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"     New York, N.Y.\u2014Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged voters to denounce the whisper campaign that for months has pushed the false rumor that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. There is also uneasiness about Obama among some people because his former church pastor has praised Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan...Obama has disavowed his pastor and left the church. The Muslim rumors have persisted for months. \u2013The Times, June 20th 2008.  Philadelphia, P.A.\u2014&amp;quot;I have already condemned, in roundest terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that caused such controversy. They professed a profoundly distorted view of this country\u2014a view that sees white racism as endemic.&amp;quot; \u2013Barack Obama, March 18th, 2008 This week, when I decided to run for President of the United States, I did so because, like our nations&amp;#039; founders, I had a dream. Mine came on a Tuesday night, after a meal of meat loaf and apple tart. In it, people of all colors hugged each other and gave each other money. A blue man wore a yarmulke, a red one wore a Sindhi cap, and a woman with a purple face was dressed as a clown. As she danced past me, the clown slipped me a five-dollar bill. I was thrilled and woke up sweaty. I glanced down at my fist: no five. However, after searching the sheets, I realized what had happened: the guy in the Sindhi cap stole it. The next morning I announced my candidacy. Furthermore, I announced my platform: that citizens of all colors should cooperate to make a more unified America. True, I am not a &amp;#039;traditional&amp;#039; candidate. I am a Catholic; I am a woman; I have dandruff; I am unmarried, and my &amp;#039;First Man,&amp;#039; if I had one, would be my brother. Nevertheless, my campaign has been a success so far. Why, then, do I address you today? Because my Priest, Father Bouvaire of Brooklyn, just made an offensive remark. And now, like several other presidential candidates this summer, I must divorce my church. Why, then, do I address you today? Because my priest, Father Bouvaire of Brooklyn, just made an offensive remark. And now, like several other presidential candidates this summer, I must divorce my church. Father Bouvaire said: In America, People of color are oppressed. I should emphasize that my priest and I are two different people. But I can understand why people would associate me with him. I&amp;#039;m part English; he speaks English. His favorite ice-cream flavor is vanilla; as is mine. We are both of color. But, we are not the same color. I am what is called &amp;quot;true pink;&amp;quot; he is what&amp;#039;s known as &amp;quot;ham-hock.&amp;quot; Can I count him as my spiritual guide, respect him, dream at night that he spanks me, and still disagree with him? Yes, I can. I absolutely disagree with what he said. It is silly, given our current war and recession, to spend a presidential campaign discussing skin-tone. But my opponents leave me no choice. We&amp;#039;re faced with the question: Are people of color discriminated against in America? Are they punished disproportionately by our judicial system, and passed over for partnership in our prestigious legal firms and pyramid schemes? Some say Yes; some say No. The matter is tricky. But my position as an &amp;#039;unusual&amp;#039; candidate gives me insight. I am multi-ethnic; I am multi-lingual; I know how to multiply; I have multiple personalities and unfortunately, multiple-sclerosis. I have lived in Brooklyn, and I have lived in Manhattan. I have stood in some of our city&amp;#039;s finest lobbies, and I have worn some of its ugliest clothes. So. Is it true that people hurt colored people? Maybe. But people also help colored people. For example, my mother often gave my father backrubs at night, when he was exhausted from reading a Tom Clancy novel, and he was grateful and said, &amp;quot;That feels good.&amp;quot; They were both colored\u2014my mother a delicate eggshell, my father a sort of pork-loin. Now, being dead, they are both translucent. But they come to me at night and say, &amp;quot;You are disrespectful, rude and manipulative! Time to clean your room!&amp;quot; And they are right. I&amp;#039;ve learned a lot from them. My cousins are all hues of the spectrum, from beef-Red, to salmon-steak, to the palest-piglet. As you might guess, I am tri-racial. I have one cousin who&amp;#039;s Polish, and another who&amp;#039;s not Polish at all\u2014he&amp;#039;s French. I myself am part Dutch. The lots we&amp;#039;re given in life are un-equal; we accept it. My colored cousins all struggled\u2014to greatly varying degrees\u2014in their quest for the means to support a family. One of my cousins, to prepare for his college admission test, had to hire three tutors and take the Kaplan course four times; while another (Helga) only needed the Princeton Review. After high-school, my cousins&amp;#039; paths diverged wildly: Helga attended Yale University, while Frank (he&amp;#039;s the salmon steak) did not go to college at all. Rather, he skipped it, earning an honorary degree from Yale for his pubescent volunteering work in Honduras, and proceeding directly to graduate studies in philosophy at NYU. Some of my cousins, upon their eighteenth birthdays, were given trust funds to help them on their way; others, nothing but an allowance and a credit card. Some were admitted directly to jobs they craved; others had to take decades of unpaid magazine internships in order to be considered &amp;quot;qualified.&amp;quot; Some of my cousins, upon our grandparents&amp;#039; deaths, inherited things such as large tracks of Bermuda; others could look forward only to a few wise words and a tiny, civil-war-era treasure map. Yet all of my cousins accepted their legacies, and none gave in to regret. Personally, I do not think of myself as a color. Yet sure enough, at various stages in my campaign, some commentators, such as my roommate, have criticized me, calling me &amp;quot;too pink&amp;quot; or, &amp;quot;not pink enough.&amp;quot; To that I respond: I am the right shade of pink. They still ask: would I govern for the common good, or for that of my own hue? It&amp;#039;s a concern. As our founding fathers knew, the positions we take on issues such as taxes, education, and mortgage-loan sweetheart deals can often be traced to personal circumstance. Indeed, during this divisive turn in this election, pundits (such as my roommate) have contended that if elected, I&amp;#039;ll &amp;quot;think pink.&amp;quot; However, I was raised by mavericks who considered all sides of all questions. As a child, I wandered through our kitchen searching for snacks, while my parents debated the issues of our times, their faces slathered in arugala paste (this was just something they liked to do before their debates\u2014but my mother also thought arugala was a great moisturizer). &amp;quot;The death penalty is wrong,&amp;quot; my mother would say, her d\u00E9collet\u00E9 tender bologna-mauve, &amp;quot;because all life is sacred. But some people are so bad you just have to kill them.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I disagree,&amp;quot; my father would say, &amp;quot;I think the death penalty is O.K.&amp;quot; And I, the sprite allowed to witness these debates, would say: &amp;quot;I disagree. I think it should be renamed &amp;#039;tit for tat&amp;#039; and applied more precisely!&amp;quot; But I only said that because I liked to say the word &amp;#039;tit,&amp;#039; and also, &amp;#039;tat;&amp;#039; and every time I said them, I got a punishment. Is America uneven? The truth is: Yes. It is deeply uneven. There are hills where the Rockies are, and suddenly there is the Grand Canyon! But there are also flatlands, and like those flatlands we must not give up hope. There is poverty, but also wealth. I saw someone give a dollar to a dog in the subway yesterday. Later, I saw that same small dog wearing a Dior vest and giving investment advice on CNBC! The dog&amp;#039;s since been indicted for improper asset recognition, but it&amp;#039;s still a hopeful story. The dog wasn&amp;#039;t even colored\u2014it was white. Will I miss my church? Yes. Will I look for a new one? Yes. But not until after the election, in case anyone else says something offensive. In conclusion, I&amp;#039;m dismayed by my priest&amp;#039;s divisive and unpatriotic rhetoric. If we focus on our shared goals and look past our petty differences, like skin color, we can make a better nation together. My speech is over. But as long as I&amp;#039;m still talking, I would like to make a few points about my main opponent, Barack Obama. I&amp;#039;d like to point out that he is black. Furthermore, I would like to point out that O.J. Simpson killed his wife, as did Othello, and that they&amp;#039;re both Muslim. This is not to say that I have a problem with Muslims, or that Obama definitely is one. Just saying, O-J Simpson, O-thello, O-Bama: three &amp;quot;O&amp;quot;s. Strange coincidence. Or is it? My roommate, when I mention this, protests that Obama is not black, he&amp;#039;s more like &amp;quot;chocolate-mousse&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Hagaan-Daaz Espresso Chip ice cream;&amp;quot; to which I respond: Don&amp;#039;t compare Black men to food. That&amp;#039;s racist. Finally, I must say, in all frankness, that what I&amp;#039;d really like is for America to vote based on the fact that of the two of us, Obama and I, only one of us has twenty-three years of institutional experience and is brave enough to attack Iran in December, and also sometimes at night I wake up and am scared and see scary shadows and they&amp;#039;re black. Not that they&amp;#039;re Obama and they&amp;#039;re coming to get me, just saying. The shadows are black. About the author: Rebecca Curtis&amp;#039;s story collection, Twenty Grand, came out in 2007 and was a New York Times notable book of the year, an L.A. Times best book of the year, and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper&amp;#039;s, Jane, Harper&amp;#039;s Bazaar, McSweeney&amp;#039;s, Conjunctions, Open City, and N+1. Curtis teaches in the Writing Program at Columbia University. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a32724/rebecca-curtis-my-race-speech/>