It has sometimes been suggested that Barack Obama "transcends race" -- or that he's selling the delusional notion that America has transcended race. I think the truth of it is quite otherwise -- that one of the deepest unspoken appeals of Barack Obama, to all Americans, has been the sneaking suspicion that one day he was going to speak about race directly, open up the honest conversation about race which this country has been too confused and too frightened to have. It makes him slightly dangerous but also utterly intriguing.
I always assumed that he would say what he had to say on the subject after he was elected President, and perhaps he made the same assumption, but the Reverend Wright controversy made it necessary to say it sooner rather than later. So on 18 March, within hailing distance of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, he gave the most important speech on race delivered in this country since Martin Luther King's address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the crowds gathered for the March On Washington.
At this point I don't think it matters how people respond to Obama's speech as a bit of political strategy, how it may hurt or hinder his campaign for the Presidency. It's a speech that will echo down the years. Curiously, for a man who is both praised and condemned for emotional rhetoric, the speech was most notable for its sober and sobering analysis of the state of half-conscious or unconscious racial division in the country. There were no sweeping appeals to idealism, no sense that the division could be repaired by lofty slogans, by "dreams".
He told us where we are -- where, on some level, we all know we are. He gave us permission to speak about the issue from where we are. He brought the talk around the kitchen table into the public square. Nothing but good can come of it.
We may draw back from him, as a candidate, decide once again that we're not ready to have this conversation. But we won't be able to stop it now. William Blake said, "Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd." That's why prophets get stoned to death -- for starting uncomfortable conversations that can't be stopped. That's also why we need prophets and cherish them, if only in retrospect.