March 19, 2008
Column #1,386
Advance for March 22
Obama's Speech on Race & Religion
by Mike McManus
Barack Obama has made perhaps the most important speech on race since
Abraham Lincoln. He had to defend his 20-year association with his
pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who has made a series of inflamatory
statements in sermons, played over and over on TV.
Days after 9/ll Wright proclaimed, "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed
Nagasaki...We supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and
black South Africans, and now we are indignant because...America's
chickens are coming home to roost."
Wright also charged, "The government gives them (African-Americans) the
drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants
us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. God damn America. That's in
the Bible for killing innocent people."
Obama denounced his pastor's "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."
Yet he also praised Wright as "a man who helped introduce me to my
Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligation to love one
another, to care for the sick and lift up the poor." Obama added, "As
imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me" who officiated at
his wedding and baptized his children.
Obama will pay a political price for his association with Wright. Those
videos will hurt him with some white voters. However, he undoubtedly
benefitted early in his career by his association with Wright and his
church. They helped him launch his political career. He could not
honorably disassociate himself.
However, he seized the opportunity to give a stirring speech on race,
steps away from where the U.S. Constitution was written, "stained by
this nation's original sin of slavery," which stalemated the founders
until they agreed to continue the slave trade for "at least 20 more
years."
Yet he noted the Constitution "had at its core the idea of equal
citizenship under the law" plus "liberty and justice." However, it took
a "Civil War, and civil disobedience...to narrow the gap between the
promise of our ideal and the reality of their time."
He told his personal story of being the son of a Kenyan black father and
a white mother from Kansas, raised with the help of white grandparents,
being married to a black woman who "carries within her the blood of
slaves and slaveowners...I will never forget that in no other country on
Earth is my story even possible." Imbedded in his genetic makeup is
"the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out
of many, we are truly one."
Obama exposed the roots of black church preaching deep into "the
bitterness and bias" of the black experience. For years blacks could not
get union jobs or become firemen or policemen or own property. "For the
men and women of Reverend Wright's generation the memories of
humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away," he said.
"Nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not
be 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,"
as well as "in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the
pews."
However, Obama added that "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."
Equally important, he acknowledged white anger too: "Most working and
middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly
privileged by their race. 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...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 spot in a good college because of an injustice
that they themselves never committed...resentment builds anew."
However, he noted that as "black anger often proved counterproductive,
so have these white resentments." He urged races to work together on
"ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations "
This sort of candor about race is without precedent. It will help
blacks and whites understand one another - and create a better
interracial society.
|
|
Since 1981...
2000+ Columns |
|
LATEST ARTICLE |
|
March 2, 2021: Column 2064: Stop
Executions for Murder |
|
Recent Columns |
|
RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE |
|
Observing Lent |
|
Celebrating Marriage Week |
|
A Case for Pro-Life
|
|
End
The Death Penalty? |
|
Christian Choices Matter |
|
2020 Was A Terrible Year |
|
Suicides Rates Are Rising |
|
The Biblical Sexual Standard |
|
How to Cut the Divorce Rate in Half |
|
Divorce Rate Is Falling |
|
How To Save Marriages |
|
55 Years of Marriage |
|
How To Cut America's Divorce Rate |
|
Suicide Rate Rising |
|
Overcoming Porn Addiction |
|
The Devastation of Pornography |
|
Marriages Are Falling - But Improving |
|
Divorce Rates Are Falling |
|
Cohabitation: the Enemy of Marriage
|
|
How To Reduce Suicide |
|
How To Stop Drug Addiction |
|
Cut Federal Funds for Planned Parenthood |
|
The Horror of Soaring Suicides |
|
Make
Adoption More Appealing |
|
The Addictive Nature of Pornography |
|
Abortion Becoming Illegal |
|
Protecting Girls from Suicide |
|
The Worst Valentine:
Cohabitation |
|
Pornography: A Public Health Hazard |
|
Sextortion Kills Teens |
|
Cohabitation: A Risky Business |
|
Recent Searches |
|
gun control,
euthanasia,
cohabitation,
sexting,
sextortion,
alcoholism,
prayer,
guns,
same sex marriage,
abortion,
depression,
islam,
divorce,
polygamy,
religious liberty,
health care,
pornography,
teen sex,
abortion and infanticide,
Roe+v+Wade,
supreme court,
marriage,
movies,
violence,
celibacy,
living+together,
cohabitation,
ethics+and+religion,
pornography,
adultery,
divorce,
saving+marriages |
|