Dispatches: Across the Great Divide
With U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, seeking to break the color line and become the first black man to win the nomination of a major party in the nation’s history and the tortured history of race in America, it couldn’t have been any other way.
Race, however, has not been the campaign’s central theme. There have been some skirmishes over comments made by former President Bill Clinton and former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, both associated with U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but nothing strong as to force it to center stage.
That changed this week with the firestorm surrounding comments made in past sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago who has been Sen. Obama’s spiritual advisor.
Video of two sermons from 2001 and 2003 have been in regular rotation on cable news over the last week, with critics questioning Sen. Obama’s connection to the Rev. Wright and his unwillingness to break with the pastor.
The comments - fiery denunciations of America, its foreign policy and its treatment of blacks - were shocking and threatened to derail Sen. Obama’s campaign, with many calling for the Illinois senator to make a very public break with the Rev. Wright.
Sen. Obama chose a different tack, denouncing the Rev. Wright’s comments but not the man as part of an eloquent and honest speech about the racial stain that still divides this country 143 years after slavery was abolished, 44 years after the adoption of the Civil Rights Act finally ended legal segregation and nearly 40 years since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.
Sen. Obama’s ostensible theme was the way in which race divides us - how the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow remain with us. While legal segregation may be gone, he said, its equally pernicious offspring, segregation based on economics and housing patterns, remains and continues to consign far too many blacks and Hispanics to “the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.”
The speech, as Philadelphia Daily News reporter Will Bunch wrote Tuesday on his Attytood blog, offered a “a dose of what the other candidates have only promised - straight talk, on America’s most difficult subject.”
Sen. Obama “found a new and clearer voice, a way to talk about - and not to deny - that alienation, anger and pessimism but also to talk about why he believes that his generation - and specifically Barack Obama - will be the American to finally erase much of that anger, by channeling it into positive energy.”
Ultimately, the Wright controversy says more about us as a nation and society, about our divisions and our inability to rise about the troubling parts of our past than it says about the candidate himself.
The pastor’s sermons are a textbook example of what the historian Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics.” He turns real grievances into conspiracy, resorting to “apocalyptic terms” and the kind of distorted rationalizing exhibited by conservative Christian ministers Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks.
“The government gives (black youth) the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America,’” he railed during a 2003 sermon. “No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
The language, of course, is strident and conspiratorial, bordering on the intolerant - and yet it contains more than a kernel of truth about American society. The United States too often acts as if its concerns are the only ones that matter around the world, most recently in Iraq, but also in Central America, Iran, Southeast Asia and elsewhere, sowing resentment that was bound to explode at some point.
And the history of blacks in the United States has not been a good one and continues to be marred by injustice and economic disparities. Some of what is happening may be the fault of some in the black community, but the despair that exists in the inner city creates an atmosphere ripe for drugs and the growth of gangs and the government - read the white power structure - has done very little to address this.
That these conditions continue to exist, that the resentment continues to bubble up and boil over in the kind of inflammatory rhetoric used by people like the Rev. Wright should be a warning. And while we should condemn the Rev. Wright for his vitriol, we should not use his paranoid style as an excuse to sweep the substance of what he is saying under the rug.
Sen. Obama’s speech Tuesday acknowledged this, even as it attempted to create political - though not personal - distance between himself and the Rev. Wright.
“The profound mistake of Rev. Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society,” Sen. Obama said. “It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know - what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.
To understand just how correct Rev. Wright’s comments are, one only need to review the Iraqi Holocaust and blacks’ treatment during and after Katrina. Second, “The government gives (black youth) the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America,’” he railed during a 2003 sermon. “No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
This is 100% correct. Webb and Ruppet proved, and the CIA *admitted,* the US government imported, and still does as proved by the reporters at NarcoNews, Cocaine and Heroin into the country to finance its covert “black” operations. If anything, Rev. Wright’s sermons were too meek, and Obama’s actions in response prove just how meek he is when confronted with the truth about the institution he wants to lead.
Wright’s “God damn America” would have been better timed to September 2005, when the federal government let New Orleans drown. Or perhaps better spoken at one of the sites where the federal government is destroying sound public housing in New Orleans to make room for real estate development.
And yet, it’s the Hank Kalets of the world who give me the fan-tods, not the Jeremiah Wrights.
I fear that too many Americans want to live in a dream world where we’re the most wonderful country and everything we do is noble, and if people are poor it’s their own fault and Blacks have nothing to complain about. That is, the state called denial.
Don’t
Even
Notice
I
Am
Lying
Since we are only in the leading edge of the pain of this recession, people may not be ready to move out of their comfort zone. Obama may not have wanted to make this kind of move so soon, but the breaking story of Wright gave him no choice. Everytime I read his words, I feel tears. For what we are, for what we could be, for his courage and honesty and tact in telling us the truth people don’t want to hear.
kathyodat
Wright was right. Amen hallejuah!
Some of we people that I am sure at least some are white can manage to see the truth in the Pastor Wright`s statement, so is it not possible that in his heart, Obama also agreed? If so, does it not show that he is guilty also of thinking one thing, and saying another for political gain? When he takes office, if that is to be, will he always work for what he knows the country needs, or will there be so much pressure to do otherwise that he will not carry on with the idealistic agenda he speaks of?
Before we put someone on a high pedestal and start the hero-worship, it might be a good idea to wonder if it might be time to come back to earth again, as Obama is only another human with weaknesses common to all of us.
National Public Radio featured an hour discussing race this week. Blacks were mentioned almost exclusively, Asians were mentioned only briefly once, and American Indians were never mentioned. Why? Think of it as a continuation of the policies of genocide. America and NPR do not want you to know that we still exist. NPR “never” allows American Indian intellectuals and historians voices to be heard. Sometimes they will feature a small cultural tidbit but nothing substantial. So when you think of NPR, think of FOX, to ndn’s they are the same.
But it’s okay when white preachers like Falwell and Robertson call for the bombing and murder of darker people with nary a word of criticism.
I fear even now, the Neocons / MIC are setting up and training the ”lone gunman.. who’s sights are clearly aimed at Obama should he even get near the reins of power…
I truly hope i never can say ..”told ya so”
ezeflyer__I believe that Falwell and Robertson lost a considerable amount of credibility after their rants with all except their devout followers. It did not help Franklin Graham either as he also got his foot in his mouth.
It all goes to show that our founders knew what they were doing when they set up the separation of church and state, as mixing them up ruins both of them. Bush of course, had to ditch the laws of the land as he was the Decider and ruled that the government would get involved in religious matters.
Just another of the disastrous remodeling jobs of America the used to be Beautiful. Vote for HRC as she is too ornery, or so we hear, to worry about religion, and besides, she is for letting big government take care of the less priviledged in the country.
By the author utilizing this quote, “He turns real grievances into conspiracy, resorting to “apocalyptic termsm” he tries to take credibility away from Wright. Although the “Christian” nation shudders at the very intonation of “God damn,” there’s nothing NOT true about what Wright actually said. Maybe this Wright/right dialog will get a festering scar out in the open so that a basis for healing might occur?
On OpEd News yesterday, I saw the entire sermon on a video from which the few seconds of the chickens come home to roost clip that Fox and then all the channels blasted over and over–in fact he gave a great sermon.Quite eloquent.
That is not to say I had any problem with the brief clips taken out of context—most US citizens cannot or will not face our history, our complicity and our crimes against humanity here and all over the world. So many are convinced that we can do no wrong. How can we ever change if we cannot even accept that we have ever been wrong? Sad!
You got that right ‘Doom n’ Gloom’ it started with the Native Peoples and just kept going and going and it now includes the Planet and everything on it: human, animal, earth resources - truly astonishing.
And if you think this is somehow accidental and nastiness here and there, think again.
This is a mature belief system that everything belongs to them; it’s all theirs; at every level, and all current institutions are there to serve it/them. WE DO NOT COUNT AND ARE USEFUL ONLY WHEN WE SERVE THEM.
So, what has changed? This is the culmination of 6,000 years of patriarchy.
“The dark power at first held so high a place that it could wound all who were on the side of good and of the light. But in the end it perishes of its own darkness, for evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration.” I Ching
Hi, Believe ezeflyer comes up with excellent point about Neocons’ hypocrisy. Some leaders have openly advocated the death penalty for Gays and Neopagans. Much of the credibility they lost was among folks who didn’t give them much to begin with.
Maybe more importantly, there’s one point no one’s addressing _ that old, standard “Angry White Man” rant about “I never owned or beat a slave, I never killed an Indian,” etc.
I’d like to remind those who hold this view _ Vast majority of you did wade ashore at the beaches of Normandy, invent the light bulb or tip a lot of expensive tea off a British ship, either _ but how many of you say “we” in that context? My point is that you cannot be selective about what parts of our history you accept a part in, or believe are part of some American character in which you believe you share.
If you want to take ~credit~ for our accomplishments, you have to take ~responsibility~ for our mistakes, atrocities, too. Aren’t you the ones always preaching responsibility? Step up to the plate and take it. Listen to what Wright and Obama are saying. It’s truth, for once. Maybe not in their content, but in their feelings. We just have to face down that anger _ on both “sides” _ before we deal with it. Plenty of White people are mad, too. I sure am. But bottom line _ if you want to disown those of us in our history who owned slaves, etc., you have to disown Thomas Jefferson, the Wright Brothers, etc., and all the good and great things US has done, all our greatness and ingenuity. You have to take our evil with it, if you truly love your country and are one of us and want to make it better.
After all, it was you and me.
What we have been witnessing in the media feeding frenzy of the last couple of weeks is the culmination (I hope) of a coordinated assault upon the tattered remnants of the wall of separation between church from state that the founders of our republic sought to erect when they unequivocally prohibited imposition of any religious test to hold public office in America. Just look at the full sequence of events.
First, there was a whispering campaign from cyberspace and email falsely claiming Barack Obama was a closet Muslim, secretly educated in a madrassa in some brown skinned country overseas, who took his oath of office upon the Koran rather than the St. James version of religious truth favored by the majority. And he sure do look funny when he dresses up for the village elders when he visits Somalia or wherever.
To dispel the slander, Senator Obama is called upon to set the record straight early in the primary season. No, I am not now and never have been a Muslim. I am a Christian.
Well, what then is your relationship to that Chicago-based sect called the Black Muslims, that spooky group that espouses racial separatism, and which added Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed to the landscape of American political anxiety? Louis Farrakhan, an outspoken anti-Semite, at least once said something supportive of Obama’s candidacy. What about it, Barack?
In response during a nationally televised primary debate, Obama famously both “rejects and denounces” Farrakhan and all he stands for. Case closed? Hardly.
Well, if you are indeed a Christian like you claim, which denomination? What church congregation do you, the wife and kids affiliate with for Sunday worship, and who’s the pastor? Jeremiah Wright? Why, isn’t he one of them so-called black liberation theologists, cut from the same basic race baiting cloth as Farrakhan?
Never mind that Senator Obama had already publicly distanced himself from much of Reverend Wright’s controversial rhetorical excesses, characterizing the long time pastor as “a sort of old uncle”, prone to unpredictable hyperbole. The fun has only begun.
Archives of church archives are fly specked to pull out selected inflammatory passages from 40 years worth of Rev. Wright’s old sermons. Ripped entirely from their context, the most outrageous snippets suddenly materialize on YouTube, migrating quickly from there to Faux News and simultaneously on to all the cable television networks, just in time to stoke a weekend news cycle.
Now we have the 9/11 attack as partial response to US military policy abroad. AIDS perhaps as government initiated genocide directed at Africans or other folks of deviant lifestyle, reminiscent of those earlier conspiracy mongers’ charges that the urban crack epidemic was enabled by the CIA. Hillary can hail a taxicab anytime she wants because of her fair complexion. Goddamn America.
Senator Obama goes to Philadelphia and gives a masterful, heart felt nation wide address on race in American history and contemporary culture. In doing so, he points out that he had never heard, nor ever even been personally told about, his former pastor’s specific comments that were reverberating in the media megaphone. Regardless however, Barack Obama declares he would no more sever all ties to Reverend Wright’s ministry than he sould sever all ties to the African American community.
Enough said? Not for Limbaugh Land and those caught up in competitive pursuit of all that is controversial enough to be deemed newsworthy.
Why weren’t you in church, or where did you attend services, in the traumatic days right after the terrorist attacks? How about January of just this year? Once you had become aware that your pastor was prone to making controversial remarks with which you disagreed, why didn’t you, the wife and kids abandon this particular church and seek more appropriate spiritual guidance elsewhere?
Turning to specifics, and knowing now what you insist you didn’t hear back then, do you totally condemn Jeremiah Wright’s remarks about what caused 9/11, or do you partially condone those remarks? Don’t you think your pastor owes Hillary Clinton an apology? Why not do the right thing, wash your hands now, and just walk away from this church and all this controversy while there still may be time to reach out to white America?
When the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were drafted in the building across the street from where Senator Barack Obama spoke last week, the Caucasian male power brokers did indeed punt the whole issue of human slavery down the road for at least twenty years, leaving that contentious issue to be grappled with by a later generation of legislators.
But repeatedly, and explicitly, those same founders of our system of democratic, Constitution-based government spelled out in no uncertain terms that no candidate for political office in the United States of America shall ever be held to satisfy any test of religious faith to qualify and hold elected public office.
I can think of no white political candidate who has ever had his or her personal religious faith or individual religiosity demonized, categorized, challenged, scrutinized, dissected, or made the focus of intense, narrow minded partisan cross examination than the feeding frenzy testing process that the junior Senator from Illinois has endured in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary to date. This is a true chickens-coming-home-to-roost moment in my opinion for all concerned about the ominously growing clout of right wing religious wing of the GOP’s grand, post-Reagan tent.
James Carville is credited with saying that Pennsylvania consists of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between.
I believe Barack Obama has passed his 21st Century religious test with to hold public office with flying colors. With grace, he has endured a sectarian ordeal that would have made Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and friends shudder and shake their heads in utter disbelief.
Whether the good people of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania (particularly those out there in Archie Bunkerville comfortable with their own chosen brand of religious piety) share my perception is of course what lies in wait next upon the horizon. It’s all as unfair and grotesquely one sided as it is blatantly unconstitutional.
I mean, does anybody even know or care about the name of Bill Richardson’s priest or Joe Lieberman’s rabbi? Who’s business is it anyway?
Bill from Saginaw