Our FLYPside editorial examines the recent Obama speech on race.

Watch this week’s video editorial, FLYPside, which explores presidential candidate Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech on race.Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech on race in America was a thoughtful, personal and sincere reflection on why racism still exists and how it affects every American.

As all the pundits have pointed out, it was a great speech. Unfortunately, as almost none of them have been willing to say, it probably won’t have any lasting impact.

No one—certainly no politician looking for votes—wants to confront racism head on. Obama himself has spent most of the past two years running what is usually described as a “post racial” campaign. Even the controversy surrounding Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright’s out-of-context You Tube clips was couched primarily in terms of anti-Americanism, not racism.

We are living in an era defined by 9/11, not Rodney King.

Americans don’t want to talk about racism. We don’t want to talk about why “security” is sufficient justification for profiling Arabs or mistreating Mexicans caught crossing the border into Arizona.

We don’t want to talk about why we tolerate third world-like health statistics among poor blacks or accept increasingly de facto segregated schools decades after Brown versus Board of Education.

We don’t want to talk about why New Orleans almost drowned under the “watchful” eye of FEMA.

Racism is one of the last taboos in our reality-TV saturated society. It lurks in the shadows of relations between whites and blacks, blacks and Hispanics, Hispanics and whites, and Asian-Americans and both blacks and hispanics.

It partially defines national attitudes towards everything from immigration policy to education. It is quietly baked into every discussion of who benefits from and who pays for government.

Obama’s speech did not change any of that. It may have bought him some added credibility with superdelegates impressed with how he reacted to a crisis, and even some temporary relief from being Swift boated by right-wing talk show hosts.

But the country’s political elite have remained largely silent on the substance of what Obama said about why blacks are angry and why whites are resentful.

No significant politician accepted his challenge to move beyond the superficial conversation that dominates the American political debate. Not President Bush, not Senators Clinton, nor Senator McCain. No one.

If Obama’s speech aimed to turn the page on Reverend Wright, he probably succeeded. If his speech aimed at getting Americans—and their leaders—to confront some of the demons that make us less than a great society, he certainly failed.

But at least he tried.