Top 10 Obama quotes at Rev Pinckney funeral
By Rotimi Akinola
US President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy at the funeral of the pastor of a historic black church who was slain in last week’s mass shooting in Charleston.
Clementa Pinckney was one of nine victims of the rampage at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in the southeastern US city, carried out by suspected white supremacy terrorist Dylann Roof, 21.
We pulled out these notable quotes from Obama’s eulogy of the slain pastor.
The quotes bordered on American gun culture, racism, extremism…and grace.
10. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career.
9. Removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought – the cause of slavery – was wrong.
8. History can’t be a sword to justify injustice, or a shield against progress, but must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past – how to break the cycle.
7. By recognizing our common humanity by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what’s necessary to make opportunity real for every American – by doing that, we express God’s grace.
6. We don’t earn grace. We’re all sinners. We don’t deserve it. But God gives it to us anyway. And we choose how to receive it. It’s our decision how to honor it.
5. None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight.
4. None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy. It will not.
3. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual – that’s what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society.
2. Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don’t realize it, so that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs, but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal.
1. Reverend Pinckney once said, “Across the South, we have a deep appreciation of history – we haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history.” What is true in the South is true for America.
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