Quote Of The Day
March 20th, 2008at 06:09pm Posted by Eli
Nicholas Kristof on Obama’s speech on race and Jeremiah Wright:
All of this demonstrates that a national dialogue on race is painful, awkward and essential. And that dialogue needs to focus not on clips from old sermons by Mr. Wright but on far more urgent challenges – for example, that about half of black males do not graduate from high school with their class.
That’s pretty much the crux in a nutshell. The Republicans and their pet media want to talk about how Jeremiah Wright is a Crazy Angry Black Man and therefore so is Barack Obama, when the real story is what Wright and Obama are actually talking about. If you dismiss Wright and/or Obama as Crazy Angry Black Men, then you never have to worry about whether maybe, just maybe, people of color in this country have legitimate grievances and genuine disadvantages.
My personal belief is that America has succeeded in almost completely eliminating racism… on paper. Now we just have to eliminate it everywhere else.