addressing race

After Barack Obama's race speech, below on YouTube, people are talking about the race issue again. He acknowledges anger among Whites and among Blacks. Whether you want him to be President or not, to listen to a man who is a viable candidate for President of the United States who has relatives of practically every race, address the issue of race head on, is remarkable. He is the son of a White woman, apparently descended from slave owners, and a Kenyan father. His wife Michelle is descended from slaves and slave owners.

I am descended from slave owners. But my parents raised us to treat people of all races with utmost respect. Before I was born, my father was a poor Baptist preacher in the South who told the story of the Good Samaritan with the Good Samaritan as a Black person. You know the story. A man is robbed and left for dead, all the "good" people like priests walk by him, avoiding him lying there on the road. I suppose it was about the blood they weren't supposed to touch. Along came the Samaritan (Jesus' audience in this story, the Jews, hated Samaritans) who tended the man and paid for him to be nursed until he recovered. Ok, so my dad told the story from the pulpit with the Good Samaritan as a Black man, in a little rural church in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. After the church service, the Elders came to him, saying, "Rev. Hart, we'd appreciate it if you'd please only preach the Bible."

In the 1990s I got a seven-year education in American race relations when I worked in a University office in which I was one of two White women. The rest of the staff (10 or so people) were either African American or Latino. I learned that my friend Sheree, a beautiful AA woman of 35, felt discriminated against every time she went to the mall and the staff stayed close by her and left White women alone. I learned that there was deep anger between African Americans and Latinos. I learned that some African Americans felt superior to Whites because they believed they would never degrade other humans through slavery. I learned that even after 140 years, Whites can't necessarily expect that African Americans are ready to "move on." I learned that I basically have nothing to say as a White person, about what an African American or Latino person might feel or should do.

This is the first 9-minute segment of Obama's speech two days ago. You can download segments 2-4 from the sidebar at YouTube.