Like many of you, I watched, rapt, Senator Obama's speech yesterday. Like many of you, I was stunned and moved at many points to tears. I saw a true leader, a president, someone who was willing to say uncomfortable but true things to the American people.
Like many of you, I watched eagerly for how the MSM would assess the speech. And while not everyone shared my particular view, the speech has been widely hailed (by those on the political right and left) as groundbreaking, serious, "the best speech of the 21st century."
That is why I was so disappointed to hear on NPR this morning Juan William's tired, constituent-based political analysis of Obama's speech. The disjuncture between what I heard and what Mr. Williams had heard seemed so wide that I was moved to write a letter to NPR expressing my consternation.
My letter to NPR's Morning Edition program is below the flip.
I was dismayed to hear Juan Williams’ analysis of Barack Obama’s speech on Morning Edition with Renee Mantegne today (March 19, 2008).
I have come to know Mr. Williams as an astute critic of both the American political scene and of black America. His initial reaction to Mr. Obama’s speech seemed to wholly miss the central thrust of the discussion. When Williams suggested that Obama equated his mother’s casual racism with his pastor’s fiery rhetoric he widely missed the mark. I wondered what speech Mr. Williams had listened to. I understood Senator Obama to be saying something more profound: that we all have an experience of race and that such experience, no mattered how varied, is always imperfect. And, more importantly, that we all have a responsibility to own up to our own history, to understand it, and to try and transcend the tortured history of race in America.
Obama’s speech has been hailed as one of the most important speeches of the 21st century and the most meaningful speech on race since Dr. King’s "I have a dream speech." Mr. Williams’ brief observations captured none of this.
If all a listener had to go on was Mr. Williams’ assessment, they would come away thinking that Obama simply delivered another in a string or ordinary political speeches designed to speak one constituency or another. Mr. Williams depicted Mr. Obama as trying solely to engage in political damage control, speaking to defined constituencies (white working class voters, African Americans, etc.). Instead, I heard Mr. Obama speaking to all Americans of every background. His speech was a call to all of us to own our collective past but not be trapped by the bitterness and resentments that lurk there.
When was the last time an American political figured asked so much of Americans?
It was a brave speech at a dicey moment in Mr. Obama’s political campaign, one that indicated to me at least the kind of courageous leadership one could expect of an Obama presidency.
I have no idea what speech Mr. Williams heard. I wonder if people listening to Mr. Williams this morning were left worse off in their understanding of this important moment in the life of the nation and will, as a result, fail to understand the courage that Mr. Obama showed in addressing our collective history squarely, honestly, and bravely.
For the full NPR story, check here: http://www.npr.org/...
NPR's Juan Williams on Barack Obama's Speech