Posted: March 18, 2008 12:27 PM
Obama Stresses Being 'Our Brother's Keeper' in Speech on Race
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In a Democratic contest bombarded with questions over race and gender, front-runner Sen. Barack Obama, who is making a bid to become the country’s first black president, spoke Tuesday in Philadelphia to address issues of race “stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery.”
The Illinois senator, who has a black father and a white mother and spent his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, has battled questions over race during his political career and, in particular, throughout his White House run.
Obama began his address with the Founding Fathers’ ideals of equality and then talked about how slavery “divided this country.” “Words on parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were able to do their parts through a civil war and civil disobedience,” Obama said.
Controversy has recently stirred over Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose fiery speeches have circulated in the media over the past week.
Wright’s sermons held that the U.S. “had brought the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on itself because of its ‘terrorism,’” Agence France-Presse reported. “Wright also said African-Americans should sing ‘God Damn America’ to protest their treatments at the hands of their white brethren.”
Obama directly condemned Wright’s words in his speech.
“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,” he said, adding that Wright’s comments “were not only wrong but divisive.”
Despite his censure of Wright’s words, however, Obama was quick to defend his relationship with the pastor, expanding on his history with the man who officiated at his wedding and baptized his daughters.
“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him as I can disown my white grandmother … who on more than one occasion has uttered racial stereotypes that have made me cringe,” Obama said. “These people are part of me.”
Obama then expanded on the inequalities caused by segregated schools and institutional racism, asserting that “understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point.”
He then mentioned similar issues anger the white community, stressing that inequality is a universal problem and overcoming it requires cooperation.
Still, the Illinois senator made clear the message that attention on his campaign should not dwell on race. He classified media concentration on ethnicity and gender as “distractions.”
“What is called for is nothing more and nothing less than what all the religions in the world call for — let us no unto others what as we would have them do unto us,” he said, urging that focus shift to problems of health care, education and employment that are “neither black or white or Latino nor Asian.”
-- By , NewsHour with Jim Lehrer | Comments | Link
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Far as I can tell nobody is making the audio of the entire speech available on line. Come on, PBS!
In his opening remarks Mr. Lehrer said that Mr. Obamas speech today would be presented in its entirety. Instead, for those of us who were not able to watch the speech live, we were presented with Ms. Woodfruff and 4 pundits discussing the speech.
I had really looked forward to hearing and viewing the speech itself and am quite frankly upset to find it being "explained" when I don't know what he said. Why couldn't you simply show the speech and let us form our own opinion?
I wonder how many of the bloiviators,pundits,whatever you want to call the the personalities who are currently commenting on the Obama speech this morning actually heard the speech. I have been watching Fox, MSNBC and others since the speech ended and am appalled at the distortions and half-truths put forth by those who are entrusted with bringing the public the facts.
How can the public ever expect to make an informed decision when we are "educated" by idiots?
I just finished watching the Obama Nae Culpa segment. Featured were journalists including Laura Washington, a journalist from Chicago.
"Ive followed the Obama story for years"- Says Ms Washington.
Oh, really, Laura? Then I have you to thank for keeping the Rev. Wright story out of the Newspapers so that the Iowa Primary goers could be in the dask and choose this fatally flawed candidate.
Laura, you betrayed your profession and the people across this nation when you kept this a secret.
You can see video of the whole speech on barackobama.com
Did you ever miss the boat today on your coverage of Barack Obama's speech. This was perhaps the most important and insightfull speech given by a politican on the issue of race relations in a generation. Your coverage by pundits who, for the most part, wanted to convey thier own agenda focused on the lack of specifics in his speech and the usual right wing witch hunt for what other radical statements had been made by Reverend Wright completely missed the value of Barack Obamas extraordinary insight into race relations in this country and his ability to navigate his way through the minefield of these thorny issues. His abilities today clearly demonstrated why we need Barack Obama as our next president. Despite your poor coverage, his daring, positive and constructive message will get out to the American people.
Earl Hutchinson, one of the experts interviewed by Judy Woodruff about Obama's speech, stated twice that Obama's constituency is primarily African-American. Woodruff can't control what an interviewee says, but this was such an obvious and important mistake that she should have corrected it.
dotty, you seem to have loads of time on your hands, or 'back-side' if you are able to watch Fox, MSNBC, etc., Why don't you get up off that rear and get a job reporting the News on TV, like you seem to like, and change that?