Black Commentators Say Critics Miss the Point
Black journalists and commentators rallied around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and by extension the black church, as Sen. Barack Obama‘s longtime pastor was excoriated by white pundits over remarks denounced as anti-American and unpatriotic.
Obama, singed by the criticism of his association with Wright, prepared a “speech on race, politics and unifying our country” and delivered it Tuesday morning in Philadelphia.
In Tuesday’s speech, delivered to a flag-draped background, Obama said Wright had gone too far in his comments, but added, “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.
“The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.”
It was billed as a major speech, and had the potential to change the dynamics of the campaign, particularly in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary. It invoked Obama’s central campaign theme of uniting the country by using his own biracial heritage as an example, and he said the nation could continue to pounce on gaffes by campaign supporters or understand that if it does, it will still face the same issues in the next election.
Text at the end of this column. C-SPAN planned to rebroadcast it at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday.
The controversy over Wright, who is retiring as pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, was ignited Thursday when investigative reporter Brian Ross, on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” showed excerpts of Wright’s sermons that are offered for sale by the church.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, for example, Wright said, “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yard. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
“He regularly mocks black Republicans as sellouts,” a voiceover said in the report.
“They live below the ‘C’ level. They live below the level of Clarence, Colin, and Con-damn-nesia,” Wright was shown saying.
By Friday afternoon, Obama issued a statement posted on the Huffington Post Web site in which he said, “All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country. . . . Had I heard them, had I been sitting in the church at the time that they were spoken, I would have been absolutely clear to Reverend Wright that I didn’t find those acceptable.”
Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, “I have felt frustrated by how the church has been characterized and by the suggestion that this is somehow a separatist church and by other statements made on these talk shows,” Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell wrote.
The criticism reached a crescendo on the Sunday morning television talk shows, when Wright’s comments were often shortened to soundbites in which all the listener heard him say was “God damn America.”
On “Fox News Sunday,” moderator Chris Wallace was astonished that the first two guests, Sens. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., an Obama supporter, and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who backs Sen. Hillary Clinton, wanted to put the matter to rest.
“Are you telling me — because I’m a little surprised at this, Senator. You’re not troubled that Barack Obama belonged to a church which had a reverend, Reverend Wright, who said that the U.S. has sponsored state terrorism through Israel against the Palestinians? That doesn’t bother you?” he asked, continuing to press.
On the pundit panel, the issue became what Obama knew and when he knew it. The motives of the congregation were questioned as well.
Brit Hume said to Wallace, “I think it’s a very big deal. And even if you give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt and accept the idea that not only at the time these remarks were made — and there’s quite a number of them, as you noted — that he didn’t actually physically hear them, it’s hard to imagine he didn’t hear about them. And they are pretty extreme.
“And you also noted the reaction inside the congregation of the church. There were people jumping to their feet to cheer this. This is the atmosphere there where such comments are not only accepted but applauded.
“And it’s worth noting also, I think, certainly Obama knew what sort of church this is.”
It fell to black commentators on the Sunday shows to try to put the issue in context.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Michele Norris of National Public Radio said, “Where Jeremiah Wright is concerned, it’s interesting. If you [were] introduced to him for the first time just based on the clips that you showed on this program and that have been in heavy rotation, particularly on cable news and on talk radio, you don’t get the full measure of, of, of this man and who he is and a sort of full understanding of why Barack Obama may have been attracted to him. Barack Obama is in a difficult position because he has said repeatedly ‘Words count.’ And so he can’t diminish these words or, or easily step away from them.
“But if you just focus on the words, it seems that you ignore something very important. When Jeremiah Wright makes these statements, the amen chorus in that church was very loud. His words resonate with a large number of African Americans, and the blunt language that he used makes people uncomfortable, you know, when he talks about America’s inglorious record on race. And yet many people find, find something that they relate to in those words, and that’s what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may want to start focusing on, is this chasm that both [the] Ferraro dustup and the Jeremiah Wright dustup seems to point to in this country,” referring to a controversy involving former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who said Obama had benefited in the campaign because he is black.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said, “I come at this, not as someone who sits in a black church, as I’m Catholic and my church is predominantly white, but someone who has benefited from the fiery rhetoric of the Jeremiah Wrights of this country. I understand the unconscious bias that exists in American politics that would make it very difficult for Barack Obama to address head on some of the racial challenges and disparities.
“And that’s hard to do in a presidential campaign when people expect to you have a 30-second sound bite. But the black church has nourished the souls of black people and those who go to church with broken spirits after spending weeks and weeks of being torn down. So we can use Jeremiah Wright, perhaps, as a lesson of history, a moment to reflect deeply where the country may be at this moment. And perhaps how Barack Obama transcends race, given it has now spilled over into his campaign. . . . He has repudiated and denounced those comments. What else can he do? He’s not going to renounce the good Lord Jesus Christ. What is the point?”
On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page said, “I think this is all the sort of thing that Obama needed to be expecting. And I suspect from that brilliant statement that he did make in regard to his religious belief, that was a statement that told me this guy has been thinking about this for a while. He knew Jeremiah Wright, that controversy was coming down the road. He’s been profiled before, and these kinds of things do come up, so this is all part of the test of any candidate who is looking for a critical office, to see how well can he get through this situation.”
The exception was Juan Williams, a “Fox News Sunday” regular, who seconded Hume’s and Wallace’s questions and went further.
“Of course it says something about him. . . . He joined this church really to solidify his credentials as authentically black and authentically a part of that South Side Chicago community, because it’s the largest church there and Reverend Wright is well known not only in Chicago but nationally,” Williams said.
“And he’s known for making these outlandish comments. And he falls into a tradition of black ministers who — you know, they say it’s social gospel, or whatever.
“But really, what it comes down to is an expression of black nationalism and trying to affirm black folks and say, ‘You know what? Racism in this country’s terrible and it’s a burden to be black in America,’ and all that.
“But they go beyond the pale at some point, then, and start off with this whole victimization, blaming people, damning the United States. And it goes to the point, then, where I think it becomes sort of — it picks up and leads to what Michelle Obama said about — only for the first time has she, this Ivy League-educated prominent American lawyer, proud to be an American because you’re having support for her husband.
“I think that’s wackiness . . .
“This is the closest black people have ever been to having a president of the United States of America. And suddenly, you see — wait a second, he’s playing games and corners here on the race question.
“He’s not being straight ahead and saying, ‘You know what? I stand astride racial polarization.’ He’s saying, ‘I play racial polarization at one moment to my advantage,’ Reverend Wright, ‘the next moment, I will distance myself and disavow Reverend Wright when that’s convenient, too.’
“That is why I say for me, it just strikes — wait a second. I want to know you. I want to know what you think and who you are. And in this case, I realize I don’t.”
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. . . Black Print Commentators See Racial Chasm
By Monday, African American print commentators, some in the ministry themselves, were adding their say to the Jeremiah Wright controversy.
“It is a sad testimony that to protect his credentials as a unifier above the fray the Senator is fueling the media characterization that Rev. Dr. Wright is some retiring old uncle in the church basement instead of respecting Wright for the towering astute father of progressive social and global causes that he is,” said the Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds, a former Chicago Tribune and USA Today journalist who joined the ministry and now writes in the black press.
“The Jeremiah I know is a sought-after preacher in seminaries across the country. I have traveled with him, introduced him at the National Press Club and use his tapes as teaching tools in my prophetic ministry classes at the Howard University School of Divinity, where he often preaches to adoring audiences.”
Eric Easter, chief of digital strategies for Johnson Publishing Co. who has worked in national Democratic campaigns, wrote on ebonyjet.com: “Ignoring the issue of why this is once again an issue, a large part of the Jeremiah Wright dustup is White America’s lack of understanding of Black religious tradition. Black preachers have an awesome responsibility. In the face of slavery, racism, lynchings, bloody marches, CointelPro and syphilis experiments, they have had to convince their congregations that not only does God still exist, but that God is also just.
“And frankly, in order to make that theory fly you have to dramatically ratchet up the rhetoric on the forces of good and evil, both in delivery and substance. I mean, it’s pretty hard to let people walk away each Sunday with the impression that no matter how much you pay in taxes, how many of your sons [die] in wars or how hard you work to raise a good family, there’s a group of people who will still hate you because your skin is darker. White people can’t be that stupid, right? Right? There’s got to be some other reason.
“Hence, conspiracy theories, devil analogies and hope in the heavenly karma that God will avenge in the end.
“And aside from an inflammatory tone, what exactly did Wright say that was inaccurate? That Hillary Clinton has never been called a Black man? That at least a part of the reason for September 11 was that America’s chickens were coming home to roost? Inelegant, certainly. Divisive? Perhaps. But disavowal material?”
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University, and seminarian at Union Theological Seminary in New York who has attended Wright’s church, wrote on theRoot.com, comparing Wright’s comments with those of the great abolitionist and editor Frederick Douglass.
“This week Barack Obama was pressured to denounce Jeremiah Wright. But in the hundred years following the end of the Civil War more than five thousand African Americans were lynched and not a single president denounced the atrocities. Because of this history, black patriotism is complicated.
“Black patriots love our country, even though it has often hated us. We love our country, even while we hold it accountable for its faults.
“We cannot learn from our prophets if we denounce them. Silencing Jeremiah Wright will not [make] us forget hundreds of years of racial inequality. Now is the time to listen to each other carefully.”
Activist Jasmyne Cannick said on thedailyvoice.com:
“Jeremiah Wright may be retired now, but thank God for us that there are still pastors and ministers like him out there who aren’t afraid to tell it like it is when it comes to the United States Government and the history that was so conveniently left out of the schoolbooks.
“It seems that it’s not enough that we’ve adopted their religion and most Blacks are worshiping to their white blue-eyed Jesus, but now they want to dictate the message that we receive as well. And in the process, they’ve backed Obama against a wall, forcing him to publicly distance himself from his pastor in order to prove that he’s not an angry Black man in disguise.”
Trinity United issued a statement denouncing the news media’s distillation of Wright’s comments. “Dr. Wright has preached 207,792 minutes on Sunday for the past 36 years at Trinity United Church of Christ. This does not include weekday worship services, revivals and preaching engagements across America and around the globe, to ecumenical and interfaith communities. It is an indictment on Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound bite,” said the Rev. Otis Moss III, the pastor, BlackAmericaWeb reported.
Marc Ambinder, the Atlantic blog: Kristol Fails To Check His Sources, And So Bungles Key Fact In Anti-Obama Column
Patricia Arnold, thedailyvoice.com: The Politician and His Pastor
Randall Bailey, the dailyvoice.com: What’s Right with Jeremiah Wright?
Jasmyne Cannick, thedailyvoice.com: The White Man’s Burden is Not the Black Man’s Responsibility
Eric Easter, ebonyjet.com: Obama and the Jeremiah Wright Problem
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting: Media Hold McCain, Obama to Different Standards
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, theRoot.com: Our Jeremiah
Lisa Lerer and Mike Allen, politico.com: Church accuses media of ‘crucifixion’
Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com: The Wright Dust-Up Shows and Proves That Many Whites Don’t Know Black People at All
Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Attacks on his church trouble Obama
Barack Obama, HuffingtonPost.com: On My Faith and My Church
James Oliphant, the Swamp blog, Chicago Tribune: Rev. Wright touches a raw nerve
Kim Pearson, BlogHer: On the Patriotism of Wright’s Jeremiads and Michelle Obama’s Pride
Zachary Roth, Columbia Journalism Review: Rod Parsley’s Free Pass: Jeremiah Wright gets torched, while McCain’s “spiritual adviser” offends with impunity
Mark Silva, the Swamp blog, Chicago Tribune: From the pews of Trinity United Church of Christ
Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Trinity Official, Other Black Ministers Decry Controversy Over Rev. Wright’s Comments
Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Victimhood skirmish aids only McCain
Peter Wallsten, latimes.com: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was an early concern, Obama aide admits
Jeremiah Wright’s sermon: The audacity to hope
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Bill Clinton’s Attacks on Obama, Media Had a Cost
“Bill Clinton‘s reentry into the political arena appears to have come at some cost to his legacy. New polling now suggests that Clinton’s involvement in the Democratic nomination battle between his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama, has significantly tarnished the former president’s image,” David Paul Kuhn wrote Monday on politico.com.
“A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Thursday found that more Americans view Bill Clinton negatively than positively, 45 to 42 percent. It marked the first time since January 2002 that a plurality of Americans disapproved of the former president. One month earlier, The Gallup Poll found that nearly as many Americans had an unfavorable as favorable view of Bill Clinton for the first time in nearly five years.
“Clinton’s low point came in South Carolina, where he drew criticism for comparing Obama’s candidacy to Jesse Jackson, a remark widely viewed as an attempt to pigeonhole Obama as a candidate who appeals largely to black voters. Clinton also took on a much more adversarial role with the media, a posture unseen since his years in the White House.”
Jeff Adair, MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, Mass.: It’s because I’m black
Wayne Dawkins, politicsincolor.com: Ferraro’s Evaluation: Any Black Guy Won’t Do
Ted Diadiun, Cleveland Plain Dealer: Adding up Ohio Republican crossover votes was team effort
Brian Gilmore, ebonyjet.com: Hillary and the Loss of the Black Vote
Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: Prisoners of sentencing politics
Errol Louis, New York Daily News: It’s sad to watch old politicians try to fit Obama into racial box
Susan Milligan, Boston Globe: Clinton role in health program disputed
Ruben Navarrette Jr. , San Diego Union-Tribune: Blinded by our success on race and sex
Les Payne, Newsday: Ferraro’s view on Obama is way off
Leonard Pitts Jr. , Miami Herald: ‘Experience’ is a phony issue in this campaign
Gregory Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times: White suspicion, black ‘luck’
Stan Simpson, Hartford (Conn.) Courant: Race Enters The Race, Once Again
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Big Media Crowd Witnesses Historic N.Y. Swearing-In
“It was just incredible,” Judy Sanders, New York state’s executive photographer, told Journal-isms. “I’ve never seen press like that,” she said. Sanders, who has been part of the Albany political scene for 27 years, was speaking, of course, of coverage of the ascension of Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson to the governor’s seat Monday after the scandal-prompted resignation of Eliot Spitzer.
Sanders said there were 30 television cameras on Wednesday for Paterson’s first news conference as governor-to-be. He was sworn in shortly after 1 p.m. Monday.
But in Tuesday’s New York Daily News, the lead story, by columnist Juan Gonzalez, was not about the swearing-in.
“The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state’s new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs,” Gonzalez wrote.
“In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.”
Others were focused on the history being made.
“Mr. Paterson, the state’s first blind governor as well as the first black one, nodded to the historic nature of his wearing-in, Nicholas Confessore reported for the New York Times.
“‘I have confronted the prejudice of race, and challenged the issues of my own disability,’ he said. ‘I have served in government for over two decades. I stand willing and able to lead this state to a brighter future and a better tomorrow.’
“At times, the event felt more like something of a coronation for Mr. Paterson, the scion of a Harlem political fraternity that remains powerful and well-connected in New York politics. His father, Basil A. Paterson, a former state senator and secretary of state, stood behind Mr. Paterson when he first ascended the dais, as did his mother, his wife, and his two children. They remained there as Mr. Paterson, a well-liked veteran of Albany, was greeted by exultant cheers and whistles, and a lengthy standing ovation.”
It turns out that Paterson will not be the first legally blind governor in United States history, Sewell Chan reported Thursday in a blog on the Times Web site.
“Bob Cowley Riley (1924-1994), who was governor of Arkansas for 11 days, from Jan. 3 to 14, 1975, was almost entirely blind as a result of injuries he sustained as a Marine, in combat on Guam, during World War II. The Associated Press noted Mr. Riley’s status today in a correction.”
Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: ‘Stand by your man’ era is past its time
Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News: Sanctimony turns two political heroes into two big zeroes
Mary C. Curtis, Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: A distant sex scandal hits home
Bob Herbert, New York Times: The Winds of Albany
Colbert I. King, Washington Post: Two Errant New Yorkers
Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Alpha males behaving really badly
Bob Richter, San Antonio Express-News: Spitzer behaved badly; E-N reported superbly
Ruben Rosario, St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press: Eliot Spitzer and me: My fight with sexual addiction
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Payton Leaves Oakland Tribune After 28 Years
Columnist Brenda Payton, a fixture at the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune since 1980, has accepted a buyout offer, editor Martin G. Reynolds confirmed on Monday.
Payton, 55, has been on leave since August, writing a family history about her grandparents homesteading in New Mexico. She was recruited to the Tribune by Robert C. Maynard, according to a bio on the History Makers Web site.
In addition to her Tribune work, Payton was a staff reporter and director of the social justice project at the Center for Investigative Reporting, where she directed the investigation for “Your Loan is Denied,” an hour-long documentary on mortgage lending discrimination. Her columns have been honored by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute.
“I’m working to get my book published, I’m developing an online community reporting project that would diversify the news online and planning to set up a blog to write my column. I’m researching how to do that,” Payton told Journal-isms.
The Bay Area News Group-East Bay, which includes the Tribune, lost 107 employees through the buyout offer but the exodus did not alter the racial composition of the newsrooms, John Armstrong, president of Bay Area News Group-East Bay, told Journal-isms on Monday.
The cuts affected the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Fremont Argus, Hayward Daily News, Tri-Valley Herald, San Jaoquin Herald, San Mateo County Times and a dozen weeklies.
“In every division we had more applications than we could accept,” Armstrong said, “so we had to be careful in the ones we accepted. We found no bias in age, gender or race. The buyouts really reflected the universe.”
Meanwhile, at Newsday in Long Island, N.Y., 36 rank-and-file newsroom employees took buyouts, although the company needed only 25, according to Zachary Dowdy, vice president/editorial of Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Conference/International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He identified three journalists of color: reporters Brandon Bain and Colin Nash, and artist Rich Harris.
Previously, two black journalists in management, Genetta M. Adams, assistant managing editor for features, and Stacie Walker, a deputy national editor, accepted the buyout.
The Northern California Media Workers posted what it said was an incomplete list of those who left the newsrooms of the Bay Area News Group:
PHOTO: Herman Bustamante (East County), Nader Khouri (Central/East County), Ron Lewis (San Mateo), Bob Pepping (Contra Costa Times), Tue Nam Ton (Hayward/Fremont), Ron Riesterer (Oakland Tribune photo editor emeritus), Jay Solmonson (Valley).
FEATURES: Bari Brenner (copy editor/Travel editor), Rob Gagnon (Features copy desk chief), Trine Gallegos (copy editor), Chad Jones (writer/editor), Candace Murphy (writer), Mary Pols (film critic), Michiele Roderick (copy editor), Jennifer Slafkosky (food editor/writer).
CITY/METRO REPORTERS: Lea Blevins (Tri-Valley Herald), Momo Chang (Oakland), Rachel Cohen (Hayward), Linda Davis (Hills newspapers), Chris De Benedetti (Fremont), Janice de Jesus (weeklies feature writer), Dogen Hannah (military/regional), Deb Hollinger (chief clerk, editorial), Ryan Huff (county government reporter), Jamaal Johnson (Fremont, contract not renewed), Alan Lopez (Hills newspapers), Scott Marshall (Contra Costa night cops), Nargis Nooristani (Lamorinda Sun), Brenda Payton (Oakland). Laurie Phillips Huff (Pittsburg/Bay Point), Aaron Swarts (Tracy).
GRAPHICS/NEWS ART: Joni Sare, Rog Hernandez.
NEWS EDITORS: Keith Bennetts (east county editor), Dan Buchholz (Hayward city editor), Julie Cadigan (Danville/Pleasanton editor), Rob Dennis (Fremont city editor), Mike Meenan (San Mateo city editor), Randy Striegel (weeklies news editor).
NEWS RESEARCH: Bev Hunt
OPINION: Michelle Fry
SPORTS: Andy Altman-Ohr (assistant sports editor, Pleasanton), Steve Ellison (copy editor), Steve Herendeen (Tribune prep sports editor), Bill Kruissink (Valley Times sports), Dennis Miller (Herald sports), Ricardo Sanchez (west county sports), John Sherriff (copy editor/paginator), Jon Walsh (Copy editor).
COPY DESK: Francisco Fernandez, Donna DiPaolo, Kate Lavin, Ben Reed, Alyssa Tong, John Vieira.
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Trend: Prospects Limited for User-Created Content
The Project for Excellence in Journalism, in the fifth edition of its annual report tracing the “revolution” of news, on Monday noted these trends:
“News is shifting from being a product — today’s newspaper, Web site or newscast — to becoming a service— how can you help me, even empower me?
“A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations.
“The prospects for user-created content, once thought possibly central to the next era of journalism, for now appear more limited, even among ‘citizen’ sites and blogs.
“Increasingly, the newsroom is perceived as the more innovative and experimental part of the news industry.
“The agenda of the American news media continues to narrow, not broaden.
“Madison Avenue, rather than pushing change, appears to be having trouble keeping up with it.”
The report also said:
“A comprehensive audit of coverage shows that in 2007, two overriding stories — the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential campaign — filled more than a quarter of the newshole and seemed to consume much of the media’s energy and resources. And what wasn’t covered was in many ways as notable as what was. Other than Iraq — and to a lesser degree Pakistan and Iran — there was minimal coverage of events overseas, some of which directly involved U.S. interests, blood and treasure.
“At the same time, consider the list of the domestic issues that each filled less than a single percent of the newshole: education, race, religion, transportation, the legal system, housing, drug trafficking, gun control, welfare, Social Security, aging, labor, abortion and more.
“A related trait is a tendency to move on from stories quickly. On breaking news events — the Virginia Tech massacre or the Minneapolis bridge collapse were among the biggest — the media flooded the zone but then quickly dropped underlying story lines about school safety and infrastructure. And newer media seem to have an even narrower peripheral vision than older media. Cable news, talk radio (and also blogs) tend to seize on top stories (often polarizing ones) and amplify them. The Internet offers the promise of aggregating ever more sources, but its value still depends on what those originating sources are providing. Even as the media world has fragmented into more outlets and options, reporting resources have shrunk.”
Russ Britt, MarketWatch: Are job cuts death knell for America’s newspapers?
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Clinton Vows to Restore Open Government
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., says she is “committed to restoring open government” by not only mandating more open meetings and release of public documents, but also by nominating “an attorney general who has a proven commitment to open government,” according to her response to the Sunshine Week 2008: Sunshine Campaign survey of presidential candidates, the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported.
The group has not heard from Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., or John McCain, R-Ariz., Debra Gersh Hernandez, Sunshine Week coordinator, said.
“Clinton’s response comes on the heels of a Sunshine Week public opinion survey by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University that found three-quarters of Americans think the federal government is secretive, and almost nine in 10 say where a presidential candidate stands on openness is something they consider when deciding who will get their vote,” the organization said.
“Sunshine Week — a non-partisan, open government initiative led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that runs March 16-22 — surveyed the presidential candidates on a variety of open government issues, including access to information, Freedom of Information Act reform, secrecy and classification.”
Wayne Ezell, Florida Times-Union: Celebrate Sunshine, even here
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Short Takes
Mark Carter, a 20-year veteran media executive, strategist, reporter and executive producer, is the new executive director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the Goldenson Chair in Community Broadcasting at the Missouri School of Journalism, the Committee announced. Carter, 44, began work in his Washington office on Monday. He has worked at CNN, KING-TV in Seattle and WCVB in Boston and was the first foreign corespondent for the education network Channel One.
“As U.S. newspapers struggle to build online ad revenue and readership, the biggest Hispanic newspaper group, ImpreMedia, is launching a single digital platform for its Spanish-language papers,” Laurel Wentz reported Monday for AdAge.com.
The HBO series “The Wire” “is over and the entire cast and crew have moved on to their next jobs,” and co-creators David Simon and Ed Burns are busy editing their next HBO project, a mini-series based on “Generation Kill,” Evan Wright’s 2004 book about the 2003 Iraq invasion, reports Bret McCabe in the Baltimore City Paper, which published a lengthy interview with Simon.
“NBC Nightly News” on Sunday did a story about the “Angola 3,” “three innocent men held in solitary confinement for over 3 decades for trying to speak out against inhumane treatment and racial segregation,” in the group’s words.
Ebonyjet.com has a story about the 3,000 to 10,000 African descendants living in Bolivia. “The rough population estimate is just one of the problems plaguing Bolivia’s least recognized and most discriminated-against ethnic group, one of 36 different ethnicities in South America’s poorest country. Afro-Bolivian leaders are working to change the dire situation of their people, who say their communities sorely lack schools, health care, infrastructure, and basic services such as electricity and water,” the story by freelancer Yasmin Khan says.
A visit to Cuba by the journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has found, “The Raúl Castro presidency has done nothing to improve human rights in the country, but some gestures have been made.”
“Hispanic broadcast network Telemundo has entered into a 10-year strategic alliance agreement in Mexico with Grupo Televisa that could ultimately have a major positive impact on the network’s fate among Mexican viewers in the United States,” John Consoli reported for Media Week. “Under the terms of the agreement, Televisa in Mexico will distribute Telemundo-produced content across multiple platforms including broadcast television, pay TV and emerging digital platforms.”
“The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) named DeShong Smitherman, a producer at WTHR-TV in Indianapolis, and Cynthia R. Greenlee, a freelance journalist and Duke University doctoral student as the 2008 Ethel Payne Fellows. Named after the historic Chicago Defender foreign and Washington correspondent, the Ethel Payne fellowship gives NABJ members a chance to gain international reporting experience in Africa,” the association said.
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Feedback: One Hell of a Group Covered Jackson
Congratulations on a very interesting article (” ‘Bigfoots’ on the Campaign Plane” March 14.) As a 1984 “alligator” of the Jesse Jackson campaign, and again in 1988, may I add a few other top-flight black journalists to your list:
George Curry of the Chicago Tribune, the late Gerald Boyd of the New York Times, Time magazine’s Jack White, the late Jacques Chenet, photographer from Newsweek, Jacqueline Adams of CBS, and Ken Walker of ABC.
And this is not to mention the number of crews and producers from all the networks.
We were one hell of a group; that I will never forget.
I was CNN’s producer on the Jackson campaign both in ’84 and ’88. Fyi, after the Jackson campaign in ’84, the Jackson “alligators” went, virtually en masse, to the Bush VP campaign.
Are you familiar with the term “alligator”?
When Jess made his “Hymietown” apology in Manchester, N.H., Jesse cut the q-and-a short by saying, “I am tired of the allegations and all you alligators.”
Thus the press corps, about 25 at the core, had its name. We were with him from the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire to San Francisco.
Jim Miller President?Producers International Media, Inc.?Marietta, Ga.?March 17, 2008
Editor’s note: The list of black journalists who covered Jesse Jackson is not all-inclusive.
Text of Obama’s March 18 Address on Race
Text of Barack Obama’s remarks in Philadelphia.
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
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.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this 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. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together — unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction— towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners — an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
IT’S A STORY that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts — that out of many, we are truly one.
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.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth — by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, “Dreams From My Father,” I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters . . . And in that single note— hope! — I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories —of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about . . . memories that all people might study and cherish — and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety — the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full 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.
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.
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.
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. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We 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.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
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.
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.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it — those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations — those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
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. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
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. 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.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze — a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns — this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
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.
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.
Ironically, this quintessentially American — and yes, conservative — notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
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 true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means 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 — by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand— that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
FOR WE HAVE a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the OJ trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina — or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation — the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today — a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
