How Obama Spoke To Us About Race [Part 2]
This Day (An America 250 History Show)
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our conversation about Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright continues with a look at what he said about race in America during his "A More Perfect Union" speech. Jody, Niki, and Kellie also look at how the speech previewed -- or didn't -- how Obama would talk about race and race relations throughout his presidency.
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:13.4 | Welcome to 50 Weeks that shaped America. It is Week 11, Part 2. We are on March 18th, 2008, at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and Barack Obama is getting ready to deliver a speech that would come to be known as the Amor Perfect Union speech. |
| 0:31.0 | And in it, he has a specific task of trying to distance himself and quell the controversy around his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. |
| 0:38.5 | But he also does a much, much bigger project of trying to couch Reverend Wright and his own |
| 0:45.5 | story, Barack Obama's own story, in the history of racism and racial anger in this country. |
| 0:51.1 | It is a remarkable speech, one that a lot of people think both moved him |
| 0:55.3 | past this controversy, but also gave us a real glimpse into how Obama thinks about his own race, |
| 1:01.4 | racism, and so forth. But let's get into it. Here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt |
| 1:06.3 | and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello, Jody. Hey there. We mentioned the logistical challenge of booking venue at the last minute here. |
| 1:14.7 | They do not go four seasons total landscaping. |
| 1:17.6 | They find a proper venue, right? |
| 1:19.7 | So you can find a real venue in the Philadelphia area at the last minute, correct? |
| 1:23.9 | Indeed, you can. |
| 1:24.8 | You just have to double check your Google Maps to make sure you're at the right place. |
| 1:28.4 | Yeah, he's at the National Constitution Center, which David Axelrod would later say, you know, we decided if we were going to go down, we were going to go down swinging. |
| 1:35.6 | And it felt like the right venue for this kind of speech. |
| 1:38.9 | Because, you know, as we'll talk about, Obama is going to make a deeply personal biographical argument. |
| 1:45.1 | He is going to spend a lot of time talking about race and racism in the United States. |
| 1:49.8 | But he is going to couch it in this is the central problem that the Constitution and that the founding had to ultimately deal with and didn't deal with for a very long time. |
| 2:02.1 | And so the Constitution Center is a really nice setting for this kind of speech because he's, |
| 2:09.1 | he really is, he is going down swinging, right? |
| 2:11.5 | He swings for the fences right from the start by making it about much more than just him |
... |
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