Though Hillary Clinton’s delivery of a speech in a broad southern dialect at an Alabama church was perhaps the most entertaining moment of last weekend’s political follies, Barack Obama delivered the best speech so far in the 2008 primaries. Kudos to whoever wrote it.
His remarks, delivered at a church in Selma, Alabama, circled around the central idea that he, the 45-year-old son of an African man and a white American woman, whose “blackness” has been questioned by black political leaders, is a modern “Joshua.” Senator Obama cited a letter he received from a well-known preacher that said, “if there’s some folks out there who are questioning whether or not you should run, just tell them to look at the story of Joshua, because you are part of the Joshua generation.”
In his own words, Obama continued:
I just want to talk a little about Moses and Aaron and Joshua, because we are in the presence today of a lot of Moseses. We are in the presence of giants whose shoulders we stand on, people who battled, not just on behalf of African Americans but on behalf of all America; that battled for America’s soul, that shed blood, that endured taunts and torment and in some cases gave the full measure of their devotion. . . .
I am here because somebody marched. I stand on the shoulders of giants. . . . I thank the Moses generation; but we’ve got to remember, now, that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn’t cross over the river to see the Promised Land. God told him your job is done. You’ll see it. You’ll be at the mountain top, and you can see what I’ve promised. What I’ve promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You will see what I have promised, but you won’t go there.
In one rhetorical swoop, Senator Obama defined a legitimate niche for himself as a black man who does not share the same history as most American blacks, but who has nonetheless been sent to lead them to a political Promised Land. His legitimacy, he suggests, comes from what he can do now, not from his past. Furthermore, he essentially dispatched the brokers of blackness—Al Sharpton and especially Jesse Jackson—who have questioned him, by complimenting them, giving them great thanks, and pointing out that their job is done.
Those Democratic politicians who have spent years cultivating the black political establishment, including Senators Clinton and Edwards, must be thinking very hard about where they fit into this biblical analogy.
