Unfortunately, I missed Sen. Obama's speech on race in America and Rev. Jeremiah Wright live as it was happening due to work commitments. However, I just read the transcript of the speech.

 

I must congratulate the Senator for once again demonstrating his oratorical flair. Yet again, Sen. Obama is able to deliver an eloquent piece of prose, filled to the brim with sentiments sure to bring tears to the eyes of some, and the sound of the simultaneous nodding of many heads out across the countryside. Through this speech, he has attempted to negotiate walking across a very tight rope, on the one hand trying to admonish Rev. Wright's tirades without alienating the black community that has been the single-most consistent voting bloc spurring on his victories in the Democratic primary process, while on the other hand attempting to lecture the white community on the history of discrimination and slavery that underlies black anger without coming across as pedantic, all while asking to be excused for having chosen someone with such a loathsome and hateful view of his own country to act as his "spiritual advisor", and to allow this individual to become "like family to me."

 

If one just looks at these words on their surface, they come across as a powerful, meaning-laden declaration of the kind of country that we can become through the acceptance of our fellow man regardless of skin color or ethnicity, invoking the word "hope" frequently throughout that has becoming Sen. Obama's stylistic hallmark second only to "change". 

 

However, these words are simply words, meaningless as the air on which the sound of them is carried unless they are based upon actions that have, or will, carry them through. As I have stated in my post on the perils of "change" in this election campaign, if one is susceptible to becoming easily overcome by their emotions, they can quickly fall into the trap of being dominated by overvalued ideas, which can lead to self-destruction. In order to avoid subservience to overvalued ideas, one must assess situations in life based on reason, logic, and fact, and not become overcome with the emotions that a speech such as this one is designed to invoke.

 

If we apply this test (i.e. the test of reason and facts) to the situation of Senator Obama and his "spiritual advisor" and view not the Senator's words but his actions, reality belies a very different situation than the bucolic candy-coating that Mr. Obama would have us believe. The facts are that Sen. Obama has been a parishioner of the Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years, during which Rev. Wright was the head pastor and delivered numerous hate-filled diatribes at the pulpit over years and years, to not speak of his honoring of known racists and anti-Semites (which may belie Rev. Wright's own sentiments). Unless Sen. Obama is willing to suggest that he merely joined the church out of political expediency to placate blacks in his community and pave the way for his political ascendancy (an idea that I think he would refute) and therefore did not really attend the church's services, then it is reasonable to assume that Sen. Obama was present for many of these diatribes. As such, the fact that he did not publicly speak out against this offensive, divisive hate speech (which Sen. Obama acknowledges in his own speech today) prior to a week ago when it was no longer politically viable to look the other way and hope the matter just went away, let alone quit the church out of disgust, undeniably implies at least tacit support of such speech.

 

If Sen. Obama's speech today is to be taken on its merit, then we should be expecting a public rebuke by Sen. Obama of his wife Michelle, highlighted by his asking of her what she really meant when she said "for the first time in my life I am truly proud of my country", the country that has afforded her opportunities to attend its premier educational institutions, has allowed her family to prosper beyond the dreams of most Americans (black, white, brown, or whichever qualifier you would like to use), and is considering her husband and she for occupancy in the White House. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this day to come.

 

In terms of what this speech by Sen. Obama means for us, it means that although the Senator can deliver an eloquent speech, at the end of the day this speech can be tossed into the bin of meaningless speeches and words that Mr. Obama has placed in the collective consciousness that are not backed by action, and are tarred by a history of actions that imply the contrary.