For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”

I missed Obama’s speech on race and much of the fallout among what the Reverend Jeremiah Wright had to say. I was in Northern Ireland, with little access to the news. But I heard about the speech one night in Ballintoy, on the north coast of Ireland, in the kitchen as our team was making dinner. My teammate from Northern Ireland and I were in the kitchen, pulling the baked potatoes out of the oven, and he turned to me and said that Obama had made a major speech about the racial problem in America. And he started asking questions. And I responded and asked questions to him.

My friend is a Protestant who grew up in Northern Ireland, and I’m a white guy who grew up in the American South. I went to a mostly-white school in a mostly-white part of Atlanta, and he didn’t run into too many Catholics growing up. I went to university in the American South–a fairly diverse university that had its share of racial discord, too. My teammate went to Oxford–not exactly the most socioeconomically diverse place in the world.

But after the Obama speech, we talked about how we both had dealt with issues of race and ethnicity–comments our friends made, stereotypes our cultures held, and times that we ourselves said or thought things based off these stereotypes that we probably wished we hadn’t. I talked about highly-publicized racial incidents at Virginia; he talked about his summer living in Chicago, and how classism in the UK seemed much more deeply rooted than in America, even though the racial problems weren’t highly charged and in the press every day. And then he stopped and said, “You know, we never talk about these things this way.”

And I thought to my experiences. And my experience with American public life. And, you know, we never talk about these things this way. When we talk about race, it’s either as a spectacle–the OJ Trial, Rodney King, Tawana Brawley–or as a scapegoat. Some people feel that affirmative action takes jobs away from better qualified white people, and others exploit discrimination and oppression for personal gain. We even see it in politics–The “Reagan Revolution” telling fictionalized stories of welfare queens driving around Cadillacs, putting poor African-Americans into an unfair box that’s difficult to get out of, or African-American politicians using an “us-vs.-them” mentality, exploiting race to mobilize people to the ballot box. Both sides have been unfair. I’ve been unfair sometimes myself.

But in my experience–whenever there have been racial incidents growing up, in high school, or at university–talking about it makes things a little bit better. We fear the unknown and antagonize “the other,” and with America’s history, it’s all too easy to turn race into a very easy “other” to pick on. The national dialogue focuses on race in a very meaningful way. Why, if I did not own slaves, am I responsible for the sins of the past? Why, when I’m in an English class and I’m a black person, am I expected to speak for my entire race when we’re reading William Faulkner? These are deep and powerful questions.

Obama’s speech addressed them honestly and directly. I have never seen a speech like it in my lifetime. Several commentators are seizing on one or two lines and parsing them apart, but most are talking about the substance and nuance of the speech–which is important.

Jeremiah Wright said some inexcusable things. But the (white) pastor of my (mostly-white) church in Atlanta said to me in December that Obama “comes from a great church, with a great pastor, that is committed to preaching the gospel.” I have also said some things in my life that I would not want taken out of context and played on repeat on YouTube and CNN. I bet that you have, too. Race and stereotyping are ugly things, and sometimes our emotions–justified or not–get the better of us. Obama’s speech is an attempt for us to forgive each other a little bit more and move forward–which is what the country needs to do.

And Mike Huckabee, who, along with Obama, has been consistently the most honest and genuine candidate (whether or not you agree with him) in this race, said, “And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.”

People ask me in the UK all the time, “Is your country ready to elect a black man?” I always say, “Yes, yes we are.” I hope this is the case. We don’t have to elect Obama to be a progressive country, and there are plenty of legitimate reasons to vote against him–you might disagree with his policies or his lack of experience. But for much of this campaign, the fact that Obama is black has mattered very little to voters in Iowa, which I saw, and Wisconsin and Missouri and Connecticut and…and hopefully in the general election, this will keep going.

I was once asked the following question: if I were an English teacher, I would keep from teaching Huckleberry Finn because it has the N-word in it. I said that I wouldn’t, because fear of the word means fear of the problem of race, and if we don’t directly address it, we continue to label other races as “the other,” perpetuating stereotypes and sometimes harmful behavior on both sides. Obama gave a speech that wasn’t politically prudent, but didn’t fear the problem and has encouraged all of us not to fear it, either.

Race in America and religion in Northern Ireland are ugly things, but Obama’s example led to a two-and-a-half hour honest discussion in a kitchen on the Irish coast that, if it’s happening across America, is a great thing. We can let soundbites and clips slow us down, or we can say, “Not this time.”

ERB