“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago,…  …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.

I think it is interesting that reduces the Civil War to one part of the struggle for civil rights.  If slavery is our original sin, the Civil War was our baptism by blood.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign… …, 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.

Interesting that the ends his spectrum are dumb white liberals and a black racist America hater.  That’s a pretty narrow spectrum, since both ends think that America is to blame for most of the ills in the world. I’m having a really hard time placing myself on this spectrum.

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.

This last paragraph is truly a rhetorical gem.  First off, he talks about Rev. Wright in the same terms you could use to describe Dr. MLK Jr.  He describes the questions as nagging, as if they are too trivial to really address.  I think it is pretty plain that “US-KKK-A” and the other Rev. Wright comments go far beyond being “fierce critic”.  At the same time he likens these ugly comments to teachings we hear at our own churches.  It is absolutely disingenuous to compare the hateful Dr. Wright’s comments to some unpopular basic teachings of mainstream religions such as don’t eat pork, abstain from pre-marital sex, or even (potentially controversial in some churches) don’t engage in homosexual acts.  Most of the disagreements we have with our own churches are almost always based on rules that appeal to our better angels, not our basic hate.  Is Sen. Obama really saying that a Churches suggestion respecting life by not harvesting human embryos for genetic manipulation is the same as saying that the US government developed the AIDS virus?

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.

Is there a major black leader who doesn’t espouse such views?  From Jesse Jackson to Al Sharpton the black leaders of America have preyed upon their flocks by using the white Bogey man as the cause of all problems and blaming Jews above all others.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity;… …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 (it seems only if you are black); to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine (So did Lee Harvey Oswald); who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country (probably not any more), 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, … …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 (Jesse Jackson once did also), and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe (Maybe his Grandmother could have been a rapper or the mayor of Detroit).

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love (and his wife has been proud of for the last 9 weeks).

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.

Now this is truly sickening attempt to balance Rev. Wright with Ms. Ferraro.  To equate Ms. Ferraro who dared to question the influence of Sen. Obama’s race on his success with the vile comments of Rev. Wright is unjust.  As to the question that Ms. Ferraro raised, I can answer that question, with a scientific precision greater than that used to determine the impact of Global Warming.  Unlike Global Warming, we can actually run an experiment where we run two candidates with similar levels of national political experience, near carbon copies of policies, who are both good looking and very eloquent, and come from humble beginnings. The white version of Barak Obama is Sen. John Edwards.  We can see the Oprah effect on the difference between their electoral standings. Unfortunately, I think people are rightly going to be talking about Rev. Wrights comments long after Ms. Ferraro is back to doing whatever she does in between elections.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now…   …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…

…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…

…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.

 

In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama's longtime minister, friend and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president.

The Pastor as well as the membership of Trinity United Church of Christ is committed to a 10-point Vision:

1. A congregation committed to ADORATION.
2. A congregation preaching SALVATION.
3. A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION.
4. A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA.
5. A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION.
6. A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION.
7. A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA.
8. A congregation committed to LIBERATION.
9. A congregation committed to RESTORATION.
10. A congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.

Randall Robinson is quitting America, and this book charts his journey from the most powerful nation on earth to the tiny tropical island where his wife was born. His search for a more peaceful and hospitable place grew out of the disappointment and increasing sense of abandonment he felt in the land of his own birth-an America that has sapped the creative energies of his race and "transfigured humanity."

In this powerful and controversial book, Randall Robinson makes a persuasive case for the resotration of the rich history that slavery and segregation severed. Drawing from research and personal experience, he shows that only by reclaiming their lost past and proud heritage can blacks lay the foundation for a viable future.

...America and other interests that profited owe reparations to blacks following the holocaust of African slavery which has carried forward from slavery’s inception for 350-odd years to the end of U.S. government-embraced racial discrimination—an end that arrived, it would seem, only just yesterday.