Obama's Racial Plea

Barack Obama didn't take the easy route.

The safe course would have been to just denounce the ugly comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and move on to a generalized appeal for racial unity. But he didn't do that.

He said he could no more disown his pastor than he could his white grandmother. He talked about how Wright came from a generation of African Americans that was understandably angry about racism and segregation in this country. Then he pivoted and talked about white anger, about resentment toward affirmative action. He also took a couple of swipes at the media before reaffirming his belief that America can still make racial progress.

In quiet tones--dispensing with the full-throated oratory so familiar at his rallies--Obama challenged the country to a more elevated debate about race.

And there was a not-so-subtle challenge to the news business:

"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 . . .

"We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. 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." Or, he said, we can talk about what really matters.

Most people, of course, aren't sitting around watching speeches on morning cable. They will form impressions of the speech from the TV coverage and the newspaper headlines. In short, a long, discursive rumination about race will be sliced and diced by our sound-bite culture.

I don't know whether this defuses the Wright problem or not. Obama seemed absolutely determined not to disavow him, and that won't help him politically, no matter what the chattering classes say.

"The speech violated several conventions of campaign discourse -- for one, the injunction that all politicians must speak about racial and ethnic groups in upbeat stereotypes," says the New York Times.

"Presidential politics usually requires candidates to either wholly adopt or reject positions and people. Mr. Obama did neither with his pastor, rejecting his most divisive statements but also filling in the picture of Mr. Wright and his church . . . He admitted that his pastor is both a divisive figure and an inspiring one."

"Obama in effect offered his candidacy as the next chapter in a story of racial tension and reconciliation that has unfolded since the country's founding," says the L.A. Times.