The thing that most struck me about Barack Obama's "major speech" on race yesterday was its frank acknowledgment that there are two conversations going on about race: one public, one private.  The reason the speech is largely being portrayed as courageous is that it sought in part to "out" those grievances people have been nursing in their closed communities, and give them a public airing.

The topic of race aside, the existence of separate public and a private conversations is not really the problem, it is a necessary condition of living in society, and truth told, one of its small mercies.  It exists in every realm of society and accounts for our sense of trust and intimacy in private relationships, and respect and esteem in public ones.  Mastery of these separate languages goes by the name of discretion.  It sometimes manifests as tact. 

The recognition that the appropriateness of certain behaviors is based on context is the soul of socialization, and as oppressive as restrictions on our every whim may seem to us in moments of abstract reverie, just think of how you would feel if masturbation were perfectly acceptable on the T.  Look around.  There are plenty of good reasons for separate public and private realms.

And it is rightly ingrained in us from a very early age — with greater and lesser degrees of success, of course.  Which is why it constitutes the lion's share of embarrassing tales people tell about their children. You know: "My three year old yelled out in a restaurant, 'Mommy, I tooted!'" Which is essentially what Reverend Wright did.   Over and over again, with glorious abandon.  Leaving Obama to explain to the other patrons in the bistro that in his house that's how they pass gas.  Hey, we all toot on occasion.  It happens.  Let's move on.  Together.  The future awaits. 

But placating offended others in public when your child does something you'd share a light-hearted laugh about at home is not something most parents relish, and explaining his pastor's behavior was something Obama obviously did only reluctantly, forced by widely circulating video of Wright pulpiteering in a manner Obama admits those unfamiliar with the idiom of African-American churches might find strident.  The "dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting," Obama allowed, "may seem jarring to the untrained ear."

Obama courageously declined to practice the politics of repudiation, refusing to apologize for Wright's wrongs, instead using the preacher's repeated gaffes as an opportunity for a teachable moment.  The speech was refreshingly frank not only about the difference between public and private discourse, but on the topic of the particular discourse in question — race — which, Obama recognized, many members of one of the races involved would rather not talk about at all. 

For African Americans, Obama observed, "questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways," but white Americans often don't view the world through the same lens. What Obama has attempted to do in part in this exceptional speech is convince white America that "what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people."  The Anger is real.  And not only real, but based in real grievances, in sins that, many believe, have yet to be atoned for.

This is precisely the point where the discourse on race gets dicy.  Many white Americans simply don't feel the responsibility for racial injustices as intimately as those injustices are felt by victims of them. What is largely viewed as a sin of commission by one camp is viewed as a sin of omission by the other.  Which is partly the source of your stalemate.

But many we might expect to feel the racial resentment Obama equates to the anger of African-Americans, don't reach for a racial explanation at the slightest sign of trouble, either.  White working class resentment towards blacks, where it exists, often doesn't extend beyond explicit encounters with blacks, not that that isn't enough.  But the point is, race is seldom a topic in most white churches, or even around the dinner table in white working class homes. 

This is a kind of passive indifference, which Obama seems to claim is as powerful as the resentment that comes when the problem of race rears its head in a way it can't be ignored.  Thus, the most powerful exhortation of the speech is, again, for white Americans to acknowledge that "what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people." He recommends the Golden Rule as a good starting point.

But it cuts to the core of the problem for Candidate Obama.  African-Americans have little choice but to view their experience through the lens of race, but white Americans see race mainly when confronted with it forcibly.  And while middle class white liberals and progressives will welcome the opportunity to display their solidarity with those on the receiving end of institutional racism, the white working class will feel like they're having their noses rubbed in it.

Whether the speech was brave or foolhardy we'll soon find out.  It's always a gamble challenging the conventional wisdom about what can and cannot be expressed in mixed company, and we'll soon know if Obama's paid off.  It will either be his "I Have A Dream" or his "Dean Scream."