Today at the Forum: The courage to confront

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The courage to confront

I appreciated a tone in Barack Obama's speech on race that I can only describe as instructive.

Politicians and officials preach to us all the time. They use slick, rhetorical phrases, throw in a heart-wrenching story and spend more time deflecting the issue at hand than exploring or explaining it.

Maybe Obama's speech didn't answer every question on his relationship with his controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and those he did answer may not have satisfied everyone. But he showed that he's willing to take on a sensitive issue -- probably the most sensitive one this nation faces -- and to do it calmly, thoughtfully and very personally.

He laid open some of Americans' deepest fears about race, and did it with respect and great civility. We could choose not to go where he wanted to take us -- refuse to try to see things from others' perspectives -- but he showed that he was unafraid to try to lead us there.

21 Comments:

at 9:15 PM, March 19, 2008

Anonymous said...

Obama shows us that he does not like white America and blames problems on the majority. His wife is discusting and would "soil" the White House as First Lady. Lord help us...

at 9:22 PM, March 19, 2008

Anonymous said...

Obama, the great uniter. What did he teach you Krista?

I voted for Obama in the primary. I now will no longer vote for Obama.

Who is Obama, now that he has been exposed to us:
-He throws his white grandma in front of the public, labeling her a racist. This for his own benefit. Does his grandma get a chance to defend her name? No. What a pig.
-He attends a church for multiple years that preaches with a racist and anti-american message. Now he no longer supports the message because he realizes that American is offended when Israel is called a dirty word. All Whites are labeled the KKK. His pastor within weeks of 911, said the USA deserved what it got. It took Obama 20+ years and a campaign for the presidentcy to denounce the obvious racist views of the pastor Wright. At best, it shows Obama as an opportunist with poor judgement. No more for me!
-it goes on with 10+ examples. No need to list all. Obama is exposed for who he is.

Who is Obama? He is just another calculating two-face politician like Clinton and McCain.

I'll vote for neither of the three as president of the USA. None are worthy of my vote.

at 8:36 AM, March 20, 2008

Anonymous said...

Obama is ignoring the fallout but the damage is already done and will continue throughout his campaign. It gives McCain much ammo but he may be too nice a guy to use it. Be sure the conservative media will not let it drop, even though the liberal media is already trying to bury it.
I think Obama's disguise is wearing thin and intelligent people are seeing a considerably "different" Obama.

at 9:02 AM, March 20, 2008

JohnDWoodSr said...

Barack Obama's speech was the most eloquent, reasoned explanation of how African-Americans are traumatized by the casual racism still prevalent in this country. It was a thoughtful discourse, and that is exactly the problem with it. It required people to actually listen carefully and think about what he said. Unfortunately, many people who were not predisposed to listen, heard only those parts which reinforced their existing prejudices and stereotypes rather than attempting to understand the message.The other comments here, as well as many on other blogs, not only illustrates this, but proves the points that Obama was attempting to make. There was not even a hint of "hate" in his speech, and he made a courageous plea to Americans of every stripe to simply understand and acknowledge the problem of racial discrimination as a first step in overcoming it. Obama should be applauded for his efforts, but as you can see, facing up to uncomfortable truths is not something easily done.

at 9:50 AM, March 20, 2008

Anonymous said...

Obama courageously spoke to the american people and admitted that he has racist tendencies, racist background, and a racial agenda. What courage but not the racist leadership we need.

at 2:10 PM, March 20, 2008

Anonymous said...

Mr johnwoodsr...for 20 years Obama listened to what you descibe as a reasoned message, from his racist pastor, as he sat in the pew. Obama said and did nothing but embrace Wright, even writing a book based on Wright's sermons.

Yet, Obama did not see the light until he chose to run for president. I find Obama to exhibit extremely poor judgment and even a racist enabler, if not one himself. Too bad. I had high hopes for Obama until the truth was revealed after a few simple questions that the media ignored in his past local elections.

at 3:21 PM, March 20, 2008

Anonymous said...

Barak Obama's speech on race realations in this country is the most honest and enlightening I've ever heard from a politician.

However I wish he had labeled minister Wright's troubling comments as more than just offensive and for what they really are HATE SPEECH.

I understand that some African American churches may preach Liberation Theology, but how is libration and social justice promoted by denigrating your fellow Americans.

Minister Wright apparently brought Mr. Obama to Jesus, and perhaps many others. He and his church have worked to improve their community, so I don't believe he should be defined just by those
hateful words.

As a Catholic I've never heard such comments from the pulpit.
If I had heard such comments in my church I would be compelled to find another parish.

Having said all that - I still believe Barak Obama may offer us the best HOPE for a better America than the other two candidates.

at 4:13 PM, March 20, 2008

Anonymous said...

of all the posts up to now, only mr. woods gets it. obama's speech was a breath of fresh air with complete sentences, reasoning, and logic, challenging us to think.

have no doubt about it, the right wing wackos won't let go of their 30 second out of context soundbite. why anyone should waste their breath debating them is a mystery to me. they are incapable of rational thought and change.

freedoms on the march, move to the side of the road please.

at 8:33 AM, March 21, 2008

Anonymous said...

Black on black crime and fathers neglecting children. This is the TRUE racism.

at 11:27 AM, March 21, 2008

Anonymous said...

Anon 4:13pm.....What do you place greater value on, ones speech or ones action?

Without a true venting by the media, liberal mass media or talk radio, I was an Obama believer. I like his speeches.

But Obama's actions are what i place more weight. For 20+ years Obama listened to the Wright hate speech and did nothing. I can't ignore 20 years of inaction and enabling/supporting a racist preacher in favor of a few Obama speeches that contradict Obamas actual behavior.

at 11:30 AM, March 21, 2008

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Mr. Woods.

And I can only add a personal experience. My 80 yr. old mother occasionally still uses words and and stereotypes which make my hair stand on end and even while she's telling the following story of her own heroism; in 1948, she stood up to her restaurant owner employer and served some black travelers a meal despite being threatened with dismissal. He wanted to compromise and give them carryout containers so they could leave before the white people saw them, but she refused. "Right is right and wrong is wrong". To this day she can see the subtle work which remains to be done. So, OK Barack, I hear ya.

at 11:34 AM, March 21, 2008

Anonymous said...

4:13pm
I think you argument would be even more powerful if you degraded and dehumanized your opposition further. Name calling always demonstrates your superior intellect and rationale.

at 11:38 AM, March 21, 2008

Anonymous said...

Obama's political hurdle has always been how white people project on to him. He doesn't/didn't threaten them. Obviously black anger makes white people uncomfortable since it implies guilt. No one ever said it wasn't somewhere in his background and common sense would dictate that he's had to have it, work through it, process it. So really what's happened is that unimaginative, one dimensional people have walked around the prism and seen something different. He hasn't moved, he was just courageous enough to offer us some insight into his life and feelings. To suggest that he is a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde is to reveal your own fears and inability to parse details.
So the political risk he took may be his undoing in this election. He's speaking to "the masses" and should learn to gladhand I guess, like McCain, Clinton, et al.

He's the only true leader in the race.

at 3:21 PM, March 22, 2008

Anonymous said...

"Soil the White House"? You mean what parts of it that are left untrammeled by the thieves and pickpockets currently inhabiting it, even while they smile and kiss your babies? Better a little dose of a bitter truth, than to have someone grinning and joshing and lying to your face.

Also what agenda do some of you fear if he is elected? What is a racial agenda these days in your minds? It sounds frightening but maybe not if we can hear the details.

Finally, the Christian religion has LOTS of room for "righteous anger" when it is fairly meted out. The driving out of the moneylenders from the temple is the most often cited as the best example, and one I would have liked to have seen administered once again this week when our greedy Wall Street socialist oligarchs picked the corpse of Bear Stearns. Maybe a good flogging near the stock exchange, (or in the White House) would be a lesson learned about usurious lending and borrowing.

To the gentle poster who was shocked by the sentiments from the pulpit, I have no sarcasm. I would simply say that my own religious upbringing had a similar "fire and brimstone" oratorical style, and it just shows passion about, well, serious subjects. On the other hand, the first time I visited a Catholic church with friends, I was awestruck by the decorous, dignified, ancient tradition. So assured, so monolithic, so beautiful, really. Two paths to truth can't be too many.

at 5:06 PM, March 22, 2008

Anonymous said...

"But he showed that he's willing to take on a sensitive issue --", Ya think so Ms. Ramsey. He certainly took it on when heard his friend, Pastor Wright, make such inflamatory remarks. Took it on, absorbed its passions, has he embraced its abilities. Sensitive to his proclaimed embrace of Christianity he sat there, and never questioned the use of such inflamatory statements. Maybe it was the excitement of the moment, with the congregation shouting in ecstacy, to the words of a man, and not of the Word. Obama certainly learned of its value, and its ability to raise a fevered pitch among those easily blinded. The weak will always be among us, but I pity the man who makes hay of those weaknesses.

at 11:28 AM, March 24, 2008

Anonymous said...

White America will never understand where blacks are coming from because whites don't want to think about or admit "what was" and blacks can't forget.

Let me explain what we can't forget. In the early 1960s in Alabama, a relative of mine had just completed the building of a beautiful new home. Late one night, his neighbor's home, across the street, was bombed. The neighbor was a civil rights activist. Thank God, all the dynamite did not explode. However, because of the angle of the blast, half the man's home was blown away and my relative's windows were broken and the foundation of his home was cracked. How do you forget that?When the KKK made their night rides through black neighborhoods and shot out windows (yes, that happened many times, especially to the homes of civil rights activists), my little cousins and I slept in the bathtub because it was the safest place for us to be. Can you imagine what that can do to a child's miind? One of my cousins was an adult before she was able to sleep alone. How do you forget that? As a child, I was a friend of one of the four little girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Her head was blown off. The church was bombed because of white hatred against blacks. How do I ever, in this life, forget how and why my friend died? Just typing this comment makes me want to cry. I have been spit on, called the "n" word, and suffered other indignities, too numerous to mention. One of these indignities occurred recently in good old Milford.

It absolutely makes me furious that whites think that what happened back then was nothing, or worse, didn't happen, should be forgotten, and can't understand why we can't forget. Just as the Holocost will never be forgotten, neither will the civil rights era.

at 12:40 PM, March 24, 2008

Anonymous said...

11:28 am
No one is asking you to forget.
But for your own benefit...Move On!

The overwhelming factors holding blacks back today in the USA are themself and fellow blacks. Hatred seldom solves problems, real or perceived.

Opportunities abound everywhere. If you expect success to be handed to you, you will fail.

at 2:35 PM, March 24, 2008

Anonymous said...

To 11:28 am...Hatred on who's part? For one thing, time is too precious to waste a moment of it hating anyone. I moved on years ago...that's what you (I am assuming you are white) don't seem to understand. I wrote it down because I have not forgotten it, not because I haven't moved on or because I hate anyone. I have raised very well adjusted children, one of whom is married to a white man, whom I dearly love. So don't preceive to understand why I wrote my comments. You obviously missed the point, which is basically what I was trying to say in the first place...you (plural) don't get it.

at 6:08 PM, March 24, 2008

Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

at 10:10 AM, March 25, 2008

Anonymous said...

Matthew 5: 44-48 addresses this issue of hating each other perfectly. Please, get out your Bibles and read it.

Remember, it doesn't matter who becomes President; Christ is King. Follow Christ, and forget the sins of the past. Strive for a better future, for each and everyone of us.

And finally, remember Matthew 7:1-5, which reminds us not to judge ech other, because the measures we use to jusge others will be the same measures used on us.

The time for a doctrine of love has come. Let us embrace it! God bless you all.

at 6:55 AM, April 01, 2008

Anonymous said...

The previous poster is actually offering some sound advice about not dwelling on past injury.

Unfortunately, however, it's entirely inappropriate, for its arrogance in dismissing all other external forces from consideration when trying to help an oppressed people out of its misery, a gradual process at best. Those forces include: cross-generational inculcation of low self-esteem; the emergence of a deadly drug culture which entraps both low income white people and their economic competitors, those black people who have not made the first cut to middle class life in America; the suppression of educational opportunity in American life long after the official abolition of slavery - education and reading are power.

Also, if you think that there is a culture of black urban myths which is paranoiac, just remember that even the paranoid have enemies. An example: in the late 1980s crack cocaine became a plague in the United States, beginning in South Central Los Angeles via some very well established East Coast drug dealers. It is strongly believed that at best this was benign negligence and at worst, it was linked to the fundraising for Iran-Contra. ("Whiteout" by Alexander Cockburn, Verso Press: available at the library). This source makes a strong case for the choice of location because of the vulnerability of the largely poor black and hispanic populations.

To this day, S. Central LA is a breeding ground for gangs, drive by shootings and the perpetuation of a drug culture that my tax money is supposed to be helping to eradicate via the bankrupt, bureaucratic "War on Drugs".

Truth or paranoia? You can investigate and decide.

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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The courage to confront

21 Comments: