Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 3/25/08 Section: Opinion

I enter the political fray reluctantly. I have never been sure of much more than my own capacity for ignorance. I enter the Diamondback opinion page equally reluctantly, afraid to expose my oh-so-cool insouciance for the well calculated façade that it is. Simply put, I'm tired of not caring. I'm tired of not believing. Let's call this an experiment. In fact, I'm writing to suggest you try the same thing.
Last Tuesday, while I was flying back to College Park from Ft. Lauderdale, stuck somewhere between morning-after-drunkenness and a fairly wicked hangover, Barack Obama was giving a speech in Philadelphia. I'm not sure if a name has coalesced yet around that speech, titled "A More Perfect Union;" I've heard it referred to as the "postracial speech," the "grandma speech" and the "Philadelphia speech." I'm an Eagles fan, so I'll go with that last one, but I'll take it on faith - that experiment again - that the student body, or at least the ones who read this page, know what I'm talking about.
The reception so far looks mixed, inconclusive. Pete Wehner of National Review claims Obama only "created additional doubts about [his] candor and his willingness to speak up and speak out against a charismatic, forceful, and pernicious figure." Time's Joe Klein, meanwhile, calls it "a grand demonstration of the largely unfulfilled promise of Obama's candidacy." In The Washington Post alone, you might have seen it referred to as "a road map" for race relations, falling "short in significant ways," "excellent and important" or "a brilliant fraud."
If one theme emerges, though, it's that those who liked the speech also thought it was extremely noteworthy, capable of marking a turning point for race relations in this country. Those who didn't? Not so much. That's what we would expect, of course; only George W. making bad speeches count as news. But what if we decided to make the Philadelphia speech important? What if we decided that Obama, who wrote a book on growing up multiracial in America, didn't just execute a very skilled rhetorical parry of his critics' thrusts, but actually put his considerable gifts to the purpose of describing and continuing the process of healing a divided nation?
Now, I'm not saying you should necessarily vote for Barack Obama, though I plan to. You can think the Philadelphia speech was important and worth believing even if you think Obama is weak on the economy, nuts about Iraq and generally poor presidential material. I'm just saying that we should try giving unity a shot, even if only on the mental level. Obvious racism isn't our generation's thing, but unity isn't, either. Any walk across the campus can illustrate that. Can we admit that is a problem that doesn't just predate our particular lifespans but also influences them, runs through them and may or may not survive them? Can we admit the damaging reality of that fact and that it is changeable and important? I'm not going to argue for a particular solution here. I don't have the space or the knowledge. I'm just arguing for a change in our collective state of mind. Can we accept responsibility for race relations in this country without assigning blame?
I'm not saying the Philadelphia speech was perfect. To be sure, Obama made it because of political pressure. To be sure, a grandma who feels nervous when a young, black man approaches does not equal a pulpit-endowed congregational leader who proclaims, "God damn America." But none of that is the point. Obama's point, I think, was that you could love and respect someone without loving and respecting everything they do, that you need not believe your religious leader's views about politics, just as you need not believe your grandmother's views on race. Nuance, people: It's a good thing. My point is that you need not agree with Obama as a candidate, or even a person, to accept his challenge to begin building a racially united country.
So why not believe that the Philadelphia speech, political and self-serving as it was, could also mark a rallying point; a point where we, as a group, decide that this guy said some pretty intelligent things about race, particularly that we can accept responsibility for the past while forgoing blame and hate? Aren't we the ones who decide whether or not this speech becomes important in the end? Wouldn't the decision of a few hundred thousand young adults that things can and should change turn that very notion into fact? Care. Believe. Even just as an experiment. I did, and now, look, it's in The Diamondback. What might happen if you do, too?

Brian Cognato is a junior English and government and politics major. He can be reached at bcognato@umd.edu.

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