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Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and Race

By Carmen D. on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008, 7:07 am Comments

How’s he going to do it? How will Barack Obama reconcile the off-putting excerpts of Jeremiah Wright’s fire breathing oratory with his own peaceful, easy feeling vision of bringing our country together beyond the barriers that have existed since Plymouth Rock?

I think it’s impossible.

Barack Obama’s initial wishy-washy and overly parsed response to Wright’s most incendiary comments placed Obama right back in the box with the other presidential candidates. And that’s the campaign killer as I see it.

It is ironic that Obama until recently was called the “post-racial candidate.” I never understood that stamp and certainly never believed it. I do believe that Obama made many white and black people feel “safe” that in the ‘Age of Obama’ he would lead us through the racial swamp that spills over onto the national radar from time to time. But now to many it appears that Obama, or at least his mentor of 20 years, is stuck knee deep in mud.

What most disappoints me about all of this is the absence of Jeremiah Wright speaking for himself. I have no idea if it’s true, but Fox reported that Jeremiah Wright was traveling in Africa and completely unavailable to the press. That is a serious problem for the Obama campaign. Maybe Wright could clarify those clips that we’ve been seeing. After all, there is a history in the African American church of calling for the hard judgment of God to fall down on America for her mistreatment of black people. And sure, now it may be more palatable to the majority to hear such sermons in the context of slavery or lynching or Jim Crow segregation. But, keep in mind angry sermons were as vilified then as Wright’s are now. And perhaps for Wright, the problems as he sees them are as urgent now as they were during the 1930’s. If that’s the case, Wright needs to say so if he wants to help his long term advisee.

This is not the moment for Jeremiah Wright to fall silent.

  • Intréessant ce billet ! ;) en passsant je tenais à te dire que le design du blog esy tout particulièrement réusi ;)
  • n-2-me-i-c
    Carmen,

    I think you might appreciate this.
  • Hey n-2-me-i-c. I don't agree with the clips of Wright I've seen. Of course Obama will lose votes and I agree that the campaign is deeply wounded. I still wish Wright would come out and talk for himself.
  • n-2-me-i-c
    Carmen,
    Arguments that Rev. Wright has said nothing that wasn’t true just doesn’t cut it with me. There are ways to convey the truth in order to ‘level’ with people; and there are ways to speak the truth to ‘level’ people. Clearly, Rev. Wright has done the latter. To expect Obama not to LOSE votes, esp. White votes, because of the Rev’s remarks is to dream the impossible. How a servant of God and friend of Obama can say such inflammatory rhetoric that obviously would hurt Obama is beyond me. IMO, Reverend Wright has deeply wounded the Obama campaign and helped both Hillary and the Republicans.
  • J Richards
    J Richards Says:

    As his first name suggests, Dr. Wright seems to be preaching a JEREMIAD, of sorts. Compare the harsh, hyperbole-filled figurations he levies against those in HIS country who, willfully bereft of history, continue to oppress poor whites and non-whites, women, etc. with the rhetoric of Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah, Samuel, Elijah, Daniel, Hosea, Isaiah, and NT John the Baptist.

    Much of his rhetoric about 9-11, the AIDS conspiracy, and the infiltration of drugs into urban communities has already been proclaimed by American thinkers who span political, identity, and cultural categories. Are they all crack-pots?

    As an African American Republican who sometimes feels myself “blackened” by the rhetoric of race-based supremacy and HYPER-capitalism, I wish that we can name those moments when ALL of us are unfairly racialized by apartheid practices and other forms of godliness that deny the power thereof. We can start by trying to first understand and perhaps even trust those traumas that are imposed on us by cultural practices predicated on the myth of race. This means naming the demons and getting to the heart of the hyper-classification movement of the Enlightenment’s Carl Linnaeus, the “objective racism” of de Tocqueville and Hippolyte Taine, and (of course) the wrongheadedness of the Eugenics Movement, and strident, meaner elements of ethnocentrism–be it Afro or Euro.

    And when “privileged” Americans of color such as Michelle and Barack and others decry the social injustices of OUR nation, they often (I assume) do so on behalf of those who are limited by race, gender, and class to show that the American Dream they now have was achieved not BECAUSE of their race, but IN SPITE of it. This is a trauma that whites must trust is true; for I think it leads to the beginning of naming and casting out the demons of division that continue to cripple our nation’s great potential.

    And if the kamikaze politics of the Clintons should wrench from McCain or Obama the presidency, then flee to the hills O Judea ’cause with slick Billy as first spouse, he’ll have that White House looking like Ottawa of the 70s and early 80s. In fact, he’ll be the Margaret Trudeau of a new millenial America. Are we ready for that?
  • That clip with the longer context makes something else clear to me. While the "Greatest Hits" snippets show Wright as an accomplished showman and crowd pleaser, when he's talking about Biblical exegesis and the meaning of ancient Greek words, he's just like my priest: boring. What was Obama doing in the seats for 20 years? He may have been snoozing, just like lots of other good, wholesome Americans.
  • Tom
    Carmen, I just caught up on some of Wright's remarks about AIDS after reading what you said. I'm really not on board with him there.
  • Thanks STF (edit - Freudian?). "Jesus loved the Hell out of his enemies." Nice.
  • I just found a link to a longer sermon by Wright, and posted it on my blog.
  • Hi Francis, welcome. I am honored to see you here. I will sign this petition, but not yet. After Pennsylvania and Florida and Michigan delegates are tallied I will sign the petition. If you've looked around this blog you've seen that I will not vote for Clinton under any circumstances BUT I support her right to push for the nomination. If Obama were in her shoes I would still be cheering him on and donating money. I would be believing in the unseen. So thank you for alerting me to the petition and I will sign it and circulate it after Pennsylvania.
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