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Obama's speech began by quoting the Preamble to the United States Constitution: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
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</BR>Noting his proximity to Independence Hall, Obama highlighted the tension between the ideals of equal citizenship and freedom expressed in the Constitution and America's history of slavery, and connected the civil war and civil rights movement with the goals of his own 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."
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</BR>Obama described his own family history, stating that "in no other country on Earth is my story even possible" and connected both his multicultural background and his campaign with the American motto, "out of many, we are one." He mentioned that he achieved primary victories in "states with some of the whitest populations in the country" and in South Carolina, where he won with the support of white and black voters.
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</BR>Obama then addressed the comments of Jeremiah Wright:“...we've heard my former pastor...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.
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</BR>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.
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</BR>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...”
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</BR>Obama went on to say that Wright's views were "not only wrong but divisive... at a time when we need unity." He posed the rhetorical question of why he would have allied himself with Reverend Wright in the first place. Arguing that Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ had been misrepresented by "the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube," Obama spoke of Wright's service to the poor and needy, and of the role Wright played in his own journey to Christianity.
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</BR>Obama stated that like other black churches, Trinity contained the full spectrum of the black community: "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." Similarly, he argued that Wright "contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years." Therefore, Obama stated: “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.”
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</BR>Emphasizing that he was in no way justifying or excusing Wright's comments, Obama said that to dismiss Wright as a "crank or a demagogue" ... "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."
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</BR>Obama then invoked the history of racial inequality in the United States, first by paraphrasing a line by William Faulkner: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." He argued that many of the difficulties in African-American communities could be traced to the sufferings of previous generations under slavery and Jim Crow laws. Obama observed that, in the era in which African-Americans of Reverend Wright's generation grew up, segregation and degradation were common. Even blacks of that generation who, like Wright, surmounted obstacles to succeed in life often remained bitter and angry about their experiences with racism.
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