Moving beyond Obama and race

BocaGuy: Obama's speech asks each of us to come to terms with our own feelings on the question of race. What our own experience on race.


Joan Walsh
salon.com
March 22, 2008

Barack Obama sounded tired when he described his grandmother as a "typical white person" who feared those who are different from her in a radio interview Thursday. He was elaborating on the historic speech on race he gave Tuesday. Obama hasn't gotten his line on his white grandmother quite right yet. He compared her to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose extremist statements (admittedly a minority of his prodigous pastoral output) are part of his public persona, while Obama's grandmother's supposed transgressions were private (and in Obama's books, occasioned by her harassment by an aggressive panhandler who happened to be African American. But maybe there were more.)

Whatever the truth, what Obama experienced with his grandmother was no doubt painful as he reckoned with his mixed-race upbringing, as well as the fact of an absent Kenyan father and an often absent Kansan mother, who were often replaced by two loving but imperfect aging white grandparents.

I've gotten a ton of criticism in letters for questioning Obama's use of his grandmother in his landmark race speech, and it's all made me think twice. Many more times than twice, actually. Yet I hold to my view that Obama's speech, and its aftermath, could well be politically damaging despite rave reviews, and that his use of his grandmother is part of the problem. I would ask my critics' indulgence, hoping they'll join the conversation on race Obama correctly says we need, and put aside their own preconceptions while I explain my reaction. ... ( more )

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