This post is rare because I’m highlighting something from President Bush’s most recent speech that I actually agree with:
Within the Gulf region are some of the most beautiful and historic places in America. As all of us saw on television, there’s also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.
I expect that I may not agree with his administration’s strategy for addressing it, but at least it’s an acknowledgment of the problem.
4 Comments
wow!
I was just reading on This Modern World an interesting response to this. It feels a contrived (adversarial for the sake of it) but it’s still worth looking at. Here’s an excerpt:
“The poverty of African Americans, they believe, is part of an ugly historical legacy that, little by little, we’re extricating ourselves from (or, in a less noble frame, that “they” will extricate themselves from with a little hard work and responsibility). In his speech last night, Bush played on that opening, talking about “the history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America,” but not about current racism. In Bush’s formula, we are trying to overcome the effects of historical racism. Current racism either doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter.”
http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2005_09_11.html#002447
Ya, I got that feeling a bit too, but I’m trying not to be too cynical about this.
If you read the next few sentences, he definitely wants to take a traditional Regan-esque approach to the problem, but even though I disagree on the solution (and maybe even, as you point out, the extent of the acknowledgment - framing it in “history” without mentioning the present and continuing discrimination), I still think it’s a net positive step.
in seventh grade i discovered that racism still exists, when i went to public school. the funny thing is, i don’t blame the public school, i blame the christian one for white-washing the problem. i was taught that racism ended with the emancipation proclamation. they didn’t even mention the civil rights movement!