HEALING
My Brazilian friends are following this with tears in their eyes. I imagine it is the same in much of the world.
11:20 a.m. Mr. Obama says that, “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 the true genius of this nation.”
11:27 a.m. “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.”
Obama makes me, once again, proud to be an American.
Here is the transcript.
And here is the editorial response of the NY Times: Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage.
2 comments:
Amen to that, my friend...
You know, Lou, when I first saw Barack speak last year I was instantly reminded of someone else: you.
There was a similar comfort and presence in front of hundreds/thousands of people, a similar speaking from the heart with a highly informed intelligence. And something about the whole style, and I thought to myself, even though these two people come from such radically different backgrounds and times, what is common to them is South Chicago. Go figure. --pedro
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