Obama’s March on Washington speech will be one of the most important of his presidency
ANALYSIS - The address President Obama delivers later this month at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington could be one of the most important of his presidency, as it ties together two subjects that have defined his tenure in office, the economy and race...
The address President Obama delivers later this month at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington could be one of the most important of his presidency, as it ties together two subjects that have defined his tenure in office; the economy and race.
The president himself, in an recent interview with the New York Times, emphasized that the march 50 years ago was not solely not about racial justice, but about improving the economic conditions of Americans of all races.
“Obviously, after the Trayvon Martin case, a lot of people have been thinking about race, but I always remind people — and, in fact, I have a copy of the original program in my office, framed — that that was a march for jobs and justice; that there was a massive economic component to that,” he told the Times. “When you think about the coalition that brought about civil rights, it wasn’t just folks who believed in racial equality; it was people who believed in working folks having a fair shot.”
But the racial aspects of the march, known by many for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, are unmistakable. The rise of Obama is in part a fulfillment of King’s goals. The president himself is an heir to King’s legacy. Like Obama’s comments in the wake of the George Zimmerman trial, his remarks on the anniversary of the March on Washington will likely resound in the African-American community more than any other group.
What Obama has hinted at in the past, and could make more explicit in this speech, is that racial justice, to him, is very closely linked with economic progress. He told the Times last month he worried because of the increasing inequality in the U.S. that “racial tensions may get worse, because people will feel as if they’ve got to compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot.” He emphasized his concerns about the plight of black men in his remarks from the White House briefing room after the Zimmerman ruling.
As the president is no doubt aware, the racial progress illustrated by his election stands in marked contrast to the continued economic challenges for millions of African-Americans. The black jobless rate, as it has been for decades, remains almost double that of whites and has been above 10 percent for most of Obama’s presidency. (It is currently 12.6 percent.) The recession hit minorities harder than whites; from 2004 to 2010, whites lost 1 percent of their wealth, while blacks lost 23 percent and Hispanics lost 25 percent, according to the Urban Institute. About a quarter of blacks and Hispanics live in poverty, compared to less than 12 percent of whites and Asians.
This speech gives the president the opportunity to tie his broader economic agenda, which he has been campaigning for across the country the last several weeks, with the specific racial disparities that exist in America.
But this is unlikely to be just an economic speech. The America that King hoped for in 1963, and that Obama spoke of in his famous 2004 Democratic National Convention address, one not divided by race, is far from reality. American voters remain divided by race. Obama won in 2012 despite finishing with less than 40 percent of white vote as four of every five non-white voters backed him in a campaign that was marked by intense debates over voting rules and practices with obvious racial undertones. Polls showed the Zimmerman verdict similarly polarized Americans along racial lines.
Obama has given very little hint about how the first black president sees race in America, which made his comments last month about Martin so compelling. His speech on August 28 should give us a closer glimpse of his views after serving as president for five years.
