Barak Obama's Speech on Race

I happened to watch today the speech by Barak Obama that he delivered shortly after the controversy about the comments made by his former pastor broke out. A more perfect union.

I must agree that it is a nice speech. He takes sometime to warm up, to get into the groove but then he is very fluent and impressive. Race is a very tochy issue and I am not familiar with the noraml political commentry on the subject in US. He delicately builds up his argument and sounds pretty convincing.

At one point of time during the speech he said that an easier thing to do would have been to simply denounce Rev. Wright but he is not doing that. I don't quite agree. I don't think that was a path available to him considering his strong black constituency. His strong point is not that he made a choice to walk the right path, he was pretty much forced to do so. The thing I liked was when pushed on the path, he walks it courageously, with confidence and comes out on top, turning what could have been a devastating moment for his campaign into an opportunity. I would like to believe that to be a characteristic of a strong leader although a leader is much better judged on his/her deeds than his/her words.

But despite the fact that I liked what he said, it gives me little hope. The reason is that I really doubt any candidate going to White House would dare to make bold changes to the foriegn policy or to the way the things work here. I love the American dream in its basic form, a dream that allows every individual an opportunity to realize his/her potential and american society has made a lot of progress towards that. However somewhere along the way, a SUV has gotten added to that dream, a culture of abundance, of unchecked consumption. Unfortunately I don't see any leader trying to change those things.

But anyway, good luck Barak Obama ! Your speech had many things that are very relevent to the situation in our own country today ! Hope our politicians can take a leaf out of your book for once.

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