I’ll be the first to admit that I agree with many things that Obama said in his racial speech today. I’m sure that it will be hailed by his supporters and the mainstream media (pretty much one and the same) that this settles the Reverend Wright issue and we can all get back to loving him again.

I disagree. The more I know about Obama, the more I like Hillary.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

Obama is spot on here. I would like to think that if I were born decades earlier, I would have marched for civil rights. As the left sidebar shows, I consider social justice to be of pivotal importance. I’m reminded of the denomination of my youth — Southern Baptists — who would take up collection after collection to send missionaries to Africa but would not let the black family down the street enter the doors of its churches. The Baptists have publicly apologized, repudiated their past, and now openly reach out to all peoples. I also feel a family blame for that because it was an ancestor of mine who led the push to Mississippi Baptist to separate over slavery.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

Oh, quit whining about the Confederate flag. While the south did try to secede mostly on the issue of slavery it was northern tariff laws favoring northern states that heled keep keep slavery alive in the south. The north benefitted from slavery just as did the south. In fact, 4 slave-owning states plus the chunk of land that became West Virginia were aligned with the north during the Civil War. And those northern slaves were not freed until months after the Civil War.

“Rev. Wright preached hatred against the Jews. Yet you still attended the church and were close friends with him for 20 years.”

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, 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.

First, it was Hillary who played the race card. Obama conveniently fails to mention that it was the Democrats obsession with race and racial politics that brought up this issue in the first place.

Second, the mainstream media finally became embarassed over their fawning love for you and began to look at your past. What they saw wasn’t pretty. If you find Reverend Wright’s language divisive and incendiary now, then why did you attend his church for 20 years? There’s no way you could have missed Reverend Wright’s ongoing association that that racist nutball, Louis Farrakhan.

This would have been a much better speech if you had owned up to your mistakes. But, as a liberal, your mistakes are always somebody else’s fault.

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.

Um, no. I have never even visited a church and heard hateful remarks like Rev. Wright has made. Not even close. I did once visit a Sunday School class where the lesson was about how rock music was the devil’s music. However, the teacher did say that it was okay to listen to country music and Elvis Presley. The teacher was such a crackpot that I didn’t even stay for the service.

Compare this to the church that I currently belong to. It’s smack in the center of predominantly white Plano, Texas. However, the church employs a number of blacks on its staff, including the Assistant Pastor, who is my beloved Sunday School teacher. The congregation is a melting pot of races and cultures and is probably about only 40-50% white. Mixed marriages, including my own, are extremely common. Our best friends and mentors are a mixture of African and Portugese heritage. We preach Christian love to all people.

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; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

Rev. Wright preached hatred against the Jews. Yet you still attended the church and were close friends with him for 20 years. You even named one of your books after one of Rev. Wright’s sermons.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Again, why did you attend the church actively for 20 years?

Yes, Obama — you are trying to justify Rev. Wright’s comments while at the same time distancing yourself from him. And you desperately hope that the hateful sermons spoken by your pastor fade away. Don’t worry, the mainstream media will help you. And if the Republicans dare to bring up this issue, you’re going to scream racism.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

OWN UP, OBAMA
“Your pastor preached hatred yet you were an active member of his church for 20 years.”

If I heard my pastor preach any of those things, I would never darken the door of that church again. The problem is that the snippets we’ve heard of Rev. Wright and the website (which the church has conveniently changed) truly reflects the views of Rev. Wright, the church as a whole, and you.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

So have you been sleeping through his sermons for the past 20 years?

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork.

Yes, Obama — you are trying to justify Rev. Wright’s comments while at the same time distancing yourself from him. And you desperately hope that the hateful sermons spoken by your pastor fade away. Don’t worry, the mainstream media will help you. And if the Republicans dare to bring up this issue, you’re going to scream racism.

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.

Yes, segregated schools are inferior schools. But how many segregated schools are left in this country? And exactly what facts do you have to support your claim that predominantly black (or whatever your race) schools are inferior. Blacks and whites attend the exact same schools. Racially-mixed marriages are extremely common. Perhaps the achievement gap is better explained by the divisiveness and perpetual victimhood preached by your pastor and the so-called black leadership of this country, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

In Dallas, at least, black leaders complain about too many policemen in urban neighborhoods.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.

That would be correct, Obama. I suffered discrimination from government racial quotas when I owned my own business. Being white hurt me financially. But, you know what? I got over it. Why can’t you? Replacing one form of discrimination with another only perpetuates the problem.

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.

Bullcrap. You’re lying now, Obama.

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.

You are so full of it, Obama. Check out the careers of people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and how they’ve profited over their racist politics. And what you call reverse racism is real, and it’s wrong.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

Then let’s start by ending racial quotas. Somehow, I don’t feel that you would do this if you were president.

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.

I finally agree with you again.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.

And that would be the race-based politics of the Democrat Party.