Elections: March 2008 Archives

Senator Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech on racism last week resonated widely (already more than 4 millions views on YouTube) and sparked loads of reaction across the political spectrum.

The speech definitely provides us a teachable moment; one that I hope can extend beyond the typical duration of our collective cultural attention span.

Lest we succumb to all our competing distractions and penchant for selective amnesia, I’ve extracted and labeled what I think are some of the nuggets of wisdom and key quotes of Obama’s that I hope we can remember as we work to advance the conversation of race and eliminate the racial inequalities structured in our society.

So I'm at the Take Back America conference, seeing the event with the dual eyes I have been using for viewing this entire election season thus far.

At this conference (nicknamed the "progressive convention"); the passion is in people's eyes, their
bodies aquiver with the idea of advancing progressive ideals. it's been a while since we had a national moment of victory.

by Alex Jung

Update: Barack Obama has announced that he will give a speech on, "race in this campaign."

A comedy troupe called the Public Service Administration has released a satire, "Don't Think of a Black Man" (a spin off of Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant) in which they pretend to be staffers of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The racial dynamics in the race are fascinating, with Barack Obama's campaign running away from the R word (and consequently any statements made by radical black folks like Reverend Wright, and Hillary Clinton's camp possibly maybe mentioning that Barack Obama is black, or not a Muslim, or used to snort cocaine. Possibly. Maybe not?