Ramanujan Redux

“If our job teaches us anything, it’s that we don’t know what the next President’s gonna face. And if we choose someone with vision, someone with guts, someone with gravitas, who’s connected to other people’s lives, and cares about making them better… if we choose someone to inspire us, then we’ll be able to face what comes our way and achieve things… we can’t imagine yet. Instead of telling people who’s the most qualified, instead of telling people who’s got the better ideas, let’s make it obvious. It’s going to be hard.”
“Then we’ll do what’s hard.”

Last lines of 20 Hours in America, The West Wing.

There are times when I watch the current presidential debate and shake my head. Has anything changed? Sure, we have changed in eight years–on everything but politics. We have changed the way we ridicule our candidates, mock their stances, incite anger in our voters. Instead of yelling at each other in public, we log onto Malkin (GOP!), or Kos (Obamanation!), or the Internets (Ron Paul!), and yell at each other in the comments. You should witness the comments of badly moderated political posts. Downright filthy.

So I’m going to talk about the Senator’s speech. If the comments will get nasty, I will delete swiftly and surely.

For the first time, the Senator stood up and held his ground. He took a tough stance, a stance that will almost certainly in the short run, damage him and his hold on the campaign. Middle white America is howling its disapproval, furious at the thought that there is a race problem in this country. Nope nope, everything’s alright!

I remember the sugarcoating 2004 Democratic Speech, an inspiring one. But it was purely words and rhetoric, the same thing many in America have been protesting against. Show us what you mean. Show us how you plan to change America.

Today he took that first step. He confronted race openly. He speaks to what is real. To what plagues our country. To what needs to be fixed. To the problems that middle-class America have done their best to ignore and escape. To issues that affect those we don’t really acknowledge on a day-to-day basis.

Whether we like it or not, we cannot divorce ourselves from these issues. They are fundamental to the corruption in the Beltway and the disillusionment of the citizen to the process. We do not live in a utopia. We are troubled by race in the suburbs, in the cities, in the swamps (okay, well, not as much in the swamps). Subconscious or unconscious or conscious, it is an issue that have kept many disenfranchised minorities distrustful of authority, of refusing to peer outside the boundaries of their skin color.

Most of the people who are condeming Obama probably lack the extreme character of a Reverend Wright in their life,  and are quick to judgement. “Oh, if I were in his shoes, I’d just walk out and leave! There are so many other churches.” But where are you from, anonymous commenter? Did you grow up in the streets of Harlem or the suburbs of Madison? Context matters. Obama’s experience is relative to his own life. And this is more of an example than an excuse: At the extreme, this is what results from neglecting race.

Open, unadulterated bigotry, the things most Americans claim to shun in real life. And the cultural schism grows wider between the poor black kid and the rich white kid.

Those admonishing Obama probably have not experienced race relations first hand or have shunned it out of their minds, fearing exposure rather than walking across the lines. But this speech isn’t for them. And they’ll be voting for Hillary in any case because it’s easier to vote for a sure commodity of experience and image.

Our experiences shape us. They make us. To escape them is to deny ourselves. Obama took that first big step with that speech. To show us who he is. To show us that he is a human who really wants to fight for us. For us to come together does not mean a big group hug. It means coming to the table and arguing, mending, laughing, crying, discussing, shouting, hitting, being. Learning to be comfortable with race as we are comfortable with family, to let skin color fade and let our content speak for ourselves.

It’s the hard road to do this. But I think it’s the right road. Let’s do it.

Share your thoughts. Please try to be insightful. I want discussion, not retribution.