“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 our 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 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 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.