Chapter 27 - Things to Laugh About

She who goes on audacious adventures should expect whatever insanity appears.

I freely acknowledge that I live life on the edge. I do things that my friends think are crazy. I don't follow many rules.  I'm the last person in the world who needs to be told life is short. I milk every single second out of every single day that I can, because I'd rather live with a little red cheeked embarrassment for the things I did than the melancholy regret for the things I didn't. And thanks to my aversion to the mundane, I'm going to have one hell of a book to publish one day.

Not that all of my stories have pretty, wrapped up, happy endings. The endings are always amusing and evocative, but I've had my fair share of explosions. But that's the thing... even the explosions are good. They're real. They're filled with emotion and life. And they're all part of my story. 

And so I try to write it all down as it happens, because I know how I am. After the fireworks subside and the dust settles, I'll be back on another adventure, probably involving a passport. Once I set out again, I'll just remember the good of what happened in the chapter before. I forget the angst in making a life changing decision, the profound loneliness of an unknown place, the rage at life's injustices, and the bitter taste of the inevitable. After they pass, why bother with them? Do they make the sweet times any less satisfying? Does anguish make a memory more real than joy? I don't think so. And even if they did, there's still something to laugh about, just up ahead.

Taking Stock

New Year's Day is one of my favorite days of the year. It's the perfect day to take stock of the 365 days prior, and daydream about the new year to come. 

I've gotten in the habit of measuring my life in a series of before and afters that seem to revolve around the places I've lived. Before Lubbock. Austin. After Jersey. Spain I, II, and III. DC. It feels like the chapters of my life have started flying by since Austin. It was a staggering thought to wake up on my birthday this year and realize that I graduated from college 6 years ago. Eesh. Fortunately, I feel like I'm in a good place in the world. I'm happy with the exhausting degree I'm working on, my family exists in relative harmony these days, I'm blessed with wonderful friends across the globe, and all is as it should be most days of the week. 

The fact that life is so good right now has done much to reinforce my mantra that everything happens for a reason. I can't help but think how much things can change in a year. If someone had told me last New Year's that I'd be living in Tennessee in less than a year, I would have laughed. It certainly wasn't in my life plan that I'd painstakingly assembled. Fortunately, I have friends and family willing to smack me back into reality and keep me from missing the hidden opportunities life has to offer, even if they don't come wrapped in the sort of package I might expect. 

Perspective

Law school is sort of like being on Survivor. 196 of us have been tossed on this island. Every once in awhile, we win a prize and get to have a visitor, or get to go back to whatever city we came from and reclaim a teeny piece of our old lives for 36 hours. The rest of the time, we hang out with the same people, in the same classes, with the same really lame law school jokes that we all come up with in our non-existant spare time. And the dreams. Dear God. We've ALL had the most effed up dreams since we moved here. And somehow, the goal is to win. The jacked up thing? Most of us really don't actually want the prize. 90 hour weeks and soul selling to the man isn't what everyone signed up for. But does that matter? Not really. 

It's so easy to lose perspective in law school. It's an insanely competitive environment that attempts to prepare you for the insanely competitive job market by implementing trial by fire methods. And when the only people you see all day are law students, it's totally easy to forget that you were once a normal, functioning human being with a day job, disposable income, and hobbies who had no idea that the word reasonable actually has a completely different meaning than the one the rest of the world knows. There's a whole world out there, but if it doesn't involve the library, Bar Review, or Blackacre, we certainly wouldn't know about it.

And then finals season starts, and people really go bat shit crazy. Ordinarily reasonable people become patently unreasonable, and the stress level gets so unbelieveably high that you can almost hear the energy in the room humming. People lose their center of gravity and all rational thought processes. As a general rule, law students are a pretty volatile bunch from November 1 - December 20. And the 1Ls are the worst, because we've been convinced that nothing we've done up to this point matters in any way, shape, or form beyond whatever grades we get in this, our first year of mental assault. 

I won't lie. I sort of drank the Kool-Aid for a minute and started to get sucked into the madness. And then as always, something popped the Crazy Bubble and brought me back down to earth. 

K, a friend of my family's has been battling an incredibly aggressive cancer since mid-June. Everyone has been hopeful for the best since the beginning, but it's become apparent over the last weeks that the harder they seem to fight it, the more vengeful it becomes. K is tough as nails. We met in high school and got to know each other on a couple of different trips to Latin America as teenagers. I always identified with her because, even though we came from pretty different backgrounds, I saw a little bit of myself in her. We both had sweet as pie fathers, phenomenal, strong, no-nonsense mothers, and we ourselves were a little headstrong and independent. You couldn't really tell us much that we didn't think we already knew. I haven't seen her much since high school, but have always kept up with her through my mom's updates and random encounters with her mom in the mall. K has led a superstar life - amazing jobs across the country, an opportunity to work in Africa... real work doing real things to help real people. I cried when I found out she was sick, but had faith that she'd fight her way back again. Tonight I cried again. K's fight has become a losing battle, and she has been moved to hospice. We're still praying for a miracle, but at the same time praying that she'll find peace and rest after a hard fight. The part that shocks me the most is that K and I are the same age. We're adults in our own right, but we're still sort of getting started. We've been busy changing the world while keeping an eye out for a life of husbands and babies and mortgages. At our age, we're supposed to have our whole lives ahead of us. 

K has been in cancer wards for about as long as I've been in law school, and I'm the one complaining. 

So here's to perspective. Here's to the unfairness of being graded on a curve, cancer, and life. And here's to K, for reminding me what's important, and inspiring me to be a better person. Please pray for her.

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

John 14:27

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

My poor, neglected blog. I met my goal of checking out of the world for awhile. It was amazing. I missed the growing concerns regarding the subprime lending crisis, fingerpointing across the aisles of Congress over failed economic policies, and obituraries for the American Dream. The only indication I had of any trouble in paradise was the ever increasing cost of withdrawing Euros from ATMs across the Iberian Peninsula. Apparently, while I was off gallivanting across Europe, it appears our American economy was priming itself for a downward plunge. And plunge it has, just in time for me to get settled into my new life and start itching to write something that isn't a faux legal memorandum. Fortunately, it appears all may not be lost as the decline seems to have been stemmed, at least for now. I hope that in this painful process, some of us have learned some lessons about how our changing world works these days.

I recall having an 11 hour conversation with my favorite Madrileño one sunny July day on our way up the steepest mountain God ever created. We picked politics as our topic that afternoon, in the hopes of exasperating each other to the point that we'd forget about the pain we were inflicting on ourselves on our way up the cliff. Our conversation shifted from America's lenient firearm laws to how loans work. Their government helps grad students by providing grants and scholarships to those who continue to study after undergrad. My companion was appalled not only by the cost of my impending legal education and the amount of loans I was going to have to take out to finance the entire affair, but also by the ease of obtaining credit and loans in our country. He was in the process of purchasing a flat, and our conversation quickly turned to the stringent requirements that must be met across most of Europe when one decides to take out a mortgage. He was further scandalized to find that, not only do you not need a 50% down payment or well established guarantors to obtain a home loan, but our banks had been in the business of summarily handing out money at variable interest rates to people who barely had the cash on hand for closing costs. You can imagine the interesting conversations we've had over the course of the last week, one of which actually started with the statement that my country is responsible for tanking the entire global economy in a matter of days because we don't know how to manage money properly. I think he might be on to something.

Thanks to the sad state of our affairs, lots of previously "comfortable" people are having to worry about making their lives fit into the confines of a tight budget. For all the ridiculousness that we've seen in vice presidential politics as of late, the one thing Sarah Palin has said that I agree with was a statement on Americans having to bite the bullet, get over ourselves, and learn to live within our means. Sometimes, people have to go without. This is going to be an especially interesting lesson for a lot of American teenagers. The NY Times did an article this weekend about the effect that our economic crisis is having on the current generation of pampered teens, many whom have been raised in households unfamiliar with the word 'no'. I'm one of the cheapest people I know in all areas of my life except travel. I'm perfectly willing to buy my jeans off eBay to have extra money to spend on a plane ticket to a new and nifty place. I refuse to buy new furniture, and my new bicycle is one of the only things I've payed full price in many, many moons. I justified it because I sold my car out of sheer refusal to pay current gas prices, especially when I live across the street from campus. This mindset of mine makes it almost impossible for me to understand a teenager who wouldn't rather buy thrift store Sevens and have cash left over to play with. Or, God forbid, save. 

I'm disheartened by the number of people whose livelihoods and retirements have been submarined by the abysmal economy. But maybe there's a silver lining to be seen here. As we come out of our own modern version of the Roaring '20s, maybe we'll get back to ideas of a less materialistic and greedy society. The Times article makes interesting observations regarding families that have previously used money and tangible gifts as a way to assuage their guilt for not spending enough time with their children. People are having to adjust and deal with the emotional baggage that often accompanies money issues of all kinds as they become accustomed to a new and more restrictive economic reality. But that's okay. There are worse things than the forced enjoyment of simple (and cheap) pleasures. After all, it builds character. 

I liked him more when we were just texting.

I have long likened myself to Bridget Jones. She and I share a penchant for making idiots of ourselves in front of other people, with or without the assistance of vodka. Kind people give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I'm easily flustered. Others just assume I'm a card carrying member of the Asbergers 'R Us Society.

Fortunately, Gansie says it's not my fault that my social skills are declining. I've forgotten how to act in public settings because there's just no real need for face to face interaction anymore. I spend 8-10 hours a day in my small, small office, door closed. If I have to ask someone a question, I email them. Voicemail scares me. I have incredible typing skills based on my ability to recount an entire Thursday night via gChat in under .5 billable hours, complete with caps for inflection. I judge people who misuse "your" and "you're" in their texts, and "Ur" is enough to get yourself deleted from my phone entirely. I have friendships centered around cellular and internet based exchanges that involve nary a phone call, much less any in person contact. When my most important interpersonal interactions involve the ability to type and retype my thoughts before actually imparting them on another human being, it's not a wonder that I sound like an experiment in artificial stupidity when you get me face to face.

And I know I'm not the only one. My friends don't call or write, they blog. Screw holiday cards - I get mass text messages on major holidays. I've met boyfriends, dogs, and children via Facebook. I'm quite familiar with entire hookups and breakups that have been engineered via electronic means. It wouldn't be my first friend who has engaged in witty repartee with a member of the opposite sex until the wee hours, just to find that they're wildy uncomfortable with the mere idea of sitting next to each other, sober and sans cell phones, at a restaurant. And we've moved past waiting 3 days to call. Why on earth risk a phone call when you can shoot a quick "What r u up to?" text? If they don't answer, you can assume they never got it, as opposed to the more painful option of exploring the idea of rejection. We've even graduated from the 3am booty call to the 3am drunken, misspelled text message. Thanks to all this ridiculous technology around us, we're becoming more socially retarded with each passing second.

So next time you hear me make a complete ass out of myself in public, I hope you'll understand - I would have been much pithier if I could have just texted you.

The End is Near

Somewhere between my landlord showing our apartment to prospective tenants and me researching storage units in Tennessee, it has come to my attention that I am not long for this city. In an attempt to combat the melancholy creeping into my heart, I'm constructing a "Things I Have To Do Before I Leave DC" list. This is no time for tears, as there are still many restaurants, museums, and concerts to be enjoyed in a baccanalian manner before I pack up my car. Suggestions welcome, as are tagalongs who want to enjoy the next 3 months with me!

Thus the list begins, in no particular order...

1. National Portrait Gallery - Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture, Katherine Hepburn Exhibits

2. Dinner at Marrakech

3. Boating in the Tidal Basin

4. Drag Queen Brunch at Perry's in Adams Morgan

5. Dinner, drinks, or both at Proof

6. Sushi at Makoto

7. The Phillips Collection

8. Old Rag

9. Manassas Regional Park

10. Friday night Jazz at the Natural History Museum

11. An Orioles game at Camden Yards

12. A Nationals game at the new stadium

13. The FDR Memorial (I know - I have no idea how I haven't seen this yet)

14. The National Firearms Museum

15. Mount Vernon

16. Pope-Leighey House

17. A night at HR-57

18. Ethiopean food. I don't even care where.

A More Perfect Union

I have my own warped opinions about race and society. I credit my opinions to the fact that I am the product of a slightly complicated multiracial family. The only public statement I have heard to date that even begins to match many of the things I believe in came today from Barack Obama. It's not lost on me that the first person to put words to many of my thoughts is also of mixed racial heritage. As globalization shrinks the size of our comfort zones, I hope Obama's thoughts are prophetic to the type of world we're moving towards.


"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."


Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.


The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.


Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.


And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.


This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.


This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.


I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.


It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.


Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.


This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.


And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.


On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.


I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.


But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.


As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.


Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way


But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.


In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:


"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."


That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.


And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.


I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.


These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.


Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.


But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.


The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.


Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.


Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.


Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.


A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.


This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.


But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.


And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.


In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.


Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.


Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.


This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.


But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.


For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.


Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.


The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.


In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.


In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.


For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.


We can do that.


But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.


That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.


This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.


This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.


This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.


I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.


There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.


There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.


And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.


She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.


She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.


Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.


Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."


"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.


But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.