{"id":293,"date":"2008-03-20T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-20T21:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2008\/03\/20\/293\/"},"modified":"2015-01-13T21:31:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T02:31:27","slug":"293","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=293","title":{"rendered":"Obama, a Man for All Colors"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, just about everyone in the nation has said something about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright videos and about Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech on Tuesday. The country now seems tired and ready to move on from it; that\u2019s just when I\u2019m ready to jump in. Too bad for me that just about everything that could be said on this already has been. Nonetheless, with my usual sense of exquisite timing, here are my thoughts on the subject. <\/p>\n

First off, the Obama campaign was expressly NOT supposed to be about race<\/a>. Senator Obama basically told us that the fact that he has African blood in him should not matter. But now, thanks to his closeness to Rev. Wright, it does. After the Wright videos surfaced last week, Obama was in effect asked to choose between being a black man and being a generic, trans-racial member of the human race, as previously advertised. He chose to be black. And I take my hat off to him for doing so. He is a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church, a church community that expressly defines itself as “unashamedly black”. When called upon to break his ties to that community, the Senator refused. So, Barack Obama is now the unashamedly black candidate. <\/p>\n

Again, I admire his courage in choosing his community bonds over political expediency. Senator Obama is an extremely bright man who knows darn well that his shot at the White House, if not the Democratic nomination, has been endangered by his choice not to condemn the Rev. Wright. I don’t have to tell you that the GOP 527 committees are going to have a field day with those videos in the fall (along with Obama’s express refusal to wear an American flag pin, the video of him not placing his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, and his wife’s words about being proud of America for the first time in her adult life). <\/p>\n

Now, as to the speech. Obama is a bright man who knows that his candidacy has been endangered, and the speech represented a necessary damage control effort. That’s not to detract from its brilliance and bravery. Obama decided to “grasp the nettle” of underlying racial tension that America has not yet resolved (but at least has the good sense to keep from boiling over in public). He told us that he knows what many blacks say and think about whites in private, and likewise knows what a lot of whites say and think about blacks in private. He promised to keep working toward greater understanding between such blacks and whites. <\/p>\n

He told us that he didn’t share Rev. Wright’s more fiery views; in fact he condemned them, at least from his perspective as a national celebrity. However, he asked us to accept that he hasn’t previously challenged or personally censured such expressions while in the company of his black community, and he won\u2019t now. He’s asking the nation to acknowledge that this sort of thing is all right within the African American community. He didn’t opine whether the nation as a whole should extend similar toleration to comparable situations within the Euro-white community, the Hispanic community, the Arab\/Islamic-American community, etc. <\/p>\n

(Indeed, imagine an Egyptian-American imam lecturing at an American mosque in front of many children, “Allah, Curse America!”, “America got what it deserved on 9\/11” . . . . do we hope that the participants would tell the imam that they don’t want such values conveyed to their children and that they will withdraw their financial and personal support if such messages continue?)<\/p>\n

OK, to me that’s the BIG ONE; that’s the question of the day. Is Obama correct in asking the nation to accept the black community\u2019s toleration, if not complete embracement, of factually wrong and patriotically negative expressions by some of its prominent members? (Black church ministers are about as prominent as you can get in many African American communities.) And that its children should be exposed to such expressions? (Admittedly, there is a countervailing message from adults that no one intends to follow up on those messages by reviving the armed ‘black nationalist’ movements of the late 1960s, e.g. the Black Panthers<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Senator Obama didn’t have the time on Tuesday to lay out the complicated and often unspoken historical and sociological parameters that underlie the state of racial relations in America today. And neither do I — not to mention that I really don’t know them very well. But I will admit that there are valid reasons for America to extend some understanding to people like the Rev. Wright (and to their relationships to those like Senator Obama). <\/p>\n

Jeremiah Wright is not Osama Bin Laden. He has done much to serve the needy, to provide education, and to lift up and support those within his community. He has maintained the flow of daily life within his neighborhood. As with most black ministers, he has unceasingly urged and challenged his Chicago flock to strive and achieve, to educate and improve themselves, to be good faithful husbands and wives and parents, to believe in morality, to shun negative influences such as substance abuse, gambling, prostitution, etc. <\/p>\n

And from the broader perspective, whites today cannot expect that the legacy of 300 years of slavery and apartheid on American soil could just vanish within a half century, despite the administration of correctives such as federal civil rights laws, poverty assistance programs, extended educational opportunities, and affirmative action within higher education and the workplace. Most white families today are able to say that their ancestors were not in America when slavery and the reconstruction were taking place. But their ancestors (including my own) did choose come to this country to share in its prosperity, and a significant portion of that prosperity was gained because of the forced labor and other injustices imposed upon west Africans brought to this land in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery did give America a significant economic kick-start, although science and the industrial revolution later took over. So there is an argument that America still owes something to its children of Africa, especially those who have not yet shared in the dream. <\/p>\n

But on the other side of the coin, I think that whites, if allowed to speak frankly, would have some legitimate points to raise. One of those questions would be this: how long? Do African-Americans expect to be treated specially forever? Do they really want that? Doesn’t challenge often bring out the best in people, and can\u2019t too much entitlement bring out the worst? The conservatives have some valid points about human nature such as it is. <\/p>\n

I myself don\u2019t believe that gangs, drugs, crime and other maladies of the black poor stem from the Great Society programs of the 1960s and 1970s; what did stem from them is the now-expanding black middle class. But at some point, white guilt can be and has been unfairly exploited. Does black culture in America really want to bill itself and be viewed as a damaged group that needs to always be given a head start in every event (other than basketball and hip-hop)? I know a fair number of successful black people who probably don\u2019t think so. And although there certainly are valid arguments regarding redress for the sins of the past, at some point nearly every human being alive today has ties with some social or ethnic group that at some point in history was persecuted or plundered. Can the world heal all of the generational effects from every wound from the past? <\/p>\n

Somewhere between these two polar viewpoints lies the truth, along a road of reason. Barack Obama (with help from Rev. Wright) brought American race relations back into the spotlight, but basically left the issues hanging and unresolved. He has to get on with his campaign; political realities won\u2019t let him dwell on the subject. If anything, they encourage him to get away from the topic. Politically, he needs to go back to being \u201cBarack Obama, man of all creeds and colors<\/span>\u201d, and get away from being \u201cBarack Obama, American black man<\/span>\u201d, as he was and is when at Trinity United. <\/p>\n

For better and for worse, though, I\u2019m not sure that the voters this fall will let him do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now, just about everyone in the nation has said something about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright videos and about Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech on Tuesday. The country now seems tired and ready to move on from it; that\u2019s just when I\u2019m ready to jump in. Too bad for me that just about everything that could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5109,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/5109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}