I found the speech very candid. He talked about race like no other political figure has done ever. He addressed black anger and white resentment about racial politics in a a matter-of-fact way. He laid the facts out on the table. Descendants of slaves and people who have suffered from Jim Crow have been wronged by this country, while people who have been aversely affected by affirmative action feel that they have been wronged as well.
When racial politics is spoken about in the media, it raises heated emotions and incendiary speech, most often. Everyone wants to argue who is more hurt or what not, but little attention is payed to how to make this country and society more just and fair.
Here is a snippet of Obama's speech that he gave earlier today...
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience. As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed, when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudice, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation.
Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism. Moreover, I find it highly offensive when political pundits assume African American constituents vote for Barack Obama simply because of his race. As an African American Democrat who voted for Obama because he shares my political beliefs, it undermines my and every other black persons intelligence who voted for him.
Quite frankly, I have discovered an ugly side of Hillary Clinton that I do not care to see as my president. She is divisive and petty, in my humble opinion. And I do not think she would be a good president for America. The farther along this Democratic presidential nomination has gone on the more and more I can't stand her.
To put it simply, I rather party like a Barack star.
As a disclaimer these are just my (AfroMuffs) feelings, and I do not claim to represent the sentiments of any other blogger(s) on this site.
~AfroMuffs
