Watching Obama With Strangers

I just read this powerful post on The Daily Kos, about a man getting his car fixed at a Jeep dealership in a conservative Altanta suburban area, when Obama's speech on race in America comes on TV. His fellow customers are riveted, and their responses are a powerful testament to the ability of Obama's words to reach across political lines and draw people in from disparate worlds.

The message also confirmed my own experience with conservative Republican friends who've told me, "You're not going to believe this. I know Obama's way too liberal for me, but I respect his integrity and think I'm going to vote for him in November."

From the Kos Diary of Socratic, ">Watching Obama With Strangers:

...Now, I'm not going to talk about the speech itself. Plenty of folks have done that. I'll just say that I was watching intently, pleased with what I was hearing. When, after about 5 minutes, the guy who was working on my car came by to tell me that the car wouldn't be ready until the afternoon, I thanked him and stayed right where I was to watch the rest of the speech. But something curious happened. I was snapped out of the moment of the speech by the mechanic's visit, which was fine because Obama was, in a very real sense, giving the speech about race in America that I've wanted to hear my entire life: genuine, personal, intelligent, and direct. I've watched the speech again since this morning, and it didn't disappoint, but just at that moment I stopped watching it ...

... and started watching the people around me. The young black man. The elderly white couple. The two white women, one college-aged, one in her late-20s. One middle-aged white woman. Two white men, one college-aged, one in his late-30s. One Asian couple. All of them were watching the speech. Rapt. Nodding.

Gradually, the twentysomething white woman went back to her laptop, but kept smiling when Obama would say something important. The elderly white couple whispered in their Southern accented way: "He's really good... He's saying good things... He's a good young man..." The young black man chuckled when Obama said that Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in America, but was otherwise simply watching. And at one point, the middle-aged white woman asked one of the dealership folks, in another thick, thick Southern accent if she wouldn't mind turning up the volume, because she really wanted to hear this speech.

She, this white Southern woman from the suburbs, wanted to hear this speech, delivered by a Black man with a funny name running for President. And she was nodding.

But she wasn't the only one. Folks from the dealership, passing through on their way to and from whatever they do (most of them for not a lot of money) stopped and watch for 3 or 4 minutes. A young mechanic of ambiguous ethnicity stopped by at least a half-dozen times (hours later he stopped me as I was walking to the cashier to pay and said "That was some speech," then paused awkwardly, and said, hushed, "It's good that folks our age are getting involved, I think, right?"). Two salesmen, white, mid-40s, Southern as sweet tea, stopped and watched. And nodded. And I wasn't the only one to stick around to watch the speech after my business at the dealership was done.

Never seen anything like that. I bet a lot of folks in that dealership were Republicans. Most, based on snippets of conversation I heard, were Southerners. Almost all were white. And they watched, listened, and agreed with what Barack Obama was saying about race in America. ....

Read here for the rest of the diary...

Comments

[pbfishtaco]

One interesting aspect of the people who saw the speech at the car dealership is that it points out how difficult it is for people so hurried in their life that an unfortunate minority of us will take the time to actually sit down and pay attention to what Obama had to say IN IT'S ENTIRETY.
Just as some who comment here who've already made up their mind about the man and his minister (after listening to 30 second sound bites of the most inflammatory parts of his speech, I'm sure) or are just plain closed-minded can 't put his speech and ALL it's contents together, in context. This is what I dislike so much about this presidential contest. It's all punditocracy, sound bites, and spin, intent on grabbing the attention of people in 30 seconds or less. Or just appealing to our prejudices...

"What we have here, is failure....to communicate. Some people you just can't reach." --Prison Warden from the movie Cool Hand Luke.

[Rothgar]

If someone in the Obama campaign or MoveOn or HuffPo would take parts of the 2 minutes of this wonderful speech from about minutes 20 to 22 and package that part as a long format TV Ad they'd have a winner. That is the part where Sen. Obama talks about it's how its all of us in the same boat. That Whites suffer some of the same frustrations in private that Blacks do. Wrap it in with his comments about the private frustrations of Blacks and wow.

[raskolnikov72]

ditto. can someone do this?

[outnow]

If MLK was Obama's spiritual adviser, would we demand that Obama both reject AND denounce him? If Christ was Obama's spiritual adviser would we demand that he reject and denounce him?

Christ was against the accumulation of wealth and was against violence? (I have all the citations from the Bible at my finger tips about Christ's statements as attributed to him in the Bible).

If MLK was such a bad person - and he talked of the triple interrelated evils of racism, poverty and military imperialism, why would we have a MLK Day declared as a National Holiday?

Reading the Declaration of Independence has gotten people arrested by Homeland Security.

Someone has turned around the U.S. Constitution, the Bible, and the meaning of "un-American."

The Salem Witchcraft trials and the dunking chair are back. The McCarty era has been revived. The ideals of our founders are difficult to attain. The principles of the Bible are ethical and moral aspirations. But why are we allowing these bastards to turn our highest morals, principles, and the rule of law into crap? The poor rednecks and their families will suffer the most for voting for the GOP.

[Davwbaird]

One pup is at my side and one lies acrosss my feet utterly content with feet in the air exposed like our my hope. Beware thou who will nail our rare moment to the cross.
the a sincere man

[lcsartori]

Obama like Lincoln? Is that like Wright is like his grandmother? His white grandmother says she is afraid of black men passing her on the street. I know what she means. His black preacher says God damn America. I don't know what he means. And he is a preacher, and Obama has poor judgment and he will not be elected. We do not want an Obama Nation, a president who has a maniac for a mentor. One chooses a mentor . One doesn't choose a grandmother.
Bye bye Obama.

[lachgirl]

That's funny. I know exactly what he means, thought I can't quite relate to his grandmother. And I am a white woman.

Of course, I've been around black men all my life, have never lived through segregation, etc. But I have seen what American economic policies have done to people in this country and around the world. I know what prison culture has done to minority men in this country. I've seen schools in poor neighborhoods of all colors crumbling, and the only thing we throw at them is "No Child Left Behind".

Remember how liberals joked openly about leaving America for Canada after the 2000 and 2004 elections? Isn't that, in essence, saying "Damn America, I'm heading for somewhere else?" How many posters here have stated that they think America is irrevocably mired in the sludge of Bush-Rove policies?

And as a woman, when I blame "old white men" for the glass ceiling, am I not using the same rhetorical quips that Wright has chosen to use?

I am not saying I agree with his racist and divisive speech. I am just saying that it is not really any more shocking or offensive than the stereotypes and reductive soundbytes we all use every day.

[lavisiter]

I don't know about his relationship with STRANGERS but what about the "Exploitation" Anger and Resentment in this speech towards his grandmother

I must admit, I did hear that speech and I do remember him saying what he did about his grandmother! And it went right over me until I read another post this morning. I remember cringing as he did, too but for different reasons. And EVEN if that's a true story and it could certainly be true - wouldn't the way to deal with someone so close to you, someone you also say loves you more than anyone, wouldn't it be best not to exploit your own grandmother and instead go to her in private to let her know that she has hurt you? I know he was trying to make a point about his diversity but exploiting his own grandmother to illustrate that point to save his campaign was so unkind, so not thoughtful, and as far as the Presidential campaign shows us he does NOT have GOOD JUDGEMENT. This is yet another example of him ACTING one way (exploiting his grandmother) but saying WORDS (I believe in Peace and Unity) that are the contrary! He has no doubt NOW caused a very hurtful DIVIDE in his family! Wow! To use that point in public against his own grandmother! No doubt, it must have been horrible for him to have to endure that kind of bigotry - racism but CLEARLY and this is relavent to this story - JUST LIKE he said of Rev. Wright - it is clear that Obama also STILL has tremendous ANGER and RESENTMENT towards his grandmother! Why else would anyone exploit their own grandmother in that way?

[lexilulu]

you already posted this elswhere. think a new thought or go take a nap.

[lavisiter]

Who you talking to chickie! Like I said - I don't FOLLOW! And I don't need no nap! LOL

[rosal]

Hey everybody! The talking point for the day of Hilly's supporters is that Obama hated her grandmother.
Did Rove gave you the idea little sheep?

[lavisiter]

I want a candidate I can support not FOLLOW! This is one of the most important elections of our life! It is NOT a personality contest! And I'm not the least bit interested in following some stranger who I don't know anything about because he doesn't yet have a record to draw on - over some cliff! Like the one so many people went over with GWB and his war without ANY REAL information - 80% of America bought it! We're supposed to blindly just believe in these politicians because we FEEL good about them? I go by RECORD, his is slim so he'd have to convince me and so far I'm not terribly impressed with Barack Obama!

Suggestion for you: send him an email and tell him to get brave and take on another political strategy - stop chesting his cards so close so that the rest of us - looking for someone to SUPPORT - NOT FOLLOW won't have to work so hard trying to figure him out! What the heck he stands for and WHAT is his mindset?

I liked the focus of his speech - a VERY IMPORTANT discussion - but I still don't like what he said about his grandmother! And I also didn't like that he's now in his fifties and he hasn't so far ACTED like a TRUE proactive leader or he would have made this kind of speech a LONG TIME AGO! But maybe he was too busy listening to and FOLLOWING the Rev. Wright!

[indalay]

Why do you assume he didn't speak with his grandmother about it, and that he talked about her without her knowing ahead of time? During the time of the Kansas primary, I heard an interview with an elderly (white) woman who is his cousin, and she spoke very proudly of him and his relationship with his grandparents.

I have no doubt that his entire family is united in their pride.

[Davwbaird]

They are.

[lachgirl]

This isn't a new comment. He raises it in his book, "Dreams of our Father". He talks openly about it, and in the preface he mentions that he has the approval of all those in his family.

[highlyamused]

HuffPost's Pick

How damn intimidating it must be to those who are losing their grip on the American people. How long have they had us in their clutches? Who set the pundits/msm up as our moral authority? When did we hand that job over to them?
I hold my breath every time something happens that could loosen that grip. Every time Obama makes a speech that touches something in us...that makes us reach for the best parts of ourselves, the part that knows truth when we hear it. The part that dares to hope. The part that we've turned over to those not worthy.
The petty arguments against Obama since this speech seem so trite, contrived, the last grasp to hold on to power...by those who really wish to do our thinking for us. By those who've we've allowed to do our thinking for us. Being lead along like a bunch of sheep.
Blind patriotism, defined by those with an agenda. Spectators of life rather than participants, consuming more than we need.......feeding the beast....keeping it alive.

It's way past time to shut it down and starve it to death.

[lavisiter]

I suggest you listen to someone who will always continue to inspire you - someone who doesn't talk out of both sides of his mouth - someone like Tavist Smily! And this is just a listener - I have NO affiliation to Tavist Smily but that man is a true leader in the black community and he has a track record that is VERY LONG and I believe he's even younger than Barack Obama! And he IS Making a huge difference!

[bigfated]

Yo! At least spell the mans name correctly!

[Solja]

Tavis Smiley is a total jackass. I am black and I watched him demand that Sen. Obama come to LA to his forum AFTER voters had already voted there, despite his desperate need to campaign in other upcoming states. Tavis is selfish, petty, and totally self-centered so you can stop all of that faking when it comes to that moron. He knows Sen. Obama and tried to intentially derail his campaign for his own agenda. F*ck a Tavis Smiley. He planned his event poorly to include a Presidential candidate after the fact, and even had the AUDACITY to turn down Michelle Obama in the Senator's place, as if she weren't good enough to sit on his panel. But he wanted Hillary, and of course, as bad as she has been doing in the races, she jumped at the chance. But of course, MSM doesn't cover this black forum as Tavis hoped it would have because of Clinton or Obama. Still, the message was lost because of his self-centered ways. He turned many in the black community off, myself included.

[Davwbaird]

My thoughts put into words better than I am able.

[Serfie]

Funny, I was sitting in a Starbucks when I heard three old white guys almost go to blows over that speech.

Two of the white guys liked the speech, another didn't. The two guys were ridiculing and mocking the third guy just for having a different opinion. Hmm, just like the bullies at the Huffington Post.

Welcome to Obama's Thugocracy.

[rosal]

Unfortunately, you are on the one percent I wrote on my post. No intellect, no heart. Just plain bitterness.

[Serfie]

I gave a contrary view to what was expressed in this blog submission and you say that I have no intellect and not heart.

Welcome to Obama's Thugocracy. Maybe you should practice what your Lord Obama preaches. Maybe you should let go of your true believerism and realize that maybe other Americans have a different opinion than your own.

[rosal]

After listening to the speech I though, you have to be an intellectual to understand. But, not really, after all, I understood. Later on, I thought, you just need a big heart to understand. Ninety nine percent of Americans have a good and big heart. We all understood.

[Violist]

So inspiring and heart warming. Tears are in my eyes from reading this post. Folks, that's a little glimpse of what America could be and it's a beautiful view.

[SeriousBlack]

Absolutely!

[efranklin]

I grew up in New Hampshire which is white as white can be. (New Hampshire has the dishonor of being the second to last state to recognize Martin Luther King day.) All the white kids I knew listened to hip hop, almost exclusively. All the white kids I knew idolized Michael Jordan. All the white kids I knew watched the Cosby Show. Et cetera, et cetera. I do not believe that America is as racist as the media would sometimes lead us to believe. Obama's popularity amongst whites doesn't come as a surprise to me. A star is born.

[jhandy3940]

Good story! It's good to know that you were able to hear a voice that cut through the den of the pundits..

[nerakami]

I so totally agree... but how do we let the "pundits" know how we truly feel...

[keriheb]

I think we would be better served if we just shut the televisions and the radios off, or turned the channel from the pundits. They run their show by demeaning and sliming people. How they treat callers who disagree is unbelievable and frustrating. This is the effect they want to have. They express the hate their listeners harbor. The pundits put words to the hateful emotions these people have and then unleash them onto the civilized world. Even now with the world crashing in all around them, they are screaming about an insignificant black minister, a retiring man at that, while what is truly profane, killing innocent people in Iraq on a military adventure is thought of as heroic!

Nerkami, i truly don't mean this as an insult, but why on earth would you want to let these pundits know how you feel? I would suggest that you bathe yourself from the slime you have experienced. Meditate, pray, cry for humanity that these people with backward logic, upside down morality and a finger on the nuclear button and the cursed "red phone" are leading our nation and the world, teaching our children their values, provoking us into conduct that would not lead us anywhere toward or in the vicinity of the salvation Christians say they are striving and praying to achieve.

Turn them off. Let their hate echo in their own empty heads. Let their immorality lead them to their ultimate fate and let us not be a part of it. Let us communicate even more with our spiritual leadership, what ever your faith may be. If you believe in a God, there has only ever been ONE God. What there has been is a multitude of voices and interpretations. Keep seeking your God through the maze of voices and shut out those vexatious spirits, and you will find the comfort that comes with truth, that these pundits don't understand and as a philosophy don't subscribe to.

[mcfried]

This post made my day.

[Moose49]

Thank you. Your anecdotal account gives me hope that things really can change -- not only in terms of having an open, honest dialogue about race, but in terms of moving beyond the media-driven, six-second soundbite, short-atte­ntion-span­, shouting-pundit nature of political discourse in our country.

Right now, if I could be granted one wish related to the presidential campaign, it would be this -- that every American listen to Obama's speech -- or read the text -- in its entirety, unfiltered by the moronic mainstream media.

[KiwisCanFly]

Heart warming. Thank you Paul Loeb.

[libby2]

Yes, the speech was a wonderful one. However, I wonder why Barack Obama has not been able to heal his pastor and bring him together with the country--all the things Obama promises--and stop Jerimiah Wright's hate mongering. If Obama can have no impact on those he knows, how does he propose to deal with strangers? How does one heal the country while allowing this kind of hate mongering to continue to influence large groups of people?

[ddot]

You see he's healed his pastor by this speech.. he didn't blatantly say it..but he's shown Rev. Wright that his hard-pressed views of what has enraged him over time, can change.... there's a new day & age here.. and the world is changing... and all he has to do.. is not be influenced by the junk that the media shoves down our throat, but look at what's boiling underneath. In a short amount of time.. it will be a generation that will not know the civil rights movement personally but only have heard about it from second & third generations. There will be a new story to tell. will you be the storyteller to tell it???

[MrsGreebers]

Because maybe one man can't overcome Wright's life experiences which include serving THIS COUNTRY in a segregated military, coming of age in a time of segregated toilets, police dogs, fire hoses, renewed enthusiam for lynching, church bombings, and the TRUE medical atrocities perpetrated by the US Government upon black people (including syphillis and forced sterilization)? It's just way too facile to insist a) the people just "get over it" now that white American has decided it will no longer oppress them.

[YankeeCanuck]

It would be a good idea for you to go back and read the text of the speech, hear it again. You've missed the message.

[babar77]

Care to enlighten us?

[blueraven]

I wonder why you don't realize that the politics of the individual and the politics of the group are two different dynamics and that the anger Rev. Wright expressed needs to be looked at as more than "hate-mongering." Do you even know how it is in reality for people like him? Can't you see the difference between raging against the machine and using the machine to stomp on people's dreams, which is what happens when white preachers make far more hateful and divisive comments?

[SeriousBlack]

Maybe it is the case that what has occurred in the last week or so, and Obama's participation in it (not the least of which the speech) has in fact effected that change in Wright. Yes maybe it would have been nice for Obama to personally confront him about his occasional hurtful rhetoric before this. But how many people who are reading this have not been able to confront older (or any age) relatives who have said bigoted things towards ANY race or ethnic group? Or confront friends? It is precisely the need for this that Obama himself, not claiming to be perfect, was calling for in his speech.

[babar77]

How do you know he didn't? All these assumptions.

[kls9331]

Thank you so much for this. After listening to the first 10 minutes of Morning Joe this morning on MSNBC, I was starting to think that I was the only one who was touched by the speech! I agree with another blogger who said the speech made him want to sit up straighter in his chair. I always feel I am re-energized after his speeches...that I want to go out and do good myself...that there is hope after all. If people doubt that there are still people filled with hate toward blacks, all they have to do is read some of the comments on these blogs...it is frightening! And btw...I suffered through the last Joe Scarborough rant of my life...I fired off an e-mail to them telling them why and erased them from my DVR. Life is too short to spend any more of it listening to pundits like him telling me I didn't hear what I thought I did! We all need to set our sights a little higher and not let people like him bring us down. Maybe I need to go back and listen to the speech one more time just to get the negativity from that 10 minutes out of my mind before it ruins my day! Thanks again for sharing your experience.

[legalgirl]

You are soooo right. I did that years ago and found I had PLENTY of company. The agenda of the Main Stream Media is the agenda of the military-i­ndustrial-­MEDIA complex, which is to keep us uninformed, frightened, and on the defensive (like children). Personally, I'm done. Today, what we are talking about right now, IS the news and the MSM can't cover that.

[highlyamused]

Time to say "Goodnight Joe"??

[Davwbaird]

the foxs on fox news did not like the speech.