With the backdrop of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's recent comments, members of Piedmont Community Church and Imani Community Church of Oakland got together to have a frank conversation about race.
Led by Dr. Bill McNabb, pastor of Piedmont Community and Dr. George Cummings, pastor of Imani, they sought to localize a national conversation in an authentic manner that sound bites and cable news shows rarely have the time for.
Undergirding this conversation, however, is the same constraints that are placed on the national version -- America is a country founded on multiple, competing narratives while preferring to believe there is only one.
Competing narratives has been one of the attributes that makes America unique. As the nation formed, there were a competing narratives between northern colonies and those in the South, between those that owned land and those who did not. And like race, there has always been warring factions between those with privilege and those without.
In the post-9/11 narrative, some view patriotism as wearing metal flags on their lapels, adorning bumper stickers saying "I support the Troops," and under no circumstances is dissent, doubt or questioning of the president's war policy part of the current discourse.
There is no single American story. Yet, when it comes to race there is a tendency to believe this fallacy is real.
Race is the most glaring example of our desires to believe that our position on the subject stands alone, beyond reproach as to what is the truth. Because of its accompanying sensitivity, any narrative on race that fails to correspond with the one already held is invariably dismissed as being wrong rather than prompting an insatiable curiosity to learn more about the differing perspective.
Given the legislation passed, amendments to the constitution, as well as the examples of African-Americans making great personal strides in business, entertainment, and sports it is understandable that some might ask, when will the need for such discussions cease?
But there is another narrative that sees Barack Obama held to a different standard than the other presidential candidates that reminds them from the 3/5 Compromise of 1787 to the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education to landmark civil rights legislation there remains a shadow of injustice that potentially cloaks every person of color.
It is a narrative that does not understand why after 12 years of elected office, the legislation he has authored, two books, and a campaign that appeals to the better nature of America that Obama must answer for Wright's sound bites.
Now that Obama has placed more distance between himself and Rev. Wright time will tell if this particular story has been put to rest. However one feels about the Wright situation, there has been much more media scrutiny placed on this issue than president Bush's run up to war that caused far more damage than anything Wright has said in the past 20 years.
Recent history demonstrates what can happen when America is presented as a nation with only one narrative. Immediately following the 9/11 tragedy, it was widely reported that it was the worst case of terrorism on American soil.
Whether or not it is true, how does this statement sound to African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and those indigenous to this land who have all been forced to drink from the bitter well of American terrorism?
Not only did these statements portray America as having a single narrative, it fueled our collective desires for revenge resulting in the present quagmire that has the country stuck militarily, politically, and economically for the foreseeable future.
Race is a complicated issue embedded into the fabric of America's origins. There is no magic bullet that will alleviate its divisive nature.
But the example offered by Piedmont Community Church and Imani Community Church seems to be the best way to address it -- to acknowledge there are competing narratives, not for the purposes of proving right and wrong but for better understanding of those differences.
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. He is the author of Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or go to his website, byronspeaks.com