Barack Obama’s speech on race just ended and, boy, can he speak! That was the best political speech I’ve heard at least since a certain keynote address in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention. And maybe this was better, because it was substantive and peeled away layers to confront sensitive matters that normally go unexamined.

One concern is that this was a long and complex speech but that few will hear the whole thing, and that bits will be plucked out of context on talk radio and cable TV. On the whole, I think the speech as a whole would reassure nervous white voters, but it may be that specific lines will be taken out and played endlessly on talk radio and exacerbate the public nervousness or discomfort with a black candidate. A friend of mine says that the first Catholic president (Kennedy) wasn’t very Catholic, and that the first women and black presidents won’t be very female or black, either. So I have a nagging concern that parts of this speech could be played over radio, out of context, to make Obama seem “blacker” and leave some whites less comfortable with him.

I thought that Obama’s basic pitch was right: Whites need to acknowledge the legitimacy of blacks’ complaints about the legacy of Jim Crow, and blacks can’t let anger be an excuse to fail to read to their kids. In general, Obama’s emphasis on education as a remedy feels just right: The biggest way we fail black kids today is with poor inner-city schools, and that’s the best ladder we can offer to overcome social and racial inequity.

If you haven’t seen or heard the speech, do so. It was a masterpiece to go down in history along with Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” and Kennedy’s about his Catholicism.