Barack Obama Race Speech

In his remarkable March 18th speech," A More Perfect Union," Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, directly addressed the racial aspect of his campaign that, up until the preceding week, had largely been in the background. While the overt reason for the speech was the inflammatory remarks of Obama's former pastor,...

For many years, the United States has been suffering from political nihilism -- disbelief in its institutions.

I have seen political nihilism in various countries around the world. It manifests itself as a form of futility, the feeling that one cannot recover from what is ailing the people.

Two common...

On Tuesday, this son of Eastern European stock drove into Center City to bear witness to a speech about race delivered by a candidate who described himself in his remarks as "the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas."

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.),...

Two of America's leading black intellectuals, John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, recently had the best conversation I've yet seen about Barack Obama's race speech, one that's worth watching in full, but that struck me as particularly interesting when it turned to the question of the candidate's grandmother.

Obama's critics...

Move over Hillary and John: there's a real leader in the house.

Barack Obama gave the speech of his life.

It wasn't just a speech, but a heartfelt look at one of the toughest issues in America. His speech addressed the ills within the hearts of people, so that they...

It probably had to happen. Maybe better now than later. But still profoundly depressing to see that the practical effect of The Speech was to push down Obama's numbers significantly among Democratic voters, according to Gallup.

I do not fault the candidate for campaigning on the premise of a post-racial...

Obama's race speech has been justly celebrated by many Americans, myself among them, as a major event in American presidential politics. Without taking anything away from either the man or the speech, here is a little reality check, concerning a part of the speech that has gone without comment in...

When I was fourteen -- the same age as my own son is now -- I came across, or, more likely, was given, a copy of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. I was in my black turtleneck phase, taking each Friday the E train to bohemia (West Village branch),...

Well, there it is. If you are one of those folks who has been watching Barack Obama bring audiences to their feet with platitudes like "stand up for hope," while you yourself wonder who this guy really is and what does he really stand for, today was your day. Few...

I had so many thoughts after Obama's speech yesterday, but none of them were organized enough to write. Today maybe a few are.

1. I don't think it's going to change anyone's mind. If you supported Obama before, you probably still do, if you didn't you still don't.

Jeff Jacoby, a conservative columnist for the Boston Globe, is angry at Obama and at those who cheered his speech. We (I not only cheered, I wept) are guilty of accepting a double standard because, says Jacoby, if our clergyman had said the hateful things that Wright did, we...