America’s Emerging Wardrobe
“We have been made to believe that differences of race and region; wealth and gender; party and religion have separated us into warring factions; into Red States and Blue states made up of individuals with opposing wants and needs; with conflicting hopes and dreams.
It is a vision of America that’s been exploited and encouraged by pundits and politicians who need this division to score points and win elections. But it is a vision of America that I am running for President to fundamentally reject – not because of a blind optimism I hold, but because of a story I’ve lived.
Our family’s story is one that spans miles and generations; races and realities. It’s the story of farmers and soldiers; city workers and single moms. It takes place in small towns and good schools; in Kansas and Kenya; on the shores of Hawaii and the streets of Chicago. It’s a varied and unlikely journey, but one that’s held together by the same simple dream.
And that is why it’s American.
That’s why I can stand here and talk about how this country is more than a collection of Red States and Blue States – because my story could only happen in the United States.
That’s why I believe that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that the dream we share is more powerful than the differences we have – because I am living proof of that ideal.”
This is an excerpt from Barak Obama’s Jan. 29th Speech in El Dorado, Kansas. I have been trying to get a bead on why an upstart bi-racial unknown has risen like an Apollo political spacecraft going toe to toe with the most potent Democratic Party juggernaut since FDR.
Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution contends that Obama is a ‘bargainer” who says to white’s, “I won’t hold your history of racial shame against you if you wont’ hold my color against me.” Steele further asserts that blacks like Obama offer white America redemption and absolution for their guilt and they respond with great gratitude. Steele places Oprah in this category as well.
A sound critique of Steele’s assessment comes from a surprising corner. George Will writes, “Steele has brilliantly dissected the intellectual perversities that present blacks as dependent victims, reduced to trading on their moral blackmail of whites who are eager to be blackmailed in exchange for absolution.
But Steele radically misreads Obama, missing his emancipation from those perversities. Obama seems to understand America’s race fatigue, the unbearable boredom occasioned by today’s stale politics generally, and especially by the perfunctory theatrics of race.
Steele notes that Obama “seems to have little talent for anger.” But that is because Obama has opted out of the transaction Steele vigorously deplores. The political implications of this transcendence of confining categories are many, profound and encouraging.”
Cal Berkeley Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg perceptively articulates liberal’s inability to weave a narrative as a foundational failing. But, this alone doesn’t explain the Obama phenomena.
If we place Steele, Will, Nunberg and a remnant of St. Paul’s Universal Christ on the loom we may be able to fashion a full suit of clothes.
“Put off the old practices and put on the new nature…in the image of its Creator. Here there cannot be Greek or Jew…slave or free, but Christ is all in all.” (Colossians 3: 9-11).
In the past few weeks Obama has won 3 Deep South primaries including Alabama for God’s sake. White men are voting for him. A staggering 67% of youth voted for Obama in South Carolina. Caroline Kennedy’s children talked her into endorsing him.
America seeks redemption; not one where a Savior has to die, or one horse collared by guilt, but one where our worn out, threadbare garments fall to the ground. Obama embodies and eloquently speaks this quintessential American narrative. The graying boomers and the purple haired Gen X & Y’s are in Amen corner. He may not win this time around, but the hour is nigh to put on America’s emerging wardrobe.
