Far away from home, lecturing outside Calgary, I did not hear Barack Obama's speech on March 18. In reading the transcript, however, I am both impressed and moved. It may be one of the most important speeches ever offered by an American politician about race.
It seems that what triggered the speech was yet another round of political "gotcha." Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was in trouble for certain comments in his sermons and speeches. Obama was therefore guilty by association. Each day brought new inflammation. Let's go to the videotape!
This is what happens when you have presidential campaigns that last two years, and when you have essentially no important political news for six weeks on the Democratic side. Something (or someone) must be offered to the always hungry media maw. This week it has been Jeremiah Wright. Who will it be next week?
Undoubtedly, Obama has been wounded by the fracas surrounding his (now) former pastor. He has been wounded personally, and probably has been wounded politically in that blood sport we call a presidential campaign.
Today he decided to use this crisis as an opportunity to teach. It was a bracing lesson. It tests whether Americans have the capacity to deal with a nuanced presentation of both our history and our current realities.
Obama celebrated the principles that motivated the Founders while honestly decrying the horrible compromise with those principles represented by slavery. He talked about the legacy of systemic racism in this country and how that has been experienced within different generations of the black community. He talked about the meaning, and some of the problems, of the black church. He offered empathetic reflections on the struggles of economically desperate white Americans as well. Deep within the speech was a kind of seamless garment sense of human connectivity and a golden rule ethic of neighbor-love.
In an ironic way I am angry at Barack Obama. I am angry because to read this kind of articulate, honest, and profound speech from a politician actually gives me hope that our staggering and, yes, I believe, declining nation might actually find the kind of leadership it needs to do better. Is it better to have hoped and lost than never to have hoped at all?
--David P. Gushee is is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights. His most recent book is THE FUTURE OF FAITH IN AMERICAN POLITICS: THE PUBLIC WITNESS OF THE EVANGELICAL CENTER (Baylor University Press).
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