TO DISOWN OR NOT TO DISOWN?

Obama’s speech earlier this week was, in my not always humble enough opinion, excellent. He clarified that he has had and does have differences of opinion, but he made the focus of the speech a refusal to disown. A refusal to disown

1) Someone he considers family (Imagine that! Someone not looking for an excuse to disown "family"! Loyalty! "Blood is thicker than water?" Fragile egos and empty minds are thinner than… I digress...

2) His white grandmother who made racist remarks

3) That black culture, the black heritage, black theology, black anger even, are all parts of him, and he won't disown that such is there, a forever part of him. Some, like Thomas Sowell, have said this whole thing reveals that he is a phony. Nonsense. That he went through a late teenage and early adult period of being an angry black man in LA, NY, and Chicago is quite clear in his biography. The point of being a healer and a uniter was not to deny the history of ugly racism. Not to put himself at odds with the 90% of blacks who vote Democratic, obviously, or at odds with the many inner city black churches of liberation theology who have similar rhetoric or views- of which this was an exagerated part.

Obama’s speech was, in my opinion, clear, to the point, brave (he actually pulled closer to Wright instead of throwing him overboard Larry Craig-like in the Mitt Romney Leadership :) way

“Just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

That is really an interesting statement. Ponder that one. Beneath the surface I think it is true, even in Utah, even as Church has become more of a “We talk to you” format, with never ending High Council speakers who mistakenly think they are dazzling enough to wing it.

Are white Mormons really going to expect their black Presidential candidates to say "We are proud of American history! From the 1600s or so to 1865 we were slaves, from 1865-1968 or so we were segregated, and we are still 5 or 10 times more likely to be poor, more likely to go to prison than college, etc.! The Constitution was written by the finger of God, even if it gave 20 more years of slave trade and counted us as 3/5 of a person!!!"

No. Others who have said that 9/11 was brought about because America doesn't have clean hands in the world: Ron Paul, Pat Robertson, Hugh Nibley,

This may turn out to be an ugly election about race, although McCain seems too honorable to want to go there.