The following is a transcript of Sen. Barack Obama's speech, as provided
by Obama's campaign, (in response to controversial comments by his
ex-pastor).
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.
Sen. Barack Obama has said the controversy over his ex-pastor's remarks
has been "a distraction" to the campaign.
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 20 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 its 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 our
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, Rev. 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 Rev.
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, Rev. 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 Rev. Wright in the first place,
they may ask? Why not join another church?
And I confess that if all that I knew of Rev. Wright were the snippets
of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and
YouTube, 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 20 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 Rev. 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 Rev. 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 Rev. 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 Rev. 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 Rev. 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 Rev. 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 naive 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 if 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 Rev. 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 Rev. 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 the 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 O.J. 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 Rev. 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, 23-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 9 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.
March 19, 2008
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/18/obama.transcript/index.html
****
Beliefnet's Washington Editor, David Kuo; Politics Editor, Dan Gilgoff
and Beliefnet Editor in Chief and author of the new book FOUNDING FAITH:
Providence, Politics and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America and
other bloggers are weighing in on Senator Obama's "A More Perfect Union"
speech today. Please check out the Casting Stones blog for updates
(www.beliefnet.com/castingstones ).
Here's a quick rundown of pre-speech posts and points of view:
-- David Kuo: Obama's decision to stand by his church is good
Spirituality "He didn't forego his spiritual home for political
convenience. Whether or not that is good politics is yet to be seen.
That it is good spiritually should be applauded."
-- Steven Waldman: Obama can't be held responsible for all Wright's
statements, but he needs to say where he agrees and disagrees.
"Some stay because the Sunday school is terrific. More commonly, I hear
people say something like, "I don't like the minister's sermons, but he
was so wonderful when my father died." We should remember that the main
purpose of a minister is spiritual. If he helps someone get closer to
God, or find meaning, that matters tremendously."
-- Dan Gilgoff (God-o-Meter): With Trinity UCC lashing out at the media
this weekend, this controversy is sticking around for a while.
"One of the main arguments Obama's surrogates have been making in the
face of the Wright flare-up is that voters want to hear about issues
like health care and the economy, not about the ravings of Obama's
pastor. This weekend's ravings from the church are fuel to the fire,
promising the story ain't going anywhere soon."
-- Rod Dreher: Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no MLK: "Martin Luther King....
was a true prophet, in the Old Testament sense,
who did not damn America, but called her to be true to herself. It's
easy to imagine King denouncing the grave sins of this country, because
he did that. It's impossible to imagine him denouncing this country in
the fanatical terms used by Jeremiah Wright. Had he done so, we would be
living in a different country today, and a worse one.
-- Jim Wallis: This controversy is all about race, not religion.
"There is a deep well of both frustration and anger in the African
American community in the U.S. And those feelings are borne of the
concrete experience of real oppression, discrimination, and blocked
opportunities that most of America's white citizens take for granted....
In 2008, to still not comprehend or seek to understand the reality of
black frustration and anger is to be in a state of white denial which,
very sadly, is where many white Americans are."
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(20,000 articles 4000 humor)
Blogs - http://rowlandsblogs.blogspot.com/
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/
Funny Jokes and Pics - http://funnyjokesnpics.blogspot.com/
|
