Of race and Obama

Here’s a really powerful reflection, sparked by Obama’s speech. I can’t help thinking that no matter what the ultimate impact on the campaign, this speech was really key in lots and lots of ways to helping us deal more directly with race, as does this piece. An excerpt:

At some essential level of cultural abstraction, what it means to be black in this country is to manage the anger of a persistent past, to understand the power of humiliation as a daily depressant and to overcome it anyway with love, laughter and growth. That identification has lots of material expressions, but for many it is spiritually known. And for a lot of American blacks, underlying that spiritual connection is a notion of Christianity rooted in service, redemption and liberation.