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Constitution Center
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
<http://my.barackobama.com/hisownwords>

[The video may be viewed at the same url. PS welcomes
readers' comments -- moderator]

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 naÃ¯ve 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.

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.