Great speech, Sen. Obama. But where's the props for your elders?

[thatcrazycajun]

Well, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, finally the official Democratic nominee for President, gave his acceptance speech last night, after the convention moved its venue for the last day from Pepsi Center out to the local shiny new corporate-named football stadium so more ordinary folks without party credentials could attend.

To his credit, he gave as detailed a response as anyone given only 44 minutes to make their case could have to all the critics who say his campaign is long on soaring rhetoric and short on substance, using words like "change" and "hope" like mantras without explaining exactly what sort of change he wants and how he'd make it happen. He laid out a couple dozen ideas, and will probably flesh them out more in the weeks ahead. And he also countered those who've said he hasn't been aggressive enough by laying into the Bush Regime and John McCain, his GOP counterpart, at every opportunity.

Most seem to think he "hit it out of the park" when called to give the biggest speech of his life. But for such a historic moment, why only the barest acknowledgment of the fact that his ethnicity and skin color are what made it so historic? And why hardly any mention of the other great African-American leaders who paved his way to this moment? Only one—Dr. Martin Luther King, whose most famous speech was given 40 years ago that day, by what may be only partly coincidence—merited an actual mention in his speech.

But this nation has had black and brown people involved in its shaping from the very beginning, with Crispus Attucks, the first martyr of the American Revolution. And what about Frederick Douglass, the first African-American to have a major party place his name in nomination for this office? What about abolitionists such as John Brown and Nat Turner, legislators from Adam Clayton Powell to Shirley Chisholm to Jesse Jackson Jr., jurists such as Thurgood Marshall, mayors like Tom Bradley of L.A., Atlanta's own Maynard Jackson and Shirley Franklin, and New York's David Dinkins? Or L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, still the only two black governors? (Democrats all, by the way.) Or does he think letting John L. Lewis and King's son open for him is all the acknowedgment needed?

If he can stand on such a mile-high platform today, it's only because he is standing on their shoulders. It would have been nice to see him recognize that in his own speech more than he did.

Comments

[maverick-weirdo.livejournal.com]

He knows he stands on the shoulders of giants. He has, for example, acknowleged Harold Washington, the first African American Mayor of Chicago, previously; however you know very well that from this point on the campaign will be focused on winning the moderate/independant voters.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

You forgot Barbara Jordan.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Because this wasn't a speech about that. This was a speech about his vision for the future and why he should be elected president.

Good *grief*.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Because every speech needs to be about everything?

Because at a time when he is trying to not get pigeonholed as the "Black candidate? And may I add that he is actually good friends with Deval Patrick, who spoke on Tuesday night?

No offense, but is nice you are not actually running this campaign.

Oh yes . . .

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

If you haven't seen Lewis Black's "Root of All Evil" on Red States v. Blue States, go watch it. Particularly the part about "we Blue Staters are so filled with self-loathing and guilt we can never win."

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I have to join with the others. This ain't his Oscar acceptance speech. This is his "I"m gonna kick their ass" speech, and it was about explaining how he is gonna do that, not about how he got there. Future, not past. That's his whole message. Now, come a certain Wednesday in November, we *hope* he can make the speech you want him to make. OTOH, I think if he's smart he'll save that one for February when it's *time* to look back. The jokers that are in there now are not going to go quietly, and we will have to continue to fight them until they've got no more fight left in them.

Nope. Not time to look back. Time to look to the future.

You never count your money
when you're sitting at the table
there'll be time enough for countin'
when the dealin's done.

[maya-a.livejournal.com]

The "I Have a Dream" speech was forty-five years ago yesterday, at the March on Washington in 1963.

While this was an historic day, it would not have been appropriate to go through a laundry list of other achievers of color. This was not predominately a speech of thanks, but rather one about vision.

[poltr1]

Isn't the new governor of New York -- David Patterson, if I remember correctly -- also a man of color?

I know, I'm picking nits here.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

He's not accepting the Nobel Prize. He's trying to win an election. His race is still a factor to more swing voters than will admit it -- polls consistently run about 5% above what actual votes tally for black candidates, meaning a reliable 5% won't vote for them and won't tell the pollsters they won't. He'd be a fool to push his race in people's faces more than is necessary from the way it shows on his own.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

my personal feeling is that when he was running for demoratic nominee, the fact that he was black was significant, and when he is actually elected president, it will be a historic moment when he can acknowledge the other black people who have paved the way. but right now, he's just a man who believes the country needs to rescue itself from the quagmire bush has sucked it into, and his race is irrelevant.