Obama Speach On Race And Politics

I just read Obama's speech, and it really speaks to me about things that I have been thinking about all week. I am ashamed at people who have made an issue about Obama, and his preacher, and his religion. If people understood the history of black America, they might get at least an idea of the kind of life that Reverend Wright had to live under, and perhaps they would understand why he is so bitter. However, the professional pundit class is more interested in braying about how evil, and anti American the Reverend Wright must be, and how that implicates Obama. As someone who has worked, and played in the African American community for many years, I was not surprised or offended by any of the remarks. Mainly because everyone is entitled to their opinion, the last time I checked their was a Bill Of Rights! Also as an historian I can dig up lots of crazy preachers, relatives, and cabinet members of almost every president who said things far worse than what the Reverend Wright said, but I think you have to ask yourself just what purpose does it serve for all of the talk radio and the television pundits to be hammering Obama on this topic. They are just serving up more racial hatred that is not going to heal our country. They are only interested in two things, gotcha politics, and the Republican false hope that Hilliary is easier to beat than Obama in the fall. I only hope that this blows up in there face, and end this petty hate once and for all.

OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNIONTuesday, March 18th, 2008/
10:17:53 ETPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania**VIDEO** “We
the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and twenty one
years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men
gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment
in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled
across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their
declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the
spring of 1787. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately
unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question
that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the
founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more
years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. Of course, the
answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a
Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the
law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union
that could be and should be perfected over time. And yet words on a parchment
would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of
every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the
United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who
were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets
and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at
great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the
reality of their time.This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of
this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march
for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.
I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe
deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them
together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have
different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and
we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same
direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren. This
belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the
American people. But it also comes from my own American story. I am the son of a
black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help
of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army
during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line
at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools
in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a
black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an
inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters,
nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered
across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in
no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It’s a story that hasn’t
made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into
my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts –
that out of many, we are truly one. Throughout the first year of this campaign,
against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people
were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy
through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of
the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate
Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white
Americans. This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign.
At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too
black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface
during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every
exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of
white and black, but black and brown as well. And yet, it has only been in the
last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a
particularly divisive turn. On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the
implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that
it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial
reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor,
Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the
potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the
greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black
alike. I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of
Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions
remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic
and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be
considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree
with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have
heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly
disagreed. But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply
controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out
against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view
of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates
what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view
that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of
stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful
ideologies of radical Islam. As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only
wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a
time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two
wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and
potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white
or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all. Given my
background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt
be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate
myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join
another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were
the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television
and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures
being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much
the same way But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I
met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian
faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care
for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S.
Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and
seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that
serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the
homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships
and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.In my
first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first
service at Trinity: “People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap
and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the
rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot
of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the
stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath,
Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry
bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my
story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this
black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story
of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and
triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in
chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim
memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might
study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.” That has been my
experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the
country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and
the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black
churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy
humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem
jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and
cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and
successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black
experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with
Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He
strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once
in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in
derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but
courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and
the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I
can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more
disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a
woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she
loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black
men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has
uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.These people are a part
of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love. Some will see
this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I
can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move
on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can
dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed
Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some
deep-seated racial bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot
afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend
Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype
and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that
the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last
few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never
really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if
we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will
never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or
education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this
reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner
once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do
not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we
do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the
African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed
on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery
and Jim Crow.Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still
haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the
inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive
achievement gap between today’s black and white students.Legalized
discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from
owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners,
or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from
unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families
could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That
history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the
concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and
rural communities.A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame
and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family,
contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies
for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many
urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat,
regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a
cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. This is the
reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation
grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when
segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically
constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of
discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many
were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after
them.But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the
American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately
defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was
passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women
who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without
hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it,
questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental
ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of
humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the
bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front
of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop
or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians,
to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own
failings.And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the
pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that
anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism
that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That
anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention
from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity
in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the
alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is
powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its
roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between
the races.In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white
community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they
have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the
immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them
anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives,
many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after
a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams
slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity
comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So
when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear
that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot
in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed;
when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are
somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black
community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they
have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over
welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians
routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts
and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of
racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and
inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.Just as black anger
often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted
attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate
culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and
short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests;
economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the
resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist,
without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens
the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. This is where we are
right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to
the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as
to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election
cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my
own. But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in
God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move
beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we
are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American
community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming
victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice
in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular
grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to
the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break
the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to
feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by
demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and
reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and
discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or
cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own
destiny.Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative –
notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But
what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a
program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. The
profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism
in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no
progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible
for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a
coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old --
is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have
seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we
have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and
must achieve tomorrow.In the white community, the path to a more perfect union
means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just
exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and
current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are
real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing
in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and
ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation
with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It
requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the
expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of
black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than
what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would
have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us
be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one
another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well. For we have a choice
in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict,
and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial –
or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder
for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel,
every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only
question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I
somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on
some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card,
or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the
general election regardless of his policies. We can do that.But if we do, I can
tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other
distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will
change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come
together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling
schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and
Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we
want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that
those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of
America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall
behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. This time we want to talk about
how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and
Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to
overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do
it together. This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once
provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale
that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of
life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that
someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation
you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. This time we
want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve
together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We
want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been
authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll
show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the
benefits they have earned. I would not be running for President if I didn’t
believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want
for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after
generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find
myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the
most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs
and openness to change have already made history in this election. There is one
story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told
when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home
church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There is a young, twenty-three year old
white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South
Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community
since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable
discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were
there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer.
And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health
care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she
had to do something to help her mom.She knew that food was one of their most
expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked
and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish
sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. She did this for a year
until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the
reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other
children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.Now Ashley
might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that
the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy
to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she
didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.Anyway, Ashley
finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why
they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons.
Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man
who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s
there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or
the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was
there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am
here because of Ashley.” “I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single
moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is
not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the
jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our
union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the
course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed
that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
END