The Speech

I've been thinking about Senator Obama's speech all day. I've been having trouble getting my thoughts straight and figuring out what to write about it. Not that I have to write about it. There's plenty of commentary out there that I think is both astute and insightful.

So, I will add only one basic thought.

In this country, politics has been tied up with race since the very beginning. From slavery to civil rights to immigration to affirmative action, every generation of Americans has grappled with race and expressed some of those struggles through the political process. Most of the time, race bubbles beneath the surface, informing and influencing. A good example is the Southern Strategy of the 1970's and 80's, whereby the Republicans used subtly racist appeals to Southern white voters to shift those states into the GOP column. The strategy clearly worked and I think you can easily make the argument that its effects are still being felt today.

Other times, rare times, race takes center stage. Often when that happens, it comes with violence, unrest and lingering bitterness. There aren't many political leaders who can talk about race in a way that doesn't delegitimize people's genuine concerns, but does empower them to consider another viewpoint. In many ways, people like Al Sharpton and Pat Buchanan are very similar. They both talk about race and they both speak to their constituencies with relative openness about their grievances. But both have utterly failed to bring about anything that we might call healing.

I don't know if Barack Obama can deliver "healing". I do know that, for the first time in my life, I feel some real hope for national progress on issues of race. I think we'll be talking about this speech for decades.