SAM SANDERS, HOST:
Hey, y'all - Sam here. So first and foremost, just want to say I hope all of you are staying safe and sane during this really, really weird time. I know it's tough. But please take care of yourselves and others. Be kind. And, of course, wash your hands. Here at the show, we're going to work on some very special content to help you all find joy in the age of coronavirus. You'll be hearing that stuff later on this week and for the next few weeks.
But today's episode has nothing to do with coronavirus at all. We taped this whole thing before the crisis began. It is a look back on a really big speech Barack Obama gave almost 12 years ago to the day. The speech is called "A More Perfect Union." And that speech says a lot about race in America and how that conversation has changed over the last 12 years - going to play that for you now.
But before that, I got to ask y'all a favor. We need some joy on this show in the upcoming weeks. And you can help us with that. I want you to tell us what is getting you through this pandemic, whatever it is - a TV show, a favorite book quote, dancing with your pet, going out for a hike, video conferencing with friends, whatever. Record that stuff and send those voice memos to us at samsanders@npr.org. The weirder the better.
All right, listeners. Thank you all so much for everything. Here's today's episode. Enjoy.
JON FAVREAU: I remember where I was exactly. Like, you remember...
SANDERS: Yeah.
FAVREAU: ...Everything about something like that because...
SANDERS: Where were you?
FAVREAU: I was in headquarters in Chicago.
SANDERS: That is the voice of Jon Favreau.
FAVREAU: I'm the co-host of Pod Save America, co-founder of Crooked Media and former speechwriter to Barack Obama.
SANDERS: A few weeks ago, Jon was telling me about maybe the most stressful day of Barack Obama's first campaign for the presidency, the day the so-called Reverend Wright story broke.
FAVREAU: A bunch of us from the communications team, press team just stood around someone's TV watching it. And we're like, holy [expletive].
SANDERS: How did you feel in that moment?
FAVREAU: I think we're (expletive).
SANDERS: Here's why they all felt that way. Flashback to this time in '08 - candidate Barack Obama had won not just the Iowa caucuses but also the South Carolina primary. And the thinking was he'd be able to build a coalition of black voters and white voters and all kinds of voters and possibly win the presidency. Hopes were really high. But then the Reverend Wright story - it involved Obama's longtime pastor saying things like this...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JEREMIAH WRIGHT: The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing "God Bless America." No, no, no. God damn America - that's in the Bible - for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating your citizens as less than human. God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she...
SANDERS: Reverend Jeremiah Wright was the pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Wright had married the Obamas and baptized their children. He was heavily involved in Obama's '08 campaign. But these tapes that were leaked of Wright from an old sermon saying things about America that Obama's campaign really wanted nothing to do with - it all went against Obama's message of hope and racial harmony. This story, if it kept snowballing - it could kill his campaign and kill this idea that America could ever elect a president who is not white.
Jon Favreau says it took a while for the Obama campaign to decide exactly on how to address all this.
FAVREAU: So he gives a round of cable interviews. And, of course, it doesn't go away. And we had a senior staff call every Saturday morning. So I get on the call. And David Axelrod says, all right. I talked to Barack. And he's very insistent that he wants to give a speech about this. And it's not just going to be a speech about Reverend Wright. It's going to be a speech about race in America.
SANDERS: What goes through your head as his...
FAVREAU: Oh, panic. Every...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SANDERS: I'm Sam Sanders. You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. In this episode, we look back on the speech. It's called "A More Perfect Union." Many think it saved Obama's candidacy and that there'd be no first black president without it. That speech is exactly 12 years old this week. And a lot has changed since then. Later on, we'll hear from a professor who helped write an entire book just about this one speech. And we'll hear from one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement on just how much has changed since that speech was given. That is after the break. Stay with us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SANDERS: We are unpacking Barack Obama's big race speech from '08 12 years later. We've got several more voices in this episode. But first, I want to have Jon Favreau finish the story of how that race speech came together. After that freak-out moment, after that first round of cable news interviews, on a Saturday morning, Favreau figures out that Obama wants to give this big speech on race the following Tuesday. He starts working with David Axelrod, a former Obama adviser and strategist. Usually, a speechwriter will make a first draft for the politician. But John told Axelrod, this time, it would have to be different.
FAVREAU: I'm like, Axe, you know damn well that I can't write a draft of this until I talk to him and...
SANDERS: Because, I mean, given the content.
FAVREAU: Given the content...
SANDERS: Yeah.
FAVREAU: ...And just being so personal, right?
SANDERS: Yes. Yes.
FAVREAU: And Axe is like, you're right. Go home. Just wait around. So...
SANDERS: So that night, Favreau waits by the phone. Obama calls late at night. And Jon says, hey, Obama. Just give me what you're thinking, and I'll see what I can write.
FAVREAU: This is where the lawyer in him really comes out because, even though the guy said he was going to give me stream-of-consciousness thoughts, he goes, here's what I want to say. One, one A, two, two B...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
FAVREAU: ...C - and he just starts going through this incredibly detailed outline for an hour...
SANDERS: Really?
FAVREAU: ...On the phone.
SANDERS: So when he finishes that, what do you have on paper?
FAVREAU: Five pages of just material just typed out.
SANDERS: So then a very young, white guy goes about writing a speech on race to be given by the man who could become America's first black president.
FAVREAU: It's St. Patrick's Day. And I'm in Chicago. It's, like, 11 o'clock at night. I'm freaked out, nervous. I might as well just go have a drink with people because I got to, like, just...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
FAVREAU: ...Calm down and take my mind off it. So I went out. I had a couple of beers. And then I came back, and I woke up at 6 a.m.
SANDERS: OK.
FAVREAU: I went to the Starbucks that I always wrote at in Old Town in Chicago and got it to him by 8.
SANDERS: So, usually, a politician adds notes and makes some small tweaks. But Favreau says what Obama did with that first draft - it was something more.
FAVREAU: And at 3 a.m., he had emailed me the draft of the speech that I had sent him with track changes.
SANDERS: Oh, my goodness.
FAVREAU: And it was...
SANDERS: So he was up all night working on it.
FAVREAU: He was up all night. And it was just, like, blue track changes everywhere.
SANDERS: What do you think when you see that?
FAVREAU: I was like, OK. This is - this - he's going to do this.
SANDERS: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
BARACK OBAMA: We the people - in order to form a more perfect union - 221 years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy.
SANDERS: This speech, "A More Perfect Union" - it was delivered by Barack Obama on March 18, 2008, almost to the day 12 years ago. And the big idea in this speech was that, to move forward on race, all of America would have to forgive each other and come together. But the speech was also very much about Obama's own story.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: I'm the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.
SANDERS: It was about his upbringing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived the Depression to serve in Patton's army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas.
SANDERS: Growing up as a biracial black kid whose life has been more than any one thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: I've gone to some of the best schools in America. And I've lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners, an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins of every race and every hue scattered across three continents. And for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional of candidates. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts.
SANDERS: Then there's this part of this speech that really brings it all together. Obama is comparing Reverend Wright, who had said all those incendiary things, to his grandmother to make the point that, well, both black people and white people all have some work to do. He says this of Reverend Wright.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: He contains within him the contradictions, the good and the bad of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street and who, on more than one occasion, has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are part of me. And they are part of America, this country that I love.
SANDERS: It is really hard to overstate just how well this speech went over. The Pew Research Center found that, in the days after the speech, about 85% of Americans heard about it in some way. The New York Times called it a, quote, "extraordinary moment." And they compared it to speeches by the likes of Abraham Lincoln and JFK. Depending on who you ask, there'd be no President Obama without "A More Perfect Union." But I have wondered, in the many years since that speech was given, if it holds up today.
It seems everything has changed. The Black Lives Matter movement happened. Charlottesville happened. America is just finishing up a Democratic primary in which, for months, one of the big topics of discussion was reparations for descendants of African slaves. That is a long way from making speeches where you forgive your racist white grandmother.
I asked Jon Favreau if that speech works now. He told me a story.
FAVREAU: I was working on a podcast that I host called The Wilderness about the Democratic Party. And we did an episode on race in 2018.
SANDERS: OK.
FAVREAU: And at the end of the episode, I spoke about the end of that speech and some of the message that Obama wanted to deliver. And at some point in that speech, he tries to understand where the racial resentment comes from among some white people, especially working-class white people in America.
SANDERS: What reasons does he give for that?
FAVREAU: He talks about how for many white people who aren't very economically advantaged themselves, they don't see themselves as people who are cutting the line or have a bunch of advantages economically. A couple of my producers said, I don't know if that's wise to say. I'm like, but it's not my...
SANDERS: Yeah.
FAVREAU: It's not me saying it. I'm talking about...
SANDERS: Yeah.
FAVREAU: ...What Barack Obama said...
SANDERS: Yeah.
FAVREAU: ...In his race speech.
SANDERS: Yeah. Like, literally, producers working for a podcast company founded by Obama's former head speechwriter say you probably might not want to talk about a line from Obama's speech 10 years after he gave it.
FAVREAU: Yeah because it seems to excuse white racial resentment.
SANDERS: Do you think Obama's race speech now still gets a favorable approval rating?
FAVREAU: I don't know. I think a lot of people would have some questions for him. And I would love to hear what the conversation is maybe if he did a Q&A after the speech.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: After the break, a Q&A - I talk with the professor who published a book all about Obama's speech. And I interview one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. I ask them both if this speech holds up. Their answer is complicated.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SANDERS: This episode, we are talking about Obama's big race speech from 2008. It's called "A More Perfect Union." We're talking about what's changed since then.
(SOUNDBITE OF SKYPE RINGTONE)
TRACY SHARPLEY-WHITING: Hello.
SANDERS: Hi, this is Sam. How are you? Can you hear me?
SHARPLEY-WHITING: Yeah. I can hear you fine.
SANDERS: Tracy Sharpley-Whiting is a humanities professor at Vanderbilt University. She also edited an entire book about Obama's race speech. That book is called "The Speech." She told me that, for black people, supporting Obama in that moment and this big speech on race was all about symbolism.
SHARPLEY-WHITING: He was symbolic of something that was necessary and needed. And for black folks, oftentimes, the symbol is more important than what cashing the check might also deliver. And so Obama was never forced to cash a certain check in certain ways by black people.
SANDERS: When the speech was done, and you finished hearing it, did you say to yourself, oh, this is canon? This is, like - this isn't one for the books. We'll be talking about this speech decades from now. I mean, there are already folks saying it's Obama's Gettysburg Address, whatever, whatever. Did you have those feelings?
SHARPLEY-WHITING: No, I did not (laughter).
SANDERS: OK. Explain. Explain.
SHARPLEY-WHITING: Because I think the Gettysburg Address and other things - there was so much at stake at those moments. And for me, what was at stake was the candidacy of a man who aspired to be president of the United States, who was a black man who I identify with as a black woman, who I identify with - his ambition and his hard work and his drive and his desire to serve his country if only he would be allowed to have that opportunity. But I do think - let me say this - in his presentation of, you know, the speech itself, he made it about more than himself. And that's what the beauty of the speech was.
SANDERS: Yeah. When I began reporting this story, my kind of assumption and the premise I was taking into it was, with issues like race, every decade or so, people evolve on this issue. And things that seemed woke 10 years ago just aren't woke today. And that is the way it works even for the president. But I feel like it's even more than that. I mean, like, is this assumption that, you know, anything anyone was saying on race, even if they were on the, quote, unquote, "right side" 10 years ago just won't hold up in 10 years because things like race and gender and equality - the way we look at those things changes and moves?
SHARPLEY-WHITING: It's interesting. I think what might have held whatever 10 years ago, 12 years ago would seem to be a little bit dated in terms of solutions, right? So I can see that. But then there are other texts that I do think hold up interestingly well, and they might be, you know, over 100 years old, you know? James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" - Obama could not be as candid as Baldwin.
SANDERS: Yeah.
SHARPLEY-WHITING: Baldwin could really - I mean, and because Baldwin was talking about people coming together, right? - he wanted - he was talking about, look. If we don't bring this thing together, we're going to basically all go down, right? Obama simply could not bring the same sort of candor in the moment.
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SANDERS: Tracy says that kind of honest, candid conversation about race - America still is not ready for it. The next person I talked to - she agreed.
ALICIA GARZA: My name is Alicia Garza. And I have a hundred titles, but the one we can use for today is principal at the Black Futures Lab.
SANDERS: One of Alicia's titles is also co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement that, in the last few years, has changed the way just about all of us talk about race. Alicia says that she's always had a complicated relationship with Obama. She had hoped that change was coming after he was elected. But she told me that Obama's own relationship with race made her see things differently.
GARZA: He didn't actually get comfortable acknowledging the ways in which race shapes people's lives every day. That's white lives, black lives and everybody in between.
SANDERS: Yeah.
GARZA: And it became problematic in a number of different ways. And certainly, it became problematic in relationship to the Black Lives Matter...
SANDERS: Yeah.
GARZA: ...Movement.
So every person in this country has a complicated relationship to race. And it's because race has been used as an organizing principle to distribute power, and that distribution is often unfair and creates unfair advantages.
SANDERS: I think with Obama, particularly this speech, his approach to race was very conciliatory. It was very, well, black folks have done some stuff, and white folks have done some stuff. And we all got to come together. And I just feel like, after Black Lives Matter becomes a thing, that no longer works. Do you think that's correct?
GARZA: I 100% agree. And I think a lot of that both-sides-ism really reflected a lack of depth in understanding the difference between prejudice or discrimination and racism. I actually think that his viewpoint on race is shared by lots of people in this country, predominantly white folks, who, I think, have a hard time, sometimes, grappling with the notion that this whole country was built off of the backs of Indigenous people whose lands were stolen to provide - right? - resource for a new economy that colonialists kind of were developing, that black labor and black bodies built this country, that, you know, Chinese bodies - right? - built this country and that America has never atoned for that. It's almost as if folks see history because this is the way we're taught, right? Folks see history in a very two-dimensional way. And Barack Obama actually makes this comment. He says, you know, there wasn't - the problem wasn't that Reverend Wright made these comments. The problem is that it views America as static.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: It's that he spoke as if our society was static.
GARZA: But actually, in a lot of ways, racism is the thing that has endured. And so that's why, when we start to talk about racism, folk are very reluctant and resistant to it because they think that it means that they're bad (laughter), right? - that there's something wrong with them or that they're evil, or they're doing bad things to other people. And the point that I often try to make is racists can be really nice people, (laughter) right?
SANDERS: Barack Obama's grandmama - he said it, you know?
GARZA: Correct.
SANDERS: If, hypothetically, Obama were a candidate again this year running for president with the same Reverend Wright problem in this time, in the Black Lives Matter era, how should his speech be different? And how would you coach him on how to make it different and better and more for the moment?
GARZA: I would say to him that this is our shot to really achieve the aspirations that you spoke about in 2008 of a more perfect union. And right now, we are not only an imperfect union, but we are a union that leaves people behind. It's a union for some and not for all. And so that requires a very aggressive approach. And at the same time, you should keep going. And the legacy that you leave is going to shape this country for the next hundred years.
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SANDERS: Twelve years ago, when Barack Obama gave this speech, I was a graduate student. And in my spring semester of '08, I will never forget a professor in one of my classes - she canceled our lectures twice in one week just to use that time to talk about the speech. She had us break down this speech literally line by line. Today, I still wonder if it was worth all of that. So I called up an old classmate of mine who was there in that classroom with me.
Remember when she just, like, literally stopped class for that week...
JASMINE BEACH-FERRARA: Yeah.
SANDERS: ...And was like, we're going to talk about this speech?
BEACH-FERRARA: Yeah.
SANDERS: How did it feel when she did that?
BEACH-FERRARA: It felt appropriate. You know, it felt appropriate to the occasion.
SANDERS: That is Jasmine Beach-Ferrara. She is now the executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality. That's an LGBTQ advocacy group based in North Carolina. Jasmine and I talked for a while about the speech, about its legacy, about whether it works still today. But we also talked a lot about the work she does now. A lot of her work involves listening to people's stories, sharing her own story, using the power of story to make change in people's lives. And then Jasmine told me that's really what makes Obama's speech work still, 12 years later. It's the way that Obama used storytelling in this speech to give us all a bit more nuance.
BEACH-FERRARA: We're living in a moment where there's so much tendency to be reductive or essentialist around identity or around partisanship, meaning here's the identity you possess. Therefore, this must be what you think. Or here's the party you're registered with. Therefore, this must be what you think. And the power of what happens when you just sit with people and listen to who they are and what matters to them and what their story is and what they need and what they dream about in their lives, to me, is what opens up the sort of possibilities around where we go together.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SANDERS: Barack Obama is not a perfect man. That speech, no matter how impressive - it wasn't perfect, either. But there was this one thing it really got right, this idea that none of us is just one thing, that all of us are more complicated than we assume. I would say that idea - that is pretty timeless.
Thanks to everyone involved in making this episode - Jon Favreau of Crooked Media, Tracy Sharpley-Whiting of Vanderbilt University and Alicia Garza, principal at Black Futures Lab and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. Of course, thanks to my friend and former classmate Jasmine Beach-Ferrara of the Campaign for Southern Equality. And thanks to the team that helped make this episode. It was produced by Anjuli Sastry and Hafsa Fathima. Our editor was Kitty Eisele. Thank you for listening. Until Friday, I'm Sam Sanders - talk soon.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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