That's Capital

Barack Obama chose  Philadelphia as the site for delivering his majestic “A More Perfect Union” speech. Sure, choosing the City of   Brotherly love freights the whole statement with the symbolism of comity. It also taps into a powerful set of symbols about the founding of the country. But this speech – or talk – went far beyond symbolism or pretty words or rhetorical sleight of hand. This talk touched upon what one friend of mine called “real talk”: the kind of straightforward, no-foolin’ exposition and explanation that reveals, deepens, and expands conversation and thinking. The sort of talk that suggests, invites, and even provokes action and change.

Before going any farther, I invite you to read, listen to, or watch the whole thing. Here are the links to the speech: text, audio, and video.

The speech inspired and invoked all sorts of reactions: wonder, frustration, respect. But for me, I felt something I haven’t seen other commentators mention: relief. That may sound like an odd or minor reaction, but I did feel it quite clearly. It felt as if a burden has been lifted – just a bit, mind you – to finally hear these words and thoughts and feelings put across in the public discourse. It’s been a long time comin’. My thought: “Well… finally.”

But this really is a big deal, at least to me. Obama put across a straightforward, heartfelt explanation of his experience, and used this as the basis of an explication of how the American identity is motley and full of multiplicity. This runs counter to the typical view of how we define ourselves in purist terms; White Folk especially like to think of this as a White Folks’ country, but I think they are wrong as can be. As soon as White Folk got off the boat at Plymouth Rock, this country has been about difference coming together. E pluribus unum. The problem is that we’ve never really defined the pluribus part as widely as reality has presented it to us. So

America decimated and displaced the American Indians, oppressed and segregated Blacks, and applied an erasure to Latinos and Asians when they began showing up in numbers. What a misguided waste.

Obama exploded this view, spelling out the benefits of difference and grounding these facts in his very existence and experience. While many will be taken aback and spun by this take on history and American identity, it comes close to the facts of our history and the potential for our future. What he said is not a new story; rather it is a story that has finally emerged as part of the wider American conversation.

While we continue to unpack these and other meanings within the speech, something else should come across loud-and-clear: no one else could present this speech. Not our “First Black President” who precipitated a lot of the BS over the last few weeks that have dragged racial tension into the presidential race, or his wife, or Mr. McCain. The only person with the insight, the intellect, the articulation, the feeling, and the lived experience to present these ideas, and to animate them with genuine authority, clarity and authenticity, is Mr. Obama. That’s what I hope people get.

Put another way: the phone rang at   3:00 AM. He answered and had something serious to say when he did.

This speech matters to me, it matters to America, and it matters to the world. Because, like it or not, we will have to deal with difference coming together. This world manifests multiplicity, but we share a common heritage, a common genome, a common biosphere. The sooner we get these lessons through our sometimes thick heads and occasionally cold hearts, the better. So even though Obama delved into difference within the context of the

US, the speech touches division more broadly: Muslim/Hindu, Black/Arabic, Franco-French/French-Immigrant, Aborigine/Australian.

I suspect that most people around the world think of the US as being part of the European/Western axis, and thus, White. This race will not change the perspective, but it may begin the process of calling this paradigm into question. I just hope that plenty of folks here and abroad will take the time to read/listen to/watch the speech in full. One commentator called it a symphony, and it does have the same sort of broad-based architecture. On the other hand, not a whole lot of folks are setting aside time to listen to Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony in spite of its beauty and depth.

What little highly anecdotal feedback I’ve gotten has been encouraging. One Chinese friend understood it within the context of promoting social harmony, a fundamental Confucian value. A Filipina I know felt moved, but buffeted by inchoate thoughts about identity, race, difference, and the singularly complicated colonial history of her homeland. Not to mention the lack of real hard-hitting discourse in a country that just let Emelda Marcos off the hook for corruption charges that have hung over her head for decades. Digging into hard topics will unsettle things. I’m fine with that.

Closer to home, I wonder what White Folk will hear in what O had to say. From what I’m beginning to read online, some caught it; many did not. I hardly expect a speech to unravel 400 years of racism in this country, but if it can open up a space for dialog where almost none existed, that would be a major step forward.

Of course, in the context of the election something more specific matters here: what will swing voters – that ill-defined group of 3-8% of the electorate that rides the fence, that does not seem particularly well informed or decisive – make of the speech? Will they understand that it took real leadership to handle this? Or will they only see a Black Man trying to give them a basic education on points they’ve long neglected and would rather forget? Will they feel scolded by an Uppity Negro?

I worry about this because we have, as a nation, lost our focus for extended periods on issues of race. But the fact that Obama went out on that limb says a lot about his character to me. To put it in common parlance: he manned-up. People who have questioned his spine got a taste yesterday. That may be the crucial subtext of this. And that may sway some of those "swing voters" (read: indecisive, uninformed, but crucial anyway). Even if they can’t get their heads wrapped around the subject matter, they might dial into the character he demonstrated.

Alas, he can’t do this on his own. He needs help. Someone like a… Bill Clinton could step to the plate and say, “What Mr. Obama said has gravity, substance and insight in it. We would do well to listen.” This might have the bonus benefit for Mr. Clinton of healing some of the rifts he’s opened between himself and his wife’s campaign, and Black Folk. This might actually help the

Clinton’s by making them appear less Machiavellian. Then again, William Jefferson dropped Lani Guinier at the merest bit of pressure, so it’s hard to believe that he’s willing to take the hard road on this go-round. A bit more valorous behavior would go a long way…I’m hopeful, but not completely idealistic.

Compassion and depth and righteousness should be met and supported no matter where it originates, even from a so-called “competitor. Obama showed gumption and moxie and plain ol’ human decency. Getting right with that will be good for any candidate, including Hillary Clinton. Maybe a sophisticated family friend like Vernon Jordan can break it down fo’ ‘em. 

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Before finishing up, I’m going to take a lengthy detour because it has to do with media, which is still my interest and expertise, as well as how Black intellectuals have and will discuss Obama’s talk.

Tavis Smiley had Henry Louis Gates on his PBS show right after the speech and they chatted about Obama’s speech. Here are my top ten points on what Misters Gates and Smiley had to say:

1.
Gates notes that the media have a notoriously short attention span and that will probably work against any deeper explorations on the points brought up through Obama’s talk. I think he’s right on the money. The people who run the media (editors) are mostly isolated White Folk. Race is already a non-issue for them. They have no particular interest or skills in figuring out how to keep a conversation like this going. And the kind of nuanced exchange that is needed now won’t play well in the media, especially TV. We may end up being stuck where we are right now.

2.
Gates and Smiley go to some lengths to talk about how White males might react to Obama’s speech, especially given the historical jitters they’ve expressed on racial matters. I’d go one step farther: I really wonder what White men AND women will think. White women may have half-a-clue more than their male counterparts, but that’s still not enough.

3.
Professor Gates mentions receiving a lot of emails on the speech, many of them from notable Black intellectuals. I would just about give my eye-teeth to see them, as well as those written by people like you and me, as well as the aforementioned White males and females. This would make a remarkable book. One could get the temperature of the conversation on race from this material. If anyone knows the Obama people, tell them to find a writer for this project to bring the talk back into the national conversation in a few months.

4.
Professor Gates make an especially astute observation: that no candidate has put forth a serious economic policy plan that realistically discusses how we will deal with a middle class trapped in economic inertia and a lower class that finds itself squeezed by economic forces. A serious economic policy statement has to come from each candidate now. The more forward-looking candidate(s) may go the next step: presenting a real top-to-bottom reassessment of how the economy works, whom it works for, and how we define key players like corporations. Is Obama up to that task? That’s iffy. But he’s way more likely to even broach the questions involved than Hillary, who is a close-to-the-vest company-gal and McCain who doesn’t have a clue about any of this. Obama’s reflective nature may come across as navel-gazing to many, but we absolutely positively need that kind of deeper level of thinking plugged into our political and economic system. Now.

5.
Many commentators have noted how stunned White America, and the mainstream press, has been at continuing Black anger. Well, duh: if you never talk to us, I suppose you may well be surprised by what we think and how we express it.

But what can we expect? White Folks have Little League and home improvement and supper and all that. This is not a putdown: I just mean to say that people are really busy with the day-to-day. The anger of Black Folk seems really remote to their lives. And journalists do only a little better: they face a barrage of rolling deadlines, they tend to spend most of their time talking to one another, and they probably don’t circulate in the Black (or Asian or Latino or… ) world on a regular basis. These conditions will not produce basic or deep insights about the Black culture. This makes me think that a revolution needs to happen inside of the media. If we can’t get good information through the media, we will continue to shoot ourselves in the collective foot on racial matters, political matters, environmental matters, and so much more.

6.
One point kept hitting me that Misters Smiley and Gates overlooked: Jeremiah Wright’s impact on the culture is approximately zero. Really.  White Folk need to learn to distinguish real threats from the fake ones. Rein in that fear, for goodness sake!

7.
Gates talks about how Obama tried to present a balanced picture of anxiety on both sides of the racial divide. I agree: O did about as well as anyone could to allay such fears. If we don’t calm this fear, we can’t move forward on the race issue.

This touches on something that’s been on my mind quite a bit of late: that our culture faces four interlocking cultural conundrums: violence, fear, class, race. We have to deal with all of them. That’s hard. Are we up to the task? Yeah… sorta. We’ll focus… and drift. Like we always have. Obama opened up an opportunity to move the process forward. We can make substantive progress right now if we do this right. My prognostication is that we’ll stumble, but at least, we’ll stumble forward.

8.
Smiley brought up the “speaking truth to power” point by saying that Obama should have brought up the issue of race sooner. I think he’s way off base on this point. Sure, conditions forced Obama’s hand and he couldn’t time the speech on his own terms. But if he had presented this speech sooner, he would have been accused of “racializing” the campaign. There would have been no context for discussing race. Many if not most White Folk would have been spooked (pun intended) and bewildered by this because White Folk don’t think/talk about race all that much. Just bringing it up would make it seem like it came out of the blue. They would have felt blindsided.

Mr. Smiley goes on to note that he thinks Obama will have to more directly criticize, challenge, and rebuke the country. Naturally, he draws a comparison to Martin Luther King, Jr. However, he flails to understand the importance of context: King was not running for office. Hitting people with the hard stuff up-front, especially when they are scared, judgmental and prone to overreacting and becoming confused, will not help a presidential campaign. Obama did the right thing: he worked to develop rapport with the public before taking on harder topics, like race. That’s not cowardice, that’s finesse.

9.
Building on this point, they suppose that Cornel West would not have been boxed in on issues of race as easily because he is unfailingly balanced and compassionate. I beg to differ. If Professor West ran for office, or had a broad cultural impact, the O’Reillys, Rushes, and Coulters would descend on him like white on rice. Compassion has little to do with it; these people are sharks.

10:
Are we ready for a Black President? That remains to be seen. But we’re a lot closer than I thought possible at this point in time.

Anyway, you can read a transcript of their interview here.

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Of course, this all begs the question: Why write on race at a blog dedicated to economic issues? This will become more apparently in upcoming posts, but in brief:

1: Race and class and economics are bounded up in one another. And our economy will never be fully productive as long as 20% of its people remain consigned to economic backwaters.

2: Race figures into local economies in significant ways: social isolation reduces the circulation need to vitalize local economies and communities. My post on Robert Putnam’s recent work on fraying social infrastructure within the context of cultural and ethnic diversity addresses this point head-on. (That post immediately follows this one, so it’s a double-dip posting day!)

Titus Levi