In his speech on racism in America Senator Barack Obama tried to do for race what President John F. Kennedy did for religion. The Democratic presidential candidate yesterday attempted in Philadelphia to quell a firestorm set off by incendiary sermons made in past years by his former pastor and adviser, and to challenge Americans to transcend racial prejudices. While the speech Senator Obama delivered is unlikely to win over those who oppose his candidacy because of his race, it may serve a similar purpose as Kennedy's address to Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960 -- easing concerns among some voters about his core beliefs, analysts and historians said.
Senator Obama's speech ``made clear that his own views differed'' from those expressed by his longtime pastor, just as Kennedy made clear that a Catholic president would not answer to the Vatican, said Ted Sorensen, 79, an Obama supporter who helped Kennedy write the Houston speech that was a turning point in his race for the White House. ``The parallels with Kennedy instantly came to mind,'' said political scientist Stephen Hess of the Washington-based Brookings Institution who was a speechwriter for President Dwight Eisenhower.
Senator Obama said, ``Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity.'' He added, however: ``I can no more disown him than I can disown the Black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my White grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who loved me more than anything and who also made racist remarks that made me cringe.” Obama said his own mixed heritage has taught him 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.'' In his 1960 speech, Kennedy voiced similar hopes, saying he believed in ``an America where religious intolerance will someday end, where all men and all churches are treated as equals'' and where ``there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind.''
In 1960, Catholics comprised almost a quarter of the American electorate, and most experts believe that Kennedy gained as much with Catholic voters as he may have lost with some Protestants. Today, Blacks comprise about 10 percent of U.S. voters and have overwhelmingly voted for Senator Obama, but contrary to what the media constantly fails to report is that he has done well in states very few Black, i.e. Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa; instead they focus on his struggle in many states to carry white male voters.
And the assault on Senator Obama, for his connection to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, from some Republicans and Democrats isn't likely to cease. Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, said Obama -- by trying to justify Wright's comments as a legacy of bitterness among Blacks who grew up in the era of segregation -- didn't go far enough to condemn the pastor's words. It was ``an enormous missed opportunity to really assert as a very articulate and capable African-American leader how damaging Wright's expressions of hatred and animosity are to the African-American community itself,'' Reed said. (This coming from a man who criticized Gandhi; His name should never be linked with the word “Christian” – it is an insult to the term). I am pleased that Senator Obama did not throw his pastor under the bus as most politicians would have. He condemned the word but would not and should not condemn the man. This is a fundamental Christian principle that he undoubtly learned under the ministry of Dr. Wright; condemn the sin while loving and trying to correct the sinner. This shows how little conservative White America knows about Blacks in this country. Dr. Wright is well respected in religious circles throughout the U.S. and you can not judge a person for a 30 second sound bite out of a lifetime of achievement and good in the community. And let us not forget, sermons similar to this can be heard in any number of inner city churches throughout America. The civil right movement started in the Black church?
Harris Wofford, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania who advised Kennedy on civil rights, said the barriers Obama has to overcome are higher and the message he was trying to convey more complicated than was Kennedy's. Senator Obama's speech "was aimed at White people who are having a hard time in our economy and may be distracted by the old fears related to race," Wofford, who introduced Obama at the National Constitution Center, said in an interview. It was also directed at Black people who are ``seeing everybody telling them that these White workers are voting against a Black man because he's Black.'' Race is ``in some ways a far more significant issue than Catholicism was for JFK,'' agreed Hess. ``We fought a Civil War over this one. This was a much more complicated message.'' Sorensen said while President Kennedy's address was critical in allaying the suspicions of many Protestants, there were some ``anti-Catholic bigots'' who were unconvinced. Today, he said, those who oppose Senator Obama for his race ``are probably going to continue in their bigoted attitudes.'' Exactly!
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