Obama's speech was as subtle and complex and fiercely insightful as the subject matter required, but that means the difficulty is how America is going to internalize the message.
Based on the news headlines (as noted by Ben Smith) most of America will miss the message:
CNN: Obama: Constitution stained by 'sin of slavery'
ABC: Obama: Pastor Has Distorted View, But He Is Family to Me
FOX: Obama Condemns Pastor, But Won't 'Disown Him'
MSNBC: Obama: Racial anger is 'real'
CBS: Obama Urges End To "Racial Stalemate"
Only CBS got it nearly right, so allow me in my own way to boil down the speech into an essential message that his supporters should embrace going forward.
Wright's profound mistake was underestimating America's ability to move forward.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Implicit in this argument is that to continue wallowing in the mire of racial paranoia (like the media is so powerfully drawn to do) is to make exactly the same mistake Wright made: assuming that America is doomed to inescapable racial paralysis.