An image is a powerful thing that transcends words and rationalization, and elicits thoughts, ideas and connections that we make consciously and unconsciously. In Camera Lucida,  Roland Barthes defined two characteristics that give photography this ideas-eliciting nature: “studium” is that which the observer recognizes consciously about a photograph that raises his/her interests (be it because of culture, a personal exposure to what is depicted in a photo or any other sort of conscious connection to it); and “punctum” as that which “wounds” the observer by appealing mainly to the subconscious.

What do we see in this picture? Can we speak of a cultural subconscious in contemporary consumption society? A few months ago, I showed this picture to some of my friends. They almost unanimously told me it looked like a piece of United Colors of Benetton advertisement from the early 1990s. That is, the punctum of the observers. They referred back not only to a fact of materialistic consumption, but rather to a rhetoric of multiculturality as an expression of freedom (in terms of race, ideals and culture) made popular in the aftermath of the apparent end of history and the “victory” of liberal democracy.

Interestingly, though, I took this photograph not in the midst of the confusion of the early 1990s about what exactly constituted “ideology,” but during a general march by students and workers in New York City in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, in October 2011. To me, in my studium, this is an image of the people that I saw in that march. Not revolutionaries, not hard-core left-wingers, but normal people who have been affected by the economic crisis and were angry at the fact that Wall Street institutions continued to win in spite of the so-called “99%”.

That being said, this image is not only what I intended. I intended to portray a discourse of “normality,” but what most people saw in it was a long-lasting rhetoric of diversity. This makes me wonder about the connections between the rhetoric of civil society (which became a buzz word in a post-communist world) as represented in contemporary social movements, and the punctum of popular culture (an association to an advertisement campaign). It also made me wonder how the visual language of photography can actually be a vehicle for such ideas to flow without a word being written, or a photo being rationalized.

Collective action (an example of civil society at its best) transforms participants’ identities because of the amount of emotional energy the latter put into the former, but many times the political core of the practices of a movement (such as in a march) can be re-framed in unexpected ways (like when the political was reframed through the language of soccer in Argentina, as Carlos Forment has explored). In this case, the march in support of Occupy Wall Street was not just a political act, but also an emotional one, in which all sorts of other emotional meanings were conveyed, reframing the meaning of the march.

Collective action is, therefore, never just that. It has meanings beyond its intended purpose, beyond its studium; and the solidarity they elicit in people is actually a consequence of its punctum, of their unrationalized unforeseen consequences. For me this is clear. This is revealed in the image, such as my snapshot, as it can be deliberately considered through social scientific inquiry.

During two weeks under Morocco’s sheltering skies, one loses a granulated sense of current American civil discourse. Sipping mint tea in the souks of Marrakesh, the world filtered through the International Herald Tribune, it appeared that Iranian nuclear policy, gas prices, and the health care challenge were sucking up American discursive oxygen. I was vaguely aware that a teenager had been shot in a small town in Florida, but across the ocean that seemed like a routine tragedy in a nation awash in firearms. Teens are often shot and often shooters.

Within hours of touching down at JFK, I learned that the killing (or, some insist, the murder) of Trayvon Martin in Deland, Florida, constituted that now-common spark that creates a blaze in the public sphere. As is so common when the insistent force of the image outruns mundane evidence, people were making forceful pronouncements, selectively parsing the facts of the incident. Trayvon was transformed from a Skittles-eating kid to a talking point. Anytime an adolescent dies, we should weep, but should we pounce?

As many have noted, from Attorney General Eric Holder on down, Americans have great difficulty – perhaps cowardice – in discussing the pathologies and the possibilities of racial contact. Even our president is palpably anxious behind his bully pulpit. So rather than discussing the broad structural challenges of race relations we often rely on idiosyncratic moments, often tragic ones: Bernard Goetz, the subway vigilante; the dragging death of James Byrd; the wilding attack on the Central Park jogger; and, of course, OJ. Now we discuss the shooting death of young African-American Trayvon Martin in a suburban gated community. Each of these instances is a rare and atypical moment, but they are magnified to reveal pervasive racial animosities and resentments. And frequently what we believe is at some remove from how the events evolved.

The jury is still out on Trayvon’s shooting, or perhaps with more accuracy the jury hasn’t yet been called in. But on that evening of February 26^th, 17-year-old Trayvon, wearing a hoodie, was returning to his father’s home in a gated community in Deland, where neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman noticed him and felt that he was acting suspiciously. As things transpired – we know not how, precisely – Trayvon died from a gunshot wound, and Zimmerman is in hiding, not arrested but under moral assault. With the details trickling out, the story became curiouser. Despite the reputation of gated communities as redoubts of the white elite, Zimmerman is Hispanic (sometimes snidely described as “white Hispanic”) and Trayvon’s father is black. Both reside in this gated community, which is perhaps a positive sign of a sort.

As information was released, neither Martin nor Zimmerman was a paragon. In 2005 Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer, a charge that was dropped. Trayvon had been suspended several times from high school with indications of drug use and perhaps burglary. While this background does not determine what happened that February night, imperfection rules. Together the two created a complex puzzle.

Is this a case of “walking while black”: A harmless youth harassed, and then murdered, because of the symbolism of his hoodie and the pigment of his skin. Or was this an instance in which a wild youth threatened the tranquil order of a multi-racial community. These two are surrounded by others who attempted to use the incident for their own purposes. The filmmaker Spike Lee felt it his responsibility to tweet the (wrong) address for George Zimmerman, leading an elderly couple to fear for their lives. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson each hoped to boost their own sagging street cred. Ann Coulter for her part likened those who wanted justice for young Martin to the KKK. Gun rights advocates have weighed in, endorsing Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, permitting the use of deadly force.

These incidents misdirect us away from the deliberate consideration of our real racial divides. As we tell them, these are stories that are too good to be false. We trap ourselves when treating racial imaginaries as definitive accounts. As a parent myself, I recognize the anguish of Trayvon’s parents. Further, as a student of racial rumors (in my book with Patricia Turner, Whispers on the Color Line) I realize how difficult it is to avoid the desire to draw conclusions based on hunches. However, the debate over the linked fate of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin reveals our racial tensions at their most troubling. We would rather have our fantasy Martin and Zimmerman without waiting for the complex world to unspool. Perhaps the events of February 26 hold a mirror up to American race relations, but more surely the discussions since that Sunday do so. It is not the acts of Martin and Zimmerman that we need most to worry about, but the claims of those who struggle to fit these two into Procrustean boxes of their own design.

As a social critic, I am ambivalent about the power of imaginative action in politics. On the one hand, I think that the power of the definition of the situation is a key resource of power for the powerless, the cultural grounding of “the politics of small things.” On the other hand, I worry about myth-making that is independent of factual truth.

On the positive side, there is the definition of the situation: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” This relatively simple assertion, the so called Thomas theorem, was first presented in a study of child psychology and behavioral problems by W.I. Thomas and his wife, Dorothy Swain Thomas. Yet, the theorem has very important political implications, going well beyond the area of the Thomases initial concern, moving in a very different direction than the one taken by the field of ethnomethodology, which can be understood as the systematic scholarly discipline of the definition of the situation.

While researching cultural and political alternatives in Poland and beyond in the 1980s and 90s I observed first hand how the theorem, in effect, became the foundational idea of the democratic opposition to the Communist system in Central Europe. The dissident activists acted as if they lived in a free society and created freedom as a result. A decision was made in Poland, in the 70s, by a group of independent intellectuals and activists to secede from the official order and create an alternative public life. People ignored the commands of the Communist Party and associated apart from Party State control, openly publicizing their association. They created alternative publications. They opened the underground by publicizing their names, addresses and phone numbers. They acted freely. They developed ties with workers and others beyond their immediate social circles. And when the regime for its own reasons didn’t arrest them, an alternative public life and an oppositional political force flourished, which ultimately prevailed over the regime.

The powerless can develop power that can and has overwhelmed the holders of conventional power resources. Daniel Dayan here considered how this worked in the case of the Gaza flotilla protest. This morning we could read about how a group of Saudi women are challenging the powers by publicly staging a drive-in. The controversy surrounding their action, the discussion of it on Facebook, is creating a new public life in Saudi Arabia. Facebook is facilitating the power of the powerless, in the Middle-East, North Africa and beyond, but it is the power of the definition of the situation that is creating this new public.

On the other hand, there is a seamy side of imagination and creativity in politics, revealed in two posts this week.

Rafael Narvaez illuminates a most basic and enduring problem. Race is a biological fiction that has become a most important social reality. Racial differences that do not exist, are said to exist, and, in the process, they come to exist, in their consequences. Racism is very much an ongoing social reality in the U.S. and beyond, even, and perhaps especially, in the face of the election of our first black President. Or is he bi-racial or is it post–racial? From institutionalized racism, where, for example, I observe that it is somehow especially difficult to keep open a decent food store in the black corner of my affluent suburb, to the persistent racial stereotyping on a major cable news network, i.e. Fox News, race is a fact, despite the fact that it is a fiction.

The relationship between fact and fiction is a more general problem, as Esther Kreider-Verhalle explored in her post this week. She was inspired to write about this issue when Fox News mistakenly used a still photo of Tina Fey, an entertaining impersonator of Sarah Palin, for Palin herself. Had the liberal cable news network, MSNBC, done this, some political motive might have been inferred, but that Fox did it, with a national political figure who also is a Fox employee, suggests the fundamental insights of the late social and cultural critic, Jean Baudrillard. Hyper-reality has overwhelmed reality. We can not tell the difference between the simulator of a political persona and the person herself, who is in fact a simulation. Politicians lie so much that their lies look like truths to them. In the process, they and their publics can not tell the difference. Truth melts away, as Anthony Weiner and a long line of public men behaving badly reveal. There is some resistance, suggested by periodic scandals, but these are but passing moments in our staged hyper-reality. I applaud Kreider-Verhalle’s cautionary conclusion: “Amidst all the gaming and faking, it would be good to realize that real decisions have an impact on real people.”

This is what our concern about fictoids is all about. Political actors imagine a reality. Palin makes up the notion of death panels for example, and the make-believe becomes real in its consequences, undermining the possibility of significant health care reform. The Republican leadership repeats often enough the formulation “the job killing stimulus package” and then what every sound economist knows – a recession is the time for government spending and not cuts – becomes politicized. Observations about global climate change become a matter of political debate, when fundamental scientific observations are questioned. Next, we will be politically debating fundamental the facts of Holocaust.

I once had dinner with Baudrillard. It followed his public dialogue with Sylvère Lotringer on “The Parallax of Evil: Domination and Hegemony.” I was surprised how quickly he accepted my criticism of his notion of a totalized hyper-reality. I asserted that the politics of the definition of the situation, “the politics of small things,” stands as an alternative to hyper-reality. I wondered why he was not interested in having a real debate. Perhaps it was a matter of his sense of table manners. Perhaps it had to do with his health. He died about a year later. But as I recall our discussion now, it is clear that we met each other representing the two sides of the definition of the situation and that the debate I wanted to have had no resolution. It is not a matter of debate but of judgment and action.

Living as if we are free requires confronting fictoids resolutely. Form matters.

After a couple of centuries of errors, today we know that there is greater genetic variation within races than across them. Racial groups differ in more or less 6 percent of their genes, which means that ninety four percent of variation occurs within conventional racial categories. Race is thus a construct without genetic basis. To be sure, it is not a biological fact, the American Anthropological Association says, but “a social mechanism invented during the 18th century” in part to justify the European colonial expansion. The notion that there are human subspecies stems primarily from colonial ideologies, particularly from the idea that nature, and thus God, ordained a hierarchy of races, a belief that justified slavery and underpinned the laws and the logic that governed colonial economies.

Consider the notion that there is a “white race,” which is generally defined in the U.S. as “descent from any of the original peoples of Europe,” as census folk say. The idea that a white race naturally stems from any European roots is very recent. Bear in mind that the Romans, the Greeks, the Gauls, the Franks, etc., never thought of themselves as “white,” as sharing the same racial boat by virtue of being “Europeans.” Julius Caesar could never think of himself as white. A direct descendant from Aphrodite, he was, instead, of the race of the gods. To find folks who believe that European ancestry, broadly conceived, endows them with a race, we have to go all the way to the 20^th century. We have to picture a time when the children and grandchildren of European immigrants to the U.S. melted into a common culture and eventually into a common “white race.”

This happened by the middle of the 20^th century. In 1922, Jim Rollings, a black man from Alabama, was dragged to a court accused of the crime of miscegenation, of having had very consensual sex with a white woman, one Edith Labue. Luckily for the defendant, the woman in question was Italian. As soon as the judge discovered that important piece of information, he swiftly dismissed the case, reasoning that the fact she was Sicilian “can in no sense be taken as conclusive that she was therefore a white woman.”  Italians, many people thought, were “Mediterraneans,” not really white. Only eventually, in various ways and degrees, did Italians acquire an Americanized racial identity.  The same has happened to Slavs, Irish, “Hebrews” and other so-called “darker European races,” whose whiteness was born in this American context.  To be sure, even at the beginning of the 20^th century, the facts of whiteness were so confused and confusing that U.S. courts also ruled East-Indians, Arabs and Syrians white. At the end of the 19^th century, the same courts established that Mexicans were likewise white; “white by law,” as race theorist Ian Lopez tells us.

About 40,000 years ago, there were various human subspecies, various races, properly speaking. They sometimes fought for scarce resources, sometimes cooperated, and even mated. Homosapiens, we, were one of them. We were genetically similar to other sapiens and different, say, from the Neantherthals, who shared genetic and biological traits, including their literally low brows, with others in the same subspecies. But these other races disappeared. Neanderthals apparently had an apocalyptic end, as they were killed off, it seems, by volcanic activity in Europe and attendant climatic changes. For better or for worse, we were the only ones who managed to survive and eventually conquered the world. We came from Africa, and as we moved north, the sun lessened in intensity, and we adapted. Depending on the latitude at which we settled, our skin became lighter, primarily to absorb vitamin D. Those who remained in areas with more sun and more ultraviolet radiation retained darker pigmentations to prevent skin cancer, damage to sweat glands, ultraviolet photolysis of folate, etc. But when these adaptive traits occurred, our genetic code was nearly complete, and these genetic alterations added only an infinitesimally small portion to it, not enough to separate us into latitude-based, color-coded subspecies.

These ideas are not new. Some people still disagree with them, but in general they have become well accepted at least since the late nineties, particularly among anthropologists. Yet, old as these ideas are, it is worth recalling because they highlight an important aspect of political life. They help us see that we are capable of creating alternative realities, hyper-realities that can be irrational, even odious, and which can nevertheless pass off as reality itself. The fact that race is a myth does not make it less real. On the contrary, race is one of the most palpable and stark realities of modernity; one that has become attached to individuals as well as to countries and continents. Such ideology has become real because it has managed to enter into the texture of life itself, often becoming vivified and enacted by people who hold racial identities. Racial ideologies tend to become tied not only to ideas and identities, but also to such things as corporeal rhythms, gestures, linguistic schemata, visions of the self –the constellation of dispositions that make us who we are. Race is a reminder that fictions and fictoids can sometimes determine key aspects of our lives and of our futures, individually and collectively.

Yesterday, I opened my report on budget problems at my local community center. I showed that our local concerns were very much connected to global problems. Now I turn to how people took responsibility for the problems, or more accurately did not directly confront them, revealing a seamy side of politics as usual in America. The key figure is Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.

The supervisor was passionate about only one issue: the fact that there were inaccuracies on the unsigned flier announcing the meeting about proposed budget cuts of the Theodore D. Young Community Center. In Feiner’s response to the A&P closings in the primarily African American surrounding community and when it came to the budget of the center, he was the cool bureaucrat. He denounced the anonymous author of the flier, revealing real anger. On the defensive, he declared that the rumor that the center would close was absolutely not true. I was relieved. But when it came to details about the center’s budget, he was evasive, without passion, using clichés to deflect responsibility, stoking the anger of the community.

Feiner and the Town Board’s basic position: because of revenue short falls, the town was faced with a choice, there had to be either significant tax increases or program cuts to balance the budget. In order to rationally meet the challenge, the board was asking all the relevant commissioners to outline possible ways to cut programs. I am sure there was a target provided, but from the public discussion I didn’t catch it. The impact of proposed cuts would be weighed against their impact on programs by the board in the fall. Feiner emphasized that no program was being targeted and that the goal was to deliver lean and efficient good governance. Strikingly, he used procedure to evade answering any question about specific programs.

The seniors were particularly concerned about their group trips. The swim teams emphasized how important swimming was to them. A former director of the center reminded the board and the public that years ago she said that the building of a multi-million dollar multipurpose center for seniors, now completed, would ultimately lead to cuts at Theodore D. Young Community Center, threatening its existence. She resigned on this issue. Now the chickens apparently have come home to roost. A couple of women sitting next to me, told me that they go to both places, but there was little going on at the newer center. A local minister emphasized that the center is not a recreational facility, as it was called by town officials, but a community center, providing vital services for a community with pressing needs.

Feiner’s answer to all questions: no cuts have yet been made. All cuts would be proposed by the administrators of the town programs. All proposals would be appraised in the fall. The town board would decide then what combination of cuts and taxes would be passed, so it is silly to protest now. When concerns were heatedly expressed, it seemed that the board heard but did not listen. No commitments were made. No special appreciation of the community center was expressed. No bottom line, no guiding principles concerning the method of appraisal were revealed.

While it was good to see public officials meeting with the public about pressing issues, it was jarring to note that there was little or no give and take. Gestures were exchanged, but the words of the officials and the public expressed two competing positions that didn’t affect each other. There was no interaction between those who raised the issue of tough fiscal choices that have to be made and those who expressed pressing needs that had to be respected and taken into account, particularly as they were manifestations of long festering problems in the community and in American society at large, i.e. racism. Individual prejudice was not apparent, but the circumstances surrounding the proposed budget cuts and the closing of the A&P, both locally and nationally, appeared as a case study of institutionalized racism. Business as usual, political and economic, have a disproportionate impact on the African American community in Westchester County, without evil intent.

The public meeting concerning the budget cuts at the community center was a microcosm of a major crisis in our times. There was conflict here of a standard sort on the question of what goes into good governance, what are the responsibilities of government and how a community’s concerns should be discussed and addressed. The public officials appeared to give the impression that they were responding to the community, but when questioned no one took responsibility. There was a specific tragic dimension to this all. It is happening because there is now an irrational macroeconomic policy being pursued, cutting government budgets and programs in hard times when these programs are most needed for sound economic and social policy reasons, revealed in my home town. And there was the enduring racial dimension. Business as usual has a racist accent at the Theodore D. Young Community Center, and beyond.

Recently, I went to a meeting concerning the budget of the Theodore D. Young Community Center. It revealed the tragedy of the cult of fiscal austerity during a prolonged economic downturn and high unemployment.

The Center is a special place for me. I swim there three or four times a week. I chat with my friends, most of whom I came to know during Barack Obama’s campaign to be President. The staff of the center and the community they serve are primarily African American, although there is a diverse cliental. I was the white guy who first canvassed the place for Obama, when most people at the center were still skeptical. For me, it’s a happy place, where I satisfy my exercise addiction, and where I can see the America that I imagine is emergent, multi-racial, multi-cultural, where people of different classes pursue happiness together, from the kids who go to after school programs and summer day camp to the senior citizens playing bingo, to teens roller skating and playing basketball, to the members of the Asian culture club, to the swimmers such as myself. It’s my American dream come true. Of course, as with all dreams, American and otherwise, there are disrupting realities that often force us to wake up. Such was the case with the budget meeting. I present my reflections on the meeting in two posts. First, this afternoon, I reflect on the context as I approached the meeting and as it opened. Tomorrow, I will report on the discussion about the community center, and its implications. I went to the meeting concerned. I left dismayed.

I read a flier announcing the event urging attendance. It warned of program cuts, highlighting many of the most popular, including the pool. Rumors were flying that the center was slated to be closed, which weren’t true. But in the age of government deficits and fiscal austerity, cuts sadly and irrationally seem inevitable.

I say irrationally because I know that this is not the time for spending cuts, despite the cutting frenzy in Washington D.C. and across the nation. It is broadly understood by a wide array of economists that public spending should not decrease in the aftermath of a severe financial crisis and deep recession, with persistently high unemployment. Conservatives might advocate tax cuts and increasing the money supply, while liberals prefer public spending, as remedies for recessions, but cutting spending during a recession or at a time of prolonged high rates of unemployment makes no sense. It only makes economic recovery more difficult. Further, as a sociologist, I know that this is the time when spending cuts are most likely to negatively affect the most vulnerable. This was the broad social and political economic background of the question and answer session at the Community center.

All the interested parties were present, staff and users of the center. We all worried that a beloved community center was going to be weakened, if not destroyed.

Concerned shopper in front of the A & P slated to close © Joe Laresse | The Journal News

As if to underscore the broader economic realities and injustices, the meeting started with a discussion about the closing of local A&P and Pathmark stores near the Center. Of the thirty two stores in the north east it is closing under bankruptcy protection, the branches that serve the primarily African American community of Fairview are being closed. The Town Supervisor, Paul Feiner, started the discussion by speaking to the issue. He promised shuttle buses for those without cars to a nearby A&P, a much smaller store, in an affluent, primarily white, part of town.

This clearly was not Feiner’s, or the Town Board’s, fault. Yet, I was struck by the narrowness of their response. This is actually a major scandal. African American communities have historically not had easy access to quality food stores. A problem solved by the market in good times, a good clean efficient supermarket near public housing and in a primarily African American community, was being unsolved by the market in hard times. I would like to know for the public record why the two stores that serve a significant African American community in Westchester are the ones being closed. I would like my town supervisor to press the issue: to call a news conference, to publicly ask our Congresswoman, Nita Lowey, and Senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, to get involved, to wonder how this might be related to the Michelle Obama’s campaign for improved nutrition, especially for the disadvantaged. Feiner was pursuing the proper policy, helping the community adapt to a very unfortunate development, but he wasn’t being a leader.

This was especially evident when we turned to the primary issue on the agenda, the community center’s budget, which I will turn to tomorrow morning.

It was in his “Race Speech,” delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, that Barack Obama addressed the most serious challenge of his run for the Presidency. In Philadelphia tactics and overall political vision were brought together. The vision was used to serve a pressing necessity.

The situation was grave. The project of his campaign was being challenged by the politics of race, which was perhaps inevitable given the deep legacies of slavery and racism in America. The immediate controversy was a video compiled from sermons given by his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright seemed to embody black resentment and anger. If this was Obama’s minister, how could whites be sure that Wright did not say what Obama thought? Why did he stay in Wright’s church? Who is Barack Obama really? In order to have a chance to win the primaries, let alone the general election, Obama had to address such questions. Obama’s campaign advisors counseled a tactical response. Obama overruled their advice and addressed the issue of race head on, choosing to continue telling his story and make explicit that he was proposing, to expand the promise of the American Dream by addressing the legacies of the American dilemma. From the standard partisan point of view, this was dangerous. There was the very real danger that Obama could become identified as a symbolic black candidate.

The setting was formal. He spoke in Philadelphia, across the street from Constitution Hall, from a podium, flanked by 8 American flags. His tone was somber. His immediate audience was subdued. This was far from a campaign rally, far from a speech to a nominating convention. He opened with a reflection upon the promise and limitations of the constitution and the history of racism and anti-racism in America. Slavery is enshrined in the Constitution, but so is its critique. He pointed to the problem and identified his political project with the ongoing solution:

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 our 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.

And he identified the struggle with his personal story, linking his story with the broad appeal of the American dream:

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.

With this in mind, he addressed the then recent controversies surrounding  Wright, distancing himself from hateful words, identifying with African American experience. He expressed his ambivalence about Wright and about the complexities of white and black prejudices and sensitivities. He received his first applause fifteen minutes into his speech. If we don’t confront the legacies of racism and suspicion, we won’t address the pressing problems of our day. “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.”

He compared and empathized with the anger and concerns of blacks and whites, who have in common that their dreams are slipping away. He drew upon his bi-racial experiences to show how closely he feels the pains of whites and blacks as they have confronted each other, often without good reasons. Whites have viewed opportunity as a zero sum game, therefore, turning against busing and affirmative action. The mistake of Wright is that he spoke of American society as if it were static. He does not appreciate the change, represented by Obama candidacy. America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. The challenge is to be cognizant of how race builds resentments, but also to overcome them and address the real problems. In this speech, Obama most clearly formulated his as a project of reinventing a political culture in order to address pressing political problems.

At first the power of the speech was so overwhelming that most called it what it was: the most extraordinary speech given by a Presidential candidate, and now by a man who has become President, on the central problem in American political culture. But this deep meaning of his speech was soon lost. The commentary came to focus on whether he had successfully defused the Wright issue. The most cynical responses were those that denounced his equation of his good white grandmother with his hate filled preacher. Still it was understood as a turning point. He spoke about race in a way that reasonable people recognized was extraordinary. He was able to say things that have not been “say-able.” He turned his lowest point in the campaign to his great advantage. This was the substantive and performative highpoint of Obama’s candidacy.