Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill., delivers a speech on race in Philadelphia, March 18, 2008.
"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.