“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 an 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 twenty 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
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 the presidency 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.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and
generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American
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 a 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
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 slaveowners
– 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
candidate. 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.
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 week before the South Carolina primary. The press has
scoured every 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 has 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 wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on
the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend
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; that rightly offend white and black
alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of
Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. 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
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 the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t
simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious
leader’s effort 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 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.
The man I met more than twenty 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 thirty
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.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of
my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry
out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into 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 means 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, clapping, 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 bias 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 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.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are
simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. 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 racial 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 yet to 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 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
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.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still
haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, 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 fire departments –
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 black and white, 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 pick-up and building code enforcement –
all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue 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
fifties and early sixties, 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 rather 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 has 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
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 in American life occurs on Sunday
morning. 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 in our condition, and 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’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; 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 that an African American is getting an advantage in
landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice 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.
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. Contrary to the claims of some of my
critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can
get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single
candidacy – 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 is 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 whose 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 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; 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. 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.
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. 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.
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 OJ 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.
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. 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 a 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 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
never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and
we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them,
and their families, 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.
There is one story in particularly 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 is a young, twenty-three year old
white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South
Carolina. She had been working to organize a
mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one
day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their
story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine
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.
She did this for a year until her mom got
better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she 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 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 does not 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.”
“I’m here because of
Ashley.” 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 to 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 two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of
patriots signed that document in Philadelphia,
that is where the perfection begins.
