THE CHAIR WHISPERER

I'm a little sunburned. I've been a vampire for two years, and now the skin on my forearms and at the base of my neck is medium pinkish. Vitamin D: it does a body good.

This Netroots Nation post will be observations and personal bits'n'bobs, not scintillating political analysis. Except, of course, the personal is political and I can't help myself.

Getting to the hotel where Jesse and Lower Manhattanite (from here on out known as LM) was a story in itself, and will likely be my first Group News Blog post. Yes, kids, I am now a part of the GNB family, with my name on the masthead over there any minute now. We here at the Hundred Acre Wood are still drinking in this status change.



Jesse and LM went to their room to pack for a transfer to the Hilton, directly across from the Netroots Nation site. I sat at Jo's Coffeehouse for the first time in years, eating a Mango Mania muffin (they had run out of breakfast tacos), a big glass of milk, Coke in a glass bottle, and feeding birds with crumbs. It was indescribably glorious to be Outside, under a tree (even if it was a hackberry), feeling light and air on my skin, communing with boidies. Grackles swaggered around, interlopers whose iridescent blue-black feathers are definitely outshone by their electronic screeches and buzzes. Small sparrows, clever but not humble, darted around grabbing the best morsels for themselves while I cheered them on and did my best to subvert the dominant grackle paradigm. There was one father sparrow being shadowed by a fledgeling who looked every millimeter as large as the adult, sometimes even bigger when junior fluffed her feathers. Junior kept her mouth open, a red maw that Dad tried non-stop to satisfy. A red-eyed albino boxer on a tight leash nearby watched avidly, longing to create birdie mayhew, it was obvious.

I was having some difficulty finessing the single joystick control of the power chair, not at all helped by the crappy condition of the paved surfaces. LM volunteered to escort me to the Convention Center conference headquarters, some 10-12 blocks away, and I gratefully accepted. LM had on a stunning royal blue silk shirt which was wicking moisture away from his Lower Manhattanine frame having to deal with Austin blastfurnace (it hit 101 yesterday). On his head was a navy baseball cap embroidered with bright white "Writer" in typewriter script -- extremely cool hat. His pants were dungarees whose back right pocket had been studded with a silver peace symbol. He was a symphony of blue and style; I knew right away Ginny would have wanted to paint him.

We hit major difficulty at the end of the very first block, where the "cut-out" was at an uneven pitch, blistered with the brick-colored bubbles created to tell blinds folks "You are now at a curb" (but a mobility problem for many others, pitting crips against crips, sigh), and the final ease into the street was cracked crazily. I decided to back down it. We had already discovered the power chair had a disturbing tendency to pitch forward if it was moving at a good clip and let off acceleration suddenly. The possibility of tipping over frontward was physically nagging at every downward incline. Hence, reverse into it.

But the combination of pavement bubbles, my lack of skill, and the port-ward list of the incline turned one of my rear wheels perpendicular and locked it. I was unable to move in any direction. I got out of my chair and leaned on a nearby metal adult newspaper kiosk while LM set down the second hat he was carrying and had a go at coaxing the chair into safe motion.

About this second hat: It was a beauty, the kind of hat men wore during the summer months in cities back when men wore hats as a matter of course. It was a dark straw wave, with a green-print grosgrain ribbon and an abbreviated, jaunty rim -- a hat that bespoke of style and sport at once. It had belonged to LM's father, whom LM lost far too young. It was too hot to be wearing at the moment, as sweat would have soaked it. Every time LM had to stop to assist me, which was every minute or so, he would need to find a safe place to stash the hat, away from the feet of a giantess who walks like a chimpanista and also the wheels of a several-hundred-pound apparatus under inadequate control. There were three of us making our way to the Convention Center -- me, LM, and his father's hat.

LM did not actually get in the chair to remove it from its precarious position because that would have been foolhardy. Instead, he leaned in from the side to maneuver the joystick, trying to stay out of its epileptic way. We drew a few entertained bystanders at that point. Finally he got it down the incline and into the street, and helped me down the incline as well, where I resumed the Captain's Chair. (Declaiming "Make it so!" did not help a bit, but it was infinitely amusing to me and LM.) LM reunited with The Hat and we progressed onward.

After that, it was necessary for LM and I both to "read terrain" with accumulating expertise and confer on how to deal with the constant challenges. LM is the oldest of many siblings, and for him, being a big brother is second nature -- but a GOOD big brother, nothing like the Orwellian version or my own childhood nemesis. He was encouraging, gentle, hilarious, and powerful when called upon, literally holding down the back of my chair. I still clenched up -- my brain would not listen to my body's reaction to the sensation of gravity gone awry, and I am deeply sore in certain muscles today that is the result of this clenching. But my brain did come to trust and count on LM's intelligent patience, profoundly. At one point I called him "The Chair Whisperer", which is more apt than funny.

In particular, at times his wide kind hand rested reassuringly on the back of my neck. I feel tears welling in my eyes as I write this. Above and beyond, this man is...

All the while, in between "There's a lip, go to the right" and "See the dip there, I'm zigging here, LM", we were talking a blue streak. Turns out, we have People In Common. Sharon Bridgforth, Shia Shabazz, Deisi Perez-Perez -- he was for a time a reader at Nuyorican poetry events. One of his elementary school teachers was Sonia Sanchez, and I bet some of you out there are screaming just as loudly as I did when I found that out.

We passed the massive grounds of the Texas State School for the Deaf on our left, and had an extended conversation about the need for such brutal institutions in the past, the experience of my Uncle Joseph who went to that very school. Past the main campus was a long stretch of overgrown greenery, blocks of it, tree-chocked undeveloped land within view of the State Capitol dome. Between us on the sidewalk and this jungle was a sturdy metal fence, but still we could see when the landscape became a verdant ravine, plunging down 20 or 30 feet into what looked like a trickle of creek at the bottom. I can't say the vegetation gave an impression of coolness -- nothing is cool outside in Texas July -- but the oxygen content shifted.

Because we were so focused on the vagaries of pavement before us, we saw in the same instant a small message painted on the curb edge of the sidewalk, painted in something like fingernail polish, as LM put it, recreated crudely by me in the image below:



The arrow pointed to an 18 inch gap in the fence, where you could, if you wish, launch yourself into the ravine. We completely lost it. It was unbelievably funny, that small message written in what may well have been utter seriousness: Nature, that way. A couple of feet ahead, on the bushy side of the pavement, was a second comment in the same red script: Satellite Feed Unavailable. Which set us off again.

We continued on, crossing the Colorado River, smelling the urine and guano of one million Mexican free-tailed bats sleeping in concrete niches below us on the Ann Richards Memorial Bridge. We discovered that in downtown Austin, there is sometimes a cut-out on one side of the street which has no matching cut-out on the other side, leaving you in traffic for half a block or more: Think fast, gimps! We kept talking and laughing, our sounds echoing between tall buildings now, until we reached The Promised Land: The vast acreage of the Convention Center, with overzealous air conditioning (no complaint from us) and smooth, smooth open floors. And lots of safe places to set a hat.

More later, I have to leave now and go hear Lawrence Lessig speak. Tonight the bunch of us eat at Threadgill's (which means another trek for me through the streets of Austin with LM as my Don Quixote) followed by a concern of the Austin Lounge Lizards. Yee-haw.

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WHAT SHE SAID

Take me to the river, Shakesville.

Melissa McEwan's post For The Record has been seconded many places on liberal, woman-respectful blogs in the last week, so you may have already seen it. But if you have not, I say "Read it" and then "Me, too".

I have never voted for Hillary Clinton. (Though I did vote for Bill, twice, and am not a bit sorry for it.) I even wrote once that I agreed with Molly Ivins when she said she was giving advance notice, she would NOT vote for Hillary for President. But I had to publicly take back that blustering statement when Hillary became an equal contender for the nomination because, the fact is, if Spongebob Squarepants turned out to be the Democratic nominee this time around, I AM GOING TO VOTE FOR HER/HIM. The alternative is unthinkable. I found Hillary and Barack equally acceptable and equally unacceptable, although I do agree with Howie Klein's assessment that Hillary is/was demonstrably more liberal than Barack.

Yet any time I commented on a so-called progressive blog to protest hate language which was being aimed at Hillary on the basis of her being a woman, a wife, an older female, I was assumed to be a Hillary supporter. Not just that, a Boomer identity-politics-troglodyte racist C**T of a Hillary supporter who could not understand change or hope or vision if it bit me on my white, fish-smelling ass.

Yep, that's me to a tee.

Despite my best efforts, it got to me. And I've been sick inside as I've watched the testosterone-fueled fist-pumping victory dance. Because for some of these guys, too many of them, it was not just Hillary who was going down in flames. It was all the uppity bitches who ever denied their male superiority. We really can tell the difference, you know. You asswipes fool NOBODY but each other. And your exalted candidate did not lift one fucking finger to interrupt it. Which means when it's time to let YOUR values get assaulted, he'll choose silence if it serves him in the long run there, too.

PUH-LEEZE don't begin with your lizard-brain rebuttal of all the things Hillary's campaign did or said that were racist. I've read them. I agree. One does just not justify the other. Can you fucking understand that much? It's not a goddamned football game, nobody is keeping score of racism vs. sexism (except for you morons). I have and will continue to speak out just as much against racism, in all its forms. It's completely unacceptable.

And so is woman-hating.

I'm going to excerpt one part of Melissa's post here:

"...these women have witnessed this despicable but spectacular marriage of aggressive misogyny and their long-presumed allies' casual indifference to it, and wondered what fucking planet they were on that dehumanizing eliminationist rhetoric, to which lefty bloggers used to object once upon a time, was now considered a legitimate campaign strategy, as long as it was aimed at a candidate those lefty bloggers didn't like.

"And these women felt, quite rightly, like feminist principles were being thrown to the wolves in a fit of political expedience.

"And these women felt personally abandoned. By people they had considered allies.

"And while they struggled to understand just what was happening, while they were losing their way along well-traveled paths that no longer felt familiar or welcoming, they were admonished like children to stop taking things personally. They were sneered at for playing identity politics. They were demeaned as ridiculous, overwrought, hysterics. They were called bitches and cunts. They were bullied off blogs they'd called home for years.

"(But don't take that personally.)"

You have all shit in your beds, and you are too dumb to understand how. But nonviolent, steadfast refusal to cooperate with your cherished machinery will eventually get your attention. I'm asking all my sisters, mothers, daughters, and our allies to ELECT THIS DEMOCRAT, we have no healing option otherwise. He'll do some good, and he'll stop some of the death and destruction that's eating us alive. Boycotting this vote is suicide, and if you hint such a thing my way, I'll consider you self-destructive and unreliable.

After the election, though? The bot-boys are OUT. Lock the door. We know who we are, we know who stayed clean in the blogosphere, we took names and paid attention. Jesse Wendel, Lower Manhattanite, Shakesville, Crooks and Liars, Digby, Orcinus -- at the top of the list of those who can manage to fight injustice without resorting to racism or sexism. (Feel free to give praise to others in the comments here.)

Playing fair means, eventually, that only other fair players will sit down at a table with you.

But you'll always have Bush to whine with.

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For those of you with energy to deal with denial, recommended reading to help you not feel crazy:

From Dave Neiwert at Orcinus, How right-wing crap polluted Democrats' political waters

Shakesville keeps a simultanous Hillary Sexism Watch and Barack Racism Watch. The latest I could find are Hillary Sexism Watch #104 and Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch Part Forty-Goddamn-Six.

A request by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville to provide concrete evidence of posts and comments on "progressive" blogs of woman-hating directed at Hillary produced this depressingly long and detailed list:
List of Leftie Misogynist Hate Against Hillary

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NOTHING EVER "JUST GROWS THIS WAY"

I'm very proud to announce that some of my thinking/writing, solicited by Jesse Wendel, is included in an extraordinary essay by Lower Manhattanite over at Group News Blog right now, titled Ad-Topsy.

LM takes on the viral video, put out by Lee Habeeb and members of the McCain campaign, intended to destroy the inroads Barack Obama has made among independents, crossover Republicans, and some white members of the Boomer generation. His dissection, assisted by other members of the Boomers who HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THE ORIGINAL BATTLES (me included), is essential to stop this kind of shit from stealing another American election. Please read it and carry it on.

And -- if you have not yet watched Obama's Speech on Race, a brilliant offer to have a grown-up discussion with us all on this topic, here it is in full. A complete transcript is after the fold. Don't let them divide us again. We can have it ALL. Raise the roof.





Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
"A MORE PERFECT UNION"
Constitution Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
18 March 2008

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But 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, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

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If you'd to read another great (related) essay, check out the guest post at Group News Blog by TerriInTokyo, a minister's daughter brought up in Harlem and Queens Village, at Black Liberation Theology.

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