Pancake City

Barack Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia yesterday in part to address the controversy surrounding incendiary remarks his pastor has made over the years, sound bites of which were replayed endlessly on cable news the past few days. The firestorm over the comments, made by his pastor who Obama has had a long relationship with, has threatened to derail his campaign.

I don’t know if his speech will change the minds of the judgmental, those quick to tar him by association and assume that these types of comments occurred weekly in his church, with Obama’s tacit approval, rather than infrequently and with his regret. I doubt that they will.

But it made me proud to support him, more so than ever. Obama used the controversy as a springboard to talk about race in America, and gave a frank, complex, and nuanced overview of race relations in America. He went over the history of how we got here, discussed the feeling of whites and blacks today, along with old and young, and offered people a vision of where we could go in the future. If someone from a foreign land wanted to understand the role of race in America, the first thing I would have him do is watch Obama’s 37-minute speech.

His speech was delivered in front of a small crowd, without his usual rhetorical flourishes or soaring oratory. It was also the best speech I have heard him give. It is so uncongenial to being broken down to sound bites that I don’t think anyone can get the full flavor of it without listening or reading it in its entirety. I hope you take the time to watch the speech or read the transcript.

One moment that resonated with me is when he spoke about his grandmother:

“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, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

Many of the people in my generation, myself included, have grown up in a world largely free of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice and bigotry. It exists, and we notice it, but it rarely defines our lives or prevents us from achieving our dreams. The same often can’t be said about our parents, our grandparents, and our aunts and uncles. They grew up in a different time, and I have had some uncomfortable moments hearing them utter prejudiced thoughts that did great injustice to the love and compassion that made up the larger part of their character.

It is why for me the defining breakdown in this election isn’t black or white, male or female, Democrat or Republican. It is young and old. It is about a generation less shackled by history and more able to move on versus a generation whose thinking is often too firmly molded by the past. The problems our nation faces won’t magically go away if Barack Obama is elected. Whatever change he can affect will likely be small. But we can’t even hope to make that small change until we are willing to acknowledge and discuss our problems in a pragmatic manner. We have to nod to the past while focus on the future. That’s something I believe Barack Obama is better able to do than anyone else left in the race.