The media represents a major impediment to a discussion on race. We reduce entire comments into snippets. Clinton's comments about LBJ are educed to suggesting that MLK was an afterthought. The African-American backlash to the snippet suggests that Whites played no role in the civil rights movements.

The backlash occurs because discussions of race in the MSM usually consists of Whites posing their set of questions to Blacks. Blacks are mere responders. Black do not lead the MSM discussion on race. When presented with a snippet, the community responds with a snippet. No true conversation takes place. Both sides point fingers.

Next, we have to be honest and say that Conservatives have used racial divisions in the country to their benefit. It therefore comes as a surprise when African-American conservatives speak out against this tide. Michael Steele, the former Republican Lt Gov of MD, pointed out at the State of the Black Union conference that political party never trumps race. Condoleeza Rice's statement about the national birth defect of slavery was also eye-opening.

With few exceptions, White Conservatives have no moral authority to criticize African-Americans. The GOP has been at the forefront of the Southern Strategy. Black conservatives bear the burden of Ward Connerly. As long as the Southern Strategy and Connerly are the basis of the GOP's interacting with the Black community, the GOP will be largely ignored.

The Democratic Party via the Hillary Clinton campaign is showing a new side to the African-American community. Geraldine Ferraro and other Clinton supporters have raised serious questions about the Democratic Party's feeling toward it's African-American base.

If Blue collar Democrats throughout the country cannot accept an African-American candidate than a reassessment of the community's relation with the Democratic Party will occur. Gov Rendell of PA stated openly that there are Whites in PA who will not vote for a Black candidate. That is flatly outrageous.

Things are in flux from a political standpoint.
Neither party truly welcomed it's African-American voters with open arms. Staying home, or just voting in local elections may become the default position.

"Run, Jesse, Run!"

Glenn Loury is Mars Blackmon Redux.

So....blacks are being bamboozled by Uncle Tom Obama.

This whole thing is a setup for a race war if I've ever seen one. Blacks are figuring this guy is going to get into office and miraculously do, well, what exactly? And when he doesn't do "it" there is going to be some serious anger played out.

And what is it that non-blacks expect? Who knows. Do they think that having a black President's face on TV everyday will somehow heal all racial wounds and promote equality?

In my city govt. blacks are way overrepresented in the heads of departments and elite politicians. Yet that vast majority of crime, murders and poverty is in the small and shrinking black population. Appointing and electing blacks has done nothing to improve things.

Obama is no silver bullet. But apparently the vast majority of blacks mistakenly think he will work some sort of miracle.

Will he will be elected out of a collective sense of guilt by whites and anger by blacks? That is a recipe for failure.

Yet, the forces behind his rise are NOT grassroots-black-American in origin; they are elite-white-liberal-academic in origin.

I could understand this concern if black people weern't voting for Obama, but they are. Therefore, they are giving his message a vote of confidence.

well, you are projecting way, way too many expectations onto Barack Obama as a singular individual, and then conflating the press' reaction to his speech with the speech itself. it is certainly not Obama's fault that most in the press are not familiar with any of LBJ's speeches, let alone the specific one you mention. it is silly for anyone to expect Obama himself to "heal" our national racial wounds, that is ridiculous and impossible. certainly the same is true of the idea that Obama himself will somehow "silence" the voice of dissent in the black community or in the country. what ridiculous hyperbole! if anything it will have the exact opposite effect, and the vast swaths of America which remain reflexively rather than actively racist will be directly confronted with the refutation of many of their deeply held fears about black people.

go Barack! you can't please everybody and it sucks that sometimes the people who have the most to gain from an Obama victory hold him to purity tests instead of understanding the enormous pressure on him and the razor thin tightrope he is walking in this campaign...

I think one of the mistakes that we are making is not looking at the effects of income on African Americans. African Americans aren't a monolithic group. In fact I will argue that the life of an upper middle class black has more in common with an upper middle class white than an African American who lives in poverty on the South Side of Chicago.

So I think the conversation needs to change from a race base conversation to a class base conversation. What Obama needs to make the mainstream understand is the problems of poverty, lack of health care, lack of access to a good education, lack of access to a good job. These are problems that effect all Americans black, white, Hispanic, Asian, native American it doesn’t matter. The problem is that do to our past racial history these problems are more acutely felt by the African American Community.

The narrative can then be if we can find non race based programs to help the African American community these same programs will help all Americans.

There's two troubling assumptions at the base of this piece: (1) that Obama once had the "dissident's voice" (which he now has to abandon to assend to the Presidency), and (2) that his speech was a disingenuous political move, not an honest explanation of the differences between his worldview and Rev. Wright's.

Aren't these assumptions similar to those made by Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich and company?

i am not old school black but OBAMA does not speak for me. neither did jesse jackson nor al sharpton.

Glen, I've been flowing your commentary with McWhorter on bloggingheadsTV and I must say you two are by far my favorite duo! You always say what I yell at the tv/laptop. Great piece.

This article is intellectually stimulating. Just look at this sentence alone: "But a great deal more may also be lost including, just to take one example, the notion that the moral legacy for today’s America of the black freedom struggle that played-out in this country during the century after emancipation from slavery – I speak here of Martin Luther King's (and Fannie Lou Hamer's, and W.E.B. DuBois's, and Ida B. Wells’s and Frederick Douglass's ...) moral legacy – should find present-day expression in, among other ways, agitation on behalf of and public expression of sympathy for the dispossessed Palestinians – who are, arguably, among the 'niggers' of today's world, if ever there were any."

And there are many more sentences just like it. Just reading this article is in itself an intellectual accomplishment.

Nonsense. We accept incrementally better conditions in all aspects of our life all the time. And we judge ourselves, as a society on the trajectory of our progress not just on a single absolute scale. "In order to form a more perfect union..." Doe sit sound familiar.

Some aspects of justice are categorically either just or unjust. Specifically, de jure injustice (in this case discrimination by race) can be addressed in a categorical way. De facto injustice is always dealt with incrementally. We live in a more tolerant society in many ways than we used to. That has real advantages for society and for individuals. In terms of racial segregation in housing we have a huge amount of progress yet to make.

Since Mr. Loury says: "The narrative-defining moves that Obama is making now, in the heat of a political campaign and in the service of his own ambitions, must be critically examined..." Since he puts ambition (and therefore ego) in the argument, I am left thinking that Mr. Loury would feel some sense of personal loss for himself and other African-American intellectuals and activists of his generation should Obama become President, and therefore become the dominant face and voice of Black America. I would hope Mr. Loury will do all he can to encourage Obama to be the leader he would hope him to be. But first an election must be won, and the language and attitudes Mr. Loury would have Obama take now would doom him to defeat.

I dunno, I completely see your point but at the same time, as a white female with long experience with the attitudes that many older whites have about race, I can't see how at this point in time a black candidate could successfully run in any way other than the way Obama has run his campaign, or with a different message. Not to be pat, but it's almost another Jackie Robinson moment. 30 years from now, it might be possible that a black candidate could run as a black candidate, first and foremost, successfully, but at this point in time, the one voting bloc that most reliably turns out to vote at every election - old white people - also happens to be the last generation of folks who grew up under segregation. Some of them have come a long way in their attitudes about race, some of them have only come a little way, and some of them haven't budged at all. In short, there's a lot of these people who will consider voting for a black candidate - but only if he or she is not "too black". And destor23 is right - this stuff moves too glacially slow - but it IS moving, thank god. I'll give an anecdotal example - the small town in Arkansas my parents moved us to when I was in high school was, I thought, shockingly racist. I had come from Atlanta and even as a young teen was fairly ignorant of the whole civil rights struggle that had taken place when I was a young child. I never attended a segregated school - this was for me, normalcy. The town we moved to had a very small black population - less than 10% - and had integrated its schools only a few years earlier. It was just 70 miles down the road from a place where, into the mid-70s, it was not unheard of for signs saying "black man don't let the sun set on you in Newton County" to be posted, according to friends who grew up there. I got out of that town as quickly as I could once I was out of school.

Fast forward to a few years ago...that small town where I attended high school elected a black mayor, a guy who was a friend of mine in school, and the general agreement is that he's done an excellent job and he has drawn no opposition in the upcoming election. Even many of the older whites who didn't vote for him when he ran are supporters now that they've gotten to know him and have seen what a good job he's doing.

So things can and do change, not quickly enough as far as I'm concerned but it's not completely hopeless, because I think all of us have seen measurable change in our lifetimes.

But in the main I'm in agreement with you and my hope is that, once elected, Obama would step it up a bit. I'm personally sick of hearing consistent whining from conservatives about how the 40 years since the civil rights act is all the time necessary to overcome the centuries of slavery and oppression that preceded it. I get particularly pissed off when I consider that even during those 40 years, most black kids have still never been given access to quality education. School integration in some places wasn't fully accomplished until the mid-70s, and even then, many states merely gerrymandered rural districts to keep the black kids in schools with no local tax base (most land and businesses were in white hands, just one legacy of slavery and sharecropping) while the white kids' districts got the benefit of what tax base there was. States aided the inequality by making districts rely on local taxes for school funding. In my state, they didn't even start working on trying to equal that out until 2000. And if we're going to be honest about it, it was only 5 years after all the schools were finally "integrated" even if in name only, and 15 years after passage of the civil rights act, that white voters elected a president in part for his promises to punish the lazy layabout black people. It was also at this time that white voters began to systematically de-fund public education and move their kids out of the public schools. And for 25 years or more now, again starting about 15 years after passage of the civil rights act, we've heard consistent conservative whining about affirmative action, which in light of the school situation was for many blacks THE avenue to the middle class through employment in federal, state and local governments, especially in places like my state. Without it, the black middle class here would be virtually nonexistent, and along with it, black college enrollment, etc.

It just seems to me that whites have in this country played the role of Ramses these past 40 years: "they are to make twice as many bricks, but are to be given no straw." The outraged faux noblesse oblige of white conservatives pretends that the crumbs from the table were a generous feast. This country has been nothing but grudging in extending equal opportunity to black Americans, in most cases publicly "giving" but in private taking it all away, while continuing to blow its own horn about all the good things it was doing, and pointing to the symptoms of racial inequality as excuses for giving up on curing the disease. So if we're gonna finally be honest about all of this, let's be honest about it. I'd love to hear Obama speak of the pettiness of spirit that has brought us to the point where we are now, the stinginess with opportunity and the truth about the feel-good story most white conservatives tell themselves about both their racial attitudes and the "equal opportunity" they believe they've been so generous in dispensing.

But I don't for a minute think I'll hear him say anything like this before the election. I know I'm not alone in hoping I'll hear it - or at least something approaching - when and if he is elected.

Thanks for the thoughtful and thought provoking essay. This is a line of critique that isn't heard enough as Obama's candidacy matures.

I think it's inevitable that, since he has positioned himself as a bridge-builder, this will threaten entrenched positions on both sides. "Post-racial" is, of course, a meaningless term. I sincerely doubt that Barack Obama intends by his candidacy to suggest that the African American experience in this country is somehow being superseded. The rhetoric of his speech in Philadelphia centered on the idea of perfecting our union, which is a leitmotif of his candidacy, perhaps even a core aspect of his political consciousness.

From this perspective, your cautions are important. Without a strong, black critique of Obama's stance on race, the normative idea of "colorblindness" ("post-racial" in the current argot) will necessarily take precedence by virtue of the structural fact of white America's over-representation in the media and the centers of power.

But this critique ought not be taken too far. To suggest that there is something inherently or essentially valid, even sacrosanct, in the sort of critique levied by the past generation of black leaders is narrow minded and self-defeating. This attitude asserts itself most strongly when you write:

My fear is that, should Obama succeed with his effort to renegotiate the implicit American racial contract, then the prophetic African American voice – which is occasionally strident and necessarily a dissident, outsider's voice – could be lost to us forever.

The "prophetic" African American voice need not be a permanently marginalized one. Describing the black position as essentially "outsider" is simultaneously to sanctify an "inside" from which African Americans are alienated. I am sensitive to and fundamentally agree with the idea that the historical black experience mounts a necessary critique to the tidy histories of the empowered and privileged. But let's not kid ourselves that this is somehow "prophetic" or essentially and eternally "dissident."

If you'd like a genuinely prophetic image to capture our moment, take a look at Jeremiah 38. Having been cast by King Zedekiah into a pit, the prophet Jeremiah is lifted out by an African whose very name, Ebed-Melekh (servant of the king), speaks of his crossed allegiances. Barack Obama is this generation's Ebed-Melekh, and it is not the black community alone that has been cast down into the pit of despair. Let the man help to lift us out of this darkness. There will be plenty of time to critique his means once the job is done.

"he can only succeed by abandoning the critical, skeptical, dissident's voice which is the truest political expression of the lessons learned by black people over the long centuries of being America's 'niggers."

This is an important point to make, and one which I agree with, but which is also inevitable if a person of any minority group comes into power. A dissident who moves to the center of power is no longer a dissident. The dissident and skeptic are always looking on from the sidelines--this allows them their unique perspective--because they are not active participants in the creation of something.

This is a very similar argument to what many activist in the gay rights movement have been making for years as the "gay lifestyle" has become more incorporated into mainstream culture. There are many gay activists who are actually against the idea of gay marriage because they fear that their struggle to redefine sexuality in American society is co-opted by the attempt to confine queer relationships to the heteronormative institution of marriage. In the face of gay marriage they fear that the essentially radical nature of being queer will be lost, even though the battle for true equality and acceptance in society is far from over.

But ultimately, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Racial politics might lose some of its edge if Obama comes into power. And we certianly risk being complacent and naive if we see Obama as the beginning of the end to racism in this country. But I think there is also a lot to be gained by being in the center.

As an artist, I know that the act of creation and the act of criticism are two fundamentaly different processes, one constructive and the other desconstructive. One informs the other and makes it better, but you cannot presume that they are opposed to each other. The real question to ask is not whether Obama is a real dissident. It is whether Obama is a quality constructor?

You can criticize Obama for not being black enough and threatening the black narrative, if you like, but a much larger defeat for the black narrative would be someone if Bill Clinton were rewarded for implying that the voices of South Carolina do not matter because Jesse Jackson won there twice. If that's not removing megaphones for the Jesse Jacksons of the world, I don't know what possibly could be. You can complain about Obama's treatment of Wright and the far more radical (be honest!) Farrakhan, but Hillary Clinton's remarks on those two figures have been far harsher than Obama's. You can get angry about Obama's praise of Ronald Reagan, but that praise is obviously intended as rebuke not of progressivism but of Bill Clinton's "End of Big Government" triangulation. (THAT is what the mandate shrillness is about--that any progressive dare have the gall to suggest that the Clintons underdelivered on their promises in the 1990s.)

In other words, I understand how someone who wrote this piece can get mad at Obama, but there is no possible way to consistently believe the things written here and vote for Hillary Clinton instead--because on everything Professor Loury mentions here, both Clintons have been worse.

With all respect, the whole notion of "narratives" is of a cloth with the post-modern center of gravity which has defined both the Clinton and the Bush years. "Post-modern center of gravity" is ironic here, since pomo defines itself as precisely lacking that.

Your fear that Obama will "succeed by abandoning the critical, skeptical, dissident's voice" presumes that character is a matter of narratives. It's not. A whole person is far more than the narratives applied to them, or that they can apply. To restrict them to narratives is the essential move of stereotyping and prejudice. When narratives simply feed on each other, reality is lost, and progress impossible. It's time for the "narrative" narrative to go.

I've no notion what Obama's view of narratives per se is. But he's clearly a whole man, able to see the world even beyond his excellent oratory. That wholeness, in no paradox at all, is the requirement for being that good an orator. By contrast, her embrace of narratives is why Clinton is not.

Is this really the first time anyone has had the temerity to publicly pose the question:
What exactly was it that Wright said, in the sanctuary of his own church, that was in some way wrong (in the sense of being incorrect) about America and its young black men?
And to point out that Obama's politically "necessary" abjuration of Wright was patronizing (not to say deeply embarrassing for an outsider to witness.)
And that in so doing, he disavowed a man whose entire adult life has been spent presiding over his church as it fed the hungry, sheltered the homeless, comforted the sick and desperate. ("Corporal works of mercy," fairly well-limned in the Sermon on the Mount as the core of ethical behavior, I believe.)
I believe you have good reason, Mr Loury, to be concerned about the American narrative being skewed or co-opted in the name of some newer, more fully-visualized and progressive vision-in-progress (details to be revealed at a later date.)

Why not find some new authors for the American narrative, since the story so far gets us a large black underclass, but at least we all can drink from the same fountains.

Of course there should be anger and dissent -- but the angry dissenters of the '60s and '70s have only gotten us so far -- this far.

Glenn -

I second beve83'sa comments on your bloggingheads appearances with John McWhorter. They're great, easily the best on the site (amongst plenty of other good duos).

I'm a little put off by this analysis, though, since I think you're asking the impossible from Obama, who went about as far as politics allowed in his address. I'm not sure he'd be as 'ungeneroous' (as you'd put it) in his assessments of his elders if, for instance, he were apearing on bloggingheads.tv and was free of his considerable political restraints. I also think that the comparison of this speech to LBJ's speech was inapt (and may come from a desire to get a dig in for Hillary). Obama's was a much finer speech from a literary point of view, and showed some courage given its context. What more could you ask? Of course, LBJ's speech was more momentous in terms of its effects; it couldn't fail to be, even if he'd delivered it in Morse Code. Given content, style, context and expectations, Obama's speech was about as good as it's gonna get.

i tried to respond via reader blog, but it didn't render my html properly

my comment on professor loury's post can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yv793c

Many years ago in preparation for a career arc which as for most turned out different than planned I got a couple of degrees in political studies. The one thing above all others I remember from protracted studies in that area was this:

Politics is the art of the do-able.

I have no idea whether Mr. Loury was moved to write his post here in whole or in part by a political commitment to Senator Clinton as at least one earlier reader has commented - nor is that really germane to his chain of thoughts. In my opinion his reasoning process is flawed by two important irrelevancies [not just his own but that of many thousands & I would hazard millions of idealistic voters wrong with Mr. Loury - & not just him but thousands if not millions of idealists for some reason NOW wanting to engage in a personal struggle to find meaning in either of the two remaining Democratic party presidential candidates].

I would grant that both these candidates feel - have felt for most of their sentient lives - a call to leadership in public service. I'm confident that is also the case with Senator McCain & the personal narrative he is now trying to construct while he has the luxury to try seems at least as reliable as say the Wikipedia entry for him in terms of understanding the essence of his motivation for running for president: he wants for himself the same recognition as he has projected on his father and his grandfather for honorable selfless service gained in the military. The problem he faced was that he was unable to impress his superiors in the US military that he possessed the qualities of leadership which I would imagine his progenitors displayed in their successful military careers. The problem we face is that unlike many ex military officers like Eisenhower & JFK Senator McCain lacks the ability to call on the citizenry to rise above them personal identification & see themselves as members of a nation. The problem we face is that unlike ex military officers GHW Bush & Senator Bob Dole & Senator Jim Webb Senator McCain lacks a certain thoughtfulness & depth & steadfastness of character which justifies our placing faith in his instincts. The problem we face with is that unlike ex military officers like Senator John Kerry or Senator Bob Kerrey Senator McCain is just not very smart. Even the worst president imaginable - the current one - very likely has a level of intelligence at least two standard deviations above the mien for Americans.

But both the Democratic party candidates are extremely intelligence & both have an important degree of thoughtfulness Senator McCain lacks & both have at least the core toughness for which Senator McCains tenacity mimics. And where both the Democrats have the capacity to lead - as well as to motivate divisions - Senator McCain really has nothing more than the capacity to barbeque.

So the serious candidates for leadership are the Democrats - & to return to the premise above: that politics is the art of the do-able - Senator Clinton's goals & the interests & forces & hopes & dreams for the nation that those like Mr. Loury would strive to find in the ideal candidate are at least as irrelevant as those of Senator McCain - BECAUSE SHE CANNOT & WILL NOT WIN THE NOMINATION!

In several important senses the current president will be just like all the other 42 before him: a middle-aged white male connected to powerful interests. In THE most important sense the LEGACY of the current president will be just like all the others both before & after: it will not be based on his self-image or the regard in which he is held by his supporters or in his words - but in the deeds of his administration. Those deeds - expressed through what he has said in office & the style of his executive leadership & the judgment & values expressed in his decisions & the philosophy & values expressed in the policies of his administration - are truly appalling.

It is often observed that very little in what George Waterbush said & how he acted before gaining the presidency provided any warning of the record his administration has accumulated & his inevitable legacy. To borrow from a former president who is still living & indeed still quite vigorous: that is a bunch of bull.

Moreover all three of the senators still running for president are just as much open books as he was.

But only two of those senators stand a chance to win. And if Mr. Loury is genuinely interested in enhancing the preservation & advancement of the values he feels are most important to hims then its plain which of those two offers the better opportunity for him to realize his ambitions.

Thanks Professor!

You have written here many things that, if written by someone else, would be shouted down.

Obama's speech is, of course, simply a political device to help calm the storm he faced over the idiotic criticism of Rev. Wright who said nothing wrong and whose beliefs or opinions have exactly nothing to do with whether or not Obama would be a good President.

Is Obama really renegotiating any contract about anything or is it that he's just cutting a deal with today's white voters so he has a chance of being elected in the fall? I think it most certainly is the latter and there's nothing at all wrong with that either. I think we all need to simply understand the candidate's purpose and not imbue it with a purpose or power it doesn't really have nor was it intended to have.

Thanks once again Professor for raising so many important and undiscussed issues. Perhaps it will make some difference. I hope so.

In this day and age, to expect authenticity in anyone is probably a waste of time. Obama's appeal as a politician may derive from the fact that he is not authentically anything, but is cobbled together to fill a sensed void in the dominant culture. It will be interesting to see how far the dominant culture is prepared to let him go, or if, outside of the South, the dominant culture is still cohesive enough to determine the outcome of the general election. What the Obama campaign may not realize yet is that many Americans can hold America and the government of the United States in their minds and in their hearts as two separate concepts. The problem with the prophetic preacher -- almost a caricature of a black minister -- whom Obama has tied himself to culturally is that he damned America, not the government. Just words, of course. But oh what unfortunate words.

Dr. Loury -- I have tons of respect for you, and have been reading your work for the last eight years or so. But there is a fundamental problem in the assumptions of this post, and it's crystallized here:

'Throughout this campaign [Obama] has avoided the responsibility -- and he did it again in his ‘race’ speech -- of saying directly and explicitly what (beyond "the old ways of Washington politics") are the nature and dimensions of the failure, and how will what has gone so horribly wrong ever be remedied. Instead, he simply calls for "change."'

That is false. In the speech he laid out several ways in which former discrimination still impacts black Americans today, and -- crucially -- how those problems can be overcome. The entire end of the speech lays out how the federal government's priorities should change in order to remedy many of the socio-economic that Americans of all races face. I'm getting pretty tired of hearing people say that Obama's call for change has no substance behind it; he has a litany of policy prescriptions and he talks about them all the time.

Now, the question of whether these prescriptions are any different from standard Democratic boilerplate is another matter. For the most part, they're not. On policies, he's a run-of-the-mill liberal Democrat. The issue is whether his style will do a superior job of moving the country toward actually effecting these changes. That's a fine debate, and frankly I'm not sure of the answer. But to say he calls "simply" for change is, frankly, disingenuous.

Obama didn't say black folks need to shut up because things are all better now. Among other things, Obama said:

"...race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now."

"...we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."

"Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them...the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students."

"the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods...all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us."

What Obama's talking about is not denying that problems exist now, but taking a new approach toward actually solving these very real problems.

Loury doesn't like the fact that the role of the angry black leader may be displaced by this new approach. But surely if the new approach is unsuccessful, there will be a role for the dissident black voice. In the meantime, how successful are the voices of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and such in addressing these issues at this moment?

Perhaps that moment has passed. In the "I have a dream" speech, MLK said:

"There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote."

A reading of this passage shows that much has changed. The problems facing the African-American community have not disappeared, but clearly the have changed in their essential character from a time of explicit, open, governmentally-endorsed and enforced racism. Why shouldn't the approach of leadership change as well?

"I can’t get past the fact that Obama was negotiating with the American public on behalf of MY people in Philadelphia last week"

With all due respect, it seems somewhat contrary for you to disparage Obama's advocacy on behalf of blacks while claiming ownership for yourself in the very same sentence.

You can't please everyone. The fact is, Obama did a remarkable job in addressing race in a very thoughtful and honest way. The fact is, all you have to contribute is your criticism of him which changes nothing and adds nothing to making this society a better place.

You "fear" this and you "fear" that about Obama's speech...so what! Instead of spending your energy criticizing what he said, why not spend your time furthering the dialog on your own terms? Why is it so difficult to be productive rather than critical? Now you're going to have all kinds of people using your story as fuel that Obama's speech was inadequate despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary....so congratulations.

That is the freaking problem with the Black community as it is...people want to dog out the next person for how they approach the situation while they do nothing but sit on the sidelines. If all these leaders spent more time DOING something rather than tearing down the merits of what someone else is doing then maybe progress could be made.