I couldn't sleep the other night, so I dicked around on YouTube until I found myself re-watching Obama's "Race Speech." I noticed a few things I'd missed the first time around.

1. In this speech and throughout his campaign, Obama was speaking as an ambassador, as a black guy who, because of rhetorical skills and biography is uniquely able to explain the black experience to White America. He makes remarkable rhetorical concessions to do this--for example, he says that sentiments like those expressed by Reverend Wright "aren't always expressed in polite company." It's phrases like these that make old guard Civil Rights warriors like Jesse Jackson want to cut his nuts off. But it's also the kind of talk that makes even whites who disagree with his policies and are somewhat skittish about black politicians (but might not say so in polite company) perk up and listen. He's speaking to them calmly, with understanding, from the next seat at the table, and not from behind a barricade. And that's a kind of revolution.

2. The Civil Rights movement now exists primarily as a story parents tell their children. As they grow they internralize the movement from slavery to freedom. There is a shared history here. And although this is a specific history about a specific people who comprise 10 percent of the American population, it is still THE American story. It explains who we all are, where we all were, and where we are all going.

The key passage is from Dreams from my Father. Crucially, he paints himself as an outsider, like a visitor from outside the fold seeking reconciliation:

People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.

With this, he's speaking directly to me, and to the millions of white kids in this country who've grown up studying, loving, and living black music, literature, language and culture. He might have told us to step off, because we could never understand, or because our affection can seem affected or insincere or commercially-driven. But he lets us in with open arms. Damn right, we should all be stirred and thrilled when we learn about Harriet Tubman as children. Hell yes, Sam Cooke should give us chills when he hits the high notes. When the beautiful white woman kills the black boy on the train in Baraka's The Dutchman, she kills us too. While the Invisible Man's deepest worry is that "on the lower frequencies, I speak for you," Obama knows that he speaks for us, and that this is something to be celebrated.

3. Throughout the primary and general election campaigns, his enemies consistently went after him with one simple attack: Do you know who Obama is, really? Most sensible people understood this to be desperate dog-whistling, aimed at white voters who might be wary of the exotic, black candidate. And it certainly was that. But I think that there's also something more here, something that neither Clinton nor McCain had the inclination to fully explore. Reading the text of Obama's speech, with all its penetrating insight and understanding, still leaves you without the full impact of his delivery. Watching him, it's clear that he's not just a writer and political theorist; he's also an actor, who can deliver his lines with remarkably persuasive precision.

And there is something more than a little disconcerting about this. It creates a kind of tension in me as I watch him: it's clear, on the one hand, that he's utterly confident in both the objective truth of his analysis and the subjective truth of his experience. And yet, on the other hand, I can't help but be equally conscious of his performance. I can hear the calculation in his voice. I know that he knows exactly how to move me; I can see the connections before he makes them; I can anticipate the crescendos, and yet they hit me just as hard--even harder this time, the second time around. I'm frightened that he knows me so well.

I think this fear is the basis for an entire industry of anti-Obama fear-mongering. It's there in the faces of right-wing commentators when they dismiss Obama as a cynical politician, as a messiah for deluded masses who don't realize they're being conned by a particularly gifted actor. It was the basis for a particularly awesome recent Onion headline. It's a testament to Obama's skill, as well as to the supremely-fucked state of our country, that he was able to win despite this.

After all, what can be more frightening for white bigots than a black man who truly sees them for what they are?