|
The Wright story isn't about smearing Obama, and it isn't about good faith concerns about Obama's character or beliefs. It's about our public inability to respond to the sense of outrage and betrayal felt by many African Americans who believe, in many cases quite justifiably, that their country has not been there for them.
Immediate reactions to Wright were swift and unthinking: he's shouting racist, incendiary provocations and stoking the fires of black anger toward whites. Commentators were quick to note that, if this had been a white congregation decrying blacks, we would be unconditionally outraged. Indeed, outrage is much easier to feel than confronting the cold hard fact that the United States has treated black people like shit for nearly its entire history, and has only recently made meaningful progress in civil rights (the 1960s, for goodness sakes, were a century after emancipation).
Does this mean Wright's views and statements are acceptable? Of course not. Even someone in Wright's position, who grew up when civil rights were barely getting off the ground, and to much violent resistance, should be encouraged not to react with divisiveness and racially charged anger, but instead to be part of the solution. But his failure to do so is a very human, understandable failure, and it is hardly to be compared with the pure racist animus of bigotry.
So people can sanctimoniously fault Obama for refusing to break ties with this pastor, and claim that any right-minded person would refuse to attend a church whose pastor occasionally (or perhaps only once in a great while) gave wind to the rage of betrayal, but let's not pretend this is about Obama's character when, in reality, we are just changing the subject because the wounds of our nation's racism are too painful to confront.
Obama's career is the story of helping, giving, and bringing together, subject, of course, to his own mistakes and shortcomings. But there is simply no trace whatsoever of the racial anger and rage of his pastor to be found in Obama's accomplishments, his writings, his acts of public service, his innumerable speeches, or his treatment of his peers and opponents. If his association with Wright tells us anything about his character, it is that he was willing to forgive Wright his short-comings and embrace in Wright what was positive and inspiring -- something Fox News surely won't show you videos of. There is lesson here that all should be mindful of: let us not allow our disagreements to become walls between us, even as temperatures rise so high within our own Democratic Party.
Whether he saw it in Wright's sermons, or elsewhere in the country, Obama was certainly no stranger to this manner of anger and divisiveness, but tellingly, he never let those attitudes overwhelm his own love and hope for the United States -- a country whose history he reads with remarkable optimism not as the story of helpless oppression and violence, but as a history of social movement toward justice and equality, and beyond the divides that have plagued us from the founding of this nation. If there is one message on which Obama has been consistent since long before his presidential candidacy, it is this message: that unity is the key to progress; that togetherness makes us powerful; that political divisions and fear set us back; that we can only overcome the wounds of history as one.
I will not abandon my support for Barack Obama at this critical moment, when the forces of fear, guilt, and divisiveness are flaring up, and neither will the Democratic Party. Already he is responding with the kind of leadership that demonstrates his ability to bridge divides, not aggravate them, a leadership that rises above blame, finger pointing, and the expression of anger, and instead shows that we always have the choice to respond with an open heart to those we disagree with, for the greater purpose of embracing our shared destiny.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(88 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
