Wow, this is depressing.

Prominent scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is going to have a few things to write about this incident. And well he should.

Obama, The "R" Word, and Me

Race is a touchy subject for a liberal, especially a white liberal. Even more so for a white liberal female who cast her primary vote for Hillary Clinton.
It's hard to know where to start, in expressing how I feel about the likelihood of our first black president. But I feel excited.
I feel proud to be an American.
Sometimes I catch a few minutes of the Michael Baisden Show while station-surfing on the way home from work, and get caught up in the excitement there. Yeah, I know I'm white. I check out sites like The Root and feel the same thing.
Maybe part of it is the proverbial guilt. My maternal grandparents hailed from western South Carolina and western Virginia, (Falwell country) respectively. And, of course, I voted for Hillary, so there's that.
But although guilt breeds a sense of responsibility, it doesn't tend to breed excitement.

Part of it is just about Barack Obama himself. He has a certain something, a certain aura of leadership, a certain authenticity, a certain down-to-earth intellectualism (versus Al Gore's and John Kerry's more detached, off-putting variety) and, of course, a certain charisma. There's something in his voice that's both soothing and inspiring, and he has the (admittedly handsome) but furrowed brow of someone who doesn't take decisions lightly, a steadiness and a quiet confidence. These are the qualities that won him all three presidential debates.
I like the guy, as I have since I saw his keynote address four years ago. I liked him even when I cast the primary vote for his opponent. But now I'm on board.
It took a little while to get enthusiastically on board. I was a Bill fan since witnessing his first inaugural, and have wanted to see Hillary run since it was first tossed around as a remote possibility. It took some time to move on, but I've moved. I don't regret my primary vote, but I think my fellow Democrats made the right decision, and I look forward to following their example on Tuesday in the general election.

And part of it really is about race. I want to see unity in this country, and I want to see real healing, and I know that the former can't come without the latter. And I know how deeply Barack Obama feels and believes this (as a crucial aspect of his own identity, no doubt) and that gives me hope that we can see both, and maybe sooner than most of us thought we would. That's the sense I got after hearing his Philadelphia speech.

So, yeah, I'm white. Yeah, I voted for Hillary. And yeah, I'm excited about our first black president, excited about racial healing and reconciliation... and excited about electing Barack Obama.

Real Anger, Real Dialogue...

... and dare we say, real hope -- for healing the deep wounds of this nation's legacy of slavery and systematic racism, and decades/centuries of mutual misunderstanding?
Is that too audacious to posit?
Sure, some pundits say Obama had to say something in response to the Rev. Wright controversy, especially if he was going to (I think, admirably) choose not to just "dump" the man who had been his pastor for 20 years, and some say he had to say something big, to address what is a pretty enormous issue, not just in this campaign but in American history and American life.
But I was very impressed with what he said, and how he said it.
I'm impressed with what he had to say about his white grandmother, and his message to working-class white Americans. Maybe it was in the context of this primary, but the implications of opening up such dialogue go way beyond this election. And frankly, Obama is the right person at the right time to say these things. If the spirit of Geraldine Ferraro's comments were to say that there is a time and a place... I'll agree (I think that is being generous, but, in any case, her frustration is real, just as Rev. Wright's is, and it was decent of Obama to acknowledge that, however subtly. Whatever it may mean in the context of this campaign, it's something that needed to be said.)
Yes, Barack Obama giving a good speech is nothing new. But I think, in this one, he touched on something real, something beyond just the talking points on race, that actually broached the issue itself. To sum up by paraphrasing Faulkner, to acknowledge that the past isn't dead, or even past. Until we face up to that, we'll just be running in circles on this issue.

So is this post meant to imply that I've finally switched camps?
Not... necessarily.
I'll leave it at that, I guess, so I can enjoy my vacation.

An Embarrassment of Riches for Black Women Voters

Tough choice... but long overdue, and probably one MLK would have been pleased to see.

I've been a stranger to blogging this past week, and have kept away from all the various primary-related melodramas, while trying to do some more in-depth research on the candidates, and mull things over...

And I still have no idea who I'm going to vote for myself next month.

I wish everyone would try to play nice, though. (Or if "nice" is too much to ask, then at least fair.) Is that too much to ask?