by Christopher Kendalls

Created on: March 20, 2008

Although Obama's address more or less read as both a condemnation of Rev. Wright's comments and a call for both White and Black Americans to put each other in the other persons shoes the real accomplishment is an artistic one. It doesn't matter that Obama's address was the most eloquent on race or that it was one of the most profound calls for change concerning racism since those of the Martin Luther King thirty years ago. Obama's address gave even more hope for change in his supporters and more reason for disdain and scorn amongst his detractors.

I can appreciate his address, both his reasons for doing so, the thoroughness for which it was prepared, and the overall professionalism in his recitation and the way in which it was carried out. Unlike his stump speeches, Obama didn't digress to cutting into anyone else's air time and was about as straightforward and honest as a politician has been in years. You can tell that this was coming from the heart. But public speaking skills still do not clarify Obama's position, on anything, and still do not answer some hard questions about race that he himself needs to defend.

Detractors point to the fact that Obama waited until this time to address the nation about race. As a supporter, I am suggesting that Obama did not run on a platform of race for good reason; the record that history shows of African-American candidates who have. America does not particularly want to hear about race, and Obama has never digressed towards using race to further his position. The Clinton's tried to use the race card to their own advantage, and Obama has had a problem in states that are most polarized by race in the Midwest where affirmative action seems to give an unjust advantage to minorities and taking jobs away from the White middle class laborer.

The fact that Obama has been able to make it to where he is at in this campaign is enough of a testament on how much America really wants to deal with race to begin with. Had we been where we were when Jessie Jackson was running, concerning race, Obama never would have been able to make it to where he is today. Some of that was the unapologetic appeals to disenfranchised Blacks and the polarization that race relations had at that time, but then again, some of it simply was that the country was not really ready for an African-American candidate at the time.

When Obama is presented as a slick, clean, candidate full of rhetoric and doublespeak it suggests that his true intrinsic value is in hustling

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