Obama's Speech on Race

As I research and prepare for America's Presidential Election this year I have found that I have jumped into several camps. First it was Mitt Romney, then Ron Paul, then Mitt Romney, then Hillary Clinton, and now finally Barack Obama. Yesterday (Tuesday March 19, 2008) Obama delivered a definitive speech that centered on the race relations of America. However, it was not his stance directly on race issues that made me take notice. In his speech I found a tone of forgiving the past and moving forward to do better things. He did not really deliver specific policy on how he would attack certain issues, but I beg the question: does that really matter?

I would argue that it does not. After his speech, I feel like his mere presence as a president would just magically solve problems. I know, maybe I'm just too easily manipulated, but at the same time I can't deny that right now I feel Obama represents a new beginning. Strangely enough, his supposed "lack of experience" makes me like him more. I don't want somebody who has been a part of the thinking of American politics for the last 20 years, I want a revolution of sorts. Here is my favorite excerpt from Obama's speech:

"For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

Not this time. This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time."

You can find a transcript of this remarkable speech HERE.