3-24-08, 11:29 am

Packing hundreds of years of American history into a 38-minute speech, Barack Obama last Tuesday Mar. 18 responded to criticisms about his relationship with his controversial former minister by addressing the issue of race and racism, a question few national politicians have ever had the courage to directly address.

While the speech became an instant classic on YoutTube, having been viewed more than 3.5 million times in the past seven days, and has been circulated in just about every social networking site in the farthest corners of the Internet with polls showing huge majorities of readers and viewers approving of its contents, right-wing pundits like Fox News personality Charles Krauthammer, ultra-right MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan, radio personality Rush Limbaugh, and innumerable other Republican-affiliated and John McCain-supporting commentators didn't like it.

Though they have never really addressed the key arguments of the speech, preferring to smear the messenger and sidestep serious issues of racism and race, I suspect that at heart, they disapprove of the unifying message of the speech.

In the speech, Obama clearly and unequivocally rejected as too negative and divisive the sentiments expressed in the remarks of his former pastor which have been played and replayed on Fox News and other channels.

His former pastor's words were not just controversial Obama said. '[T]hey expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism and endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.'

The comments Obama rejected 'were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity,' he added.

Obama stated that in order to help us talk honestly about and heal the wounds of racism, we have to recognize that the experiences of African Americans are not invented. Anger among African Americans 'is real,' Obama argued. '[I]t is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.'

He then added that most whites have legitimate claims to anger and resentment as well. 'Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race,' Obama asserted. Having lived through the immigrant experience, 'no one's handed them anything,' he said. 'They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor,' Obama added.

But they, like African Americans, are often wrongly convinced by politicians and the media and right-wing talk show hosts that other working people who don't look like them or share the same backgrounds are the source of their problems. 'Just as Black anger often proved counterproductive,' Obama pointed out, 'so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze: a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic polices that favor the few over the many.'

Dismissing this resentment and refusing to engage in discussion by labeling whites as simply 'misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding,' Obama insisted.

In the end, however, our ability to end the war, to win universal health care, to repair our country economically, politically, and spiritually, depends entirely on our ability to unite across the racial, religious, and ethnic divides and move forward together, Obama argued.

Uniting to promote policies that, for example, help all of our children gain access to a quality education is not a Black or white or Latino issue, Obama said. Lack of access to affordable, quality health care is a heart not a racial issue. Closed factories and the housing crisis impact people of all races, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds.

Overcoming these difficulties requires overcoming racial divisions, the politics of cynicism, and the usual political distractions that divide us rather than bring us together, Obama said. 'It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in health, welfare, and education of Black and Brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.'

And this is the message that right-wing pundits and Fox News 'analysts' don't like. They prefer the politics of division the entertainment quality of controversy and tearing down people they see as their political opponents. It is no accident that the sharpest criticism of Obama have come from McCain supporters, but what they disapprove of most is Obama's appeal to working Americans that we look beyond the surface of racial differences to the real core of what drives the problems in this country.

While it may take a special courage for working people of all backgrounds and races and nationalities and ethnicities to reject the politics of division encouraged by right-wing pundits, what we may have to gain is deep and fundamental change in our society that is worth the risk.

-Reach Joel Wendland at