Black and white and barely read at all

[bemildred]

Last week, Senator Barack Obama gave the most important speech on race in America since Martin Luther King shared his dream 45 years ago. But instead of focusing on Obama's thoughtful words, Americans seem more intent on the sayings of the preacher Obama denounced.

In speaking fundamental truths about black and white under the stars and stripes, Obama's speech challenged Americans to prove we want intelligent debate on key issues. So far, America is failing that test as badly as it has so many racial trials, preferring simple sound bites that reduce a vivid, vibrant society to a different kind of black and white. The preference demonstrates how badly the political debate in the US has regressed, and how, as Obama eloquently noted, progress on racial issues has stagnated.

In his speech, Obama "condemned, in unequivocal terms" the sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Wright's top sound bites include a hearty "God damn America" for its white racism and "for killing innocent people", and suggesting the September 11, 2001, attacks represented "America's chickens coming home to roost". Those remarks have become bludgeons against Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Playing the granny card

But the Illinois senator also said of Wright, who baptized his daughters, "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."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC26Aa02.html