[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 15906]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                       AMERICA, RAY CHARLES STYLE

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                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 14, 2004

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I commend Mr. William Raspberry on his 
column in the Washington Post on July 5, 2004. Mr. Raspberry described 
well the importance of the life and music of Mr. Ray Charles. The way 
Ray Charles embraced the wonderful qualities of the United States is 
extremely important for many African-Americans who grew up in 
segregated America. As Mr. Raspberry stated, many African-Americans 
feel like outsiders in this country, but Mr. Charles was able to 
embrace and celebrate the presence of brotherhood and justice as 
fundamental American values. The music of Ray Charles transcended 
barriers between black and white. His life and music will never be 
forgotten. I applaud Mr. Raspberry for reminding his readers of the 
impact this great man had on so many. I hope that my colleagues join me 
in honoring Ray Charles by supporting the bill I introduced, H.R. 4633, 
which authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to create a gold medal 
honoring this great American performer.

                [From the Washington Post, July 5, 2004]

                       America, Ray Charles Style

                         (By William Raspberry)

       I'll know that today is the ``Fourth of July'' (no matter 
     what the calendar insists) when I hear my friend's stereo 
     pulsing out ``America the Beautiful.''
       The Ray Charles version, of course.
       Charles's recent death, at 73, brings it to mind, but I've 
     been aware for some years now how his prayerful exaltation of 
     America has become the virtual theme song of the Fourth of 
     July. What did Americans have for a theme song before that? 
     Was it all Sousa marches, with hot dogs and applause-line 
     oratory?
       Charles transformed the holiday for me--from the Norman 
     Rockwell tableaux that never seemed to include anyone who 
     looked like me--to a holiday for all Americans.
       And how did he manage that?
       Maybe I should start with what may be my one important 
     insight: that in most controversies, thoughtful people 
     secretly believe both sides, espousing the one and 
     suppressing the other depending on the company it puts them 
     in. That is why it is so hard to find white Southerners of my 
     approximate age who will admit to having been racists back in 
     the days of Jim Crow.
       What they recall, I believe, is that they harbored 
     misgivings about the way things were, and now they find it 
     more comfortable to recall the misgivings than their 
     toleration of the way things were. I always believed that 
     segregation was wrong. . . . And they did.
       I have harbored similar misgivings about the willingness of 
     black Americans to think of this country as someone else's 
     house--and to view it as complaining outsiders looking in. Of 
     course there has always been ample basis for black people to 
     feel like outsiders, at the very least to internalize W.E.B. 
     DuBois's sense of the ``twoness'' of being black in America. 
     But didn't we, perhaps, overdo the outsider-ness?
       You see, I always cherished America--even if I acknowledged 
     it only as the too-seldom played B-side of my consciousness. 
     Charles's ``America'' invited me to turn the record over.
       Charles could do that. He had a way of cutting through the 
     confusions and mixed emotions and preconceptions, and 
     reaching us at our core. The genius that made it possible for 
     him to universalize the blues and spirituals and country--
     anything he touched--made it possible for him to universalize 
     patriotism, too.
       But if Ray Charles changed the Fourth of July with his 
     ``America the Beautiful,'' he also changed the song. ``God 
     done shed His grace on thee! He crowned thy good, yes he did, 
     in a brotherhood.''
       The shift isn't merely from Katharine Lee Bates's elegant 
     lyric to the black vernacular; it is a shift in meaning.
       As Kenneth Moynihan noted in a recent commentary in the 
     Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette, Bates penned a prayer: 
     ``[May] God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with 
     brotherhood.'' Ray made it a fait accompli.
       As Moynihan put it, ``A fervent hope for the future has 
     been turned into a happy fact of the present.''
       It is not, Moynihan argues, an improvement.
       ``People much prefer to believe in their own righteousness 
     and that of the nation than to think about their failings,'' 
     he wrote. ``No doubt the passionate affirmation of American 
     brotherhood as a divine dispensation already granted accounts 
     for a healthy share of the popularity of Mr. Charles's rather 
     radical modification of the song.''
       He's right, of course. And maybe he'd be right to remind 
     those white Southerners I talk to that they really did used 
     to be racists. Sometimes, though, I think it's not a bad idea 
     to let people believe that their nobler instinct represents 
     their ``true'' self--that it is their greed, their envy and 
     their bigotry that are the aberration. You know: ``As a man 
     believeth in his heart, so he is.''
       At least for this day, can't we imagine that we are 
     brothers (and sisters) ``from sea to shining sea''? And be 
     grateful for that?
       Ray Charles says it's all right.

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