From The Emails 032108

Hey folks,

First, just a quick note. The OPNTalk will be off line this Sunday. I will not be here. It's Easter of course. But fret not, I WILL be here Saturday. That's right, look for a SPEICAL extended verison of the SATURDAY edition of the OPN. The IWA, Health and Science, You Can't Make This Stuff Up, segments along with whatever else I have time for, one time only, this SATURDAY.

Right now? It's Friday, time to go to the emails.

"I thought you might like an alternitive view of the Obama Speech. Believe it or not, some people were actually moved by it."

OBAMA'S SPEECH HOLDS OUT POSSIBILITY OF TRANSCENDING RACE

By Georgie Anne Geyer

Thu Mar 20, 7:57 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- Something profoundly inspirational in the long American trauma over race occurred this week with the extraordinary speech of Barack Obama. It was a moment and a message that might well carry us as a people even beyond Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s great message of justice and on to a new one of transcendence.

We may not realize quite what is happening yet, but it is not impossible to see that Sen. Obama is using his campaign and his address on "A More Perfect Union" -- which took place just yards from Independence Hall in the iconic city of Philadelphia -- to outline the transformation he foresees for America.

He spoke to the anger and to the angst, but also to the hope of all sides, black and white and otherwise, saying that "we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction."

Speaking of his controversial black pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons critical of America carried us to this moment, Obama zeroed in on what was truly Wright's profound mistake. It was "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 -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen -- is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation."

At this point, I wanted to jump up and sing and maybe even dance around a little, just like the members of his Trinity United Church of Christ do proudly at Sunday services, because finally we are hearing some truths about race. The fact is that Barack Hussein Obama, this remarkable young mixture of names, races, ideas and beliefs, can indeed be where he is because this country has already changed enough to make his narrative including the presidency possible. As they say on Sunday, "Thanks be to the Lord."

As it happens, I grew up on Barack's and the Rev. Wright's self-same South Side of Chicago. I joyfully attended a Baptist Church at 87th Street and Ashland Avenue. It was a storefront -- nothing elegant like the 9,000-seat Trinity.

I don't remember a minister ever talking about politics. That was as verboten as dancing, drinking and going to the movies. (I didn't do so well on that last verboten.)

But there was a big difference. For us white people, churches were only for worship, while for black South Siders, their churches served as community, cultural and civic centers. Indeed, Obama has written and often spoken about becoming a Christian unsure of his faith, but very sure of the crucial place of the black church in organizing the black community.

So what he did in Tuesday's memorable "Philadelphia story" was to show understanding of the historical anger and hurt of black Americans, but also to speak sympathetically of the historical resentment of the white immigrant and other Americans toward blacks. What he did was to issue a moving cry for transcendence, for rising above and beyond the very real progress -- and, look at our history, this IS real! -- we have already made, particularly since civil rights were made part of our laws.

Probably the best description of where we are was given to me by Dr. Don Beck, head of the National Values Center and the Center for Global Emerging, when he said that, as a nation, we are moving from civil war to civil rights to civil transformation.

Obama has "rejected outright" Wright's statements that were found so reprehensible. There is no wavering in his condemnation, and that should now be history. Yet a person seeing the world fairly also has to see that a church like his in a racially complicated era is itself a complicated business.

Congregants angry and hurt at the criticisms of the church have pointed out that the Rev. Wright arranges bus trips for predominantly white congregations to visit Trinity every Sunday, and that the church has steadfastly maintained its relationship with the mother denomination, the predominantly white United Church of Christ, whose president, John H. Thomas, called Wright "a wonderful friend to white pastors" who has "gifted the organization financially."

Curiously, what Obama seems to understand instinctively from his experience of living all over the world, and being the son of a mixed couple and of mixed families, is that racism is hardly an American construct. We do well to remember that the African slaves so cruelly sent to America were largely rounded up by other African tribal leaders and by Arab slavers -- that's where the Rev. Wright seems to get lost in the mazes of history.

What Obama brings to the country is a sophisticated understanding of the experiences of peoples all over the world; and yet, as he said in his Philadelphia speech, "For as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."

Then he added: "It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate." One can surely say that again.

Here is the Link

Uh, OK.
Peter

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