Tick, tock. Tamir Rice has 2 seconds before an officer, previously deemed unfit for duty, empties his clip into the 12-year old's body. Like he's living out a Grand Theft Auto fantasy.
Tick, tock. The seconds pass as Eric Garner slowly loses consciousness forever due to an illegal chokehold by a NYPD officer.
Tick, tock, Aiyana Jones is killed in the comfort of her own home.
Tick...........tock.
The lingering question becomes, what do we tell the children when they witness such violence? What do we tell them when someone their age has their life taken on the premise of being the "wrong" skin color? What do we tell them when black people die despite doing their utmost to be respectable? What do we tell them when they can have their life taken by simply fitting the description of a suspect just because they are black? Not because they actually fit the description of who police are looking for.
In a broader but direct sense, President Obama attempted to answer these questions. But before we can get to Obama's speech, we have to understand a fundamental truth about time. With time, we can never describe "right now" because through the attempt of trying to describe "right now", the moment has already passed. Tick, tock. It's too late. And for so many black lives, a single tick and a tock meant their lives were no more and did not matter.
Even if we are unable to fully describe the "right now", we always have the opportunity to live within it. Be mindful of it. Cherish it, and make it our own. No matter how you feel about President Obama, you would be a fool not to recognize the man understands one key aspect between the bridge of time & moments. Timing.
What better time to remind America of its racist past. What better time to bring Ferguson into the national sphere of topics. What better time to inject a mention of the Department of Justice report on Ferguson. What better time to use reflection as a vehicle for hope. What better time to ask America to be accountable to itself. What better time to remind America to pursue the desire to be free, instead of the desire to be white.
Obama was well aware of the opportunity and he delivered in a way which will be remembered for many generations.
"In one afternoon fifty years ago, so much of our turbulent history – the stain of slavery and anguish of civil war; the yoke of segregation and tyranny of Jim Crow; the death of four little girls in Birmingham, and the dream of a Baptist preacher – met on this bridge.
It was not a clash of armies, but a clash of wills; a contest to determine the meaning of America."
President Obama sets up his speech brilliantly by taking us back to the moment John Lewis decided to get up and walk on that eerie morning in Selma. Painting the scene so we could put ourselves in the shoes of Lewis and so many others who took a courageous step for justice.
A constant theme present in Obama's speech is this underlying faith in America. There are different moments where Obama shows us his calm side and his more forthright side. Whenever it came to putting hope or faith in America, you could see Obama's body language change. A level of conviction beyond mere belief but a knowledge which conveys, as long as we take a step of faith, we shall overcome.
Because it was through the step of faith of those who marched in Selma, that America's consciousness was shaken. A step of faith America could neither forget or try to ignore.
"They marched as Americans who had endured hundreds of years of brutal violence, and countless daily indignities - but they didn't seek special treatment, just the equal treatment promised to them almost a century before."
Here exists a slight irony Obama uses by saying "promised". If we go back to when America was founded, we have to remember documents like the Constitution were not written with black people's humanity in mind as slavery showed us. Yet, it was these ideals which so many of our people could grab onto for hope. A hope that one day, we may in fact be given equal status by a country which never cared about us in the first place.
So if there was such a promise, we knew it was empty. It more or less has always been. That's why the #BlackLivesMatter movement exists. Because we fight to hold America to that "promise".
If there's one heavy cookie crumb to take from Obama's speech, it's the long overdue reverence for Selma. Words and phrases which shall not be bound by time and space itself.
Selma is not some outlier in the American experience. That’s why it’s not a museum or static monument to behold from a distance. It is instead the manifestation of a creed written into our founding documents:
“We the People…in order to form a more perfect union.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
These are not just words. They are a living thing, a call to action, a roadmap for citizenship and an insistence in the capacity of free men and women to shape our own destiny.
What Obama does here is remind American citizens the power we actually have. Even though we live in a country littered with elements of a plutocracy, Obama still believes in the American experiment of democracy, and reminds us we have to keep up the fight to keep the democracy experiment running. No one else will do it for us.
Obama goes onto banish the myth that racial bias and discrimination are immutable. That race is essentially inherent to us. As the great Ta-Nehisi Coates intimated, race came out of racism, and not the other way around. Thus, racism made black people into a race, while we constantly have to remind our oppressors we are a people first. Racism became interested in us and through the vehicle of white supremacy, sought to divide, conquer, plunder, and vituperate us such that we would hate ourselves.
And while white supremacy combined with the visceral force of racism has succeeded in some measure in doing so, our people continually show the power to overcome. Obama extends this virtue beyond black people and to the various groups of American immigrants who have made the journey to this country in hope of a better life and opportunity for those who would follow behind their lead.
We’re the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free – Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. We are the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because they want their kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to be.
We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South. We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers’ rights.
We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent, and we’re the Tuskeegee Airmen, Navajo code-talkers, and Japanese-Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied.
What is so great about Obama's speech is within thirty minutes, he sought out to cover every fabric of American history and life as a recognition of the good, the bad, and the ugly as a challenge. A way to say, "If you want to truly love and cherish America, then you must recognize everything about it. No matter how good. No matter how bad"
He even went at lengths to talk about the gay community here in America.
"We are the gay Americans whose blood ran on the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge."
The important context here being considering the main focus of his speech was on Selma, to go out of your way to talk about a marginalized community outside of the black community speaks volumes of the man and how he views his country and how he views its citizens.
If anyone (yes you Mr. Giuliani), had any doubts about President Obama's love for his country, you can lay them at the feet of the president's speech. His love for America shines through in the hope and faith we will not only overcome, but we will reach the ideals the Founding Fathers put into our history so long ago.
He encapsulates this love so well in the following passage:
Because Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person.
Because the single most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” We The People. We Shall Overcome. Yes We Can. It is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.
Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished. But we are getting closer. Two hundred and thirty-nine years after this nation’s founding, our union is not yet perfect. But we are getting closer. Our job’s easier because somebody already got us through that first mile. Somebody already got us over that bridge. When it feels the road’s too hard, when the torch we’ve been passed feels too heavy, we will remember these early travelers, and draw strength from their example, and hold firmly the words of the prophet Isaiah:
“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.”
We honor those who walked so we could run. We must run so our children soar.
Because the single most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” We The People. We Shall Overcome. Yes We Can. It is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.
Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished. But we are getting closer. Two hundred and thirty-nine years after this nation’s founding, our union is not yet perfect. But we are getting closer. Our job’s easier because somebody already got us through that first mile. Somebody already got us over that bridge. When it feels the road’s too hard, when the torch we’ve been passed feels too heavy, we will remember these early travelers, and draw strength from their example, and hold firmly the words of the prophet Isaiah:
“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.”
We honor those who walked so we could run. We must run so our children soar.
"We must run so our children soar." Tell me Barack Hussein Obama doesn't love his country after reading that quote and I'll "mistake" you for a person who spreads propaganda as terror.
Obama's speech gave me hope among my cynicism and pessimism. He gave me hope we can win this fight. He gave me hope to believe America can come to a reckoning with it's racist past and understand the longing effects it has had on our people. But he also gave me the hope to look beyond myself and into a community of people who demonstrate exceptional love, support and guidance in a country which is still trying to figure out how to walk.
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