Barack Obama’s Father’s Day speech, full text

Here’s Sen. Barack Obama’s speech to Apostolic Church of God in the South Side of Chicago, Father’s Day, June 15, 2008. It’s worth reading the full text.

Good morning.

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus closes by saying, “Whoever hears these words of mine, and does them, shall be likened to a wise man who built his house upon a rock: the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.”

Here at Apostolic, you are blessed to worship in a house that has been founded on the rock of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. But it is also built on another rock, another foundation – and that rock is Bishop Arthur Brazier. In forty-eight years, he has built this congregation from just a few hundred to more than 20,000 strong – a congregation that, because of his leadership, has braved the fierce winds and heavy rains of violence and poverty; joblessness and hopelessness. Because of his work and his ministry, there are more graduates and fewer gang members in the neighborhoods surrounding this church. There are more homes and fewer homeless. There is more community and less chaos because Bishop Brazier continued the march for justice that he began by Dr. King’s side all those years ago. He is the reason this house has stood tall for half a century. And on this Father’s Day, it must make him proud to know that the man now charged with keeping its foundation strong is his son and your new pastor, Reverend Byron Brazier.

People ask me sometimes, “How do you manage all this, folks talking about you on cable?” I said, “Trust in the Lord. I trust in the Lord. He looks after me. And I also trust in the best wife that anybody could have, Michelle Obama, and the best daughters that anybody could have, Malia and Sasha Obama, who put up with me every day. They gave me some wonderful Father’s Day gifts. Sasha wrote me a poem that was just beautiful.

And I’m grateful that they give me attention on Father’s Day because I remember one time I was teasing Michelle about how on Mother’s Day there’s a lot of hoopa. There’s a lot of stuff going on on Mother’s Day. I said, “How come Father’s Day doesn’t seem to be as big as Mother’s Day?” She said, “Let me tell you, every day is Father’s Day. Every day you’re getting away with something. You’re running for president. Don’t talk to me about -- ”

It’s good to be home on this Father’s Day with my girls, and with my wife, and it’s an honor to spend some time with all of you today in the house of the Lord.

But the legacy of Bishop Brazier, the story that Byron Brazier is writing here at the church reminds me on this Father’s Day that, of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are most dependent on the family, the family is that most important foundation. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation. They are teachers and coaches. They are mentors and they are role models. They are examples of success and the men who constantly push us toward it.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are M.I.A. Too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities. They’re acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our family have suffered because of it.

You and I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, half, a number that has doubled – doubled – since we were children. We know the statistics – that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime. They’re nine times more likely to drop out of schools, twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents because the father wasn’t in the home. The foundations of our community are weaker because of it.

Think of it. How many times in the last year has this city lost a child at the hands of another child? How many times have our hearts stopped in the middle of the night with the sounds of gunshot or sirens? How many teenagers have we seen hanging out on street corners instead of hanging out in the classroom? How many are sitting languishing in prison when they should be working, or at least looking for a job? How many in this generation are we willing to lose to poverty or violence or addiction?  How many?

We can’t simply right these problems off to past injustices. Those injustices are real. There’s a reason why our families are in disrepair, and some of it has to do with a tragic history. But we can’t keep using that as an excuse. Some of it has to do with the failures of our government, and those failures are real, but we can’t keep on using that as an excuse.

Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our community. We know all that. That’s why I’m running for president of the United States of America. We know we need to bring about change in America. We know that.

But the change we need is not just going to come from government. It’s not just going to come from a president. It’s going to come from us. It’s going to come from each and every one of us. We need families to raise our children. We need fathers to recognize that responsibility does not end at conception. That doesn’t just make you a father. What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise the child that makes you a father.

And listen, to all the mothers out there: You need help. You need help. We need to help all those mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, and go to work, and pick up them up in the afternoon, and work another shift, and get dinner, and make lunches, and pay the bills, and fix the house, and protect the family, and do all the things that a parent is supposed to do. So many women in our community are doing this in a heroic fashion. We’re so proud of all those single moms who are out there, doing just incredible work. But they need support. They shouldn’t have to be doing it all by themselves. They need another parent in the home.  Their children need another parent in the home. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong.

And I know what it means to have an absent parent. My father wasn’t in the house when I was growing up. I have to say my circumstances weren’t as tough as they are for many young people today, because even though my father left us when I was two years old, and I only knew him by the letters he wrote and the stories my family told, I was growing up in Hawaii. Hawaii is not quite as tough as the South Side. I’m just telling the truth.

And I had two wonderful grandparents to help my mother, grandparents from Kansas who poured everything they had into me, helping my mother to raise my sister and me. They worked to teach us about love and respect and the obligations that we have to one another. And I have to admit that I messed up more often than I should’ve, but I got plenty of second chances. And even though we didn’t have a lot of money, I had love and an education, scholarships that gave me the opportunity to go to some of the best schools in the country. See, a lot of children don’t get those chances.  There is no margin for error in the lives of so many of our children. They’ve got to have everything going for them. They’ve got to have Momma rooting for them, but they’ve got to have Daddy rooting for them, too.

I understand my story is different, but I know the toll that being a single parent took on my mother – how she struggled at times to the pay bills, how she was embarrassed sometimes to go to the store with food stamps because she wanted to make sure that we had enough to eat, how she struggled to give us the things that other kids had. Sometimes I’d come back home – you know, children don’t always think about things the right way – and I’d complain about how Johnny had this or Jimmy had that, and I can only imagine how that made her feel. She struggled to play all the roles that both parents are supposed to play. She had to be the disciplinarian all the time.

And I know the toll it took on me, not having a father in the house, the hole in your heart, when you don’t have a male figure in the home that can guide you and lead you and set a good example for you. So I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle – that if I could do anything in life, I would be a good father to my children; that if I could do anything, I would give them that rock – that foundation – on which to build their lives. And that would be the greatest gift I could offer them.

I say this knowing that I have been an imperfect father – knowing that I have made mistakes and I will continue to make more; wishing that I could be home for my girls and my wife more than I am right now. I say this knowing all of these things because even as we are imperfect parents, imperfect fathers, even as we all face difficult circumstances at times in our lives, there are still certain lessons we have to strive to live and learn as fathers – whether we are black or white; whether we’re rich or poor; whether we’re from the South Side or the wealthiest suburb.

The first lesson, I think, that all of us have to embrace is the idea of responsibility, the idea of taking responsible for your actions and taking responsibility for those that you love.  And I know of no better example of this than my father-in-law, Michelle’s Dad, Frasier Robinson. Frasier Robinson, at the age of thirty, was stricken with multiple sclerosis. By the time I met him, by the time I knew him, he had to walk with a couple of walkers, a couple of canes, everywhere he went. He never went to college because he grew up at a time when there weren’t a lot of opportunities. So he worked at a water filtration plant downtown, right by Navy Pier, and he worked there all his life. And he’d have to wake up an hour early because of his disability, an hour earlier than anybody else just to get to work on time.

But he never missed a day’s work, he never missed his son’s basketball games, he never missed his daughter’s recitals. He was always there for them, and he always loved them and rooted for them and inspired them He could have used his disability as an excuse, just like he could have used racism as an excuse for not caring for his children, but he was there all the time. That’s a lesson that we have to embrace in our community, taking responsibility, no matter what the hardships, to be the kind of father that our children need us to be.

The second example that I’ve taken is setting an example of excellence for our children – because if we want to set high expectations for them, we’ve got to set some high expectations for ourselves.

You know, it’s interesting during this process of running for president, you remember at the beginning, people were wondering, how come he doesn’t have all the support in the African-American community? Do you remember that? That was when I wasn’t black enough. Now I’m too black. You remember that. You remember that? Yeah, you all remember. And what was interesting was how many people would come up to me and say, “Oh Barack, we love you, man. We’re rooting for you, but we just don’t think a black man can be elected president. We had already defeated ourselves before we even started. We didn’t set high enough expectations for ourselves. We believed that somebody else can do it, but we can’t do it. And that filters down to our children. That filters down to our children. When we set low expectations for ourselves, we set them low for our children.

Too many parents come and they say, “Oh this child has got a great report card. They’ve got all B’s.” I say, “All B’s? Is that the highest grade? Is that the best you can do? I thought there was this other grade, an A. It’s nice you got a B, but you can get an A.” It’s great if you have a job, but you can get a better job. It’s a wonderful thing if you got a better job, but maybe you can own a business and create jobs. It’s a wonderful thing if you are married and living in a home with your children, but don’t just sit in the house and watching “SportsCenter” all day.

I don’t know if you guys remember, Chris Rock had a routine. He said too many of our men, they’re proud, they brag about doing the things they’re supposed to do. They say, “Well, I’m not in jail.” Well, you’re not supposed to be in jail. Don’t brag about that.

So we’re glad that you’re in the home, but engage your child. So many children are growing up in front of the television set, in front of the video games. As fathers and as parents, we’ve got to spend more time with them, and help them with their homework, and turn off the TV set once in a while and turn off the video game and the remote control and read a book to your child! That’s how we build that foundation.

We know that education is everything to our children’s future. We know that they will no longer be competing for jobs against people in Indiana or California. They’re going to be competing against young people in China and in India, all over the world. We know the work and the studying and the level of education that that’s going to require.

You know, just this past week, I stopped by an eighth-grade graduation for a young women’s charter school, a wonderful school. And there was all the pomp and all the circumstance and parents were all bringing flowers. And I thought to myself, well now this is nice that we’re celebrating, but you know what, this is just the eighth grade. You know, when I see sometimes these eighth-grade graduations, I want to remind people, now hold on a second. This is just eighth grade.

So let’s not go over the top. Let’s not have a huge party. Let’s just give them a handshake and tell them, OK, now you’re going to ninth grade and then tenth grade. Then you’re going to graduate, then go on to college. Maybe you’ll get a Ph.D. Maybe you’ll get a law degree. Maybe you’re get a medical degree. It’s just eighth grade. Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation. You’re supposed to graduate from the eighth grade.

It’s up to us – as fathers and parents – to instill this sense of excellence in our children. It’s up to us to say to our daughters, don’t let images on television tell you what you are worth, because I want my daughters to dream without limits and reach for those goals. It’s up to us to tell our sons, those songs on the radio that glorify violence and glorify materialism, that’s not going to cut it in my house. In my house, we live to admire and respect achievement, and self-respect, and hard work, and faith. It’s up to us to set these high expectations. And that means meeting those expectations ourselves.

The third thing we need to do as fathers is pass along the value of empathy to our children. Not sympathy, but empathy – the ability to stand in somebody else’s shoes; to look at the world through their eyes. Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in “us,” in “me,” that we forget about our obligations to other people, to one another. There’s a culture in our society that says remembering to look out for other people is somehow being soft. We hear that even our politics in Washington, that it’s all about you, look out for your self-interest, don’t look out for others.

You know, our young children see that. They see when you are ignoring or mistreating your wife. They see when you are inconsiderate at home; or when you are distant; or when you are thinking only of yourself. And so it’s no surprise when we see that behavior in our schools or on our streets. That’s why we have to teach our young people there’s nothing weak about being kind, there’s nothing weak about being thoughtful, there’s nothing weak about being considerate. We’ve got to teach our children that you’re not strong by putting people down – you’re strong by lifting other people up. That’s our responsibility as fathers.

And by the way – it’s a responsibility that also extends to Washington. Because if fathers are doing their part here on the South Side or anywhere in the country; if they’re taking responsibilities seriously for their children, and setting high expectations for them, instilling in them a sense of excellence and empathy, then our government should meet them halfway.

I can’t tell you how many fathers in the course of this campaign I’ve met who are work two, three jobs and still can’t provide health insurance for their children, how many fathers who have lost their jobs and can’t fill up their gas tanks to go on a job search because of the high cost of gas.

We should be meeting them halfway. We should be making it easier for fathers who make responsible choices and harder for those who avoid them. We should get rid of the financial penalties we impose on married couples right now, and start making sure that every dime of child support goes directly to helping children instead of bureaucrats. We should reward fathers who pay that child support with job training and job opportunities and a larger Earned Income Tax Credit that can help them pay the bills. We should expand programs where registered nurses visit expectant and new mothers and help them learn how to care for themselves before the baby is born and what to do after that child is born – programs that have helped increase father’s involvement in their children, and help improve the prospects of those women and their children’s readiness for school. We should help new families care for their children by expanding maternity and paternity leave, and we should guarantee that every worker gets more paid sick leave so they can stay home to take care of their child without losing their income or their job.

We should take all of these steps to build a strong foundation for our children. But we also know that even if we do; even if we meet our obligations as fathers and parents; even if Washington does its part too, we’re still going to face difficult challenges in our lives. There will still be days of struggle and heartache. The rains will still come and the winds will still blow.

And that is why the final lesson we must learn as fathers is also the greatest gift we can pass on to our children – and that is the gift of faith and the gift hope.

I’m not talking about an idle hope that is little more than blind optimism or willful ignorance of the problems we face. I’m talking about hope and faith inside us that insists, despite all that evidence to the contrary, that something better is waiting for us if we’re willing to work for it, if we are willing fight for it. If we are willing to believe in it.

I was answering questions at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin this week and a young man raised his hand, and I thought he’d ask about college tuition or energy or maybe the war in Iraq. Instead he looked at me very seriously. He was about twenty. He says, “What does life mean to you?”

Now, I have to admit that I wasn’t quite prepared for that one. So I was stammering a little bit, and then I stopped and gave it some thought, and then I said:

When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me – how do I make my way in the world, and how do I become successful and how do I get the things that I want.

But now, my life revolves around my two little girls. They’re not so little any more. And what I think about is what kind of world I’m leaving them. Are we living in a county where there’s a huge gap between a few who are wealthy and a whole bunch of people who are struggling every day? Am I leaving them a county that is still divided by race? A country where, because they’re girls, they don’t have as much opportunity as boys do? Am I leaving them a country where we are hated around the world because we don’t cooperate with other nations? Are we leaving them a country that’s is in grave danger because of what’s happening to the planet?

And what I’ve realized is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re willing to do your small part to leave our children – all of our children – a better world. Even if it’s difficult. Even if the work seems great. Even if we don’t get very far in our lifetime.  That is our responsibility as fathers and parents. To try. To hope. We do what we can to build our house upon the sturdiest rock.

To me that means building that house on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Because I’m going to make mistakes, and sometimes it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard for me as a father. It’s going to be hard for me as a husband. It’s hard for me as a public servant. But if I can instill in my children that sense that God is looking out for us, that He’s going to be there for us during the darkest hour, that He’s going to be there for us no matter what happens, no matter what winds blow, then I know that I can succeed, and I know they will succeed.

We keep faith that our Father will be there to guide us, and watch over us, and protect us, and lead His children through the darkest of storms to light of a better day. And that’s my prayer for all of us on this here on Father’s Day. That’s my hope for this country in the years to come. And I hope that all of you feel that same faith, that same possibility that I do. Because if we rise up, if we have faith in the Lord, if we’re working hard, if we do what we must do as fathers, and as mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers, if we’re looking after our children, then I promise you, better days are ahead. God’s going to lead us in a bright direction. God is going to lead us in a better direction. God bless you all. Thank you, Apostolic. I appreciate it. Thank you.

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