Finally: A Speech About Something
The Professor and I watched this last night. It's about 40 minutes long, or you can read the text. Well worth making time for because even outside the context of a political race, it raises such important points about our history as a country and where we could go from here.
I am interested in Obama and enjoy hearing him speak because he doesn't appear to accept stagnation simply because "we've always done it this way". I remember being in elementary school and it was Earth Day this and that and I couldn't understand why people would want to pollute if they knew that it killed animals and was bad for us too. Even more, I could not get a straight answer about this out of ANY of the adults around me. All of those things that made adults shifty and uncomfortable and want to change the subject, like why we're at war and why people of different colors are mean to each other. On into adulthood, and nobody talks about this stuff really, unless it's the topic of some college course. How refreshing, now, to hear a presidential candidate tackle such a sprawling, sticky subject as race in this country in such an informed, honest and direct way.
I have a feeling that, regardless of the outcome of this election, this speech, or at least portions of it, will hit the books and be memorized and recited like the Gettysburg Address, I Have a Dream, and Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You. I guess we'll stay tuned and see about that one. It's rare that I get that History in the Making feeling.
I am interested in Obama and enjoy hearing him speak because he doesn't appear to accept stagnation simply because "we've always done it this way". I remember being in elementary school and it was Earth Day this and that and I couldn't understand why people would want to pollute if they knew that it killed animals and was bad for us too. Even more, I could not get a straight answer about this out of ANY of the adults around me. All of those things that made adults shifty and uncomfortable and want to change the subject, like why we're at war and why people of different colors are mean to each other. On into adulthood, and nobody talks about this stuff really, unless it's the topic of some college course. How refreshing, now, to hear a presidential candidate tackle such a sprawling, sticky subject as race in this country in such an informed, honest and direct way.
I have a feeling that, regardless of the outcome of this election, this speech, or at least portions of it, will hit the books and be memorized and recited like the Gettysburg Address, I Have a Dream, and Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You. I guess we'll stay tuned and see about that one. It's rare that I get that History in the Making feeling.