Will Obama's speech get lost in wide racial divide?

Barack Obama's speech this week calling for a national conversation about race drew both a "Yeah, finally," from some black listeners and a "What, still?" from some whites.

"I'm glad he finally did a speech about the race thing because he had pushed it to the back," said Danez Smith, an 18-year-old African-American from St. Paul. "Even in the debates, there was just a lot of pitter-patter around it."

For Russ Henry, 30, a white man who owns a gardening service in Minneapolis, Obama's speech was "nothing more than an attempt to distance himself from his preacher," he said. "It shows Obama's lack of character, that he just lacks political guts."

Obama's speech on Tuesday called for "a more perfect union" in a country that, this week, grew more divided as video circulated of Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., preaching angry, racially divisive sermons.

Obama condemned Wright's words, but not the person. He decried white indifference and prejudice while saying that some "resentments of white Americans ... are grounded in legitimate concerns."

Many black and white Minnesotans reacted differently to that parsing of blame, as well as to Obama's reference to how "so many people are surprised to hear that anger" in Wright's sermons.

Smith isn't convinced that Obama means to lead a national conversation. "He can't let that happen; otherwise the whole campaign will be about a black man running for president," Smith said. "The question is, can he keep it an issue without it becoming the issue?"

A window on the hurt

Gavin Lawrence is a Minneapolis playwright with a blend of Guyanese, Portuguese, British and Indian heritage. "But when I walk down the street, people just see someone who's black," he said.

Race remains such a festering wound in the American psyche, Lawrence said, that it spills out in a million ways, including Wright's fiery hyperbole. More familiar, however, is the muted thread that runs through many private African-American conversations.

"We as a nation, liberals and all, still don't want to embrace the reality of what slavery has done," Lawrence said. "People want to get past it without really being deserving of being able to look past it, without doing the hard, dirty work."

Obama has been viewed as "safe" by many white Americans up to this point, Lawrence said, but Wright's remarks have opened a fresh window onto the hurt and anger that runs -- quietly, for the most part -- through much of the black community.

"White folks totally miss the pain and the fact that they are privileged to be white," he said. "However, I don't believe that the anger and resentment is helpful because it shuts down dialogue.

"Once you call white people racist, the discussion is over because white folks can walk away from the issue and not be impacted, certainly not as much as black folks who have to think about their race almost daily."

A sliver in America's hand

Lou Bellamy, director of Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, said Obama's speech "was so trenchant, so truthful, so honest that I'm still hoping we can use that moment to take care of the complexities rather than covering them up and choosing sides again."

Bellamy, who is black, said there's nothing unusual about the kind of distinction Obama is making between a person and that person's unacceptable views. "I'm Catholic and yet I support a women's right to choose. I'm not going to blow up the Vatican because I disagree with the pope.

Pastor Danny Barnes of Thy Kingdom Come Ministry in Wheaton, Minn., is a black man who has been the target of racial slurs since moving to the mostly white town near the South Dakota border. He thinks the speech will surprise many white people, who think that racism is a thing of the past.

"The speech drew attention to the problem," he said. "It's like having a sliver in your hand; as long as your hand is healthy, you don't pay attention to it. But as soon as it starts to hurt, you tend to it. And I think that most people in Minnesota and the country at large want to attend to it. But they don't, because they don't know it exists."

Emily Jarrett Hughes, 31, a white Minneapolis resident who is assistant development director for the Minnesota Council of Churches, said that coming in the context of a political campaign, she's not confident of the speech's lasting impact. "Political campaigns aren't always a unifying time for the country," she said. '"But we lose sight of the fact that one could be."

Obama's challenge is "to be seen as safe enough, to have enough trust of the people to try to fix it," she said. "He seems to be able to understand white resentment, which I really don't."

Two interpretations

"Older people, I'm not so sure," he said. "This is something that's going to take a really long time to work through, maybe 100 years into the future."

Minneapolis City Council Member Don Samuels was initially hesitant about Obama's speaking so candidly on race in a tight political battle. "I feel mesmerized by the sheer courage of it and the skill [with which] he handled the volatile material," said Samuels, who is black. "He raised several, maybe two dozen issues that are hard to even speak about in mixed company."

Americans get to decide how the speech will be interpreted, Samuels said: as the words of a politician in trouble in an important campaign or as the thoughts of a leader having contemplated a most troubling and divisive issue.

"He's saying that's how I want to lead, and I want to lead that way, too," Samuels said. "If we choose to interpret the latter, this will be one of the greatest speeches in America. If not, it will be one of this country's greatest missed opportunities."