Say What You Really Mean

Finally! Taking cues from Obama’s ‘Race Speech,’ more of us ought to call it like we see it.

Last week while many of you were celebrating spring break in lands of sand and sun, I, like many others, found myself hibernating in Olin Library, plugging away at a Senior honors thesis that still refuses to cohere. It wasn’t an entirely useless time, though. I made friends with a monolingual (it wasn’t English) Ithaca High School girl who hiked up the hill to do her AP Chem homework; I played a few hundred games of Go online; I applied to and was rejected from a few jobs; and, I spent much of my time reading up on election news, looking at speeches, and reading press releases.

On Tuesday, Barack Obama gave what’s being called his “Race Speech,” to address concerns that he hadn’t appropriately distanced himself from the outlandish (but overblown) comments made by his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The speech was, in my opinion, as well done as it was overdue. Rather than ignore the boiling issue of race in his campaign, waiting for it to tire itself out, as it certainly would have when something equally blown out of proportion reared its ugly head, Obama decided to confront his critics head on. As many people, no doubt, spent this week as far away from the political and academic as possible, I cannot stress enough how important it is that everyone (regardless of political alignment) find fifteen minutes to read the speech online. In short, Barack Obama, on Tuesday, was as elegant as he was complex, as mature as he was necessary.

And the “necessity” of his speech is what gave me chills. My first words upon finishing it were not “thank God” or an “oh good,” but a long awaited, exhausted sigh: “finally.”

What made the speech so refreshingly necessary, so “finally,” was not just its subject matter. New York Times columnist Frank Rich expressed my exact sentiments on the talk: “What impressed me most was not Mr. Obama’s rhetorical elegance or his nuanced view of both America’s undeniable racial divide and equally undeniable racial progress. The real novelty was to find a politician who didn’t talk down to his audience but instead trusted it to listen to complete, paragraph-long thoughts that couldn’t be reduced to sound bites.”

I loved Obama’s speech, not only because I agreed with what he said but because the man turned to the television cameras and treated me like an adult.

What may be remembered as the Great YouTube Campaign of 2008 has, to this point, been exceptionally patronizing, on all three remaining fronts. John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have inundated us with shallow and evasive phrasing, hollow rallying cries (Yes we can what?) and idiotic sloganeering that insults our intelligence. Straight Talk Express? It sounds like an expedient phone sex company.

There’s a reason suffrage begins, in this country, at age eighteen. Embedded in our cultural psyche is the idea that when an American comes of age they should be able to pick political leaders with a rationally decided, carefully weighed vote. When we reduce our elections to unanalyzed two minute clips and bumper stickers, how can we expect voters to make a fully informed choices? What we need are candidates, who, like Obama did last week, speak to us on a level that inspires thought, not a calculated emotional response.

This is not an endorsement of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, only a suggestion that the other candidates, and, frankly, all of us, need to stop worrying about our images and finally say what we mean.

At the moment, for instance, Hillary Clinton has largely avoided the question of her husband’s infidelities a decade ago. For some reason, CNN decided this week, it was necessary to publish a new report with an exact timetable of Hillary’s whereabouts during the moments in 1996 that Monica Lewinsky was in the Oval Office. The news media has made the sexist evaluation that we need to understand Hillary’s marriage to judge her leadership abilities. Of course, the extent to which Hillary did or did not dote upon her husband has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the world in 2008. Like Obama finally pointing to the camera and saying, candidly, that he cannot condemn his minister for having racist beliefs, what I want (what I really, really want) is Hillary to hold a press conference of her own, point her finger at the camera and say of her marriage: “It’s none of your goddamn business.”

Once we get through the crap that muddles our already foggy perception of the world, this election, and our lives, we can get down to moving in productive directions. There’s no reason to put up with being bullied because of a fear that verbal response will make matters worse. The correct, adult, course of action is to confront challenge and imbecility. The life-fulfilling decision is not to wait until issues tide over, but to stick up for yourself. A good person doesn’t let himself become a victim.

So say what you mean. You didn’t want to see the Vagina Monologues? Clarify that it wasn’t because you hate women — it was because you felt bullied into seeing it by people who confuse inaction for apathy. You don’t want to go to that sketchy house in Collegetown that’s always filled with drunk violence? State, loudly, that weekends are too short to be lived in fear of a brawl. Do you feel pressured by some online stalker? Abused by the expected stereotypes of your Greek house? Feel unfairly reduced by a stranger’s judging glance? Confront the issue head on.

If we live our lives by getting walked on, if we subsist from day to day hoping that the embarrassing and uncomfortable will pass us by, we will have suffered too many miserable days. Think about the things people say and do that you don’t want to endure anymore. Say something to them. Say what you really mean.

Noah Hy Brozinsky is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at nbrozinsky@cornellsun.com [1]. Walk Emily Home appears alternate Wednesdays.