OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008/ 10:17:53 ET Philadelphia, Pennsylvania[1]
[This criticism was written during the speech and was finished some 45 minutes after the speech ended in published on Townhall.
The speech begins with:
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” [Segments
of the speech are in italics and reference the speech. My comments are in blue and
emphasis, mine is given in red and or bold.]
There are several problems with this speech. The central issue
with Reverend Wright’s comments is dismissed in some form of cultural
histrionics. The admission that his remarks were ‘condemned’ do not square with
the blame that is later on in this speech clearly placed on whites, who have
not fixed the schools, provided better jobs and health care.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of
Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. …
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,
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but
divisive,
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.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.
Thusly justifying and qualifying Wright’s overt racism and hate
speech.
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.
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.
We can lay all this on the teacher’s unions, who are in full
control of education in this country and cite Washington, DC the
worst school system in the US and run entirely by the black community
as proof that whatever the far left have been doing it is not effective. This
system also spends the highest amount of money per student in the US. There
is no reason to believe that reverse discrimination in
education will continue to drive ‘education’ in this country. When
whites are denigrated as being derived from DWEEMS and we read about all they
have done to destroy the brown and black races we wonder if this will ‘change,’ the
basis of the Obama platform.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other
African-Americans of his generation grew up.
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.
Here, the facts of leftist racism and exploitation of the black
masses are discounted.
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 not sufficient. The corporations, almost wholly white and
derived from Queen Elisabeth in the 17 Century are cited here as the major
problems with race relations.
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
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;
This is not sufficient. The remarks by Wright are simple hate
speech and should be characterized as such—not cast in the context of the past.
We can go to the past and show that Africa has sold slaves to anybody
who wanted to buy them for the last 7000 years. And, slaves can be purchased
today in the Sudan and other places. We might recall that blacks made
huge profits selling slaves to the Colonies, Caribbean and Brazile,
that latter seemingly have escaped any accusations of racism. No liberal could
place ANY blame for slavery on black Africans.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging
that what ails the African-American communitydoes 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.
This is a call to maintain the status quo and not make chances. The
change he must be talking about is more handouts and more taxes to ‘redress the
sins of the past.’
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a
politics that breeds division, and conflict, and
cynicism. …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 speech does nothing to change anything. The same left-liberal
complaints run rampant in this address and the call for higher taxes is
implicit in nearly every passage.
rycK
[1] OBAMA
SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION
Tuesday, March 18th,
2008/ 10:17:53 ET
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. http://www.drudgereport.com/flashos.htm
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