The old pastor, and Obama well knows that the whole world was watching yesterday. If you are racist especially, and zero in on that last paragraph (as so many Web sites have done), and if you try to view it within the narrow scope (I love a good pun) of this country's racist past and in Lowery's connection to it all (especially in highlighting the very line you highlighted, as if to say that, "Here racism no longer exists, so why is he using that line in the future tense?"), then it's going to be viewed as racist at best, and a slap in the face of whitey at worst.
But if you take the paragraph in context along with the entire benediction, it takes on a new meaning. And if you look at it in from a world view, a world where many places remain where blacks are indeed asked to get in back and all the rest, a world where racism still exists and is prevalent among not just whites and blacks but of all colors, he is simply saying, he is praying for God to help us to work for that day when racism is at an end, and the world is no longer considered, by anyone, to be a white man's world. He knows that racism here and elsewhere didn't suddenly end with the election of Obama, and he's asking that in the memory of all of the saints who worked so hard and are now dead, who helped to end racism (MLK, to be sure, but many others), to continue the work to finally reach the day where race truly doesn't matter.
It's not a dig at whites, although the fact that me mentioned it will forever make it so to many people. But those are the very same people who needs to rethink a few things about the world and their place in it. Some will never change their mind, as their thinking will only be changed by the passing of generations. This country has come a long, long way in 40 very shorts years, barely more than one generation. We're not there yet, as we have a long way to go, both here and around the world. But we have a chance, it is within our grasp, right here right now, to make great leaps forward. Let's not blow it. That's what the Rev is saying.
Incidentally, you are racist. We all are in one way or another. Well, except most of these new kids. The news kids don't think like we do. As an example, you made a statement that, to you, Obama's color doesn't make any difference, that to you he is simply a politician who is black.
There's the difference right there. To these new kids, Obama isn't a politician who is black, he's simply a politician.
These kids in their early 20's, the college aged kids, and the ones younger, black, white, I promise you, it never enters their thinking. That's a concept that is very hard, nearly impossible, for us old farts to wrap our feeble little minds around. It never...enters....their thinking. That's astounding. And it truly doesn't, unless they have been taught that it should. It never occurs to them that black or white or Hispanic or whatever should even be an issue in any way, shape or form. How bizarre is that?
It's like, for example, an 18 year old black kid, he hasn't a clue, not an inkling, of what it was like to be black in the 60's, to be hosed down in the streets of some southern Alabama town. Oh, he can be told, and he can be shown video, but he'll never really know. It's out of his experience. Just like he'll never know the feeling of watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. He'll never know the importance of that event, the importance of science, of civilization, of the political landscape of which it was an integral part, of how it affected the entire planet.
They think differently, on a fundamental level, and old farts have a problem understanding that. We view Obama through our eyes, through our experiences, through our way of thinking. And our way is fundamentally different from their way. And you know what? We're rapidly becoming outnumbered. Many of us have a real problem with that. And the older we get, the bigger problem we have with it.
in the country. Layoutshooter