Different ears will hear different things in the speech. For me three words leapt from the text: equality, dignity, and change. I could not but feel that the institution of chattel slavery cast its long, sad shadow across the speech and the day. We are not shut of slavery nor of the racism that sustained it for more than two hundred brutal, bloody years. The struggle for civil rights and economic justice suffuse nearly every paragraph of the President's speech, and undergirding them are three things that freedom-starved slaves longed for: equality, dignity, and change. Racists of every generation including our own resist these same values, or rather reserve them for "their kind" and "their people." The loathing that Mr. Obama has had to suffer through is a measure of the lingering voice of the slave holders who still, still, still cannot abide the freedom granted their former slaves by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The echoes of Dr. King in his address is the lingering voice of the descendants of slaves who themselves were still not free. In the last fifty years, we have come a long way, but the President is correct. No achievement is final, no victory is forever, and our journey is not complete so long as people of color, women, and gays have not achieved full equality and dignity. Until that day, we must continue to seek change.
Most of us have been intensely disappointed by the politics practiced on Capitol Hill and in many of our state capitals since the election of President Obama in 2008. It is painful to watch one of our two major parties, a pillar of our democracy, taken hostage by absolutist ideologues. It has been sad to witness the President's honest attempts to enter into dialogue and cooperation slapped away in a manner that dripped with disdain and disrespect. Birtherism is a stain on our national conscience, a reminder that equality and dignity are still being contested in our time. We really do need to change.
That being said, it is also remarkable that we re-elected a "person of color" to a second term of office in spite of the obstacles thrown in his way by those who calculated that they could bring him down by practicing the "politics of 'no'." It is remarkable that a descendant of slaves stood before us yesterday and called on us to continue the journey. Slavery still casts its long shadow across our nation, but it is a shadow. And, as I think about it, perhaps in our generation we are more blessed than harmed by that shadow because it has forced us to see that equality is something that we must grant not just to light-skinned straight men. Mr. Obama began his address by recalling the Declaration of Independence's bold proclamation that, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." They are also the unalienable rights of women, gays, Muslim Americans, and immigrants from Latin America. They are also the rights of children who suffer abuse and families that struggle to make ends meet. Equality. Dignity. Change.
Perhaps, just perhaps, lurking within the shadow of slavery is the Spirit working, working, working for the Kingdom. Our faith encourages us to believe it is so. Amen.
