"A More Perfect Union"

Barack Obama, March 18, 2008

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men
gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy.
Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and
persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted
through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed, but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this
nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a
stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years,
and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

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

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

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of
those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring, and more
prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply
that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our
union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may
not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the
same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it
also comes from my own story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a
white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white
grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve
gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am
married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance
we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and cousins,
of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never
forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into
my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are
truly one.

Now, I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have
caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally
fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that
could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his
political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests,
or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t
simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a
profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates
what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts
in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating
from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we
need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental
problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis, and potentially
devastating climate change; problems that are neither black nor white nor Latino nor Asian, but rather
problems that confront us all.

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

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man
who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love
one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a United
States Marine, who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the
country, and who over thirty years has led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work
here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and
scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, “Dreams From My Father,” I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the
reverend’s voice up into the rafters … And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else: At the
foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary
black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the
lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival and freedom and hope – became our
story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on
this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and
into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than
black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we
didn’t need to feel shame about … memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which
we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country,
Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model
student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous
laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming, and shouting that
may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce
intelligence and shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love, and yes, the bitterness and
biases that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he
has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory
terms or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains
within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently
for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more
disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed
again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a
woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street and who on more
than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part
of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure
you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing to do would be to move on from this episode and just
hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just
as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring
some deep-seated bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore.