A rare moment to build on: Sen. Obama’s speech on race and what its means for Asians in America

ABC World News reported, “It may turn out to be the seminal speech of his presidential campaign.” The CBS Evening News called it the “most difficult… and important speech of his political career.” NBC Nightly News noted, Obama “gave the most expansive and most intensely personal speech on race he’s ever given.” Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart said, “To have [Obama’s speech] out there… in black and white for people to read for years to come… is a very important gift the Senator has given the country.” 

These glowing reviews of Senator Barack Obama’s speech on Race point out one thing that has eluded many, if not most, politicians in my lifetime – a clear perspective on race relations in America. I am still astonished by it. And I can’t help but feel privileged for having heard such an articulate, honest and inspiring political speech in my lifetime. Finally, I can relate to those who heard Martin Luther King deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech, or those who heard John F. Kennedy inspire both young and old to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  

As a first-generation Filipino American, Sen. Obama’s speech made me feel simultaneously content and yearning. Content that there are enlightened leaders in front of me; and yearning for an America that will finally look beyond race, class, gender, and other convenient divisions of people. The speech, in its intelligence, reflects the man: a brilliant, courageous, ‘once-in-a-generation’ leader who truly understands America, a simultaneously rare and common American for wanting a genuinely ‘perfect union’ and reinvigorating others to want the same, as well.  The speech reassures an immigrant like me that the future is even brighter, reminding us that “what we know …is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.” This message of hope and optimism not only dazzles the imagination but urges the idealism that may have been buried in all of us to bubble up again, to play a role once more in how we must choose to live our lives.  

My point – this speech that we are talking so much about, is, indeed, a defining moment for Senator Obama and his presidential candidacy; but, if we heard what it was saying, it is also a defining moment for all of us. It is a defining moment for Whites to confront their resentment, for Blacks to evaluate their anger, and most importantly, it is a defining moment for Asians, Latinos, and other minorities, too.  

For us Asians, particularly Filipino Americans (former nationals of the largest American colony in Southeast Asia and the Pacific), before us is an opportunity to engage each other in our own national dialogue about our shared American experience, and what our future holds in this country. We have an opportunity to understand and then move past our own nuanced feelings of bitterness and anger, if, for no other reason, than to establish a bolder, more forward-thinking path toward coexistence.  

I am not advocating that we do away with educating ourselves about the past; or that we stop uncovering details of our difficult history. What I am saying is for us to embrace the struggles of the pioneers before us so that we can appropriately honor their sacrifices, but that we do so with a perspective. We should remain, in a word, critical-thinkers.

Let us maintain a critical view of our American experience, but let us do so without being stuck, without being left with only an oppositional view of the world. The anger of the past cannot be mimicked in the present because things have changed and continue to clearly change for the better. By no means are things perfect, but they are better; and perfecting what is right is an opportunity we cannot afford to squander by focusing only on what is wrong.   

Note: This post was published in the March 21-27 edition of “Ang Peryodiko” — a Filipino American newspaper for Southern California.