It is often the case that when a politician goes into damage control they sometimes raise new questions that did not exist before as well as not answer the questions they had meant to swat down.  Such is what has happened to Barack Obama, in his effort to swat down the issues surrounding his association with his pastor Jeremiah Wright; he failed to answer the main question and unintentionally raised at least two to three more questions in the process (http://www.drudgereport.com/flashos.htm).

The main question that he did not even address concerns why did he not follow Oprah Winfrey out of that church when he heard the racist and anti-American remarks of Jeremiah Wright, but instead stayed there for 20 years?  Last time I checked Barack is not or ever was related to Jeremiah Wright by means of blood or thru marriage.  If someone is spewing remarks you later admit "were not only wrong, but divisive" and "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country" why stay there for 20 years and expose your wife and children to that sort of poison?  It's not as if Jeremiah Wright's church is the only one on the south side of Chicago and it is not like Jeremiah Wright is the only pastor on the south side of Chicago.

Later in the speech he says that he can no more disown Mr. Wright than disown the Black Community, as if all blacks deep down are just like Mr. Wright, when we know that to be patently false.  When I listened to Jeremiah Wright's sermons I did not hear Bill Cosby, David Robinson or Magic Johnson, I heard someone similar to Al Sharpton.  When I listened to Jeremiah Wright's sermons I did not hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. Creflo Dollar or Pastor E.V. Hill, I heard someone similar to Louis Farrakhan.  When I listened to Jeremiah Wright's sermons I did not hear my godfather Frank Dean, who has involved himself with the Gideons, Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of B.O.N.D. (http://www.bondinfo.org), or Cerritos Community Safety Committee Vice Chairman Van Coleman, no I heard someone similar to former Rep. Cynthia McKinney.  In fact I believe that less than 20%, if not 10% of the Black Community is of the same racist and anti-American mindset as Jeremiah Wright.  In other words I believe him to be a bigoted anomaly within Black America.

The second distressing issue that Barack Obama raised was his response to a reporter's question with regards to the apparent racism his white grandmother supposedly showed towards blacks.  In his response to the reporter's question he in essence made the point that his white grandma was a racist because she was white.  Let me rephrase that for those who did not catch what was said.  By virtue of his grandma being a white person she was also a racist, in other words all whites are racists. 

I take great exception to that charge, as probably do many others who have grown up as I have in a many cultured environment where we and our friends have dated and in many cases married someone of a different race.  In college I dated a Latina in my sophmore year,  my friends growing up were and are of many different races and ethnicities, and I feel uncomfortable in rooms where there is not any mixture of races or ethnicities.  This is how most of us who have grown up in Cerritos were raised.  We have Indian, Chinese, Korean, Jewish, Latino, Black, White and Filipino friends.  And those of us who have grown up in Cerritos are not alone in living multi-culturalism, I have friends who grew up in Irvine, Anaheim, San Diego, Los Angeles, and other locales around the United States who can relate a similar upbringing. 

Which brings us to a third question by inference.  If Barack Obama, cannot disown a pastor whom he chose to associate with for twenty years and whose comments he himself has labeled divisive; if he believes that Jeremiah Wright is representative of Black America; and if he truly believes that all whites were born racists; then is the real Barack Obama really a masked version of Jeremiah Wright knowing full well that if he were to ever reveal his true self he would be unelectable? Or did Barack Obama just misspeak when he gave his infamous speech on race and instead is the person who does not want to be defined by race, that he has campaigned as?

We need to be certain so we have a leader for the entire country not just a leader for those of his race who thinks like Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton, Louis Farakhan and Cynthia McKinney.