Juan Williams; time for another race speech

Jonn Lilyea | June 6, 2008

This morning Juan Williams, in the Wall Street Journal, calls for another race speech from Obama, because Willaims says the last two aren’t working for him;

This time he has to admit to sins of using race for political expediency – by knowingly buying into divisive, mean messages being delivered from the pulpit. He has to say that, as a biracial young man with no community roots, attaching himself to Rev. Wright and the Trinity congregation was a shortcut to move up the ladder in the Chicago political scene. He has to call race-baiting what it is, whether it comes from a pulpit or calls itself progressive politics. And he has to challenge his supporters, especially his black base, to be honest about real problems at the heart of today’s racial divide – including out-of-wedlock births, crime, drugs and a culture that devalues education while glorifying the gangster life.

Mr. Obama also has to raise the bar for how political criticism is handled in his camp. Step one is to acknowledge that not every critic is a racist. His very liberal record and his limited experience, like his association with Rev. Wright, is a fact, not the work of white racists. Just as he calls for the GOP not to engage in the politics of fear over terrorism, Mr. Obama needs to declare that he will refrain from playing the racial victim, because he understands such tactics will paralyze political debate and damage race relations.

And then Obama needs to tell his minions to have discussions about issues instead of them pointing at opponents and charging racism merely because they oppose his intellectually vacant proposals. Is Juan Williams racist? He’s Black and he’s Panamanian, so it’d be hard to make the case that he’s racist, but we can expect the “Uncle Tom”s to start rolling out from our newest visitor’s keyboard at any moment.