VERY thoughtful analysis on Obama's speech and race relations in the US

[Hamlette]

Towards the end of his speech about race on Tuesday, Barack Obama made an observation that was raw enough to knock any attentive American listener out of his chair.

Mr Obama was talking about one of his campaign volunteers, a white woman in her 20s, who as a girl had proclaimed that her favourite food was mustard sandwiches, in the hope of making her single mother feel less bad about being poor. This girl had kept her faith in other people, Mr Obama said, even though “perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work”.

{edit...the author talks about racism still existing but because racist talk is not acceptable, it is now expressed by politicians in code. If your enemies start speaking in secret code, how can you trust them? Which has led to paranoia and wild stories about AIDS being cause by whites to put down blacks. Read the whole thing, not very long, good stuff...last two paragraphs here:)

This is the core of the problem Mr Obama aims to address. Bringing subterranean racial narratives into the light of day, where they can be debated openly, is a risk. Although the early news coverage of his speech has been positive, polls appear show that what Americans most want from Mr Obama is a simple demonstration that he is not like Rev Wright.

That is not exactly what they got. But they did get something better: the offer of a more intimate relationship among the races, a less instrumental use of them by US politicians and a breaking of the monopoly on interracial dialogue that has until now been held by elite censors. Americans ought to take him up on it.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ab26ee84-f762-11dc-ac40-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

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This is why we didn't find Reagan so inspirational as some do. All of his speeches were code speak for rich old white guys. Obama tells us to recognize how the code is in more dangerous than overt racism.