Mar 18, 2008 9:35 pm US/Central
Obama Urges End To 'Racial Stalemate'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) ―
Following controversial remarks by the retired pastor of a church where presidential candidate Barack Obama has worshiped, Obama tried to stem the damage Tuesday morning while bluntly addressing anger between blacks and whites in the most racially pointed speech yet of his presidential campaign.
"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," Obama said in a speech at the National Constitution Center, not far from where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
Obama has steered away from the issue of race, choosing instead to focus on the issues he feels voters want to hear about – the war in Iraq, the economy and health care. But he was forced to take on the issue following weeks of negative news coverage surrounding comments made by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
The questions may be about his long-time friend and pastor, but the real issue, according to Obama, is the deep racial divide that still exists in America.
"Even for those Blacks who did make it, questions of race and racism continue to define their world view in fundamental ways," Obama said.
As CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports, Obama took about 35 minutes for a lengthy history lesson, in which went back and forth over past 200 years. He criticized his longtime pastor, but in the end he refused to throw Wright overboard.
Wright has been shown making remarks such as, "God damn America," and claiming that, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus to do away with people of color," among other comments.
In response, Obama repeated that he strongly disagreed with the statement, and emphasized that Wright's remarks did not match the impression he had been given of the pastor, nor of his church, the Trinity United Church of Christ at 400 W. 95th St. Wright recently retired as pastor of the church.
A member of the Trinity United Church of Christ, Vanessa Jordan was in a South Side beauty parlor when she praised Obama's response.
"I really like how he said he would not disown his grandmother just like he wouldn't disown Reverend Wright," Jordan said. "There's issues that we all have faced in this country but his goal, again, is to unify the whole country."
Obama said in the comments, Wright "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."
Still, Obama said, Wright had played a significant role in his life, and to Obama, the pastor was not defined by the comments.
"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," Obama said. "These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love."
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.
"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," Obama continued. "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."
He added that for people of Wright's generation, raw memories lived on of coming of age at a time when segregation was still the law of the land and overt hostility and humiliation directed at African-Americans remained common.
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 then confronted America's legacy of racial division head on in a speech that tackled 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.
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.
Resentment, he said, is a two-way street, also found among working- and middle-class whites.
Dr. Linda Thomas of Lutheran Seminary calls the blunt assessment an opportunity.
"To put our feelings on the table, to put the facts on the table, to open up the reality that race is still a primary issue in our country," Thomas explained.
"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."
He said his own background, as the descendant of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, and his childhood in Hawaii in Indonesia, had given him an keen understanding of the diversity of the world's people.
"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," Obama said.
But Obama said while much progress has made to heal racial wounds, the "more perfect union" referenced in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution needs more perfection.
"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," Obama said. "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."
"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," Obama said. "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."
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 around the Internet and on television.
Before the speech, one expert said he believed Obama's response to the Wright controversy could make or break his campaign.
"Will he persuade that small margin? If he loses them, it's over; it's a narrow race," said political consultant Don Rose. "If he wins them, at least he persuades them, he lives to fight another day."
Obama was in part on Tuesday trying to stop the bleeding, to reverse a negative trend in public opinion polls. A new voter opinion survey by CBS News found Obama's campaign has been deeply wounded. Fifty-eight percent of all voters said they've heard of the Rev. Wright's outrageous remarks. Of them, 30 percent said it made them less favorable toward Obama; only 2 percent more favorable.
A local Republican activist called it a good speech, but said it is not possible for Obama to undo the political damage.
"The tape does not lie," said Dan Proft. "Those are going to be lasting images and no amount of context and no amount of rationalization is going to get Obama out of the immense political damage that Jeremiah Wright and his tolerance for Jeremiah Wright has caused his campaign."
Whether or not the speech haws achieved Obama's intended result – to explain away Wright's remarks or put them into context – will likely be seen next month when Pennsylvania holds its primary. But Flannery says the speech is "worth the investment of time" for voters to watch.
Sources tell CBS 2 Obama had intended all along to give a speech like this at some point during the campaign. But few could have predicted its timing and importance.
CBS 2's Mai Martinez, Kristyn Hartman, Chief Correspondent Jay Levine and Political Editor Mike Flannery, and the Associated Press, contributed to this report.
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