“I want to focus on our future,” President Barack Obama said toward the beginning of his final State of the Union address in the House Chamber and to the nation Tuesday evening.
But as we have learned from great thinkers, there is no way you can talk about the future without revisiting the past, and for Black Americans parsing each line of his hour-long speech, the past was particularly evocative.
When Obama discussed the nation’s scientific heritage, it was rewarding to hear a Black American mentioned among some of the most respected innovators in the “spirit of discovery,” all part of our DNA.
“We’re Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver,” he said. “We’re Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson and Sally Ride. We’re every immigrant and entrepreneur from Boston to Austin to Silicon Valley, racing to shape a better world. And over the past seven years, we’ve nurtured that spirit.” Carver’s name may not resonate for the younger generation, so check him out.
The not so distant past was also given a poignant turn when the president recalled the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the end of a well-measured address that resonated with his concern about fixing the nation’s tattered politics.
“Our brand of democracy is hard,” the president said. “But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen—inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far. Voices that help us see ourselves not first and foremost as Black and white or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native born; not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed. Voices Dr. King believed would have the final word—voices of unarmed truth and unconditional love.”
He returned to King’s phrase again without adding the full context of what the great man had to say during his acceptance speech in 1964 upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction,” King said. “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Some of the current evil the president assailed was veiled, but there was no need to read between the lines to know exactly who the targets were. It’s simply amazing that after eight years in office, given all the opposition, setbacks, vituperative denials and false accusations he has endured, he remains unfazed. Being the Jackie Robinson in the apex of American politics has not been a pleasant experience, but he has managed, like Robinson, to transcend the assaults, the trifling obstinacy of the Republicans and the Tea Party fanatics who have leveled every indecent complaint in their arsenal.
Notwithstanding the slings and arrows of intemperate adversaries, Obama talked about fixing up the political fissure that continues to trouble the nation, and even more so during this hotly contested political season. He was unsparing in his warnings to ISIL or ISIS: “If you doubt America’s commitment—or mine—to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year, or the perpetrator of the Benghazi attacks, who sits in a prison cell. When you come after Americans, we go after you. It may take time, but we have long memories, and our reach has no limit.”
Obama said he saw nothing but hope and optimism on the horizon after pointing out the four basic issues during his speech—that the ordinary citizen would have a fair shot in the economy, that we would not lose our perspective on the climate change and its dangers, that the nation would remain secure and not be summoned to be the “world police” and that we take a meaningful step in fixing our politics.
If he didn’t see a need to say more about the dysfunctional criminal justice system, pervasive gun violence, domestic terrorism and the global menace of North Korea and Iran, he did put forth his vision of progress and prosperity. That hope was envisioned, he said, in the work of ordinary Americans during their jobs without attention or praise. Those “voices” of peace and harmony were everywhere. “You’re the reason why I have such incredible confidence in our future,” Obama said, citing the American spirit and its people. “Because I see your quiet, sturdy citizenship all the time.”
He was seeing in the American people some of the things many of us wished they had seen in him.
