Breaking the Racial Stalemate

Barack said it today - he said what needed to be said, and what America needed to hear.

Separating himself from the hurtful comments of his former pastor - yet continuing friend - Jeremiah Wright without throwing away the man, without throwing away the community, without disowning his own family, without disowning America, Barack Obama managed to change the tone and refocus this debate in the direction that it needs to go.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years.

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But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

We need to go forward together - not seperately.

Many can and will say things that disturb and frighten us, but we must come to understand that when we seek to split ourselves off from those people - rather than their comments - we will continue to Divide ourselves from each other.

Divided we Fall, Together we Stand.

Black people do have legitimate reasons for resentment.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future.

With this statement he has finally shown that he does understand what it is to be Black In America - an issue with which I had had some significant doubt that he was fully commited to. I doubt no more.

However he went one step further and showed that he also understands that White people have legitimate reasons for resentment too.

Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition.

Life is not a Zero-Sum game, where every positive thing that happens to one person must be snatched from the mouth of someone else. Yet we have been taught to address the things in our life purely in competitive these terms, in terms of Winners and Losers.

We rarely speak of it, but much of America is based on the idea that If you Play the Game, you will Succeed and be Rewarded, with riches, opportunity, leisure and prosperity.

We're all playing a game, a game in which we already know is at least partially rigged in the favor of those who already have every advantage.

We all feel resentment that somehow, somewhere - we've been robbed. Somebody should have called a foul. Where's the flag on the play? The Refs are all on the take.

It has been the lot of many politicians and political commentators to manipulate this resentment for their own gains.

Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Talking heads, screaming at each other - pointing the finger of Race Baiter. From Rutgers to Duke, it goes on and on. Playing the "Race Card", ignoring the Legacy of Discrimination. We Recriminate and Rebuke, never Solve and Resolve.

It's past time we stopped bickering, and started doing.

Yes, we are in a competition. Yes, we are in a game - but we need to learn that ultimately - We're All On the Same Team.

The Human Team.

Yes, we have indeed made great strides forward over the last 50 years, but we have not arrived at the Promised Land Yet. Not quite...yet.

We have to remember that sometimes being at 5 and Goal, is far more difficult than being on the 90 yards down field. We can't afford to give up now, not when we're so close.

White people can not walk away from this and pretend as many have, that their hands are clean and nothing should be asked of them.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds.

Black people must do more than just point fingers, they must also take some responsibility of their own, and continue to nurture hope rather than give in to cynicism and despair.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

We can not afford to disown each other, and we have spent far too long staring at each other across and angry divide of apathy and hopelessness, screaming our long list of deep grievances in impotent righteous rage, we must learn to listen to each others real concerns and issues not with a tin-ear, not with a "my pain is sooo much bigger than your pain", but instead we must embrace it all, as OUR COMMON PAIN. Our Common Suffering. Our Common Fears.

And Our Common Hope.

Hope for a safer America. Hope for a more tolerant and generous America.

Hope for a Better America.

It's well past time we started making that America, together.

Vyan