Audio Boo
Senator Barack Obama's 3/18/2008 Speech
A friend of mine, who is a tried and true, fiercely loyal (and somewhat crazy) Democrat forwarded me the link for the speech that Barack Obama gave today in an effort to counter the outcry from audio clips of Reverend Jeremiah White's apparent vitriol and hatred for America and it's white citizens. Expecting to hear a lot of generalizations and ass covering, I was quite surprised that his manner and method captivated me for the entire 37-plus minutes of his speech.
As a white girl, raised in a trailer park by a teen aged mother and the truck driver she married a few years after I was born, I am not without my share of stories about racism. When I was growing up, I wasn't able to wear my hair in a pony tail that was too high on top or too far to either side because that's "how the little nigger girls wear their hair". My mother would often tell me, even into my teens after we moved someplace as diverse as California, "Clean your room, a nigger wouldn't even live here". And the classic, "If you ever bring a nigger boy home, I will disown you and then I'll die. I'll just die."
I'm grown now but those words still sting. I've told my children they'll never hear that vile, filthy word out of my mouth, though I'm prone to drop the F-Bomb a hundred times a day. That word represents a piece of my history that I wish didn't exist. I'd like to say that this all took place in the 60's, or in a part of the South that is highly publicized for its weekly Klan meetings, not that it would've made it any better. The scary part is that I'm only 33 and from the time I was 7 years old (1982), I was raised in California. This demonstrates Senator Obama's point that, although there have been terrific gains in racial equality, there is still work to be done and that racial inequality is not in just "all in the head" of blacks in our country. How could anyone claim otherwise, knowing what I know?
His speech captures the sentiment of most working class whites, whether we want to admit it or not. He says, "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. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. 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."
I recognize that these points are largely true and represents a mindset that's flawed beyond reason, but has potential to change. This type of understanding shared with a captive audience of all races is appreciated by this sometimes admittedly misguided Republican. It gives phenomenal credit to the other parts of his speech that I may have otherwise dismissed as racial rhetoric designed to somehow make me feel bad for being white. It left me feeling what he has been preaching from the beginning of his campaign. Hope.
By Jane Smith -
Emeigh Bruce is a 30-something mom to two teenage daughters living in the S.F. Bay Area. She writes with passion about children and parenting, offering amusing and helpful advice.
Am i allowed to attend this event or not?
Am I allowed to attend the what it... the audio boo 27th of oct or is that part of ur crew, im not going if im going to be shouted at?
they would! milk face!
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