Race In America

I know I'm not going to win any creativity points for this one, but it's an important speech and a well-delivered one.





This speech walks right into a topic typically ignored, race, and deals with it openly and honestly. For that alone it should be commended, but that is hardly its greatest quality. For starters, it assumes a level of audience intelligence that political speeches almost never exhibit. The issue is complex and Obama takes a very nuanced stand, but he never belittles the audience by oversimplifying. The assumption that his audience is smart enough to understand his speech is inspiring in that it gives the audience the impression that if we can understand the speech and others can as well, then maybe we are smart enough finally to work through our country's racial issues.

None of that would matter if the speech wasn't rooted entirely in the grave reality of American history. Obama confronts our troubled past on both sides head on, and asks all of us to transcend it. And that's remarkable.