My latest piece at Punditwire:
In short, President Obama’s general observations about how the United States might tackle lingering discrimination and prejudice made sense. But the fact that he linked his remarks in such a personal way to the Trayvon Martin case – of all possible cases out there across the USA, any of which could be frothed up by the media supposedly to illustrate wider points about modern life – made much less sense. Unless, that is, one main aim of the speech was to achieve the exact opposite of what he claimed to be doing: to stoke the indignation of those people who believe that in this case justice somehow has not been done because of some or other racial prejudice.
Thus one of the paradoxes of racial issues for any speaker today. What context to put them in? Things improving, or things doomed never to change for the better? How to craft a speech and tone and examples to touch everyone and so make a ‘post-racial society’ more likely?
President Obama himself suggested that racial suspicions and prejudices are ebbing:
Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. It doesn’t mean we’re in a post-racial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated. But when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I seem them interact, they’re better than we are – they’re better than we were – on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country…
…And those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions.
Yet doesn’t the very fact that this one messy tragic shooting has been given so monstrous and misleading a public profile to the point of being cited by President Obama in this very speech suggest that it is indeed being exploited to heighten divisions? Including if only indirectly by, alas, the President himself?
