Listen Live

America is at a racial crossroads and Obama has decided, correctly, to speak his truth with conviction.

“Maybe we now realize the way 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 said to thunderous applause.

But Obama pushed the envelope further. No president in recent memory has tackled publicly the thorny subject of removing the Confederate flag from state capitols across the country, but Obama faced the flag issue head-on and talked about its racist symbolism. Roof was driving a car with a symbol of the Confederate flag on the license plate before he murdered nine black parishioners during a prayer service inside the church.

“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,” Obama said. “It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought — the cause of slavery — was wrong — — the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong.”

The president clearly has a God-given purpose. He even felt compelled to break into an acapella rendition of Amazing Grace” that brought everyone to their feet.

“None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight,” Obama said. “Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race.  There’s no shortcut. And we don’t need more talk.”

A day before his eulogy, Obama returned a draft of his remarks to White House aides with many revisions and reflections which he scribbled on a yellow legal pad to include his own thoughts and views about race and religion.

It was a profound, soul-stirring message I suspect was as much for America as it was for the president himself.

Like BlackAmericaWeb.com on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

 

President Obama’s Moving Eulogy Underscores What Will Be His Lasting Legacy [VIDEO]  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com

« Previous page 1 2