SCRANTON, Pa. - Barack Obama will discuss the issue of race in the U.S. presidential campaign in a speech on Tuesday in Philadelphia, while also trying to quell a controversy over inflammatory rhetoric by the pastor at his Chicago church.
Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, is vying for the Democratic nomination against Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, who would be the first woman president.
Racially charged comments such as Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s contention that the United States believes in “white supremacy and black inferiority” put Obama on the defensive.
The Illinois senator, whose speech is scheduled for 10:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT) on Tuesday, has attended Wright’s church for 20 years.
“I am going to be talking about not just Reverend Wright but the larger issue of race in this campaign,” Obama told reporters on Monday while campaigning in Pennsylvania, which holds its important primary contest on April 22.
As Obama stopped by a Scranton sports bar for the taping of an MTV roundtable with military veterans, a handful of protesters held up signs with pictures of Obama standing next to the pastor.
“Wright Is Wrong And So Is Obama,” some of the placards read.
A central message of Obama’s campaign is a promise of trying to transcend divisions, including those involving race.
The Clinton and Obama camps have accused each other of injecting race into the campaign last week after remarks from a Clinton supporter, Geraldine Ferraro, were viewed as racially insensitive.
Ferraro, a former vice presidential candidate, attributed Obama’s lead in the Democratic race to his being black. Clinton has repudiated Ferraro’s comments.
Some African Americans took offense when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in January compared Obama’s victory in the South Carolina primary to success there by Jesse Jackson, a black candidate who ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Some saw the remarks as a bid to marginalize Obama as a candidate of only black America.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage
Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Cohn (Sen. Barack Obama speaks during a town hall meeting at the Community College of Beaver County in Monaca, Pennsylvania, on March 17)
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there is really nothing unpatriotic about this speech.
- Posted by joe ombimaSound bites from a sermon that Wright gave in 2003, entitled “Confusing God and Government”, were also shown on ABC’s Good Morning America[28] and Fox News, in which Wright made apparently controversial statements about God and the U.S. Government. In the sermon, Wright first makes the distinction between God and governments, and points out that many governments in the past have failed: “Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change.”[30] Wright then states: “And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains, the government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton field, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.”[30] Wright concludes by stating:” The government gives them drugs [referring to the Iran-Contra Affair],[31] built bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America. No, no, no, not God bless America, God damn America, that’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she pretends to act like she is God, and she is supreme. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.”[30]
I believe we have forgotten about the way that Blacks and Whites speak when it comes to slang/curse words and I cannot post the words but I’m sure you guys know what I’m talking about.
Also I don’t know if White Pastors do it but Black Pastor double speak aka read between the lines (Which by the way makes me mad when they do that) may be at play here as well.
It’s just the way he used it that if it the untrained ear hears it it sounds offencive just slow down the word he used in your mind and go from there.
What I have concluded is the way it’s used and the way it’s pronounced is really the issue here
I don’t know for sure really which way he ment it to be taken honest in fact I think you could take it two ways and still be right and still be wrong
Is it used as in a Biblical sence? As in “Did God Dammed America” as he in he put a curse upon America or is it used as in Goddamm America as an insult???
Now an english major would say he insulted America or just prononces words wrong and forgot to pronounc the (d) at the end of his word but a person who studies Urban dialog would say he spoke as in God put a curse upon America….(Yes Matilda there is really a thing known as Ebonics! America just has to acknowledge that it’s a fact and stop doing the Rush Windbag jokes!)
Either way most White Americans would say he’s wrong because of what they call Blessings they recieve aka jobs, mostly safe neighborhoods, nice cars etc but a Black American would say he’s right as in lack of jobs, drugs, drive-bys etc… so it’s just what side of the glass of water you stand on.
We Americans need to slow down our reactions to things we read about and hear on main stream media and use simple logic.
Obama 08 Yesss!!!!!
- Posted by Tom CatMarch 20th, 2008
6:49 am GMT
“we had to slog through to the last paragraph to find that McCain’s preacher doesn’t condemn Wright–this should have been the lead paragraph.”
Thats because his views are more extreme than Obama’s Preacher. Ed Stoddard is either biased or a lazy journalist
Mccain Pastor believes Genocidal Plot against African Americans
http://www.youtube.com/v/IMaaDbGgsKA&hl
http://www.youtube.com/v/Nw8-9AGGsQw
- Posted by Real AmericanThe Reuters piece by Ed Stoddard on McCain’s bucolic preacher in Phoenix is a textbook example of “burying the lead.” The ostensible point of the piece was to contrast the man with Obama’s recently retired pastor. Putting aside the obvious differences, we had to slog through to the last paragraph to find that McCain’s preacher doesn’t condemn Wright–this should have been the lead paragraph.
Christianity has its share of creeps, bigots, pedos and just plain thumpers acting as the worst possible advertisement for Christianity. (On the other hand, one of the few groups of Christians who walk like they talk were the Amish of Nickel Mines, who forgave the man who shot their children.) Like it or not, and you’d never know it from the number of thumpers who seem to pretend the Sermon on the Mount never existed, Christianity doesn’t have one belief or a set of litmus tests like being anti-abortion.
All of which is moot, or ought to be: we’re gathering in November to elect a President, not a Chaplain.
- Posted by Patrick DrazenOk I watched the speech. Obama is as funny as a person can get. Change?? The republicans call it flip flop. He did know about his pastor being a bigot. He used his pastor for his political self serving advantage. Now, he is too much of a liability. The spiritual leader has to go. It has nothing to do with black or white. Barack is just inconsistent. We had George Bush for 8 years because he was a man we could have a beer with. Now we may get Obama. A preacher groomed by a preacher who sings God damm America. I don’t know about the rest of you. I Love my country, but we are beginning to look like the last years of the Roman Empire. We just forgot
- Posted by jhernandezhow to elect good leaders. Hilary is by far the best person for the job. However, a snow job has swept the country. I hope common sense will prevail
GO HILLARY!
- Posted by MaryI think that Senator Obama joined a black church because whether you are black or white in America, you will feel at home in a church where you feel more accepted. America have to kinds of Christian churches, one Black and one White. Senator Obama being a combination of both groups, attended the church that he felt would accept him without labeling him as their Black brother.
- Posted by ChristopheThis is very sad when Christ himself would have to attend a White American Church on one Sunday and attend a Black American church on another Sunday.
I think when white america hear about black america’s resentment toward this country they stop listening before they can understand what is truly being said. Why does white america think that any black person would harbor such feelings? Would we even be having this debate if it hadn’t been for slavery, segregation, discrimination, etc. committed against blacks? This was the genius of Sen. Obama’s speech. He acknowledged that Pastor Wright’s words were “wrong and divisive” and he condemned them. Sen. Obama tried to get white america to understand where those feelings emanated. He is the only politician that I have ever heard put this matter on the table to be dealt with honestly from both perspectives: blacks and white.
The very fact that white america is trying to paint Sen. Obama with Rev. Wright’s paint brush just proves that this country is still racist. Sen. Obama has a record of what he believes and we need to judge him on his record. Not On His Pastor’s Record, but on his record. Sen. Obama was a parishioner of the church where the man who led him to Christ presided as pastor. Sen. Obama said he heard “fiery” sermons before but he did not admit to hearing this particular sermon; and as a matter of fact, he said that he was not in attendance when this particular sermon was given. All fiery sermons does not equate to sermons that condemn America, so stop making that assumption.
The fact of the matter is that white america feel more patriotism to this country because they have always enjoyed the rights of this country unabatedly while blacks have not and are still dealing with the legacy of that history, which is evidence in the fact that white america can’t get beyond Sen. Obama being a member of a church whose pastor preached inflammatory words to judging him by his own record of public service and his on personal beliefs.
When a black man can run for office and still espouse the black community without white america feeling that he has not divorced the white community just because he has espoused the black community like blacks have had to do since this country’s inception, then you will know that America’s race problem has been effectively eradicated. Until then, America will continue to be a country of two Americas. And because we are divided, we will never reach that more perfect union that the forefathers of this country envisioned
- Posted by J.T. NelsonI will not vote for a candidate who is a racist. If McCain enjoyed a close mentoring relationship with a minister who was a white racist… I wouldn’t vote for him either. Obama had twenty years to figure out that his minister/menmtor is a black racist. He’s an intelligent person so my guess is that he understands that quite well & at some level he agrees. We cannot afford a racist in the oval office: white or black.
- Posted by PatFunny I thought Mr. Obama was running for office? Am I missing somthing or did his Pastor take over and decide to run for office???
Last I read I nor have not seen Mr. Obama hang anybody from a tree in all those 20 years he was in church.
But you go back 20 years you find many who did right after they got out of church too!
Listen folks as a black man I drive a big rig all 48 states for a living have been for 10 years and I hear DAILY doses of hate on the C.B. Radio (Mostly from Whites aimed at all who are not White) and so far no one has done jack in my eye site!
So give me a break just because you may hear negitive stuff don’t mean you will act on it.
Many people say he should leave his church well my responce is of all the child molesting done in all the Catholic churches how many people besides the victims do you see leaving the church??? So why should Obama leave his?
I have been in Black Churches that speak truth to and about the Rich White power structure in America and I nor anyone I know has went out and did anything to surpress the oppressor.
I have heard some well how should I put it “Uprising Speach” from mostly white Pastors on Short Wave and I have not seen one white guy go try to take out anybody in office.
What cracks me up the most is that people like Rush can get away with saying that “The Democrats should show an ad with a woman being dragged behind a pick uo truck screeming and hollering while holding on the her SSI check” and no one that I have spoken to has heard him say this not even the media has ever said one word about it.
We poor poor humans always seem to find little flaws in each other and make those big while over looking the really big ones!!! Hehehehe God has to laughing his head off cuz I sure am!!! Hahahaha!!!!
- Posted by Tom Cat