Every time I hear an Obama or Edwards speech, I squee a little bit at the idea of a president who can form complete sentences! *happy sigh*

However, I am disheartened by the burden Obama has been saddled with, as a person of color, to be the sole party delivering today’s message.

Pam, you get to share, if you choose, what the details of what you meant were.

However, while I don’t share the disheartend part, I think it is wonderful that someone is sharing the message at all.

I do agree to some extent with the posters who correctly feel that white candidates don’t have the standing to speak directly to black churchmembers about their homophobia.

But looking at the broader version of it, I simply don’t see anyone else doing the version of it that they do have the standing for. While Edwards might not have the standing to speak of black homophobia, he certainly has the standing to speak of white male homophobia and male privilege, and if he chose, could cast it just as clearly as a “we are all in this together and need to grow past our own blindnesses.”

Obama’s message wasn’t (or I didn’t hear it as) “bad churchgoers! Bad!” but rather as, “Take a moment to see how the pain you’ve experienced is similar to the pain you are inflicting, and see how division hurts us all.”

Certainly, a member of any minority has a better hook into a specific set of experiences. But Edwards had identified himself as particularly representative of the working class - and there is certainly more than enough room to tell working class America to get past homophobia (and sexism). Similarly, while Clinton hasn’t the standing to speak to black churchgoers, she could speak to all women, and white women in particular, about homophobia and racism.

As I see it, the message Pam speaks of is the one about unity and empathy, not specifically black homophobia. And that is one everyone could be, and only Obama among the presidential candidtates, is really addressing head on, rather than in general (or not at all.)

And if Edwards gives up before the California primary Feb 5, Obama is the one I’ll vote for then, and feel good about it.

And let me reiterate: I would still feel good voting for Clinton in November. Just not as good as for Obama, because he is demonstrating, I think, that he can indeed deliver on the implicit promise of bringing all parties together for reasonable reconciliation of conflicts, as I suspected his background as a community organizer implied he could and would do. Clinton would be more refractory as a President, less inclined to support, or even at least recognize, grass-roots activism that isn’t on her DLC agenda.

But I think even she would come around if populist activism is strong enough.

As for the theme of “white folks shouldn’t be afraid to speak out against injustices committed by black folks,” well Pam, I am with some other commentators above: I just think I don’t have that standing. OTOH I also think that there is plenty of decency and intelligence among POCs. I always believe that out-groups have a more honest and smarter take on how our society actually works, and so I feel that until the larger society (aka “white” people) have cleaned up our act considerably, reform among the groups we tend to persecute is left to people within those groups. I wouldn’t presume to advise gay people how they should run their lives, or tell women how they should behave, either.

When I see bigotry in any form, in myself or others, I do go out on a limb and call whoever is doing it on it. I do so a lot less patiently and respectfully with white guys than others. But even within my own group I try to separate the person from the practice.

At any rate, until I am dealing with professional Republican politicians. Even they sometimes surprise with a moment of decency. (I am thinking here of the Texas Republican Congressman of Ms Austin, who got raped and held incommunicando in Iraq by Halliburton people, for instance–that Representative did do some serious advocacy for his constituent, the way they are supposed to do.

But though a pleasant surprise, this was still a surprise to me. And not that big a thing in the grand scheme, if this instance did not cause him to reevaluate his allegiences all across the board.

And if they were to suddenly address it now, it would be obviously disingenuous and clear pandering. They won’t touch race or gay issues with a ten foot pole at THIS stage of the game! I’m glad Obama DID, but I’d have been more pleased had he addressed it earlier on.

Obama is an inspiring leader; HRC is an empty pantsuit stuffed with platitudes.

#10: I agree with you that this is one movement for equality, and we can leave no one behind in the fight against oppression. But as a member of the privileged race, it cannot be my place to tell the oppressed how they are failing. We are all responsible for policing our own communities. I can be an ally, but I cannot lead this fight.

Pols and people in the privileged class often speak to audiences and deliver messages they don’t want to hear — men about sexism, pro-choicers about “pro-life” positions, blue collar workers about jobs that aren’t coming back, or similar to the above situation, even white audiences about tolerance regarding homosexuality.

I’m not placing all of the burden of the problem on the white pols; as I’ve said many times on this blog and on mine, the black defensiveness (and charges of racism) that occurs in some quarters whenever there is criticism directed at it also shuts down the conversation, and thus the genesis of the third rail of race.

As we’ve seen, being tagged with the label of “racist” is so inflammatory in today’s society (even though all of us are steeped in the legacy of this country’s problems with race), that the avoidance of the topic has resulted in denial and aversion that you just don’t see in other hot button topics.

That you don’t see Clinton or Edwards addressing it reflects the above complexities that cannot easily be undone. My observation about Obama’s “burden” is that he alone bears it, but most folks will presume it is his alone to carry because it is too uncomfortable to contemplate diving into the toxic, emotionally charged topic.

And this is exactly what has occurred in the LGBT rights movement over the past 20 years. We went from a movement which had a few interlocutors with the world of political power (Barney Frank and uhhh… Barney Frank) who got to set the agenda for all of us, to a localized and grassroots driven movement in which local or state orgs are pressing for specific items. Hmmm, maybe we’re making some progress although many days it feels like it’s all a re-run.

I think the very best book on that shift is David Halberstam’s story of the sit-in and SNCC branches of the CRM, called ‘The Children’.

When I was talking about “open faced legal structures that included black people just as another people”, I was trying to emphasis that the previous way of doing things worked very much as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell did. Everything was ad-hoc, and what was okay to do in one time would be bad a little while later. So progress was always impermenant because pols like Arnall eventually lost and Lester Maddox won (and if it had been 90 years earlier…) and tried to roll back. Explicit legal rights and open government structures that defeat closed room, good ole boy mechanisms to control the availability of civil rights for minorities. Black ministers back in the 1940s-50s were often timid and protective of their perogatives, and they often did not press for redress when they should have. Part of the shift young black people of the 1950s was attempting to get –especially on the local end– reliable government interaction for the black community as whole, without anyone to interpret rights for them.