Race in America ... and the distractions from the issues

Maybe you're tired of the main stream media's 10 second sound bite coverage of Obama's speech on race in the United States. Maybe you're tired of someone interpreting for you what he meant. Maybe you think there is enough at stake in our collective future to take an active interest in those who presume to lead us through it. Maybe you think it's important to go to the source and hear what the man had to say for himself so that you can judge it's merits. Here's Obama's speech in its entirety:


or watch it here on YouTube ...

In the meantime, if you'd RATHER have someone give you a synopsis, here's one *I* like from Joseph Palermo:

Senator Barack Obama displayed a quality in his speech today that the Democratic Party desperately needs in its nominee in 2008: Fearlessness. It was not Barack Obama who injected race into this campaign -- Bill and Hillary Clinton did that for the most crass political purposes -- but when his political enemies moved Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons to center stage Obama masterfully shifted the political discourse and replaced the media-driven hype about Reverend Wright with a frank discussion of the state of race relations in America.

In his speech today, Obama displayed his nuanced understanding of the meaning of the U.S. Constitution and of the trajectory of American history. No presidential candidate in decades has had such a masterful grasp of the engine of social change and the role of struggle against injustice in moving history forward. Obama elevates our political discourse by trying to educate the electorate on the problems we face and speaking truth to both the powerful and the powerless.

The rest after the click...