Obama takes on racial tensions

Barack Obama delivered a speech at the National Constitution Center that centered on race.

In the shadow of Independence Hall, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) sought yesterday to free himself from lingering questions over the "complexities of race" in the United States and in his presidential campaign.

Obama gave a speech, entitled "A More Perfect Union," at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center on identity politics and racial divisions in America - issues he said "must be addressed."

The speech came in the wake of mounting unease about Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who has made comments some have perceived as racially divisive and anti-American. In one sermon, Rev. Wright proclaimed, "God damn America for killing innocent people."

Wright also criticized Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Obama's opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, as naive to think she can empathize with black Americans.

While Obama rejected Wright's statements as "incendiary language" that would "rightly offend white and black alike," he also explained Wright's comments in the context of America's ongoing racial divide.

Obama said much of the racial divide springs from "this nation's original sin of slavery" that was left "embedded" within the Constitution.

Despite the Obama campaign's promotion of the speech as one of the most significant of his candidacy, the NCC and his campaign did not seem prepared for the overwhelming media attention on the speech.

The speech itself was delayed while officials tried to find seating for the media, eventually forcing some journalists into an overflow room.

Initially defining himself as a "post-racial" candidate, Obama in yesterday's speech re-postured himself as uniquely aware of the country's underlying racial tension. He noted that he has members of his family "of every race and every hue."

In perhaps the most notable, and passionate, part of his speech, Obama said, "I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can my white grandmother," who he said held suspicion of black men walking by her on the street and who "uttered racial stereotypes."

But Obama moved beyond those transcendent ideals to address the practical problems that still face the country, such as the struggling economy, health care and education.

In one instance, he said "segregated schools were inferior schools" that "we still haven't fixed." He reminded the audience that discriminatory laws against blacks in the South gave rise to income gaps that still continue to this day.

Obama noted too that the frustrations generated in a struggling economy are often blamed on members of another race and that politicians sometimes expose those divisions to garner support.

He said Americans have been given a choice to accept or reject those divisions but that "nothing will change" if they continue, echoing long-standing themes in his campaign.

Obama also spoke about the frustrations of the white working class, saying those who are descended from immigrant communities "don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race."

In the final parts of his speech, Obama outlined what "a more perfect union" means to the black community and the white community in America.

"Let us be our brother's keeper," Obama said. "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."

Comments (8)

Character Issue: Sadly what's missed in all the reporting, or the disinclination to report, is the Obama character issue. Only last Friday he denied awareness of the minister's views till recently. When that stretched credibility even within his fawning press, he now admits awareness. This is not to take anything away from the great discourse Obama gave yesterday, which needed to be said as possibly only he could say it. But when the going got tough and his campaign was on the line, he chose to prevaricate! Imagine the field day Republican swift boaters will have showing: * Minister's comments * His two conflicting awareness statements of them side by side. * Link it to Michelle's pride in America statement. * Link it to voting "present" on tough Illinois votes. * Tony Rezko evolving misstatements, * The joint purchase of the two properties which Obama describes as "boneheaded." * All this from the candidate whose candidacy is based on judgment? Full disclosure, I do support HRC, but I'm also trying to state the obvious. Obama will likely win the Democratic primary, but will lose the general to McCain in an election that shouldn't even be close. HRC might not do better, but I truly believe the next few weeks will present the Democratic party Super Delegates with a huge party splitting dilemma: The winner of more delegates in the primary will likely be demonstrated to be a loser in the general, while the possible winning candidate gets shunted. Before these views are attacked as self serving, please consider that at my age I'd be happy with either one winning, but my primary concern is winning period! If for no other reason, I'm interested in a cleansing and rebuilding of the Justice Department and nomination of Circuit and Supreme Court justices.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9095_Page2.html When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr. Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton. Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American. Email Print Comments Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies. Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience: If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable. And this: In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union.... Then this: There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation... Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop). Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements. Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance." We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did. My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany. The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed. Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-rothman/hillary-obliges-the-right_b_91176.html) Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.

Here's the latest new outrage from Obama's pastor! FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC are all about to start playing new secret footage of Rev. Wright screaming: �?If you lust after any woman grab a knife and gouge out your right eye and throw it in the trash. And if you're going to use your hand for masturbation cut it off or you're going to hell. I haven't come here to make peace but to bring war. I'm here to set a man against and his father and a daughter against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me and who doesn't want to get killed for me is damned. You mess with my people and you'll wish you'd hanged a stone around your neck and drowned yourself before I'm done with you!�? Except, Obama's pastor didn't say any of that -- Jesus did. So I guess all Christians must be disqualified from running for president. How can we trust any candidate that follows a violent Jewish-supremacist like Jesus? He called a woman of another race a dog just for talking to him! He said his enemies would all burn in a lake of fire... Read the full details of ---How McCain's Church Hates America, Clinton's Friends Do Too -- Full Details: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/mccains-church-hates-ame_b_92140.html

There's no right, there's no wrong. There's just words that come out of people's mouths. Don't pay any attention to them, they're racists anyway. Vote for me. Brilliant.

Having lived in the segregated town of Huntington West Virginia in the early sixties, I know how much fear and distrust were generated by that segregation. I am glad to see Obama addressing these matters in spite of his reluctance to get bogged down in the mire that the subject of race and racism can stir up. I have read large exerpts from the speech that Obama made which also echoes some of the themes of his book and I think the Pennsylvanian's precis catches the main tenor of his argument. Before someone weighs in to twist Obama's words and to justify their own shortcomings by attacking him and his "race", let me just remind that person that despite our cultural differences there is just one race in America: the human race. CB in Hamburg

Obama today called Rev. Wright's statements "controversial," which rather understates the matter. They were not "controversial." They were vicious and vile. Madonna is fucking "controversial," champ. Changing the opening theme to Monk was "controversial." The Patriots' SpyGate was "controversial." This was vicious and vile anti-Americanism and racism and anti-semitism. If those things are, to you, merely "controversial," it seems you need a teachable moment or two, rather than presuming to fill us with "understanding." But the fact is, Obama didn't even call Wright's remarks controversial. Obama is playing it even more cute than that. He said he heard things that "could be considered" controversial. He then spent the rest of his speech telling us that what we thought was controversial is explainable due to the history of racial tension in the United States. Reposted above is the sermon delivered on Sunday, September 16, 2001. Firemen were still digging through skin-blistering ash in a futile effort to find more survivors of the 9/11 attacks. And putting their health at risk breathing heavily in air heavily tainted with asbestos and toxins. Now, once again: Watch Wright's relish -- his nearly orgasmic delight -- in saying "America's chickens... have come home... to roost." Watch this cocksucker dance and flutter his hands in a happy flourish as he celebrates and exults in the deaths of 3000 Americans and foreign nationals, all civilians and all innocents, as it represents a vindication of his sickening worldview and a well-deserved comeupppance for the nation he so deeply hates. Now, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama: As your disgusting spiritual mentor and political guide is publicly celebrating the terrorism of 9/11 as blatantly as the Palestinian terrorists did that very day, and as excitedly as Al Qaeda does: Would you say these comments are merely "controversial" or potentially "controversial"? Would you like a second try at that, you rotten bastard? How many prisoners did he minister to to cancel out this disgusting celebration of mass murder on a mega scale? How much Hope and Change have you actually delivered to cancel out your own voluntary, bear-hug embrace of this repellent seditionist?

Obama's speech today took real balls. This cocksucker gets caught dirty with an anti-American radical leftist racial arsonist and yet it turns out the only way to heal those wounds is.... to elect Barack Hussein Obama President of the United States of America! That's akin to OJ saying we could just get past all this double-murder decapitation fuss if we just appoint him California Attorney General. Is the Obamessiah kinda-sorta suggesting that the key to racial reconciliation and healing our nation's wounds begins with an act of forgiveness almost transcendently spiritual in nature? And that that act of psuedo-divine forgiveness just happens to involve... forgiving Barack Obama and his Jew-hatin' preacher? I thought the Messiah was to forgive us our trespasses, not the other way around. The kingdom of Heaven is at hand: All you need to do to enter is forgive. Forgiveness will turn the key to the gates. Are you righteous enough in your hearts to attempt the audacity of forgiveness? Or are you a racist sinner stuck in the past?

Seventy-three percent (73%) of voters say that Wright's comments are racially divisive. That opinion is held by 77% of White voters and 58% of African-American voters. In addressing the issue, Obama warned against injecting race into the campaign. Most voters, 56%, said Wright's comments made them less likely to vote for Obama. That figure includes 44% of Democrats. Just 11% of voters say they are more likely to vote for Obama because of Wright's comments.

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