(Cheers,
applause). Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. (Applause continues). Thank
you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Let me begin by thanking Harris Wofford for
his contributions to this country in so many different ways. He exemplifies
what we mean by the word "citizen." And so we are very grateful to
him for all the work he has done, and I'm thankful for the gracious and
thoughtful introduction. "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 the 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 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 presidential
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 president 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. And this belief
comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American
people, but it also comes from my own 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 the 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 I've 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 slave owners, 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 of candidates.
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.
Now, 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 weeks before the South
Carolina primary. The press has scoured every single 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's 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 wild and wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the
cheap. On the
other end, we've heard my former pastor, 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, and that rightly offend white and black alike. I have already
condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have
caused such controversy and, in some cases, pain.
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 the 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 disagree. But the
remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial.
They weren't simply a religious leader's efforts 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 sets and You Tube, 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 United States Marine
and who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and
seminaries in the country, and who over 30 years has 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 describe the experience of
my first service at Trinity, and it goes as follows. "People began to
shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying
the reverend's voice up to 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 meaning (sic) 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 and clapping and 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 biases 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 her by 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 part of America, this country that I
love.
Now
some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply
inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. And 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 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 not yet made 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. (Interrupted by applause).
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 between the African American community and the larger American
community today can be traced directly 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 versus Board of Education. (Applause) 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 the fire department -- 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 blacks and whites, 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 pickup, building code enforcement -- all helped create a
cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continues 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'50s and early '60s, 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 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 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 the beauty shop,
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 of American life occurs on Sunday morning. That --
(Applause) -- 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 within the African-American community
in our own condition. It 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 handed them anything; they
built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to
see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of
labor.
They
are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And
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 an
African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a
good college because of an in justice 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.
(Applause.) And 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. And 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
candidate, particularly -- (Applause) – 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 -- 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 who's 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 -- (Applause) -- 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 -- (Applause) -- Latino, Asian, rich, poor, young and old --
is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. (Applause continues).
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. And 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 -- that these things 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.
(Applause).
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 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. (Applause).
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. (Applause.) 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 the 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 --
(interrupted by applause.) 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 should've never been authorized and should've never been waged -- (Applause) -- and we
want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them and their
families --(Applause) -- 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. (Applause.) There is one story in
particular 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's a young 23-year-old woman, a white woman, named
Ashley Baia, who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She'd
been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the
beginning of this campaign, and one day she was in a round table 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.
That's
the mind of a 9-year-old. She did this for a year, until her mom got better.
And so Ashley told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she had 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 different 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 doesn't 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. (Applause.)
I'm here because of Ashley. Now, 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 so 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 221
years since a band of patriots signed that document right here in Philadelphia,
that is where perfection begins. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
(Applause.)
