A More Perfect Union (speech) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

"A More Perfect Union" is the name of a speech delivered by Senator

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

on March 18, 2008 in the course of the contest for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination

Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008

The 2008 Democratic presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 U.S. presidential election...

. Speaking before an audience at the National Constitution Center

National Constitution Center

The National Constitution Center is an organization that seeks to expand awareness and understanding of the United States Constitution and operates a museum to advance those purposes....

in Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, Obama was responding to a spike in the attention paid to controversial remarks

Jeremiah Wright controversy

The Jeremiah Wright controversy is an American political issue that gained national attention in March 2008 when ABC News, after reviewing dozens of U.S. 2008 Presidential Election candidate Barack Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright's sermons, excerpted parts which were subject to intense media scrutiny...

made by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright

Jeremiah Wright

Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, Jr. is Pastor Emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ , a megachurch in Chicago exceeding 6,000 members...

, his former pastor and, until shortly before the speech, a participant in his campaign

Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008

Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007. On August 27, 2008, he was declared nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2008 presidential election...

. Obama framed his response in terms of the broader issue of race in the United States

Race in the United States

The United States is a racially diverse country. Modern issues of "race", as well as its impact in the political and economic development of the nation, have been examined by numerous historians and researchers across a variety of academic disciplines....

. The speech's title was taken from the Preamble to the United States Constitution

Preamble to the United States Constitution

The Preamble to the United States Constitution is a brief introductory statement of the Constitution's fundamental purposes and guiding principles...

.

Obama addressed the subjects of racial tensions

Racism in the United States

Racism in the United States has been a major issue since the colonial era and the slave era. Legally sanctioned racism imposed a heavy burden on Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latin Americans...

, white privilege, and race and inequality in the United States, discussing black

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

"anger," white

White American

White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...

"resentment," and other issues as he sought to explain and contextualize Wright's controversial comments. His speech closed with a plea to move beyond America's "racial stalemate" and address shared social problems.

On March 27, 2008, the Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center is an American think tank organization based in Washington, D.C. that provides information on issues, attitudes and trends shaping the United States and the world. The Center and its projects receive funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts. In 1990, Donald S...

called the speech "arguably the biggest political event of the campaign so far," noting that 85 percent of Americans said they had heard at least a little about the speech and that 54 percent said they heard a lot about it. Eventually, The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

opined that the speech helped elect Obama as the President of the United States.

Events prior to the speech

Speech

Obama's speech began by quoting the Preamble to the United States Constitution

Preamble to the United States Constitution

The Preamble to the United States Constitution is a brief introductory statement of the Constitution's fundamental purposes and guiding principles...

:
Noting his proximity to Independence Hall, Obama highlighted the tension between the ideals of equal citizenship and freedom expressed in the Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

and America's history of slavery, and connected the civil war

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

and civil rights movement with the goals of his own 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."

Obama described his own family history, stating that "in no other country on Earth is my story even possible" and connected both his multicultural background and his campaign with the American motto, "out of many, we are one

E pluribus unum

E pluribus unum , Latin for "Out of many, one", is a phrase on the Seal of the United States, along with Annuit cœptis and Novus ordo seclorum, and adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782...

." He mentioned that he achieved primary victories in "states with some of the whitest populations in the country" and in South Carolina

South Carolina

South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...

, where he won with the support of white and black voters.

Obama then addressed the comments of Jeremiah Wright:

Obama went on to say that Wright's views were "not only wrong but divisive... at a time when we need unity." He posed the rhetorical question of why he would have allied himself with Reverend Wright in the first place. Arguing that Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ

Trinity United Church of Christ

Trinity United Church of Christ is a predominantly black church with more than 8,500 members, located on the southwest side of Chicago. It is the largest church affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a predominantly white Christian denomination with roots in Congregationalism, which branched...

had been misrepresented by "the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

," Obama spoke of Wright's service to the poor and needy, and of the role Wright played in his own journey to Christianity.

Obama stated that like other black churches, Trinity contained the full spectrum of the black community: "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." Similarly, he argued that Wright "contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years." Therefore, Obama stated:

Emphasizing that he was in no way justifying or excusing Wright's comments, Obama said that to dismiss Wright as a "crank or a demagogue" ... "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."

Obama then invoked the history of racial inequality in the United States, first by paraphrasing a line by William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." He argued that many of the difficulties in African-American communities could be traced to the sufferings of previous generations under slavery and Jim Crow laws

Jim Crow laws

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...

. Obama observed that, in the era in which African-Americans of Reverend Wright's generation grew up, segregation and degradation were common. Even blacks of that generation who, like Wright, surmounted obstacles to succeed in life often remained bitter and angry about their experiences with racism. Obama noted:

Obama then shifted to an expression of what he called "a similar anger" in the white community based on resentments over busing

Desegregation busing

Desegregation busing in the United States is the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools in such a manner as to redress prior racial segregation of schools, or to overcome the effects of residential segregation on local school demographics.In 1954, the U.S...

, affirmative action

Affirmative action in the United States

In the United States, affirmative action refers to equal opportunity employment measures that Federal contractors and subcontractors are legally required to adopt. These measures are intended to prevent discrimination against employees or applicants for employment, on the basis of "color,...

, and the way in which fears about crime are often met with accusations of racism. Obama stated that these resentments were rooted in legitimate concerns — dismissing them as misguided or racist only widened the racial divide and increased misunderstanding.

Obama described the resultant situation as "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years." He pointed out that his "imperfect" candidacy is not the solution to racial division, but argued that it is possible and important for Americans of all races to work together to overcome it. To that end, he called for the African-American community to "[bind] our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans" and for the white community to acknowledge the "legacy of discrimination ... and current incidents of discrimination." Obama insisted that progress on matters of race was both possible and actual:
Obama then presented a choice to his audience. On the one hand the country could continue to address race "only as spectacle — as we did in the OJ trial

O. J. Simpson murder case

The O. J. Simpson murder case was a criminal trial held in Los Angeles County, California Superior Court from January 29 to October 3, 1995. Former American football star and actor O. J...

— or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina — or as fodder for the nightly news." On the other hand Americans could come together to solve the nation's problems, in particular the problems of education

Education in the United States

Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local. Child education is compulsory.Public education is universally available...

, health care

Health care in the United States

Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by the private sector...

, jobs moving overseas

Offshoring

Offshoring describes the relocation by a company of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Even state governments employ offshoring...

, the Iraq War, and caring for veterans.

Obama concluded his speech by relating an anecdote about a young white woman who organized for his campaign in South Carolina

South Carolina

and the personal connection she made with an elderly black volunteer.
The 37-minute speech as actually delivered was essentially the same as the prepared text of the speech that had been distributed to the media, other than for some minor differences.

Response

Reaction to Obama's speech was swift and widespread in the United States. Politicians, news media, members of the political punditry, academics, and other groups and individuals quickly weighed in on the significance and effectiveness of "A More Perfect Union." In the days following the speech, commentators debated (among other questions) its possible importance to American history, the extent to which Obama did or did not succeed in pushing questions about his association with Jeremiah Wright to the side, and the overall effect the speech would have on Obama's campaign and the contest with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

The speech achieved immediate popularity on the video sharing

Video hosting service

A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video...

web site YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, garnering 1.2 million views in the first 24 hours after the speech and 2.5 million views within the first few days.

Democrats

The response to the speech from Democratic politicians and activists was largely positive. Some characterized the speech as "honest" while others speculated about its possible significance for race relations in the United States.

Obama's only remaining opponent in the race for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the...

, as well as past Democratic presidential candidates, offered thoughts on the speech soon after it was given. Senator Clinton said that she had not seen or read the speech, but that she was glad he had given it.
When asked a week later about the controversy about Obama's pastor that prompted, and was addressed by, Obama's speech, Clinton answered, "He would not have been my pastor. You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend... hate speech [is] unacceptable in any setting... I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving."

Senator and former 2008 candidate Joe Biden

Joe Biden

Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...

called Obama's speech powerful, truthful and "one of most important speeches we've heard in a long time." Biden believed that Obama's speech would "come to represent an important step forward in race relations in our country."

The speech played at least a partial role in the decision of New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

governor Bill Richardson — like Biden a former 2008 candidate, and one whose support was heavily courted by both Clinton and Obama given that he was the country's only Latino governor — to endorse Obama for president. Richardson endorsed Obama on March 21 in Portland

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

, Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

. According to The New York Times, Richardson had decided to endorse Obama a week earlier (prior to the speech), but "his decision was bolstered by Mr. Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia." After the speech Richardson sent word to Obama that he had found it inspiring and impressive. While endorsing Obama in Portland, Richardson said that "Senator Barack Obama addressed the issue of race with the eloquence and sincerity and decency and optimism we have come to expect of him...He did not seek to evade tough issues or to soothe us with comforting half-truths. Rather, he inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility." The day after the endorsement Richardson elaborated on his rationale for supporting Obama, saying that the speech "kind of clinched it for me."

In a joint press conference, New York Governor David Paterson

David Paterson

David Alexander Paterson is an American politician who served as the 55th Governor of New York, from 2008 to 2010. During his tenure he was the first governor of New York of African American heritage and also the second legally blind governor of any U.S. state after Bob C. Riley, who was Acting...

and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg

Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...

both praised Obama's speech and remarked that it was an issue he needed to address. Former mayor of New York Ed Koch

Ed Koch

Edward Irving "Ed" Koch is an American lawyer, politician, and political commentator. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and three terms as mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989...

, a supporter of Hillary Clinton, was one of the few Democrats who were critical of the speech. He called it "unconvincing," chastised Obama for comparing insensitive racial comments made by his white grandmother with the comments made by Wright, and asked "Why didn't Senator Obama stand up in the church and denounce [Wright's] hateful statements or, at the very least, argue privately with his minister?"

The Reverend Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson

Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...

, who prior to Obama's campaign had come closer than any other African American to winning a major party's presidential nomination, said that the Obama campaign had been on the verge of being derailed by racial fear stemming from Wright's comments and previous remarks by Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro

Geraldine Ferraro

Geraldine Anne Ferraro was an American attorney, a Democratic Party politician, and a member of the United States House of Representatives. She was the first female Vice Presidential candidate representing a major American political party....

that Obama would not have come so far had he been white. Jackson said that Obama "made the case we've been here before, but not this time will we linger. This time we're going to higher ground."

Democratic consultants and strategists also evaluated the importance and effectiveness of the speech. Stephanie Cutter

Stephanie Cutter

Stephanie Cutter is a Democratic Party operative. She serves as Deputy Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama.- Biography :Cutter was born in Taunton, Massachusetts and raised in nearby Raynham, Massachusetts...

, John Kerry's

John Kerry

John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...

spokeswoman in the 2004 presidential campaign

United States presidential election, 2004

The United States presidential election of 2004 was the United States' 55th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Republican Party candidate and incumbent President George W. Bush defeated Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, the then-junior U.S. Senator...

, suggested that "no other person in this country, black or white, could have given a speech like that." She called the speech "incredibly honest and personal" and argued that Obama "changed the terms of the debate." Former manager of Al Gore's

Al Gore

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

2000 campaign

Al Gore presidential campaign, 2000

Al Gore, the 45th Vice President of the United States under Bill Clinton, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Carthage, Tennessee on June 16, 1999. Gore became the nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2000 presidential election on August 17, 2000...

for the president Donna Brazile

Donna Brazile

Donna Brazile is an American author, professor, and political analyst affiliated with the Democratic Party. She was the first African American to direct a major presidential campaign, for Al Gore in 2000...

said that Obama was one of the few politicians who "could weave not just their own personal history with American history but [serve] themselves up as an example of the contradictions in this country." According to Brazile, Obama had reclaimed the "high road," but the question remained as to whether that road would "lead to the White House or back to the United States Senate." Unaffiliated Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons called it "an incredibly honest speech" and "a brave thing to do politically." Simmons stated it "was the most profound speech about race that I could recall in my lifetime."

Republicans

Prominent Republican politicians reacted to the speech as well. Former Arkansas

Arkansas

Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...

governor and 2008 candidate for president Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Michael "Mike" Dale Huckabee is an American politician who served as the 44th Governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. He was a candidate in the 2008 United States Republican presidential primaries, finishing second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won . He won...

praised Obama's speech on the MSNBC

MSNBC

MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

program Morning Joe

Morning Joe

Morning Joe is a weekday morning talk show on MSNBC, with Joe Scarborough discussing the news of the day in a panel format with co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. It was created as the replacement for Imus in the Morning, which was canceled in April 2007 after simulcasting on MSNBC since 1996...

while also commenting on the Rev. Wright controversy. Huckabee argued that Obama "handled this about as well as anybody could" and suggested that it was "a very historic speech." While he decried the remarks made by Wright, Huckabee, a former pastor himself, also noted that "sermons...are rarely written word-for-word" and that pastors often get "caught up in the emotion of the moment." Referencing his experience growing up in the segregated South and the legacy of Jim Crow

Jim Crow laws

, the former Arkansas governor noted that "we've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, 'You have to sit in the balcony when you go to [a] movie'...Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too." Huckabee suggested that he was "probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this."

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain

John McCain

John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

also offered a warm reaction to the speech during an interview with Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews

Christopher John "Chris" Matthews is an American news anchor and political commentator, known for his nightly hour-long talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, which is televised on the American cable television channel MSNBC...

on April 15 at Villanova University

Villanova University

Villanova University is a private university located in Radnor Township, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States...

, describing it as an "excellent speech," "an important statement that he had to make at the time," and that "it was good for all of America to have heard it."

Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...

, the top ranking African-American in the Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

cabinet responded to the speech on March 28, saying, "I think it was important that he (Obama) gave it for a whole host of reasons." Rice went on to say that "There is a paradox for this country and a contradiction of this country and we still haven't resolved it...but what I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn't love and have faith in them, and that's our legacy."

Rice's predecessor as Secretary of State

United States Secretary of State

The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...

, Colin Powell

Colin Powell

Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...

, described Obama's speech as "a very, very thoughtful, direct speech" and added, "I admired him for giving it, and I agreed with much of what he said."

Political strategist and former executive director of the Christian Coalition Ralph Reed

Ralph E. Reed, Jr.

Ralph Eugene Reed, Jr., is a conservative American political activist, best known as the first executive director of the Christian Coalition during the early 1990s. He sought the Republican nomination for the office of Lieutenant Governor of Georgia but lost the primary election on July 18, 2006,...

argued that Obama should have gone much further in his condemnation of Wright. He saw the speech as "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."

In a speech before the American Enterprise Institute

American Enterprise Institute

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...

, former Republican Speaker of the House

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, or Speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives...

Newt Gingrich

Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....

responded directly to Obama who he said "gave us a very courageous speech." Gingrich agreed that "there’s an authenticity and legitimacy of anger by many groups in America," and "that anger can be a source of energy to create a better future, in which case it’s a good thing. But if anger is a self-inflicted wound that limits us, it is a very bad and a very dangerous thing. And we have to be very careful about the role that anger plays in our culture." Gingrich encouraged Obama to "join a dialogue about new solutions" to problems of race and poverty, including "solutions based on principles that have been politically incorrect in terms of the culture of the Left."

News media and pundits

A New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

editorial praised the remarks, saying, "Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better."

Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews

of MSNBC

MSNBC

MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

referred to the speech as "what many of us think is one of the great speeches in American history, and we watch a lot of them." Independent Women's Forum

Independent Women's Forum

The Independent Women's Forum is an American conservative, non-profit, non-partisan research and educational institution focused on domestic and foreign policy issues of concern to women...

CEO and MSNBC political analyst Michelle Bernard

Michelle Bernard

Michelle D. Bernard is an American journalist, political analyst, author, and President and CEO of the conservative Bernard Center. She was formerly President and CEO of Independent Women's Forum and Independent Women's Voice....

said it was "the best speech and most important speech on race that we have heard as a nation since Martin Luther King's

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...

"I Have a Dream

I Have a Dream

"I Have a Dream" is a 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination...

" speech."

Jonathan Alter

Jonathan Alter

Jonathan Alter is an American journalist and author who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. He is currently a lead columnist for Bloomberg View, a new commentary website. He is also a contributing correspondent to NBC News, where since 1996 he has appeared...

of Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

said "Barack Obama didn't simply touch the touchiest subject in America, he grabbed it and turned it over and examined it from several different angles and made it personal. Just steps from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, he rang the bell

Liberty Bell

The Liberty Bell is an iconic symbol of American Independence, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formerly placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House , the bell was commissioned from the London firm of Lester and Pack in 1752, and was cast with the lettering "Proclaim LIBERTY...

hard and well."

Writing in The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

, Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan is an American author of seven books on politics, religion, and culture and a weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal...

called the speech "strong, thoughtful and important" and noted that its rhetorical style subverted the soundbite

Soundbite

In film and broadcasting, a sound bite is a very short piece of a speech taken from a longer speech or an interview in which someone with authority or the average "man on the street" says something which is considered by those who edit the speech or interview to be the most important point...

-driven coverage of contemporary news media.

Jim VandeHei

Jim VandeHei

James "Jim" VandeHei is the executive editor and co-founder of Politico. Previously, he was a national political reporter at The Washington Post, where he worked as White House correspondent....

and John F. Harris

John F. Harris

John F. Harris is an American political journalist and the editor in chief for Politico, an Arlington, Virginia based political news organization. With Politico executive editor, Jim VandeHei, Harris founded Politico for its launch on January 23, 2007...

of The Politico

The Politico

The Politico is an American political journalism organization based in Arlington, Virginia, that distributes its content via television, the Internet, newspaper, and radio. Its coverage of Washington, D.C., includes the U.S. Congress, lobbying, media and the Presidency...

said, "The Philadelphia speech offered lines calculated to reassure all the groups with which he is most vulnerable." They note, however, "Obama’s cross-racial and even cross-partisan support has been driven by a belief that he is a new-era politician, not defined by the grievances and ideological habits of an earlier generation... Then came Wright." The authors quote Southern academic Merle Black

Merle Black

P. Merle Black is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science at Emory University. He is a frequent media source on Southern politics,as is his twin brother, Earl Black, a professor at Rice University...

as saying: "The new information, especially about his minister and his twenty-year association with this church, really undermines the message he’s been delivering for the last year, it completely undercuts it."

Charles Murray

Charles Murray (author)

Charles Alan Murray is an American libertarian political scientist, author, columnist, and pundit working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC...

, author of The Bell Curve

The Bell Curve

The Bell Curve is a best-selling and controversial 1994 book by the Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray...

, wrote at National Review Online

National Review

National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

that "As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols."

Also at NRO, Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

Ethics and Public Policy Center

The Ethics and Public Policy Center is a Washington, D.C.-based conservative advocacy group. Formed in 1976 by Ernest W. Lefever, who was its president until 1989, the group describes itself as "dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy."Since...

wrote "Senator Obama’s speech on Tuesday was a brilliant effort to deflect attention away from what remains the core issue: what did Obama hear, when did he hear it, and what did he do about it? The answers, as best we can tell at this stage, is that Obama heard some very harsh things said from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ; that Obama heard them said a long time ago and probably repeatedly; and that he did little or nothing about it. This from a man who tells us at almost every stop along the campaign trail that he has the 'judgment to lead.'"

Ben Smith at The Politico

The Politico

compared the speech to Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney

Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.The son of George W...

's earlier campaign address regarding his religion: "A smart colleague notes that this speech is the polar opposite of this year's other big speech on faith, in which Mitt Romney went to Texas to talk about Mormonism, but made just one reference to his Mormon faith. Obama mentions Wright by name 14 times."

Dean Barnett

Dean Barnett

Dean Barnett was an American columnist and blogger and occasional fill-in radio host for Hugh Hewitt.-Early life:...

of the conservative journal The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...

wrote a piece subtitled "Answering the question no one asked," saying "Jeremiah Wright is a man who less than a week after 9/11 gave a sermon that sadistically rejoiced how America's chickens had come home to roost... The fact is, Barack Obama opted to remain in this minister's company for more than six years after that sermon until partially distancing himself just last week in the heat of a presidential race... What the analysts who are gushing over Obama's sentiments regarding race relations are missing is not only did Obama fail to accomplish the mission he needed to, he didn't even really try. He made no attempt to explain his relationship with Wright and why he hung around a man who habitually offered such hateful rhetoric. Obama instead offered a non-sequitur on race relations."

Writing for progressive journal The Nation

The Nation

The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

, Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden

Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden is an American social and political activist and politician, known for his involvement in the animal rights, and the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is the former husband of actress Jane Fonda and the father of actor Troy Garity.-Life and...

, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Danny Glover

Danny Glover

Danny Lebern Glover is an American actor, film director, and political activist. Glover is perhaps best known for his role as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise.-Early life:...

and Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich

-Early life:Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town."...

said, "Obama's speech on racism was as great a speech as ever given by a presidential candidate, revealing a philosophical depth, personal authenticity, and political intelligence that should convince any but the hardest of ideologues that he carries unmatched leadership potentials for overcoming the divide-and-conquer tactics that have sundered Americans since the first slaves arrived here in chains."

Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian...

of The Daily Show

The Daily Show

The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...

, in a moment of rare straight-faced sincerity, finished his otherwise-typical satirical coverage of the speech by calmly stating, "And so, at 11 o'clock AM on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as though they were adults."

Conservative New York Times columnist Bill Kristol rejected Obama's call for a discussion of race in America, saying, "The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race. ... “National conversations” tend to be pointless and result-less." Liberal columnist Frank Rich

Frank Rich

Frank Rich is an American essayist and op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times from 1980, when he was appointed its chief theatre critic, until 2011...

, by contrast, said that he shared "the general view that Mr. Obama’s speech is the most remarkable utterance on the subject by a public figure in modern memory."

CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs commented, "...a speech long on history was shorter on solutions. It will take some time for this speech to settle in to the nation's political consciousness but it's unlikely to stop a potentially divisive conversation that has already begun."

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer, MD is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician. His weekly column appears in The Washington Post and is syndicated to more than 275 newspapers and media outlets. He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and The New...

dismissed Obama's speech as "a brilliant fraud" that failed to either properly pose or frankly answer the question of why someone who purports to transcend the anger of the past would remain in a congregation whose pastor epitomizes that anger, an "elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction." After Wright made a series of appearances in March 2008 and Obama changed his initial decision not to renounce Wright, Krauthammer derided "the speech [that] was not just believed [but] was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union" as a "shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud." He argued that it was based on moral "equivalences [that have] been revealed as the cheap rhetorical tricks they always were", a "pretense that this 'endless loop' of sermon excerpts being shown on 'television sets and YouTube' had been taken out of context" that had now been destroyed, and an assertion that white surprise at Wright's anger was based on ignorance, rendered inoperative by Obama's own new admission of surprise.

Summarizing the media response to the speech, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz

Howard Kurtz

Howard "Howie" Alan Kurtz is an American journalist and author with a special focus on the media. He is host of CNN's Reliable Sources program, and Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast. He is the former media writer for The Washington Post. He has written five books about the media...

wrote, "Not surprisingly, most liberals loved the speech and many conservatives — though not all — lambasted it. ... the reaction on the left and right sometimes made me wonder whether these pundits were watching the same speech. The only point of agreement I found is skepticism that it will help Obama with white, working-class voters, sometimes short-handed as Reagan Democrats."

After Obama had secured the Democratic nomination, journalists continued to refer to this speech when analyzing the role of race and racial attitudes in the Presidential contest. A Newsweek

Newsweek

summary of Obama's campaign called the speech a "tour de force, the sort of speech that only Barack Obama could give" but added, "a close reading of the speech suggests more than a hint of personal grandiosity."

Academics

Political scientists

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

and other academics also offered initial evaluations of the speech. While generally agreeing that the speech was quite significant, there was debate about what effect it would have on the campaign.

Larry Sabato

Larry Sabato

Larry Joseph Sabato is an American political scientist and analyst. He is the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, and director of its Center for Politics. He founded Sabato's Crystal Ball, an online newsletter and website that provides free political analysis and...

of the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

said that it "was a serious speech about the incendiary topic of race in America." Sabato noted that a debate about race was "inevitable" in the campaign and that "from Obama's perspective, it's much better to have this discussion now," rather than shortly before the November election (assuming he captured the Democratic nomination).

Congressional scholar and Brookings Institution

Brookings Institution

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One of Washington's oldest think tanks, Brookings conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, and...

Senior Fellow Thomas Mann

Thomas E. Mann

Thomas E. Mann is a political scientist, author, and pundit who works at the Brookings Institution. He primarily studies and speaks on elections in the United States, especially campaign finance reform...

argued that Obama gave "an extraordinary speech — not because of any rhetorical flourishes, but because it was honest, frank, measured in tone, inclusive and hopeful." Obama "appeared wise beyond his years and genuinely presidential," but Mann felt it was unclear "whether it will be sufficient to stem a racial backlash against his candidacy."

Donald F. Kettl of the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

called the speech "stirring" and noted that, "rather than put race behind him, [Obama] put it more at the center of the campaign." However Kettl questioned "whether the message will resonate with white working class Pennsylvanians" — the next state to vote in the Democratic primaries — and argued that Obama needed to "couple his portrait of race to the broader challenge of economic opportunity" in order to connect with white voters.

Some political science professors questioned whether Obama's speech would have the effect he hoped for in terms of distancing himself from the controversial comments made by Wright and allaying the concerns of a number of white voters. Michael Munger

Michael Munger

Michael Curtis Munger is an economist, chair of the political science department at Duke University, and was the Libertarian candidate for Governor of North Carolina in 2008....

, head of the political science

Political science

department at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

and a Libertarian

Libertarian Party (United States)

The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects its brand of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration...

candidate for Governor of North Carolina

Governor of North Carolina

The Governor of North Carolina is the chief executive of the State of North Carolina, one of the U.S. states. The current governor is Bev Perdue, North Carolina's first female governor.-Powers:...

in 2008

North Carolina gubernatorial election, 2008

The North Carolina gubernatorial election of 2008 was held on November 4, 2008, coinciding with the presidential, U.S. Senate, U.S. House elections, Council of State, and statewide judicial elections...

, called the speech "brave" but said that Obama was "being naive." Munger argued that "A black candidate named Barack Hussein Obama can't have questions about his patriotism, and commitment to America, not if he is going to beat a genuine war hero" (a reference to John McCain

John McCain

John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

and the general election). He argued that Obama "had to distance himself far from Wright. Instead, he was brave." Susan B. Hansen of the University of Pittsburgh

University of Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...

noted that "the dilemma for Obama is that the more he talks about race being unimportant or transcended, the more important it will become to the media and voters' perceptions." She suggested Obama did not put the Wright issue to rest and that, if Obama became the nominee, Wright's comments would no doubt play a role in the general election as fodder for Republican attacks against him. Similarly Eric Plutzer of Penn State argued that Obama's speech "did not put the Rev. Wright controversy behind him. Those skeptical of Obama are likely to continue to distribute video clips, and quotes of Obama's own words, to argue that his reaction was not sufficiently strong..."

Historian Roger Wilkins

Roger Wilkins

Roger Wilkins is an African American civil rights leader, professor of history, and journalist.-Biography:Wilkins was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Michigan...

suggested that no other presidential candidate had ever engaged in such an extensive discussion of race.

David Eisenhower

David Eisenhower

Dwight David Eisenhower II is an American author, public policy fellow, and eponym of the U.S. Presidential retreat, Camp David. He is the grandson of the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D...

at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

compared the speech with Robert Kennedy's 1968 speech on the assassination

Robert F. Kennedy's speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

A speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was given by New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy on April 4, 1968, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Kennedy was campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination...

of Martin Luther King, saying, "Like Robert Kennedy, Obama used this as a teaching moment."

Historian Garry Wills

Garry Wills

Garry Wills is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and prolific author, journalist, and historian, specializing in American politics, American political history and ideology and the Roman Catholic Church. Classically trained at a Jesuit high school and two universities, he is proficient in Greek and Latin...

, author of a Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction

The Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction has been awarded since 1962 for a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in another category.-1960s:...

winning book on Abraham Lincoln's

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and is one of the most well-known speeches in United States history. It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery...

, compared "A More Perfect Union" with Lincoln's Cooper Union speech

Cooper Union speech

The Cooper Union Speech, or Address, was delivered by Abraham Lincoln on February 27, 1860, at Cooper Union, in New York City. Lincoln was not yet the Republican nominee for the presidency, as the convention was scheduled for May. It is considered one of his most important speeches...

of 1860. He noted similarities in the political contexts of both speeches: "The men, both lawyers, both from Illinois, were seeking the presidency, despite what seemed their crippling connection with extremists....Each decided to address [alleged connections with radicals] openly in a prominent national venue, well before their parties' nominating conventions..." Wills argued that "Jeremiah Wright was Obama's John Brown

John Brown (abolitionist)

John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...

"—the radical abolitionist from whom Lincoln made a point of disassociating himself. For Wills, "what is of lasting interest is their similar strategy for meeting the charge of extremism...Each looked for larger patterns under the surface bitternesses of their day. Each forged a moral position that rose above the occasions for their speaking." While Wills was complimentary of Obama's speech, he noted that its prose "of necessity lagged far behind the resplendent Lincoln."

Houston A. Baker, Jr.

Houston A. Baker, Jr.

Houston Alfred Baker Jr. is an American scholar specializing in African American literature and currently serving as a Distinguished University Professor at Vanderbilt University in the English department....

, a professor at Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...

, scholar of African American literature

African American literature

African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late 18th century writers as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, reaching early high points with slave narratives and the Harlem...

and former president of the Modern Language Association

Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...

, criticized the speech: "Sen. Obama's 'race speech' at the National Constitution Center, draped in American flags, was reminiscent of the Parthenon concluding scene of Robert Altman

Robert Altman

Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...

's Nashville: a bizarre moment of mimicry, aping Martin Luther King Jr., while even further distancing himself from the real, economic, religious and political issues so courageously articulated by King from a Birmingham jail. In brief, Obama's speech was a pandering disaster that threw, once again, his pastor under the bus."

T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, director of Vanderbilt University's Program in African American and Diaspora Studies, has edited The Speech: Race and Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union", a collection of essays about the speech, with contributions from novelists Alice Randall

Alice Randall

Alice Randall is an American author and songwriter. Randall grew up in Washington, D.C.. She attended Harvard University, where she earned an honors degree in English and American literature, before moving to Nashville in 1983 to become a country songwriter. She currently lives in Nashville,...

and Adam Mansbach, theologian Obery M. Hendricks, Jr.

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr.

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. is professor of biblical interpretation at the New York Theological Seminary.Before taking this position he was a professor at Drew University and a visiting professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. He has also served as president of Payne Theological Seminary, the...

, newspaper columnist Connie Schultz

Connie Schultz

Connie Schultz , of Avon, Ohio, has been a nationally syndicated columnist based at The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. She won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and had been finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing....

and language scholar Geneva Smitherman.

Other responses

The New York Times reported that, within days of the speech, some religious groups and institutions of higher learning were "especially enthusiastic" about Obama's call for a racial dialogue. According to the Times, "Universities were moving to incorporate the issues Mr. Obama raised into classroom discussions and course work, and churches were trying to find ways to do the same in sermons and Bible studies." Rev. Troy Benton, lead pastor at a church outside Atlanta, said he did not "see how you can be an African-American preacher and not try to figure out how to have something to say this Sunday (March 23, 2008), even though it’s Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

." Rev. James A. Forbes

James A. Forbes

James Alexander Forbes, Jr. is the Senior Minister Emeritus of the Riverside Church, an interdenominational church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. He was the first African American minister to lead this multicultural congregation, and served it for 18 years.- Early life and...

was to preach the Trinity United Church of Christ

Trinity United Church of Christ

Easter service which Rev. Wright had preached in the past, telling the Times, "It is nighttime in America, and I want to bring a word of encouragement."

Janet Murguia

Janet Murguía

Janet Murguia is a prominent civil rights leader in the United States. She grew up in Kansas City, Kansas but now lives in Washington, D.C. and works as a renowned advocate for the Latino community...

, president of the National Council of La Raza

National Council of La Raza

The National Council of La Raza is a non-profit and non-partisan advocacy group in the United States, focused on improving opportunities for Hispanics. It is sometimes confused with La Raza Unida...

, said she hoped that Obama’s speech would help people "talk more openly and honestly about the tensions, both overt and as an undercurrent, that exist around race and racial politics."

Others applauded Obama's call for a national dialogue on race but hoped that words would be translated into action. Rabbi

Rabbi

In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

Michael Lerner

Michael Lerner (rabbi)

Michael Lerner is a political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue of San Francisco.-Family and Education:...

, editor of Tikkun

Tikkun (magazine)

Tikkun is a quarterly English-language magazine, published in the United States, that analyzes American and Israeli culture, politics, religion and history from a leftist-progressive viewpoint, and provides commentary about Israeli politics and Jewish life in North America...

and a founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives

Network of Spiritual Progressives

The Network of Spiritual Progressives is an international political and social justice movement based in the United States that seeks to influence American politics towards more humane, progressive values. The organization also challenges what it perceives as the misuse of religion by political...

, argued that "this has got to be more than a speech because these things don’t just happen spontaneously...There needs to be some systematic, organizational commitment to making this happen, with churches, synagogues and mosques working out a plan for continued dialogue."

Later in the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama cited his crafting of this speech as an example of a "gut decision." Speaking to journalist Joe Klein in October 2008, Obama said that he decided to make his response to Rev. Wright's comments "big as opposed to make it small", and added: "My gut was telling me that this was a teachable moment and that if I tried to do the usual political damage control instead of talking to the American people like ... they were adults and could understand the complexities of race, I would be not only doing damage to the campaign but missing an important opportunity for leadership."

Effect on voters

One of the crucial questions after Obama's speech was the effect, if any, it would have on voters in terms of their overall opinion of Obama and their willingness to vote for him in the remaining Democratic primaries and in the general election. Critical to these questions was the extent to which voters identified Obama with the views of Jeremiah Wright.

A Fox News poll taken immediately after Obama's speech on the evenings of March 18 and March 19 found that 57 percent of respondents did not believe that Obama shared the views of Rev. Wright while 24 percent believed he did share Wright's views. 36 percent of Republicans, 20 percent of independents, and 17 percent of Democrats believed that Obama shared Wright's views. The poll also found that 35 percent of voters (including 25 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of independents) had doubts about Obama because of his relationship with Rev. Wright. The racial division was especially noteworthy, with 40 percent of whites expressing doubts in comparison to only 2 percent of African Americans.

A CBS News

CBS News

CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...

poll taken two nights after the speech showed that 69 percent of registered voters who heard about or read about the speech felt that Obama "did a good job addressing race relations." 71 percent felt that Obama had effectively explained his relationship with the controversial reverend. An equal numbers of voters, 14 percent, saw themselves as more likely to vote for Obama after the speech as saw themselves less likely to vote for him, while 70 percent of voters felt that recent events had made no difference - a marked swing from numbers before the speech. The numbers were less positive for Obama when respondents were asked whether he would unite the country. Only 52 percent said he would, a drop of fifteen percentage points from a poll taken the previous month.

A poll taken by the Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center

between March 19 and March 22 showed that although 35 percent of likely voters said that their opinion of Obama had grown less favorable because of the Wright affair, it had not had a significant effect on the support for his candidacy; he maintained a 49 percent to 39 percent lead over Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic voters. The survey showed that 51 percent of the public had heard "a lot" about Reverend Wright's controversial sermons, and 54 percent heard "a lot" about Obama's speech. Of those who heard "a lot" about the speech, 51 percent felt that he had handled the situation well, as did 66 percent of Democrats (84 percent of Obama supporters and 43 percent of Clinton supporters).

Similarly, in a Wall Street Journal/NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

poll taken between March 24 and March 25, 63 percent of registered voters said that they had been following the Wright story "very closely" or "somewhat closely." 55 percent said that they were disturbed "a great deal" or "somewhat" by Wright's comments. 46 percent said that they had heard or seen most of Obama's speech, and another 23 percent heard or saw news coverage of the speech. Of those who had seen or heard the speech, 55 percent were satisfied with Obama's explanation of his relationship with Wright, and 44 percent said they were reassured about Obama's thinking and beliefs on the issue of race. (46 percent of white voters who saw the speech said that they were still uncertain or doubtful about Obama's thinking and beliefs on race.) In this poll, Obama and Clinton were tied among Democratic voters with 45 percent each; in a hypothetical general election matchup against John McCain

John McCain

John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

, Obama lead slightly (44 to 42 percent) while Clinton trailed McCain slightly (44 to 46 percent).

In the long run, the speech had a significant effect on some voters:

Role in changing media landscape

Beyond the content of the speech, some media coverage focused on the manner in which it spread through the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. Video of the speech "went viral

Viral video

A viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email...

," reaching over 1.3 million views on YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

within a day of the speech's delivery. By March 27, the speech had been viewed nearly 3.4 million times. In the days after the speech, links to the video and to transcripts of the speech were the most popular items posted on Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

. The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

observed that the transcript of the speech was e-mailed more frequently than their news story on the speech, and suggested that this might be indicative of a new pattern in how young people receive news, avoiding conventional media filters. Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd

Maureen Bridgid Dowd is a Washington D.C.-based columnist for The New York Times and best-selling author. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, she worked for Time magazine and the Washington Star, where she covered news as well as sports and wrote feature articles...

further referenced the phenomenon on March 30, writing in her column that Obama "can ensorcell when he has to, and he has viral appeal. Who else could alchemize a nuanced 40-minute speech on race into must-see YouTube viewing for 20-year-olds?" By May 30, the speech had been viewed on YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

over 4.5 million times. The Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

cited the prominence of the speech and the music video "Yes We Can

Yes We Can

"Yes We Can" is the first single from Change Is Now: Renewing America's Promise, a compilation album organised and produced by Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.I.Am...

" as examples of the Obama campaign's success in spreading its message online, in contrast with the campaign of Republican (then) presumptive nominee John McCain

John McCain

John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

External links

The Segregated Hour - Includes Video of Speech and Transcript
A More Perfect Union speech transcript as prepared for delivery and video
A More Perfect Union speech transcript as delivered and audio and video at AmericanRhetoric.com
Obama's Speeches Online
President Obama's Speech to the NAACP on July 16, 2009 - full video by MSNBC

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.