Obama’s speech

Yesterday, Obama delivered a landmark speech, addressing at once his relationship with his embattled former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the standing of race relations in America, and the thought that through understanding the genuine bases for grievance, we can bridge a racial divide that pervades American public and private discourse.

All the major American newspapers ran editorials. All praised the candor with which he spoke of race; some (even the notoriously conservative Washington Post editorial page) were effusive, while others (e.g. the Wall Street Journal) felt that he managed to achieve racial unity only by demonizing that other fall guy, the corporate tycoon who robs the honest poor to stuff his own coffers.

Having spent the morning reading the text of the speech (which is available here), here are some thoughts that crossed my mind. Rhetorically it is well constructed. He begins with an account of his mixed racial identity. This is done, I take it, in order to establish the authority with which he speaks of the racial divisions in America. Being divided in himself, he has an eyewitness understanding, as it were, of multiple racial standpoints. Establishing his authority is important, because the racial communities which he addresses are divided precisely by their failure or unwillingness to understand the bases for the other’s grievances.

In the heart of his speech, he attempts to bring both communities together by sketching out the legitimate bases for the complaints of both sides. He begins by noting the uninformed prejudices. Thus, as he puts it in one example, the black community sees in white criticism of affirmative action, little other than brazen racism; and, on the other hand, whites see in the black community’s cry of economic injustice little more than the demand for a free lunch. The key to unification, according to Obama, is to acknowledge, for example, that the concern over affirmative action programs and the cry for economic justice are well grounded in the experiences of the respective communities; that is, to acknowledge that they are not fictions.

To be sure, Obama does not believe that mere acknowledgment is sufficient. We must all work towards transforming those institutions (economic, education, legal) which have a pervasive and everlasting impact on our lives.

But if neither side is to blame for each other’s economic problems, then what is? Obama asserts that racial division is but a diversion from the “real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.”

Herein lies the problem. If Obama wants to bridge racial divisions by focusing attention on economic injustice, then we need a discussion of what that is; but, if Americans are notorious for avoiding public discussions of race, it seems to me we are as bad, if not worse, at discussing issues of economic justice. Unfortunately, but understandably, Obama’s speech is silent on what that would involve.

No doubt, most of us disdain corporate psychopathy, but that alone can hardly unite our truly heterogeneous view of economic justice. The polls suggest that certain social programs such as Social Security are popular, and when Bush attempted to privatize the program, he suffered his first major domestic policy defeat. That is promising, but such support for social programs may be grounded, not in a common sense of social justice, but rather prudential self-concern. What we need is a common commitment to the idea that the worst off in this country deserve, from a moral point of view, the economic supports necessary to lead a decent life. We clearly do not have that. (Just read the Wall Street Journal's editorial page or its letters page for instruction on that.)

At any rate, although the point is important, it is but quibbling in the context of what Obama was trying to achieve in his speech. It is an important speech on race in America from an increasingly appealing candidate.