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Obama’s Speech About Reverend Wright – Mike Minton

http://mrrightopinion.blogstream.com/

Today was a big day for the big man from Illinois who has been the center of speculation and scrutiny since inflammatory remarks on race and ‘evil American domestic and foreign policy’ made by his mentor and spiritual advisor, the wrong right-Rev. Jeremiah Wright became public fodder. And he blew it…big time.

When your pastor says such things after 9/11/01 as “America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” or, “not God bless America, God Damn America,” you have to go a lot further than simply disagreeing with those words, no matter how strongly. Especially when you are running for president of the very country that your preacher is calling on God to damn. It just wasn’t nearly enough.

Barack Hussein Obama is certainly a great orator, and while I have heard some pundits say that he said exactly what needed to be said, I have heard others say that he gave a great speech, but on the wrong topic. I personally feel that neither is true.

The speech was mediocre. I would by no means put him on the level of MLK, or even “second to only MLK,” as I heard one pundit say. This was a speech of rhetoric. It was a speech that went so far out of its way to please everyone, that it really wasn’t enough to please anyone.

Obama did start out strong, reciting the U.S. Constitution, "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union." How can you go wrong there?

He then went on to say, “The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate….” And he was right on the money with that.

And then he said, “Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice….” And again, he was right. The answer to the slave issue was/is in the Constitution.

But then things changed. Barack said that his campaign’s mission was to continue the march for a more just, caring, equal, and free America. Does he not realize that he is running for the highest office in America? Indeed, in the free world? I like the way Rush Limbaugh put it on his radio show today. He said something to the effect that Obama is not an agent of that change, but a product of it. I have to concur.

A little later, Sen. Obama said something that confounded me. Said he: “I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.” He sounds as though he is bitter about this dual legacy. I am not really sure what good this does him in trying to solve, if you will, the problems with race and racism in America. What message was he trying to get across here? Or was this another attempt to appeal to blacks and whites? If so, I say it was far off target. For if he was trying to appeal to blacks by saying his wife had slave blood in her, that alone may have done it. However, the slave owners statement, in my estimation, would not appeal to black voters.

And if he somehow thought he could appeal to white voters by saying the blood of slave owners passed through his wife’s veins, well, today’s white folk are pretty anti-slavery; at least the greatest majority of us.

The Democrat front-runner then talked about the unconventionality of his run for president. He said America is more than the sum of its parts. That out of many, we are made one. That’s a nice thought, and quite honestly, I believe it. I think we have come far in the quest for equality among the races. However, I am not convinced Barack himself believes it.

Throughout the speech there were instances where I found myself waiting for him to say “So in your face, cracker!” Like this next part, “Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.” Just add an “in your face cracker” there, and the racial overtone becomes much more obvious.

And while we’re on this point, why, oh why, if blacks in America truly want to put aside racial differences, and not forget the past, but rather build a better future on the past, why do they insist on calling themselves “African-Americans?” I don’t call myself, nor do my white friends call themselves, Euro-Americans. We are simply Americans. Putting any kind of adjective before American simply worsens any division that already exists.

The would-be presidential nominee then goes on to address the Rev. Jeremiah Wright issue…well, sort of. He does say that he has “already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy.”

However, he also said that he could not disown Rev. Wright any more than he could disown the “African-American” community. Now, in my mind’s eye (or ear), this is telling me that Barack feels that the black community in this country still holds the incendiary remarks of Obama’s pastor to be truths. That this is the U S of KKK A, that the American government did start AIDS as a tool of genocide, that the aftermath of Katrina was a carefully orchestrated plan by “the man” to rid New Orleans, and indeed the Gulf coast, of black people. Anybody else get that uneasy feeling that this is what Obama is saying?

He also said that he couldn’t disown the disgraceful pastor any more than he could disown his own white grandmother (I told you: a little something for everybody). He then said that he had heard this particular grandmother express fear of black men as they passed her on the street.

He also described her as a woman who “on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.” That’s odd, he hasn’t cringed at Rev. Wright’s remarks even once, at least not that he has mentioned.

A little bit later, B. Hussein Obama says that, “We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.” But then, what does the man do? You guessed it. Next came a history lesson of how racism in America’s history has unfairly treated blacks, and left many of them, such as Rev. Wright, bitter.

First, of course, he mentions slavery. This is a topic worthy of discussion, and it is certainly a permanent blight on the legacy of this country. He then mentions Jim Crow laws, Brown v. Board of Education, legalized discrimination, “where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white….”

Shhheww! I’m glad we didn’t need to “recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.” That could have been seen as being bitter about a past with which most of us had nothing to do. I’m sure glad he didn’t recite that history!

The great orator then goes on to explain that there is a similar anger in white segments of the community. That programs that favored blacks over whites, such as affirmative action, denied white people jobs and college admissions because the school or employer had to meet a quota, regardless of the applicant’s capabilities (or lack thereof). Obama said, basically, that situations such as these led to animus in the white community, and he was right about that.

He said that this anger is what sparked the “Reagan Coalition,” was the driving force behind the conservative movement in general, and also led to the catapulting of conservative talk radio, and there may be some truth to that, as well.

However, what Sen. Barack Hussein Obama fails to recognize, is that it has been the Republican party, not his, that has been the leader of reform movements to help the black community. As I mentioned in my last article, and as is stated in my upcoming book, (pardon the shameless plug), “Mr. Right Opinion-Unplugged and Unashamed,” available in late April/early May at: http://www.51756.authorworld.com/, it was the “Republican Revolution” of 1994 that brought about the most sweeping welfare reforms in our nation’s history. And those led to lower welfare rolls, and the lowest black child poverty rate in American history.

The only truly profound thing that I heard from this speech is that the welfare system has kept the black community in a cycle of dependence. I only wish that he had touched on that a little more, as it is his party that has kept that cycle in full spin mode for so many years.

The welfare reforms I mentioned earlier? By 2001, the Democrats in the halls of Congress were hard at work to reverse them.

Yes, there was a little bit for everyone in this speech. But I always say, when you try to be all things to all people, you wind up being nothing to anybody.

Michael A. Minton

Author of "Mr. Right Opinion-Unplugged and Unashamed"

Available at: http://www.51756.authorworld.com/

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