Obama in his Historic speech: "I have a Hope"

There are election speeches and then there are HISTORIC SPEECHES.  Speeches that come out from the heart and reach the heart.  Speeches that have a purpose and a vision.  Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” was one such speech.  These days such speeches are hard to come by.  We have been numbed – specially in the US – by idiotic speeches like the one on “Bring it on”.  Here is, finally, a landmark and historic speech.  I am not sure if Obama will win or not.  I do not care.  This fight is his, and MORE IMPORTANTLY, for the African Americans of this country to lose!  If he becomes the President, then many communities will change.  THAT will change a lot in this country.  If I could decide, then Obama should win just based on this speech.   It is a speech worth listening to full!

It is easy to come up to your own community and arouse them with cliches.  IT is quite another to talk straight and hard and “Hope” to make them realize.  In this speech Obama gives some really bitter and hard pills and yet gets standing ovation.  A sample:

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

Times are changing.  I hope they do.