Obama speech tackles 'divisive turn on race'

Sen. Barack Obama addresses controversy over his pastor in Philadelphia speech

In a crucial speech designed to quench a self-described "firestorm" centered on his pastor's inflammatory racial views, Sen. Barack Obama today set his campaign for the White House in the context of a "long march" toward completing a task left undone by America's founding fathers – to ensure liberty and equality for all citizens, regardless of color.

The Declaration of Independence, Obama said, according to prepared remarks, "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," Obama said.

The answer to the slavery question, the Illinois senator said, "was already embedded within our Constitution … 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."

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Generations of Americans protesting and struggling were required 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," Obama said.

The Democratic presidential candidate's campaign described the Philadelphia speech as a comprehensive take on "race, politics, and unifying our country."

Addressing the controversy over his pastor, Obama acknowledged Rev. Jeremiah Wright has used "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."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obama admitted that while he already has condemned statements by Wright in sermon segments replayed by media last week, for some people, "nagging questions remain."

"Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy?" Obama asked. "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 Obama said Wright's remarks weren't merely controversial, 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."

Obama said 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," he said. "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."

'White enemy'

As WND reported, the political liabilities Obama faces from his pastor stem from more than just statements made during sermons.

Wright has defended himself by appealing to the "black liberation theology" of scholars such as James Cone, who regard Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people" who will only accept a god who assists their aim of destroying the "white enemy."

"If God is not for us and against white people," writes Cone, "then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill gods who do not belong to the black community."

WND reported yesterday Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has removed from the "About Us" page of its website a section outlining its radical belief system for blacks.

Late Friday, Wright stepped down from his formal role in Obama's campaign, as a member of his African American Religious Leadership Committee.

In a January 2006 sermon, Wright called America the "No. 1 killer in the world" and blamed the country for launching the AIDS virus to maintain affluence at the expense of the Third World. The pastor reportedly said in a sermon just after 9/11, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

In a 2003 sermon, Wright encouraged blacks to damn America in God's name and blamed the U.S. for provoking the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by dropping nuclear weapons on Japan in World War II and supporting Israel since 1947.

Obama issued a statement Friday saying he strongly condemned and denounced "some inflammatory and appalling remarks [Wright] made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents."

Despite having been at the church for two decades, Obama said he was not in attendance when Wright made any of the statements and never heard such talk in private conversations.

'Divisive turn'

In the speech today, Obama recounted his own history as "the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas," making him an unconventional candidate with a story demonstrating "that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one."

His campaign has seen "racial tensions bubble," he said, but only in the last couple of weeks has the discussion of race "taken a particularly divisive turn."

Wrights comments were not only wrong, Obama said, but "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."

Some have raised the question, Obama said, of why he should have associated with Wright in the first place.

He acknowledged 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," Obama said. "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 30 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."

Obama said that as "imperfect" as Wright may be, "he has been like family to me."

"He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children," the senator said. "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."

Obama stated: "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."

 

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