Sen. Barak Obama in Philadelphia, PA

Today Sen Obama delivered a major address on race in America. A fine peice of work that is reprinted in total at salon.com. I reprint one piece here:

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds -- by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

All too often white folks like to walk away from race as something that is not our problem, certainly not a problem created by us, and something firmly in the past that healthy people have to "get over." Kudos for reminding us that "the past isn't buried, in fact it is not even in the past."