推 isaacchen:拋開政治立場不談,這篇演說的確相當動人。 03/26 00:26
http://tinyurl.com/23aq6x (需有正確連結)
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 25, 2008
Barack Obama was on the phone, speaking about the one issue he had not wanted
to focus on in his campaign: race.
He had just given his speech on race in Philadelphia and was expanding a
little on the need to get past the endless back and forth on this toxic and
frustrating issue. He said he had hoped in his speech to accurately describe
the “chasm of misunderstanding” that continues to foster racial division,
and to offer a way to “get out of that situation.”
The speech, which has gotten wonderful reviews, should be required reading in
classrooms across the country — and in as many other venues as possible.
With a worldview that embraces both justice and healing, Senator Obama is
better on these issues than any American leader since King.
Unfortunately, what is more likely to happen is that the essence of the
speech will be lost in the din that inevitably erupts whenever there is a
racial controversy in the United States.
The fundamental message that Senator Obama is trying to get across is that
the racial madness that has perverted so many elections needs to stop — and
stop now. Time and again, that madness has been employed to undermine efforts
to create what the senator characterizes as “a more just, more equal, more
free, more caring and more prosperous America.”
Racial prejudice, ignorance, hostility — whatever — has caused millions of
Americans to vote against their own economic interests, and for policies that
have damaged the country.
“It’s hard to address big issues,” Mr. Obama told me, “if we’re easily
diverted or distracted by racial antagonism.”
Far more people will see the endless loop of Senator Obama’s frenzied former
pastor than will ever read or hear the sober, thoughtful, constructive words
of the senator himself.
The Philadelphia speech was obviously political, designed to limit the damage
that the sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were inflicting on Mr. Obama’s
campaign. But the theme of the speech was both legitimate and powerful, and
it ought to resonate with fair-minded Americans, regardless of whether they
support Mr. Obama for president.
“We have a choice in this country,” the senator said in his speech. “We
can accept a politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism.”
Or, he said, Americans could move in a different direction. “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 talk about how lines in the emergency room are filled
with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care. ... 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.”
The great challenges this country continues to face — challenges linked to
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat of terror, a failing economy,
climate change, and on and on — cannot be solved, Mr. Obama said, in an
environment riven by divisiveness and hostility.
Listening to Senator Obama’s speech, it wasn’t Dr. King who first came to
mind but Bobby Kennedy, standing on a flatbed truck in Indianapolis on a
cold, windy night in April 1968. Kennedy had to tell a crowd that had
gathered to hear him speak that King had been murdered.
A gasp of horror and grief rose into the cold night air. Most of those in the
crowd were black.
“In this difficult time for the United Sates,” said Kennedy, “it is
perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want
to move in. For those of you who are black ... you can be filled with
bitterness, with hatred and a desire for revenge. We can move in that
direction as a country, in great polarization — black people amongst black,
white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.
“Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to
comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has
spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.
”
The nation can be proud of the distance it has traveled since 1968. But there
are still millions peering fearfully or angrily across the chasm of
misunderstanding. Politics aside, Senator Obama’s speech is an excellent
place from which to start the difficult work of bridging that divide.
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剛剛貼了一個保守派作家的
現在貼紐約時報贊同Obama的評論平衡
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以上言論為此媒體之報導或觀點
不代表本人立場
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標題:With a Powerful Speech, Obama Offers a Challenge
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