He went on to acknowledge anger among both blacks and middle-class whites, and called on all Americans to “continue on the path of a more perfect union.” “For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past,” he said. For those in the white community, “the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination, and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past, are real and must be addressed.” Obama, standing at a podium with American flags behind him and a subdued audience in front of him, spoke in a tone more reserved than the one he uses on the stump. At times, he quoted Southern novelist William Faulkner, Wright and his own book about his struggle with racial identity, Dreams from My Father. In a thinly veiled shot at critics, he said that resentments over race have shaped politics for at least a generation. “Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends,” he said. “Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.” He added that the politically safe move would be to hope that the issue of race would fade. “We can dismiss Rev. 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 racial bias,” he said. “But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Rev. Wright made in his offending sermons about America — to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.”
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