Six basic questions to consider after reading or viewing the speech.
Discussion Questions
1. What audiences did Obama address in this speech, and what is he telling each audience? Is anyone not addressed?
2. Obama listed some specific barriers that have kept African Americans from accumulating wealth over time. What are they? How would each of these barriers affect a person's ability to prosper?
3. Why does President-elect Obama say that segregated schools "were, and are" inferior schools? What action does he propose to fill the "achievement gap?"
4. Obama says the experience of whites in this country is the "immigrant experience." What are the characteristics of that experience? How does it differ from the experiences of African Americans and Native Americans? Is it the same as the experience of today's immigrants? Why or why not?
5. How is Obama careful in this speech, and in what passages? Where is he bold? Why?
6. He says, "I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle." What does he mean? What prescription does he provide instead? How does that prescription involve you?