Speech

Obama gave a speech today. It was a stunner, really another killer oratory. Did it help defuse his crazy-preacher-in-the-closet problem? That probably depends on who you talk to. It worked for me.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike... But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Good start, good start.

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

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 this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

The problem is that the people who are ready to support him will focus on the white grandmother line, while the ones who are convinced he's a one-man al Qaida sleeper cell will focus on the black community line, the raucous laughter and screaming and shouting, to conclude that electing him will mean the end of the world as they know it.

Whatever. Can't reason where there's no reason. Let's look at this instead:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

I'm glad he's talking about it, daring to grab that third rail and say yes, this does hurt like a motherfucker, but if we don't talk about it constructively it will continue to silently derail and destroy our political process and we won't progress as a society but will be paralyzed by the politics of hatred, of mistrust, of ignorance.

What I wish he'd said was he'd talk about his insane preacher if the press would hold John McCain to a fraction of the same standard when it comes to his insane white preachers. Yes, Jeremiah Wright blamed 9/11 on the US treating people of color across the globe poorly. Jerry Falwell, at whose Liberty University Douchebag McCain gave a commencement address, blamed 9/11 on the US harboring gays and feminists. Jeremiah Wright castigated white people for holding black people down. John Hagee castigates men who don't hold women down. Which candidate gets the free pass by simply saying, oh, I don't agree with all of his views and which one gets his feet held to the fire? Take a guess.

We aren't done talking about race, by a long shot. Hopefully this will be a start.