Obama offers the perfect response to the Confederate flag wavers

By Dana Milbank
July 17 at 11:49 AM

... Obama had been shy about race for much of his presidency, and when he did speak, as The Post’s Janell Ross noted this week, he would often “lecture black America about its behavior.” Now, she wrote, Obama may sound “something like the black president some white Americans across the political spectrum feared (or hoped for).”

I’m one of those white Americans who had hoped for it. It’s not Obama’s job to end racism, and he is probably in a no-win position on race (as illustrated by his “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” Martin remark) but I’m buoyed to have the president speaking as loudly as the haters.

In a June 23 podcast with comedian Marc Maron, he said ending racism is “not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public.” On Tuesday before the NAACP, he spoke of the “legacy of hundreds of years of slavery and segregation, and structural inequalities that compounded over generations.” In between, on June 26, came his eulogy in South Carolina—perhaps the best rhetoric of his presidency, but also a call for action over words. “Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race,” he said. “We don’t need more talk.”

... as Obama said this week, “If we keep taking steps toward a more perfect union, and close the gaps between who we are and who we want to be, America will move forward” ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-offers-the-perfect-response-to-the-confederate-flag-wavers/2015/07/17/a909f1f6-2c7e-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html