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| | Barack Obama's Speech on Race in America - 2008-03-18"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. | | | Posted 3/18/2008 11:46 AM - 1 comments
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It's about the issues. But I was happy with his response. It put him back in the game 
