“Obama was at that church because he had to like both the church creed and the way that creed was expressed in sermons.”

AKA Smith

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

Barack Obama

You keep trying to make the political case that Obama has no hope against the RWAs without leaving Trinity church. If what Obama said about the man that married him and baptized his children and has done so much for his church and the black community over 20 years of dedicated and hard work isn’t sufficient for his detractors, what makes you think his disowning of Wright would make any difference to them? If he abandoned his principles for political purposes, he would be criticized by the black and white communities who believe in him and he would have a hard time living with himself. Those who want to diminish him politically can always find an argument on everything he says and does, just ask Hillary’s campaign team.

I find a politician, particularly one running for president that believes in being truthful to himself and his past refreshing and admirable. For you to keep honing in on the one thing, saying he didn’t hear some specific things and then ask him to own up to what may or may not have happened is not looking at the big picture and what is most important.

Try reading this excerpt from Time and tell me why he has made such a major mistake. And please don’t keep telling me the same thing. Address my and the Time author's points please.

The Preacher and the Pol

When Obama joined Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988, the Afrocentric church and its pastor held particular appeal to a 27-year-old son of an African father he barely knew and a white mother from Kansas. Obama was searching for an identity and a community, and he found both at Trinity. And he found a spiritual guide in Wright.

Much of white America is unfamiliar with the milieu of the black church. When clips from Wright's sermons began circulating, many whites heard divisive, angry, unpatriotic pronouncements on race, class and country. Many blacks, on the other hand, heard something more familiar: righteous anger about oppression and deliberate hyperbole in laying blame, which are common in sermons delivered in black churches every Sunday. The Rev. Terri Owens, dean of students at the University of Chicago Divinity School, says the black church tradition has its roots in the era of slavery, when African Americans held services under trees, far from their white masters. "Churches have always been the place where black people could speak freely," she says. "They were the only institutions they could own and run by themselves."

In his books, Obama says he might not have become a Christian — his mother was a skeptical secularist and his absent father an atheist — if not for the special character of the black church. "Out of necessity, the black church had to minister to the whole person. Out of necessity, the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation," he writes in The Audacity of Hope. It also matched his intellectual curiosity. "Perhaps it was out of this ... grounding of faith in struggle that the historically black church offered me a second insight: that faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts."

That desire for a more challenging faith helps explain the appeal of Trinity, despite its potential for controversy. The church, which has ministered to poor South Side families and Oprah Winfrey alike, isn't fringe, but neither is it a likely home for someone plotting a political career in Chicago. "If you're black and you're trying to get ahead in politics, you're not going to join Trinity," says Dwight Hopkins, a Trinity member who is also a professor at U. of C.'s Divinity School. "Not because it's radical — it isn't radical in its context. But it would be safer to join a North Side ecumenical church — the sort of place where people are quiet. They stand up, sit down, listen and leave."

As Obama's political career blossomed, he could have quietly left Trinity for one of those more staid black churches, but he chose to stay. In his speech, he said he disagreed with Wright strongly, and yet he didn't leave the church (or even criticize his pastor until Wright's sermons became a campaign issue). He didn't explain why he stayed, but by trying to show black and white resentment as the backdrop for Wright's comments, Obama suggested that his response to controversy isn't to walk out of the room but to try to understand what's fueling the fire. He also drew a distinction between political advice and spiritual guidance, arguing that many Americans know what it's like to disagree with something their pastor or priest or rabbi says.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1723990-2,00.html

"he didn’t hear some specific things" should read "did"

Can we have a discussion about race without the tired nonsense about making republicans out to be rabid racists. If you really believe the average republican is more racist than the average democrat or the average black(not the "typical black") for that matter,you're delusional. It's great political theater, great pandering and let's be honest,racist.

By constantly playing this hate game you continue to use African Americans as a pawn in a sick political game.I for one am tired of being associated with this condescending racist nonsense.Blacks are not little props to be used by our party for any purpose.

As for a dialog on race, a speech designed to save a politicians backside may not be the appropriate starting point.Sen.Obama's effort fell far short of seriously addressing any of the more sensitive aspects of the issue. Raising the ever popular "white guilt" subject was neither ground breaking or particularly brave.

When Sen. Obama or anyone else cares to start an adult discussion including all the "uncomfortable" issues on both sides, I'll listen. I'm not holding my breath.