Four years ago last month, Barack Obama, a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination at the time, gave a famous speech in Philadelphia.
He addressed the fact that the long-time pastor of his church, Jeremiah Wright, had made a number of controversial statements, accusing the United States Government of “killing innocent people” and inviting God to “damn America”.
Obama distanced himself from these statements, in unequivocal terms. But then he added: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in the world.