So recently I've been critical both of Barack Obama, and of some of the conservatives who have been criticizing him. But there's hope on both counts. Peggy Noonan, for example, one of my favorite conservatives as well as one of my favorite writers, recently noted this concerning Obama's recent speech on race:
"Most significantly, Mr. Obama asserted that race in America has become a generational story. The original sin of slavery is a fact, but the progress we have lived through the past 50 years means each generation experiences race differently. Older blacks, like Mr. Wright, remember Jim Crow and were left misshapen by it. Some rose anyway, some did not; of the latter, a "legacy of defeat" went on to misshape another generation. The result: destructive anger that is at times "exploited by politicians" and that can keep African-Americans "from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition." But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one 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 of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too. This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit."
Exactly. Acknowledging some of the concerns many whites have on some racial issues--how many Democrat politicians have done that recently? Would Jesse Jackson have done it? Of course not. So does Obama really sound like a radical to you? And remember, this isn't the first time Obama has shown that he recognizes the same concerns conservatives have. Obama has frequently discussed how many African-Americans have lagged behind in educational achievement. And he's pointed out that some of that is due to failings in the African-American community itself--that there are too few involved African-American fathers; that more in the community need to turn off the TV and read to their kids.
Painting Obama as Jeremiah Wright redux, then, just doesn't make sense.
I'm glad Noonan recognizes that. More of us on the right need to recognize it (and, therefore, to criticize Obama where he deserves to be criticized).
