Barack Obama : A More Perfect Union


Image Credit : BarackObama.com at Flickr

Michael has the whole text over at The Daily Gotham. The speech is flawless but this quote resonates with me as also a fellow "biracial American" :

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

[...]

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Amen to that.


http://culturekitchen.com/liza/blog/barack_obama_a_more_perfect_union
Mouse over the text to select it, then press Ctrl-C to copy it.
Your rating: None
About author n/a
liza's picture



Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Links to specified hosts will have a rel="nofollow" added to them.

  • Easily link to terms in various wikis. For help, see <a href="/interwiki/4">interwiki</a>.
  • Images can be added to this post.
  • Use <!--pagebreak--> to create page breaks.
  • Textual smileys will be replaced with graphical ones.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • E-Mail addresses are hidden with reCAPTCHA Mailhide.

More information about formatting options

Captcha
This question is used to make sure you are a human visitor and to prevent spam submissions.

User login

The Publisher
Liza Sabater

Daily servings of political dissent
culturekitchen

Grassroots News and
Activism for New Yorkers

Daily Gotham

Feminist Bloggers
Network

BlogSheroes

A new kind of vouyerism
Voogling

Art + Code + Philosophy
Potatoland.blog

Got any dirt, tips, leads or money for us? Then drop us a line or two at editors [at] culturekitchen [dot] com or use our general contact form to reach everybody in the editorial team ASAP.


Nibble daily on our brainy goodness with our daily syndication digest. You'll receive an email with a list and links to the previous day's posts.



Powered by FeedBlitz

Upcoming events

  • No upcoming events available

QUOTES

By the time a century or two of exploitation has passed there comes about a veritable emaciation of the stock of national culture. It becomes set of automatic habits, some traditions of dress and a few broken-down institutions. Little movement can be discerned in such remnants of culture; there is no real creativity and no overflowing life. The poverty of the people, national oppression and the inhibition of culture are one and the same thing. After a century of colonial domination we find a culture which is rigid in the extreme, or rather what we find are the dregs of culture, its mineral strata. The withering away of the reality of the nation and the death-pangs of the national culture are linked to each other in mutual dependences This is why it is of capital importance to follow the evolution of these relations during the struggle for national freedom. The negation of the native's culture, the contempt for any manifestation of culture whether active or emotional and the placing outside the pale of all specialised branches of organisation contribute to breed aggressive patterns of conduct in the native. But these patterns of conduct are of the reflexive type; they are poorly differentiated, anarchic and ineffective. Colonial exploitation, poverty and endemic famine drive the native more and more to open, organised revolt. The necessity for an open and decisive breach is formed progressively and imperceptibly, and comes to be felt by the great majority of the people. Those tensions which hitherto were non-existent come into being. International events, the collapse of whole sections of colonial empires and the contradictions inherent in the colonial system strengthen and uphold the native's combativity while promoting and giving support to national consciousness.


Poll