Yesterday, as I drove home from school, I listened to Obama’s race speech on the local radio station. I was stopped at a stop sign on a winding road that snakes through the Northern New Jersey suburbs. I had passed the field hockey fields of the fancy private school and was driving towards the pick-up trucks and the rough rentals by the side of the railroad tracks. At that stop sign, I turned the volume up.
When I got home, I read the speech on line. When Steve got home, he asked me if I heard the speech and then he promptly went to watch the speech on YouTube. In the hallways of school today, we simply asked, "did you hear the speech?"
I think that if I discussed the speech, I would do damage to it. All I can say is that I heard it. And I am convinced that we’re living in important times.
Apt. 11d 
Barack Obama gave a good speech on race, but it’s being argued that it was designed to distract attention from much more damaging non-racial aspects of his THEOLOGY. See:
http://christianprophecy.blogspot.com/
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I really hope that we don’t waste this chance. I hope enough recognize the importance.
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I think that if I discussed the speech, I would do damage to it. All I can say is that I heard it. And I am convinced that we’re living in important times.
A pretty wise response, Laura. As is my wont, I couldn’t resist throwing several hundred words together about his speech…but by the time I was finished writing it, I was almost wishing I hadn’t bothered. We’ve just heard a speech that will, I think, go down in the history of American rhetoric and ideas, a speech that I’ll be teaching in my American political thought classes…a speech that deserves better than a blog post thrown together a mere 24 hours after the fact.
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“we’re living in important times”
As I wrote over at CT, I certainly hope so.
I’d recommend his first book wholeheartedly, the more so because it was written before he went into electoral politics. It feels very honest, but it also shows a sharp mind and a good storyteller at work. Actually, it feels like the thought going through his mind was that this might very well be the only book he ever writes, and he’d better make it count.
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RAF – I’ve got a question for the political theory specialist. I’m teaching Intro to Political Theory this semester. I’m using the Cohen book. Towards the end of the semester, we do MLK and Malcolm X. I’m thinking about replacing Ballot or the Bullet with Obama’s speech. I think it would be a good contrast with Letter from a Birmingham Jail. X feels dated now. You think that would work?
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Doug – Yes, I saw your comment at CT. I loved Henry’s response, didn’t you? Maybe I’ll read the book over the summer break. Thanks for the tip.
RAF – Didn’t have a chance yet to thank you for your sweet note about your 5 year anniversary. Thank you! Since we’ve been reading the blogs and writing them for a while, what would say about the promise of blogging? Has it panned out the way we all thought five years ago? Wait, I’m going to make that a post. Don’t comment on it here.
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“Towards the end of the semester, we do MLK and Malcolm X. I’m thinking about replacing Ballot or the Bullet with Obama’s speech. I think it would be a good contrast with Letter from a Birmingham Jail. X feels dated now. You think that would work?”
Somebody I was reading recently was pointing out that Obama’s personal style (haircut, suits, narrow ties) has a real 60s/Malcolm X vibe. So it might be premature to cut out Malcolm X from a reading list. Maybe you could substitute some carefully chosen sermon excerpt from the Rev. Wright? If, as a lot of people are saying, he is perfectly mainstream, then he probably has some value as a representative voice.
I personally don’t buy that Wright is mainstream, and I’m pretty sure Obama could have found a congenial pastor somewhere in the Chicago area who didn’t think the US government created the AIDS virus, if he had put his mind to it. (I’m still waiting for an explanation of the evils of “middleclassness,” the opposition to which is to me by far the most damning feature of Trinity.)
I agree with the people who say that the sort of church you attend for years (especially with children) says a lot about who you are and what values you want to encourage. After four glorious years in Pittsburgh with the local chaplaincy, our family put up with six years of various suburban Catholic and Jesuit drivel in the DC area. (The worst suburban DC homilies could be summarized “what the gospel says, and why you don’t need to pay any attention to it.” The Jesuit method will be familiar to a lot of readers–rhetorically well-crafted, but with a very superficial intellectual gloss, good for wowing semi-educated Catholics.) For years, I was plotting our escape. Finding a decent parish was very high on my personal to-do list, since neither I nor my husband relished spending our children’s childhoods explaining away things Father said during his homily. Half the trick of parenting is surrounding your children with an environment where your values are reinforced (by school, church, etc.), so that home, school, and church (or whatever) can all be pulling in the same direction, rather than you as parents having to fight the entire world (the odds are you’re going to lose).
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Did anyone get the Langston Hughes allusion, by the way? It was actually very appropriate.
It was a good speech. But greatest speech ever? I will have to write about it some more on OP. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a. contrary, b. in the tank for Hillary, c. someone white who’s been immersed in the study of race and rhetoric for years or d. a mix of all that, but I’m not orgasmic over it.
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I’m teaching Intro to Political Theory this semester. I’m using the Cohen book. Towards the end of the semester, we do MLK and Malcolm X. I’m thinking about replacing Ballot or the Bullet with Obama’s speech. I think it would be a good contrast with Letter from a Birmingham Jail. X feels dated now. You think that would work?
Interesting switch, Laura. Basically, what you’d be looking at there is changing the focus of what it is you’re comparing. MLK vs. Malcom X introduces, in theory at least, a conflict over how minorities can or should (or shouldn’t) use social movements to improve their condition when the rules of democracy aren’t working for them. In a sense, MLK and Malcom aren’t really talking about race at all, because racial oppression was a given in the 1960s. Introducing Obama’s speech changes things; now you’d be introducing your students to an argument that takes racism as an obvious truth–the only issue being how one, as an American, can or should deal with it–on the one hand, and an argument that pushes us to actually think about race, to make a case for taking it seriously, on the other. Might make for some interesting discussions.
Just some first thoughts. I won’t have to decide about how or if I’ll use Obama’s speech until I teach American political thought again next spring.
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Since we’ve been reading the blogs and writing them for a while, what would say about the promise of blogging? Has it panned out the way we all thought five years ago? Wait, I’m going to make that a post. Don’t comment on it here.
You’re welcome! And okay, I won’t comment. But hey–have we both been doing this about the same amount of time? When I was writing my blogoversery post (thanks, Doug!), I didn’t think to check your archives. Maybe you’ve actually been at this longer than I?
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Amy,
I’m still waiting for an explanation of the evils of “middleclassness,” the opposition to which is to me by far the most damning feature of Trinity.
It probably won’t change your mind, but you could give this a try.
Half the trick of parenting is surrounding your children with an environment where your values are reinforced (by school, church, etc.), so that home, school, and church (or whatever) can all be pulling in the same direction, rather than you as parents having to fight the entire world (the odds are you’re going to lose.
On that, we’re in complete agreement.
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“Half the trick of parenting is surrounding your children with an environment where your values are reinforced (by school, church, etc.), so that home, school, and church (or whatever) can all be pulling in the same direction, rather than you as parents having to fight the entire world (the odds are you’re going to lose.”
You know I would have called this creating a self-contained echo chamber, one that has just as much potential to reinforces the ugly “values” of racism and homophobia and intolerance as it does to reinforce positive, life-affirming values.
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Interesting observation from Douthat at the Atlantic, as picked up by Mark Kleiman:
“[Obama]’s making a bet that the country is already moving left, and that by taking an unusually respectful (by liberal standards) approach to the ideas and grievances that pushed an earlier generation to the right he can win many of them, and their children, back to the liberalism that once dominated American politics. As everyone from Rod Dreher to Mickey Kaus to Steve Sailer have noted, his practical concessions to present-day conservatism are vanishingly small. But he isn’t trying to win over the gang at the Corner, or movement conservatives more generally; he’s trying to win over those voters (and writers) who sometimes think that conservatives make a lot of sense, but whose ideological commitments are ultimately malleable. So of course if you’re an ideological conservative you don’t like what you hear from him; he’s talking to everybody else, but not to you.”
Of course RD gives the game away with the word “malleable,” revealing what he thinks of fellow citizens who aren’t hard-core movement conservatives. But otherwise an interesting observation.
I think there’s some discussion on “middleclassness” in Dreams from my Father. I don’t have my copy at hand, but I have some recollection of the term, and I think that’s the likeliest sources. IIRC, it had to do with how problematic striving for material things is and not forgetting either where one came from or those who had not come as far. That the trappings of a middle class life are not the most important things.
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BJ,
So trying to actively raise your children is (as opposed to just unleashing them on the world) is related to racism, homophobia, and intolerance? Or is it just the church part that set you off?
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“You know I would have called this creating a self-contained echo chamber, one that has just as much potential to reinforces the ugly “values” of racism and homophobia and intolerance as it does to reinforce positive, life-affirming values.”
bj,
Of course it depends what values you are reinforcing. But like it or not, neither of us is making our parenting decisions based on the role of the dice. We are choosing every day what kind of environment we are raising our children in. You could choose to have dinner with racist Uncle Bob every month, to send your kids to an actively anti-intellectual, anti-academic school, to join the Rev. Phelps’s church, to select the kids’ dinners from the chips and cola aisle at the grocery store, to offer unfiltered internet access, etc. You are making choices and shaping your children’s environment all the time without realizing it.
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I read bj to say that “surrounding your children with an environment where your values are reinforced” is a problematic idea, one that’s every bit as amenable to things the readers here would oppose as to things readers would value. It’s not an easy question, and one person’s reinforcement could very well be another’s echo chamber.
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RAF,
I finally skimmed through your post. I liked your quote about “”middleclassness” as an aspiration that draws black men and women, really the whole black family and community, into a socio-economic trap, and thus as something to be avoided.” I’m slowly acclimatizing to Texas culture (buffered a bit by our large campus bubble), and I get the feeling that the pressure to keep up with the Joneses (particularly in Dallas) is extremely powerful and quite pernicious when you consider the very moderate incomes that need to do the competing. In our area (household income 26K), there are two parallel major commercial drags: one is devoted to auto dealerships, and the other is wall-to-wall pawnshops, pay day loan places, and bail bond offices. I’ve never seen anything like that second street in my life, even the four years that I spent in the seedier parts of LA. I have a northwesterner’s immunity to the need for display, but I can only imagine what a crushing burden that cultural imperative is on people who would be having a pretty hard time even if they were only buying the necessities of life.
I’m much less sympathetic to the stuff about resisting meritocracy, particularly since meritocracy has barely been tried with regard to large sectors of the American population. If I were to use the term middleclassness, it would be to refer to those mysterious cultural values that have historically pulled people out of poverty. Here’s a tentative list of those rules: don’t drink, don’t smoke, no drugs, read your Bible, don’t have sex with people you’re not married to, hold onto your spouse, go to church on Sunday, send your kids to as much school as you can afford, make sure your kids know you respect their teachers, pay your bills, live within your means, keep your promises, and work at work. With a few deviations here and there, those were the rules that propelled my own family from basic blue collar to upper middle class in two or three generations, and there are literally millions of people out there who would benefit from sticking to them (with possibly the addendum “listen to Dave Ramsey”). Of course, for all I know, that was Wright’s message on the days when he wasn’t damning America, blaming the CIA for selling drugs, or whatever.
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Amy,
Here’s a tentative list of those rules: don’t drink, don’t smoke, no drugs, read your Bible, don’t have sex with people you’re not married to, hold onto your spouse, go to church on Sunday, send your kids to as much school as you can afford, make sure your kids know you respect their teachers, pay your bills, live within your means, keep your promises, and work at work.
Right–this is the noble heart of what gets called “bourgeois” or middle-class virtues. As I argued in my post, with a couple of caveats here and there (he wasn’t sure about higher education, being more concerned with the dignity that decent jobs provide), Martin Luther King was basically a consistent–though obviously personally imperfect–advocate of just those virtues. The problem is, in the minds of Jeremiah Wright and others, that the bourgeois ideal has been corrupted, made technocratic and meritocratic, sucks you into consumerism and individualism and ignores the solidarity and family and community resposibilities that built it in the first place. Two very different approaches to the “middle-class” dream, both competing for people’s allegiance, and these days I’m doubtful that first one is winning.
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Speaking of consumerism, here’s an evil conservative question: What kind of car does Jeremiah Wright drive?
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Amy, what do you think about what Huckabee said in regard to Wright and chips and shoulders?
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Doug,
I get how Wright got to be Wright. The question is, what was so incredibly appealing about Wright that made Obama stick with him through all those years? There are lots of other churches in Chicago. The only options I can see are: 1) it was politically advantageous to plug into the Trinity social and political network or 2) The Obamas’ (or perhaps just Michelle Obama’s) personal views are some sort of sophisticated Ivy-League class version of those that Wright preaches.
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Amy,
The only options I can see are: 1) it was politically advantageous to plug into the Trinity social and political network or 2) The Obamas’ (or perhaps just Michelle Obama’s) personal views are some sort of sophisticated Ivy-League class version of those that Wright preaches.
Or 3) he interpreted the feeling of belonging he had when he first came to TUCC as the workings of the Spirit, and you don’t want to turn your back on that, even if you’re highly dubious of or in profound disagreement with the messenger. I have no idea if Obama or his wife ever use that kind of language to express their feelings, but I’m rather disconcerted that so many fall into secular modes of explanation for the Obamas–they stayed because there was some utilitarian benefit to hanging out with Wright, or because Wright agreed with their already arrived at views. Should us believers be the first to admit that the Spirit will go where it goes, or to praise, in this world of church-shopping, someone who finds a faith community and sticks with it?
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“Or 3) he interpreted the feeling of belonging he had when he first came to TUCC as the workings of the Spirit, and you don’t want to turn your back on that, even if you’re highly dubious of or in profound disagreement with the messenger.”
Just personally, I think it’s in some ways more spiritually healthy to find a church where you have confidence in the pastor’s leadership, rather than to stay fuming. When my siblings and I were kids, our pentecostal church where our entire family went had an unsuccessful change of pastors. Many years of fretting followed, but my mom wouldn’t budge, and my parents never changed churches. The damage was done–all three of us kids are now married to Catholics, and at least two are practicing Catholics.
Among other things, I just can’t imagine the cognitive dissonance of trying to bring up two little girls to believe that they can do anything they want, be anyone they want to be, while at the same time taking them to church on Sundays to hear what a big racist, murderous nightmare the US is.
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“The damage was done–all three of us kids are now married to Catholics, and at least two are practicing Catholics.”
You should follow that with, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
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I’m not going to respond to the nattering nabobs of negativism in this thread, which Laura started by saying “I think that if I discussed the speech, I would do damage to it. All I can say is that I heard it. And I am convinced that we’re living in important times.”
(Laura, if you want nattering from me, please start another thread, in which I will be happy to nitpick — I’m sorry for my nitpick contribution already)
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Thanks for bringing us back, bj.
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I want to point out that the pastor is one part of a church. This varies considerably by denomination, and can be rather large in African-American churches, but perhaps the Obamas didn’t choose their church solely on the pastor. I attended a church for eight years where I disagreed with a very strong pastor on several issues, including his view that homosexuality is a sin. It was a decision I struggled with a lot but ultimately worth staying at that church for many other reasons. I also emphasize to my children that we don’t always agree with the people we love.
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It’s okay, bj. Y’all can nitpick. I think I’m still digesting things and need a little time to make a more objective assessment of the whole thing.
I will weigh in on the church thing. I’ve belonged to several congregations over the years. All Catholic, but the priests took their Catholicism in sharply different political directions. I still went to the churches where the priests annoyed me, because that church was in the neighborhood. It was part of the community. Obama went to the church as much for the black community as he did for the religion or the political beliefs of the pastor. Even if he went to a different black church, he would have heard many of the same ideas, because as Obama said, those ideas are everywhere in the black community.
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The Catholic thing is a lot different from conditions in a lot of Protestant churches, especially the ones with a “name” pastor. As a Catholic, even attending very regularly at a single parish, it’s easy not to even know the name of the priest presiding, since there’s a lot of coming and going, and even moderate-sized parishes have thousands of people. We were geographically in a Jesuit parish for 4 years, and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the pastor, even though we moved less than a year ago. With all that churn, you aren’t very likely to have the same celebrant two Sundays running. At least in DC, what I found most offensive was the inoffensiveness–I’m nice, you’re nice, God’s nice, etc., as if we were all 5-year-olds and there were no pain or conflict or complexity in the world worth talking about. It reminded me a lot of the Grand Inquisitor section of the Brothers Karamazov, not to mention that rhyme about the hypodermic steeple–religion as a narcotic rather than a lens for seeing reality.
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http://debatableland.typepad.com/the_debatable_land/2008/03/dmx-on-bho-and.html
some people are taking the race less seriously than others…
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