Unfortunately, Obama is dealing with a large electorate that has had minimal exposure to the black experience, and almost none to the black religious experience. Obama and others live every day with the unique and complex social (and cultural) experience of being African-Americans. He cannot and should not take the time in this campaign to explain these complexity to the nonAA electorate. Instead he has to reject and denounce and move on.

Many African-Americans have older ministers who say things during some sermons that are somewhat offensive (especially to women), but the concession that is made is to a larger agenda of religious observance, community involvement, and yes racial awareness. You can be a member of a church and not agree with certain things that a minister has said. Also, controversial statements made by a minister may not be perceived as so heretical to many AAs as to command massive notification to all church members about the specifics of the rant.

It is perfectly understandable that such statements could have been made without Obama being notified, knowing that the minister was provocative and passionate and racially-aware . I am sure that the vast majority of his sermons were fine and understandable to the lay public and religiously reinforcing. However, the media does not want to look at the 100s of sermons that were not so provocative. That is the shame. The public has no denominator to judge this man with.

To a certain extent, such concessions have been made by many Catholics over the years as the mandates of Vatican II have fallen by the wayside.