sullivan) and more.

But along with the praises is some criticism. One commentator wrote that, "[Sen. Obama would] make it appear as though the disgusting remarks of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, are the merest speck, a mere glancing moment in time in the centuries-long history of American race relations."(John Podheretz, Commentary). And there is some doubt (although it is a minority view at this point) that he fulfilled his mission of getting the subject behind him:
"Where it was weakest was in explaining the very reason for the speech: how the inflammatory, even repugnant, comments of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are understandable." (Mike Allen, Politico)

The view from here is that this is going to go a long way in helping Sen. Obama but perhaps not the entire way. For those looking for a complete repudiation of the Rev. Wright's remarks, it was not there; nor did the senator take stronger action, such as leaving the church. In effect, he was saying, people need to understand the depths of African-American despair in the United States given the legacy of slavery to comprehend why he has a conflicted nature about the entire affair.

But for those put off by the Rev. Wright's remarks, this may not do. "Understand" may come awfully close to "tolerate" when it comes to their reactions to those statements, and it could even be read as a tacit admission that while Sen. Obama repudiated the remarks, he can never completely disassociate himself from them given his past, and the past of African-Americans in the United States. That could be a tough sell to many voters.

For supporters of Sen. Obama, this was another example of his rhetorical talents and gifts in addressing a difficult and tense subject in a way that is rarely done in American politics. His honesty and forthrightness and his logic and ability to educate and persuade could work to put the matter behind him and move on in the presidential race.

There will be another two to three days of reaction and I suspect the majority will be favorable. But first glance suggests that not all were swayed by the speech and his candidacy has been forever changed from the days of swoons and "chills running up and down the leg" in reaction to his campaign.

The real reaction will come April 22 when voters go to the polls in Pennsylvania in a critical primary four weeks after this speech when there is plenty of time to think about it.