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Courage and leadership. The political blow-up over Rev. James Wright has come to define this particular moment of Obama's candidacy. Some media pundits have insisted this moment is the most important of his powerful and brilliant candidacy.Some like MSNBC's Pat Buchanan – with his own troublesome anti-Semitic and xenophobic and racist history – have looked for conspiracies and Manchurian candidate-like scenarios, the basic racist and xenophobic argument of the Republican's fall campaign against Obama. He even invented a new word for the occasion: Afro-racist. It has just come a little early.
And Obama has taken it head-on.
The theme of Obama's candidacy is to work together to repair and reconcile racial wounds and divisions, that, indeed, the very things we seek to accomplish – ending war, building universal health care, recovering the economy, repairing our devastated infrastructure, creating jobs – can only – and that cannot be emphasized enough – ONLY happen when we work together.
And frankly, John McCain and Hillary Clinton have yet to explain why the coalitions they have built to support them are almost entirely white. What is it they are saying or doing that causes that? What are they saying and doing that causes or accepts such a massive racial divide among voters? And how is it that they think they could ever hope to solve the great problems of our day without the needed unity of all our people to do so?
Obama, however, inspires the willingness not to back down or to walk away from the problems we face but to take them on. He inspires the notion that even though we come from different places we share a common life and common dreams. He encourages us to believe in the very real possibility that together we can make a new country.
That is worth standing up for and fighting for.
