Barack's Speech on Race - What Do You Think?

It was smart of him to acknowledge the concerns of whites regarding affirmative action and "reverse racism." He also reminded the audience of the concerns, like healthcare and the economy, that affect us all.

They need to just get off the race thing and move on to our Nation. What will each candidate do to try to improve our Nation? Will any of them import the jobs back to Americans?

Hello.

Just wanted to stop in to tell you congratulations for being featured on Gather's homepage right now!

Here's a 10 rating & have a nice day. :o)

Grandious and well done, but it did not answer the question why did he spend 20 years in that church if the pastor was giving out the wrong message. Once again, Obama's speaking skills aare used to hide from answering direct questions.

I think Obama's got a big, big problem due to his association with a pastor who made such vitriolic comments after 9/11 regardless of how great a speech he makes.

I believe that Obama has the vantage point of once being a bi-racial child and now a bi-racial adult, something that neither most Blacks or most Whites have; I think Obama spoke from that vantage point, which is somewhat unique.

Politics Editor: why don't you do a poll of bi-racial Gather members (half-Black and half-White) and ask THEM what they think of Senator Obama's speech.

Senator Obama -- I KNOW -- has been rejected and ostracized by the Black community, and I suspect that the same has happened in the White community. I believe his speech was borne of this.

He was trying to say that he has heard this hate speech from both sides
(the grandmother he loves and the preacher he has come to love)
and cannot find it in his heart to abandon either one. It's a little something called

love and devotion.

More people ought to practice it sometimes. A little something also called

"forgiveness".

I believe Jesus (someone Obama subscribes to taught about it)

It would make for a better world.

By the way, the rhetoric of Rev. Wright, though I definitely DO NOT endorse or condone it is only so shocking to Whites because they are not accustomed to it being said to them. Blacks are accustomed to hearing hate groups like the Klan and the neo-Nazis speak of us like that all of the time. Check yourselves. Maybe it will give you a better understanding of what Blacks have been subjected to for centuries, yet many of you don't understand why people like Rev. Wright feel the way he does or says what he says.

I thought it was a great speech. He finally highlighted the fact that he is bi-racial. I think that is one of his greatest assets. He had significant empathy for all of us, and I found that extremely refreshing. He acknowledged, as well, that none of us behave always admirably. He was inclusive, despite all of our imperfections.

I have been, and will continue to be a Clinton supporter. But I'm not against Obama. If he is the nominee, I will support him. That said, I am legitimately concerned about his ties to the Exelon Corporation.

An excellent example of talking out of both sides of your mouth. They beat the hell out of Romney for his church's stance on race even though it has been abandoned. They feared Huckabee for being a Baptist preacher who garnered the support of evangelicals. I find it ironic that so many found the religious side of the republican candidates to be so offensive but have no problem with a democrat candidate who, for twenty years, has found this type of Christianity acceptable.

The news media seems to be making a very big issue about why Barrack Obama did not leave his church when his pastor made certain comments. I am not sure exactly what that means or if it is really important. I suppose I might find it to be a little more important after I find the answer to one question: Why is no one in the news media questioning why didn't the policeman, plumber, secretary, factory worker, cook, waitress, garbage man, teacher, lawyer, cab driver, cabinet maker, construction worker, farmer, carpenter and other members of the church walk out also. Should he have walked out of the church because he disagrees with his pastors comments; or did he feel that freedom of speech is something offered to all Americans. My wife has said many things that I totally disagree with, but I am not going to leave her because of her terrible and incorrect opinions.

I think it was a typical politician's speech. He didn't answer most of the questions that people have been asking, he avoided most of them. It was an okay speech, not great. I don't know why it was okay to slam Romney and Huckabee for their religions, but Obama has been off-limits. Out of all of them, I think Romney has always been the truest to his beliefs and everyone has always known where he stands. With Obama, I feel most of the time he is only saying what people want to hear.

"Obama and Race!... Romney and Huckabee." Hmmm, I read...

I think it was a fantastic speech and will be with us forever it did address many of the problems that we have in this country.

I also think that it was part political and if this issue of Wright hadn't come up it might not have been done.

And I also don't think that it answered many of the questions that people had and raised others.

Our leaders lying has been a big one lately and I think that Obama lied last Friday when he first addressed the story. And there ar some who are putting the spin on it that he didn't lie that he had not been in the church while the video's that the news was playing and thus he didn't lie when he said he didn't hear Wright say these things. He admitted that he has been in the church and we're now getting the "well I didn't inhale and oh I didn't know oral was sex" type of spin.

"Maybe it will give you a better understanding of what Blacks have been subjected to for centuries, yet many of you don't understand why people like Rev. Wright feel the way he does or says what he says. "

And while many Whites have not been through what Blacks have been through it is wrong to think that they don't understand. They may not understand on an emotional level but they can and do understand on an moral and intellectual level.

It was an excellent speech. Barack Obama was forced by his situation with Rev. Wright but there is a racial divide in the country that will not go away until all Americans are willing to talk about it openly. Honest discussion is the only thing that can make the situation better.

Barack Obama showed his leadership by making that speech and since race is a topic that effects all Americans, those seeking the highest office in the land should speak to the issue as well- 40 minutes before the national media. John McCain and Hillary Clinton need to face the music on this topic and be the leaders they claim to be and both address and offer their solutions to the racial divide in America.

I'm an ex-soldier and and leaders lead from the front.

I thought it was an excellent speech. The most important speech on race given in my lifetime.

I think it was a defining moment for him and his campaign. I was always lukewarm to Obama: I liked him, but didn't like the whole boyband groupie feel his campaign had and didn't really know if he had the right stuff. And I was floored with Wright's venom and connection to Farahkan. But after hearing his speech, even if he didn't explain it all, I came to understand where he's coming from. And he had the guts to go out there into the uncomfortable zone and deal with an issue that makes us angry and resentful and confused. I think he was fair to whites and blacks, and the kind of courage he took to do it, showed that he had real presidential ability to lead. He's got my vote now.

Oh, and the speech was excellent. Once again Obama has proven that he has the ability to lead with a level head even when under attack.

This amount of publicity this controversy is getting right now is sort of strange. People have been talking about it online for months, but suddenly it is "news"? It think the media just needed a way to fill the void until Pennsylvania, and what better way to do it than create a sensational scandal!

Regarding the pastor's 9/11 comments: Al-Qaeda believes that the U.S. is responsible for propping up the corrupt totalitarian governments that dominate the Middle East. U.S. support for Israel also angers many extremists. So yes, 9/11 was about American foreign policy. A plain and simple fact. I haven't heard anything indicating that the pastor believes that what the terrorists did was admirable or justifiable. Instead he simply pointed out that we have made mistakes in the Middle East and around the world- which we have.

It rocked ! ! !

Typical Black Man. How does that sit, hmmm?

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about "the U.S. of K.K.K. America," and howled, "God damn America!"

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright's statements were "controversial," and "divisive," and "racially charged," reflecting a "distorted view of America."

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The "white community," said Barack, must start "acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does 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 ... ."

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The "white community" must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with "ladders of opportunity" that were "unavailable" to Barack's and the Rev. Wright's generations.

What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago

I think it was a dangerous speech. I listened to him talk and several times I had a sinking feeling. My fear is that, and I’ve seen some evidence of it in the replies here, people will not really listen. This is a conversation that is decades in the making. It has been delayed time after time by the human ability to hold staunchly onto the most negative aspects of any given situation without embracing the bigger picture. No matter who it has been, who it is now, or who it will be in the future there will always be these same distractions. There will always be a Reverend Wright who says things that are inexcusable, as described by Obamma himself, but who is also a human and probably a good and decent man. I have heard inexcusable things from people I have loved and respected in my life. I did not walk out on them either. We are a melting pot of cultures now more than ever. Even in many families across the nation there are many different cultures. In mine alone I have seen black and white and brown sit down to meals together. We are a nation of minorities. Each with a different experience and with pains unique to those experiences. It would not only be wrong to deny it, at this point it would be irresponsible and immoral. We have the opportunity now to face something we have swept under the rug since the days of integration. We have the opportunity to embrace a leader who, as far as I am concerned, has never shown evidence of an agenda that is either black or white.

Liz W.

I couldn't agree more! Of course it's just a matter of time before some brainwashed idiot gets on here and starts calling your post "ignorent" and/or "racist" and start spouting off stupid crap that has nothing to do with the real facts. "whites commit crime too" "there are many successful and well educated blacks" these things may be true but that's speaking of the exceptions rather then the rule. It's just retarded how people base everything off a handful of exceptions when it comes to race. Then they want to blame poverty. Last time I checked rape and murder are rarely for financial gain. These are just pure acts of hatred. Whites are raped and murdered by blacks daily throughout the U.S. meanwhile everyones just focused on white racists which are responsable for only a small fraction of the total number of hate crimes commited nation wide. Really people, what's more important, the right of a black kid to sit next to a white on the school bus or the right of that white kid to be able to feel safe in his/her own niehberhood. 10,000 white women every year are raped by black men. 10% of the white population has fled to gated communitys and private schools to escape this multicultural hell hole. Yet we still continue to make excuses for these people and think we can solve things by giving them more hand outs and preferentual treatment all based on a guilt trip placed on whites. I've personally never owned a slave, never enforced or took part in any acts of unequal segregation nor was I alive during that time to have a say either way. As such I don't have anything to feel guilty about and I don't owe these people anything! I'm very confident that the vast majority of whites here can say the same. I really don't care about any black ranting about whitey keeping them down or any mindless fool who wants to make silly excuses for them.