Obama Scorns Racism in Soaring, Singing Eulogy
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It is inspiring to watch how this community has come together in the face of this tragedy. Communities often do, but the powerful of their resilience is moving.
5 Times Obama Addressed Racism In AME Eulogy Speech | News One
newsone.com
President Barack Obama brought the nation to its feet Friday when he eulogized Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the South Carolina state senator killed during last week’s massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The president, who sat front row with First Lady Michelle Obama, delivered the eulogy after friends of Rev. Pinckney’s spoke highly of the senator who understood that public service and service to God went hand-in-hand (As the president pointed out: “Our calling,” Clem once said, “is not just within the walls of the congregation but the life and community in which our congregation resides”).
And though no one reflection was more powerful than the next — all embodied the characteristics of compassion, humility, love and humor the reverend possessed — it was the president’s that is sure cause a stir with right-leaning media in coming days.
Amid growing scrutiny that the president either talks too little about race (or too much if you’re sitting in the right-wing of America), Obama used his time at the pulpit to both properly memorialize the innocent lives lost in the racially-fueled shooting, while clearly outlining that race, in fact, has everything to do with it.
And while gun control was also at the helm of the president’s eulogy, it was a conversation about the contentious relationship between African Americans and this nation that really stood out — no doubt galvanized by a years-worth of highly publicized and racially-tinged incidents that resulted in the death of Black people by either a white person or a system of state-sanctioned violence.
If ever there was a time for Obama to step out and acknowledge racism, this would be it. Take a look at his most notable race-related quotes from Rev. Pinckney’s eulogy.
Obama On The Confederate Flag, Slavery:
The president joined the ranks of politicians with his own opinion about the future of the Confederate flag, suggesting that while the removal would be a “modest” one, it’s an important one to start the process of reconciliation.
“A flag did not cause these murders,” the president said. “For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation.” But “removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness, it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgement for the cause for which they fought, for slavery, is wrong…It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history, a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds…By taking down that flag, we express adds grace God’s grace.”
Obama On Systemic Racism:
Barack Obama at Clementa Pinckney's funeral
Source: (Photo by Win McNamee) / Getty
Using a mention of Jim Crow laws and segregation as a segue, President Obama discussed the often ignored racial injustices felt by marginalized communities today. And in a quote that is sure to live on the internet for some time, Obama asked the age-old question — why does Johnny get the job, but not Jamal?
“For too long, we’ve been blind to be way past injustices continue to shape the present,” Obama said. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty or attend dilapidated schools or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career…Perhaps it softens hearts towards those lost young men, tens and tens of thousands caught up in the criminal-justice system and lead us to make sure that that system’s not infected with bias…Maybe we now realize the way a racial bias can infect us even when we don’t realize it so that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal.”
Obama On Domestic Terrorism:
Barack Obama, Clementa Pinckney
Source: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/ / Getty
While the FBI has been slow to label the AME shooting one of terroristic nature, President Obama took the time to point out that Black churches have historically been targeted in an effort to oppress and stifle Black freedom. More explicitly, the president used the term we’ve been waiting on — terror — to describe the shooting that left nine god-fearing and innocent people dead.
“[The shooting] was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress. An act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination, violence and suspicion, an act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin,” Obama said. Oh, but God works in mysterious ways. God has different ideas. He didn’t know he was being used by God. Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer would not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group, the light of love that shown as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle.”
Obama on the History of Black Churches:
Clementa Pinckney
Source: Getty
In a stream of thoughts delivered with the measured cadence of a true preacher, President Obama not only talked about race, but what the Black church means for African American communities in an effort to highlight how the AME shooting was an attack on the very fabric of Black life.
“The church is and always has been the center of African American life,” he said. “A place to call our own in a too-often hostile world, a sanctuary from so many hardships. Over the course of centuries, black churches served as hush harbors, where slaves could worship in safety, praise houses, where their free descendants could gather and shout “Hallelujah.” Rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad, bunkers for the foot soldiers of the civil-rights movement. They have been and continue to community centers, where we organize for jobs and justice, places of scholarship and network, places where children are loved and fed and kept out of harms way and told that they are beautiful and smart and taught that they matter. That’s what happens in church. That’s what the black church means — our beating heart, the place where our dignity as a people in inviolate.”
Obama on…well…RACE:
Barack Obama, Charleston, Clementa Pinckney
Source: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/ / Getty
Obama’s message? Simply put, race is important. And we need to not only talk about it…we should be about it.
“We talk a lot about race,” he said. “There is no short cut, we don’t need more talk. People of goodwill will continue to debate the merit of various policies as our democracy requires. There are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for if we allow ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. To go back to business as usual as we so often do.”
Amen.
For more on the president’s speech, including his beautiful and unexpected rendition of ‘Amazing Grace,’ see here.
You can also watch the president’s eulogy in its entirety in the video above.
SEE ALSO:
Here’s President Obama Singing ‘Amazing Grace’ At Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s Funeral Service
Charleston Council Renames Library To Honor AME Shooting Victim Cynthia Hurd
Find Out More About The Victims Of The Charleston AME Emanuel Church Shooting
5 Times Obama Addressed Racism In AME Eulogy Speech | News One
newsone.com
President Barack Obama brought the nation to its feet Friday when he eulogized Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the South Carolina state senator killed during last week’s massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The president, who sat front row with First Lady Michelle Obama, delivered the eulogy after friends of Rev. Pinckney’s spoke highly of the senator who understood that public service and service to God went hand-in-hand (As the president pointed out: “Our calling,” Clem once said, “is not just within the walls of the congregation but the life and community in which our congregation resides”).
And though no one reflection was more powerful than the next — all embodied the characteristics of compassion, humility, love and humor the reverend possessed — it was the president’s that is sure cause a stir with right-leaning media in coming days.
Amid growing scrutiny that the president either talks too little about race (or too much if you’re sitting in the right-wing of America), Obama used his time at the pulpit to both properly memorialize the innocent lives lost in the racially-fueled shooting, while clearly outlining that race, in fact, has everything to do with it.
And while gun control was also at the helm of the president’s eulogy, it was a conversation about the contentious relationship between African Americans and this nation that really stood out — no doubt galvanized by a years-worth of highly publicized and racially-tinged incidents that resulted in the death of Black people by either a white person or a system of state-sanctioned violence.
If ever there was a time for Obama to step out and acknowledge racism, this would be it. Take a look at his most notable race-related quotes from Rev. Pinckney’s eulogy.
Obama On The Confederate Flag, Slavery:
The president joined the ranks of politicians with his own opinion about the future of the Confederate flag, suggesting that while the removal would be a “modest” one, it’s an important one to start the process of reconciliation.
“A flag did not cause these murders,” the president said. “For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation.” But “removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness, it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgement for the cause for which they fought, for slavery, is wrong…It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history, a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds…By taking down that flag, we express adds grace God’s grace.”
Obama On Systemic Racism:
Barack Obama at Clementa Pinckney's funeral
Source: (Photo by Win McNamee) / Getty
Using a mention of Jim Crow laws and segregation as a segue, President Obama discussed the often ignored racial injustices felt by marginalized communities today. And in a quote that is sure to live on the internet for some time, Obama asked the age-old question — why does Johnny get the job, but not Jamal?
“For too long, we’ve been blind to be way past injustices continue to shape the present,” Obama said. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty or attend dilapidated schools or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career…Perhaps it softens hearts towards those lost young men, tens and tens of thousands caught up in the criminal-justice system and lead us to make sure that that system’s not infected with bias…Maybe we now realize the way a racial bias can infect us even when we don’t realize it so that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal.”
Obama On Domestic Terrorism:
Barack Obama, Clementa Pinckney
Source: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/ / Getty
While the FBI has been slow to label the AME shooting one of terroristic nature, President Obama took the time to point out that Black churches have historically been targeted in an effort to oppress and stifle Black freedom. More explicitly, the president used the term we’ve been waiting on — terror — to describe the shooting that left nine god-fearing and innocent people dead.
“[The shooting] was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress. An act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination, violence and suspicion, an act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin,” Obama said. Oh, but God works in mysterious ways. God has different ideas. He didn’t know he was being used by God. Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer would not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group, the light of love that shown as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle.”
Obama on the History of Black Churches:
Clementa Pinckney
Source: Getty
In a stream of thoughts delivered with the measured cadence of a true preacher, President Obama not only talked about race, but what the Black church means for African American communities in an effort to highlight how the AME shooting was an attack on the very fabric of Black life.
“The church is and always has been the center of African American life,” he said. “A place to call our own in a too-often hostile world, a sanctuary from so many hardships. Over the course of centuries, black churches served as hush harbors, where slaves could worship in safety, praise houses, where their free descendants could gather and shout “Hallelujah.” Rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad, bunkers for the foot soldiers of the civil-rights movement. They have been and continue to community centers, where we organize for jobs and justice, places of scholarship and network, places where children are loved and fed and kept out of harms way and told that they are beautiful and smart and taught that they matter. That’s what happens in church. That’s what the black church means — our beating heart, the place where our dignity as a people in inviolate.”
Obama on…well…RACE:
Barack Obama, Charleston, Clementa Pinckney
Source: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/ / Getty
Obama’s message? Simply put, race is important. And we need to not only talk about it…we should be about it.
“We talk a lot about race,” he said. “There is no short cut, we don’t need more talk. People of goodwill will continue to debate the merit of various policies as our democracy requires. There are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for if we allow ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. To go back to business as usual as we so often do.”
Amen.
For more on the president’s speech, including his beautiful and unexpected rendition of ‘Amazing Grace,’ see here.
You can also watch the president’s eulogy in its entirety in the video above.
SEE ALSO:
Here’s President Obama Singing ‘Amazing Grace’ At Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s Funeral Service
Charleston Council Renames Library To Honor AME Shooting Victim Cynthia Hurd
Find Out More About The Victims Of The Charleston AME Emanuel Church Shooting
5 Times Obama Addressed Racism In AME Eulogy Speech | News One
As far back as I can remember, American politicians and media-types have gone on about how America needs to have a "national conversation" about race. I never really knew what that meant and they clearly were not having one. Now it seems like it's happening.... ? Like I said, what is a "national conversation"? Maybe it resembles this. It's tragic that this conversation needs constant renewal in violence.
The entire world needs " a conversation" yes, however, both sides need to listen not just the white side.
There are winners and losers in every social/economic/political system. That is an inescapable truth. Obama seeks transformation of America in a way in which the existing losers become winners and the existing winners become losers. Why would the existing winners cooperate in their transformation into losers?
If you don't know whether you're an atheist or an agnostic it seems you should give the matter some thought.
You bet..... before they used to put you under for a colonoscopy here, the doc had his own concoction of Valium and Demerol he would pump into you and you could watch the whole procedure on the same tv screen the doc and the nurses were watching.
I remember telling the doc as he was pushing the tube in "Don't forget to turn left at the next corner Doc"
The nurse a woman I had gone to High school with, just burst out laughing...the doctor scolded her with a "Don't encourage him"
He must have increased the dosage because I don't remember the rest of the procedure.....
That was real good sh*t....his recipe was....
The American Left subscribes to Identity Politics which tribalizes the people. Obama depended on increasing the Black turnout for his reelection. To increase the Black turnout Obama created the impression that they were under threat. The consequence of this ploy was to increase the level of division in the country. After this tactic Obama has no moral authority to make an appeal for racial healing. Obama has set back race relations by decades.
In what may not be a coincidence, a string of nighttime fires have damaged or destroyed at least six predominately black churches in four southern states in the past week.
The fires also occurred at a time when there is increasing public pressure to remove the Confederate flag — one of the last hallmarks of white superiority — from government buildings and public places as well as banning assorted Confederate flag merchandise sold in retails stores and online.
Even if the fires are deemed arson, it takes additional proof under reporting standards to conclude the act was a hate crime, investigators say.
“As the nation grapples with the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., one of the oldest Black churches in the South, other Black churches have become recent targets of arson,” writer David A. Love said today at Atlanta BlackStar.
The first arson fire occurred in the early morning hours of Monday, June 22, at the College Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church, home to a predominately black congregation, in Knoxville, Tenn.
Knoxville Fire Department spokesperson D.J. Corcoran said the arsonist set fires at multiple locations on the church property, including igniting bales of hay left at the church’s door. The church’s van also was burned.
more
https://medium.com/@splcenter/strin...churches-in-four-southern-states-7ec80655d996
The fires also occurred at a time when there is increasing public pressure to remove the Confederate flag — one of the last hallmarks of white superiority — from government buildings and public places as well as banning assorted Confederate flag merchandise sold in retails stores and online.
Even if the fires are deemed arson, it takes additional proof under reporting standards to conclude the act was a hate crime, investigators say.
“As the nation grapples with the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., one of the oldest Black churches in the South, other Black churches have become recent targets of arson,” writer David A. Love said today at Atlanta BlackStar.
The first arson fire occurred in the early morning hours of Monday, June 22, at the College Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church, home to a predominately black congregation, in Knoxville, Tenn.
Knoxville Fire Department spokesperson D.J. Corcoran said the arsonist set fires at multiple locations on the church property, including igniting bales of hay left at the church’s door. The church’s van also was burned.
more
https://medium.com/@splcenter/strin...churches-in-four-southern-states-7ec80655d996
Bama being too black for ya there matie?
you got that right...interesting watching the sides line up in this post