Resumo de Character - BARACK OBAMA

When I meet people for the first time, they sometimes quote back to me
a line in my speech at the 2oo4 Democratic National Convention that
seemed to strike a chord: there is not a black America and a white
America and a Latino America and a Asian America- there's the United
State of America. for them, it seems to capture a vision of America
finally freed from the past of Jim Crow and slavery, Japaneses
internment camps and Mexican braceros, workplace tensions and cultural
conflicts-and America that fulfills Dr, king's promise that we be judge
not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character. In a
sense I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As a
child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the
racial melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who's half Indonesian but
who's usually mistaken for a Mexican or Puerto Rican, and a
brother-in-law and niece of Chinese decent, with some blood relatives
who resemble Margaret Thatcher others who would pass for Bernie Mac, so
that family get- together over Christmas take on the appearance of a UN
General Assembly meeting, Ive never had the option of restricting my
loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of
tribe. Moreover, I believe that part of America's genius has always
been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out
of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores. In this we've been
aided by a Constitution that--despite being marred by the original sin
of slavery-has at its very core the idea of equal citizenship under the
law; and an economic system that, more than any other, has offer
opportunity to all, regardless of status or title or rank. Of
course,racism and nativist sentiments have repeatedly undermined these
ideas, the powerful and privileged have often exploited or stirred
prejudice to further their own ends. But in the hands of reformers,
from Tubman to Douglas to Chavez to King, these ideals of equality have
gradually shaped how we understand ourselves and allowed us to form a
multicultural nation the like of which exists nowhere else on earth.
Still, when I hear commentators interpreting my speech to mean that we
have arrived at a postracial politics or that we already live in a
color-blind society , I have to offer a word of caution. To say that
we are one people is not to suggest that race no longer play
matters---that the fight for equality has been won, or that the
problems that minorities face in this country today are largely
self-inflicted. We know the statistics: On almost every single
socioeconomic indicator, from infant mortality to life expectancy to
employment to homeownership, Black and Latino Americans in particular
continue to lag far behind their white counterparts. In corporate
boardrooms across America, minorities are grossly underrepresented; in
the United States Senate, there are only three Latinos and two Asians
members (both from Hawaii), and as I write today I am the
chamber's sole African American. To suggest that our racial attitude
plays no part in these disparities is to turn a blind eye to both our
history and our experience-and to relieve ourselves of the
responsibility to make things right.

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