I wonder what John McCain said today? Was it something about staying in Iraq?

Such a contrast.

It was a fantastic sermon/speech by the Senator.

Posting this took some balls, Nathan. While I greatly appreciate your sentiment, let me offer this rejoinder: as a Black man, I think it's wonderful that Barack Obama is telling the shiftless among us to get off their asses and start being fathers. However, I don't necessarily agree that there's a need for Blacks to have a "representative" that says such things.

The fact that I can attribute the adjective "lucky" to my family's story, which is filled with examples of positive fatherhood, says volumes about the state of Black fatherhood in America. And while I certainly find it encouraging that a public figure such as Obama casts aside the shackles of self-victimization despite having been abandoned by his father, I regard his words as an echo in a chamber filled with many, many voices calling our young Black men to be responsible in fatherhood. We've had "representatives" for years in this regard - pastors, community leaders, and the very fathers themselves that set a great example for us all. Not all of them have been as famous as Barack Obama now is, but they've been there.

While not a father yet myself, I've learned the trade from the men in my family, and I know there are many brothers out here who can attest to the same. Most of us are out here doing the job. Like most things in America, it's the negative aspect of the situation that gets the most public attention. But the point of Obama's speech today that was most salient to me was not the "representatives" of a better tomorrow for Black children need to be the fathers of those children. It truly does start in the home, and Obama sees that. More than his being a town crier on the subject, Obama's true relevance is in the fact that he will be, Lord willing, in a position come January to be more of practical value than symbolic.

I didn't get a chance to see the speech, and as a childless suburban white chick, I don't feel I'm likely to bring any brilliant insights to the issue. However, I want to comment on this:

We need to show our kids that you’re not
strong by putting other people down – you’re strong by lifting them up.

Barack's speech was terrific and inspiring, but not new. The message in his speech has been conveyed in many different ways by many different people within the African American community.

What's different is, given his platform more people outside the community are aware that some African Americans recognize the importance of self responsibility, personal accountability and the value of the family unit.

While the Barack as a "role model" angle, for African Americans does have merit, I think we need to be careful not to over play that perspective. In my opinion that view narrows his political scope, and limits his symbolic appeal to those of us who are African American or those empathetic to our experince as a community in this country.

In considering Barack's candidacy from a purely symbolic perspective, the big picture is he represents the tremendous opportunity of America. All Americans can get behind a narrative that speaks to it's core beliefs- the value of hard work, sacrafice, fairness, love of god and country etc, etc....

If Barack can get the country to see that his story is emblematic of the promise that America holds for ALL, he will inspire ALL Americans not just African Americans and become the next POTUS.

I want to point out that Barack also talked about structural and policy changes that need to happen in order to make it more possible, probable and likely that poor african-american men can stay with their families and be better parents.

Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities. [...] We need to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do. So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support.[...] And by the way – it’s a responsibility that also extends to Washington. Because if fathers are doing their part; if they’re taking our responsibilities seriously to be there for their children, and set high expectations for them, and instill in them a sense of excellence and empathy, then our government should meet them halfway.

I think we are in violent agreement..... Your post was well written and completely on point. As an African American Barack's candidacy does resonate with me in an extremely personal way..

Barack is both Black and White, my point is that the more we focus on his accomplishment as the first African American to be in this position, and what that means specifically for African Americans the more we seem to narrow the achievement as an accomplishment for a specific segment of the population.

On the other hand if we highlight what this means to America's progress as a nation; living up to it's principles, proving that in America all things are possible for all people, by default African Americans given our history in this country will feel more of a sense of pride, actually having visible proof that we are recognized as fully capable citizens like everyone else.

At the end of the day I am voting for Barack not because we are both African American but because I agree with him on the issues, to be clear I never voted for Al Sharpton or Alan Keyes.

Barack's racial identity is just the icing on the cake, and to the point of your post it's DAMN sweet icing to the Souls of Black folk......

Well, Obama was doing a little Sister Souljahing there. Which, as a black man and a longtime South Side community organizer, he's qualified to do. It's hard to argue with the statement that too many poor black kids grow up without fathers (as Obama himself did). But for an external audience, he's basically dumping on poor black folks to show that he's tough enough, just like Bill Clinton eighteen years ago. And nobody ever dumps on all those negligent working class white daddies, of which there are plenty.

This rankles me a little. Not that he's wrong, but it's exploitative. It's what conservatives say about black poverty to avoid having to address the moral failure we all bear, so they don't have to contemplate social programs or all the economic disincentives to building strong, stable families that working class blacks in the inner city, whose sharecropper grandparents probably migrated North for jobs and got left high and dry when the jobs went away, face. It's all well and good that the high-minded upwardly mobile black politician should moralize about the failings of black people. But it pisses me off that he's doing it to reassure me, middle class whitey, that he's tuff enuff on his people to keep 'em from mutinying on us.

I cant even touch this topic yet.

Unfortunately.