Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill.,
speaks about race during an address in Philadelphia, Tuesday,
March 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Posted on 03/18/2008 9:33:35 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
PHILADELPHIA - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday tried to stem damage from divisive comments delivered by his pastor, while bluntly addressing anger between blacks and whites in the most racially pointed speech yet of his presidential campaign.
Obama confronted America's legacy of racial division head on, tackling black grievance, white resentment and the uproar over his former pastor's incendiary statements. Drawing on his half-black, half-white roots as no other presidential hopeful could, Obama asserted: "This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected."
Obama expressed understanding of the passions on both sides in what he called "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years."
"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," he said in a speech at the National Constitution Center, not far from where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
Obama rarely talks so openly about his race in such a prominent way, but his speech covered divisions from slavery to the O.J. Simpson trial to the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina. He also recognized his race has been a major issue in the campaign that has taken a "particularly divisive turn" in the last few weeks as video of his longtime pastor spread on the Internet and on television.
Obama said the sermons delivered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright "rightly offend white and black alike." Those sermons from years ago suggested the United States brought the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on itself and say blacks continue to be mistreated by whites.
While Obama rejected what Wright said, he also embraced the man who inspired his Christian faith, officiated at his wedding, baptized his daughters and has been his spiritual guide for nearly 20 years.
"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said, speaking in front of eight American flags. "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."
Obama said he knew Wright to occasionally be a fierce critic of U.S. policy and that the pastor sometimes made controversially remarks in church that he disagreed with, but he said he never heard Wright talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms. The comments that have become a source of debate recently "were not only wrong but divisive" and have raised questions among voters, he said.
"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 YouTube, 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," he said. "But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man."
He said he came to Wright's church because he was inspired by Wright's message of hope and his inspiration to rebuild the black community.
Obama said Wright's comments have sparked a discussion that reflect complexities of race in the United States that its people have never really resolved.
"We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," Obama said. "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."
Obama said anger over those injustices often find voice in black churches on Sunday mornings. "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," he said.
Obama argued that the anger often distracts from solving real problems and bringing change. But he said it also exists in some segments of the white community that feels blacks are often given an unfair advantage through affirmative action.
"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," Obama said, drawing a rare burst of applause in a somber address.
Obama said one of the tasks of his campaign to be the first black president is "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
Che’nge Agent for the generations
way to throw your Grandmother under the bus while trying to extract yourself from under the wheels.
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill.,
speaks about race during an address in Philadelphia, Tuesday,
March 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The liberals are going on and on about what a great speech this was, but the clips I saw showed a man playing some serious defense and having to defend a man who is inherently indefensible.
If you read the text of the original speech ( posted on drudge) - he’s saying a lot of things that americans want to hear. He’s bringing the 800lb gorilla out of the closet, and saying okay, we have a gorilla, percieved differently by different americans,let’s not argue that, now what can we agree upon to get it to go away..... pretty seductive argument
They pretended that he was a different kind of black liberal.
They lied, as did he.
It's no surprise he's sticking with Wright, after all he's been molding Barack Obama for virtually all of his adult life.
“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.”
I, nor anyone in my family history, had anything to do with slavery or Jim Crow laws. They can all bugger off.
A Nation of Victims
“Obama argued that the anger often distracts from solving real problems and bringing change. But he said it also exists in some segments of the white community that feels blacks are often given an unfair advantage through affirmative action.”
I haven’t heard that level of animosity and hatred, ever. Most whites I know try pretty hard to exercise good will and when the level of hatred as evidenced by Wright’s sermon arise, then I look with different eyes at those around us and begin to realize that nothing we do will ever be good enough.
My people were not here during slavery. But, because I have white skin, I am immediately judged.
That is the definition of racism.
I will not vote for Obama.
“Oh-My-Bama!”
This guy is a tower of jello. Imagine him sitting across the table from someone like Vlad Putin during a negotiation of some kind!
The dominant media will of course hail Hussein`s speech
as one of the best ever and joe sixpack will eat it up.
Fact is he can`t explain listening to a racist hate-
mongering liberation theologian aka marxist for 20 years!
The rest of his speech attempted to unite everyone in
claiming that everyone`s failings in life is the fault of
corporations and capitalism.
So if you`re not a socialist/marxist who believes in
a “social gospel” aka liberation theology aka marxist,
then you must be a RACIST !
“....to condemn it without understanding its roots...”
Go ahead, ORacist. Give us the SPECIFIC historical context for the “roots” of black anger. The vast majority of angry blacks were born after 1950 and thus have no basis for their anger. None.
This is all about the comforting feeling of having a perpetual chip on your shoulder, and the security blanket of having a built-in excuse for your failings. Fomented of course by a disgusting plethora of self-hating white liberals who masochistically rise to this ongoing race-baiting.
That speech should have been entitled “Throw Grandma from the Train!” I’m sick of hearing the same old,same old whining concerning blacks and slavery ,gross mistreatment wah ,wah.. I do not want a president who feels compelled to defend”his people” for the next four to eight years ,depending on how misguided people would be to vote for him.He has every bit as much resentment to whites as his “misguided wife and or minister. He hides it much better.That cackling sound-Hillary celebrating. God help us.
For a week he has said he never heard such remarks from his pastor but he admitted in his speech that he was there and heard them.
After spending the past week denying to the contrary,.....
He made the statement in his speech today: "Did I ever hear him (Wright) make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?"
Answer: "Yes!"
.
This is among the finest damage control efforts I've seen, nothing more.
I call shenanigans.
Now I'm off to find my broomstick, I think I'm going to need it pretty soon.
Hillary is the uniter. She is the owner of most beautiful ovaries. Her sexy dresses that she wears is what America needs.
Go Hillary and Go Rush!
Sorry Obama! your defense of your looney tune minister is outrageous!
Amen: I guess he thinks we are so deranged we’ll join his ship of fools.
I agree. As if he has never referred to white people as crackers as he did in his first book. But, IMHO, his wife is the one to watch out for. That is a dangerous, angry woman! The other thing I noticed is that he decries how blacks have suffered because of slavery, yet, he and his wife SOMEHOW made it to the best schools, law firms and Board rooms in this horrible, racist country.
spoiled rotten angry brats...that’s what that congregation represents.
It was a lecture by Rodney King, nothing more.
White people can’t talk about this because they will be ruined.
Screw understanding it roots ... this the same "their anger is understandable" pile of crap rationale the PC nazis were selling when they tried to justify the 911 attackers.
Wright is a bigoted, close-minded, hate filled man ... and Obama sat under his teaching for more than a decade without speaking out.
The “Rev” Wright told his congregation to sing “G*D Damn America” instead of “God Bless America” and Obama is still holding that garbage close to him, having Wright baptise his children and marrying him. Obama is toast.
Its official — Obama’s defense is not good enough. As long as he remains in this church which preaches black theology he’s as guilty and racist as his Pastor.
White people can’t talk about this because they will be ruined.
White liberals maybe...I feel fine talking about a socialist I don’t want in the white house. Never mind his flamethrower minister. He’s just playing his “sympathy cards”.
Recommend Psychotherapy.
Barack is benefitting from slavery. If it weren’t for slavery, the black population of the U.S. would be about as big as the Eskimo population, and he’d have lost to Hillary a long time ago.
The reality Obama has to manage, a reality no one is really addressing, is that he cannot distance himself too much from Rev. Wright, because what the opinions his pastor expressed is fair representation of what much of the black community believes in this country.
He has chosen to employ classic Clintonian triangulation politics. Whites on one side, blacks on the other...with Obama standing in between as the compromise solution for both sides.
ap article title change
Obama says pastor wrong and divisive
That is a dangerous, angry woman!
I told hubby the other day that she reminds me of Leona Helmsley. She has a mean, nasty look on her face all the time.
This is why most whites don't want a president like Obama (Black, full of hate, and looking for someone to blame). They are sick and dang tired of hearing about it. I am posting a link that another Freeper shared this morning. This should be Obama's message. I'm afraid if he embraced it, he would crush everyone in the general election, but this isn't who he really is:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2272
throw your Grandmother under the bus
.
Which Grandmother? Considering high black on black crime rates, it could be either.
The dominant media will of course hail Hussein`s speech
as one of the best ever and joe sixpack will eat it up.
________________________________________________________
“Joe Six Pack” has a computer and e-mail — “Joe Six Pack” will see sermon after sermon by that guy on “You Tube.” “Joe Six Pack” has more information at his fingertips than a Harvard Professor in the college library had at his twenty years ago.
Actually, he didn't. He swept the real gorilla under the rug. It's the America-hating gorilla. This was the real problem with the rev Wright stuff. You can hate America (if you're stupid enough), but you can't be its president if you do.
She intends to get even with White America if she gets into the White House. Believe it.
Hussein is slicker than slick Willy.
The white one, of course.
There, fixed it ...
article update.. the spin is being refined..
—
Obama says pastor wrong and divisive
PHILADELPHIA - Barack Obama unsparingly criticized his longtime pastor’s words while strongly defending the man himself Tuesday in a politically risky speech that appealed to the country to overcome racism and the black anger and white resentment it spawns.
Forming a more perfect union “requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams,” said the Illinois senator running to be the first black president.
“This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected,” he said.
In his most pointed speech of the campaign, Obama confronted the nation’s legacy of racial division head on, tackling black grievance, white resentment and the uproar over his former pastor’s incendiary statements. Drawing on his half-black, half-white roots as no other presidential hopeful could, Obama urged Americans to break “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.’”
“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,” he said in a speech at the National Constitution Center, not far from where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
The speech was the most racially tinged during his campaign to become the first black president, covering divisions from slavery to the O.J. Simpson trial to the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina, along with his own background. Obama rarely talks so openly about his race in such a prominent way, but he recognized it has been a major issue in the campaign that has taken a “particularly divisive turn” in the last few weeks as video of his longtime pastor spread on the Internet and on television.
Obama’s advisers say the candidate decided on Saturday to make the speech and spent much of Sunday and Monday writing it, finishing shortly before he took the stage. They said Philadelphia was chosen not because it has the highest concentration of blacks in Pennsylvania, the next state to vote on April 22, but because of its historical significance.
Obama said sermons delivered by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “rightly offend white and black alike.” Those sermons from years ago suggested the United States brought the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on itself and say blacks continue to be mistreated by whites.
While Obama rejected what Wright said, he also embraced the man who inspired his Christian faith, officiated at his wedding, baptized his two daughters and has been his spiritual guide for nearly 20 years.
“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” Obama said, speaking in front of eight American flags. “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.”
Obama said he knew Wright to occasionally be a fierce critic of U.S. policy and that the pastor sometimes made controversially remarks in church that he disagreed with, but he said he never heard Wright talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms. The comments that have become a source of debate recently “were not only wrong but divisive” and have raised questions among voters, he said.
“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 YouTube, 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,” he said. “But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man.”
Wright said shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks: “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
In a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the United States.
Obama said he came to Wright’s church because he was inspired by Wright’s message of hope and his inspiration to rebuild the black community.
Obama said Wright’s comments have sparked a discussion that reflect complexities of race in the United States that its people have never really resolved.
“We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country,” Obama said. “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.”
Obama said anger over those injustices often find voice in black churches on Sunday mornings. “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,” he said.
Obama argued that the anger often distracts from solving real problems and bringing change. But he said it also exists in some segments of the white community that feels blacks are often given an unfair advantage through affirmative action.
“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,” Obama said, drawing a rare burst of applause in a somber address.
An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll conducted in January found 15 percent of whites said they have at least a somewhat unfavorable impression of blacks, while 26 percent expressed a favorable impression. Among blacks, 7 percent had an unfavorable impression of whites, while 49 percent have a favorable impression.
“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,” Obama said.
Yep! Michelle Obama got into an Ivy League school via affirmative action. She was given a job with a six figure income. She married a guy who was elected to the U.S. Senate and is a prominent candidate for President of the United States. But she’s still mad at hell at “racist” America.
It makes you wonder why anyone still believes that we’ll eventually “transcend race”. We could vote for slavery reparations of a million dollars per person tomorrow and the next day there would still be anger and another list of demands.
How long can Blacks blame their present troubles on inequities passed on from their anscestors? Blame it on fathers who are physically absent during their children’s growing up years.Blame it on mothers ,who have to work to keep their families together and no male role models in the home. Blame it on young Blacks with their pants dragging the ground. (I am sick of having to walk past these kids with their rear ends sticking out of their pants.No fashion there,just plain bad taste.) I am sick of rap ,vulgar lyrics and the attitude that it instills in Black men. No respect for their mothers ,sisters ,any female.Slavery existed. It is gone. Get over it.Find a job and take care of your family. Quit blaming America and the war for everything that goes wrong in your life. You’ll find good decent Black men fighting for the very country that Obama’s minister is damning.I grew up in the south and it has improved for Blacks considerably since I was a child. They still have a long way to go .They are the only people holding them back . The USA owes none of us anything ,welfare ,public housing etc.Grow up.As for Obama,no thank you.In the years to come ,there may be a Black president. But it isn’t him.
speech should have been entitled “Throw Grandma from the Train!”
point, God help Grandma Obama.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.