Barack Obama On Why Race In The Race Doesn’t Matter
“RACE doesn’t matter,” chant the crowd after Sen. Barack Obama’s victory in the
Of course it doesn’t. That’s why the Obamites are chanting it.
As AP’s Charles Babington writes:
“But in the seven weeks since, race has mattered more and more in his presidential struggle against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, threatening to dent his lead. On Tuesday, Obama addressed it head-on in a speech that bluntly described a history of injustice to blacks, acknowledged the resentments of whites, and ended with the hope that his campaign can help heal racial divisions.”
Race doesn’t matter. Did you hear it? Race DOES NOT MATTER!
Barack Obama’s speech is front-page news on the Daily Telegraph. A speech given by an agonist in the Race to The Whitehouse, a man not yet his party’s nominee, is front-page news on a
Says Mickey Kaus on Obama’s Speech on race – “Can’t We Ignore Race? Please?” Well, No.
We can listen, and like Kaus look at segments of the speech we like best:
Obama: “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 confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street...”
Says Kaus:
The most disastrous sentence in the speech. If Obama’s saying that those who fear young black men on the street are racists, the equivalents of Rev. Wright in offensiveness, then he’s just insulted a whole lof ot people. If he loses the votes of everyone who fears young black men, he loses the election. People fear black men on the street–as even Jesse Jackson once momentarily admitted–because they cause a wildly disproportionate share of street crime. Does Obama want to be the candidate who says that thought is verboten?
Mark Hemingway at the Corner says Obama “spoke as candidly and eloquently about race as one could hope of a politician”.
He’s right. Obama is charming, witty and dashing. He is everything Hillary Clinton is not.
Hemingway goes on:
“Now that said, I think the speech could be a disaster. Race isn’t easy to address — it required Obama to be extremely nuanced and offer up very complex arguments. Very few people are actually going to watch or read this speech all the way through. I’m not sure there’s any ten second takeaways from the speech that will be replayed on cable news that will pacify voters or give a sense of what the speech was really about.”
Or voters can just hear the bits they like best, and have their prejudices reinforced…
Posted: 19th, March 2008 | In: Politicians Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
