In a speech today at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.served as pastor, Barack Obama talked about the existence of institutional racism, the sensationalizing of race "by the media" and the creeping of race as an issue into the presidential campaign.
But Obama's speech will likely be remembered for his calling on the black community to do its part to fight homophobia, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
Obama says in the speech: "We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them," and "the scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community," and "for too long, some of us have seen the immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity."
And while Hillary Clinton, in her speech honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this afternoon at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, emphasized the importance of "doers of the word," Obama made a point to argue of King's instrumental role in enabling the civil rights movement, "he did it with words."
