Jeff Jacoby, a conservative columnist for the Boston Globe, is angry at Obama and at those who cheered his speech. We (I not only cheered, I wept) are guilty of accepting a double standard because, says Jacoby, if our clergyman had said the hateful things that Wright did, we would not have sat quietly in our pews for 20 years. Yet, we are willing to give Obama a pass. Obama not only should have objected to Wright's words all along the way, he should have left the church or worked to get Wright fired, just as Jacoby would have done if his rabbi had said equally awful things.
I know Jacoby's synagogue. It's in my neighborhood. I've been there. It's lovely. Airy. Light. It's in Brookline, a terrific part of greater Boston. Jacoby's synagogue's got comfortable seats, pretty ornamental touches, and a well-dressed, affluent, overwhelmingly white congregation.
The notion of a double standard assumes, in an odd way, a single standard. The criticism only makes sense within contexts uniform enough that our moral judgments should be the same. If I condemn a Democratic governor for paying for sex but excuse a Republican congressman for the same offense, then I'm guilty of applying a double standard.
But Jacoby apparently didn't hear what Obama said in his fearless, epochal speech. Who is this "we" who applied a double standard? Our glorious union is nevertheless imperfect because it is riven by divisions deeper than we are comfortable acknowledging. The racial division is so deep that politicians never talk about it except in platitudes so empty that they function as lies. Now Obama has.
IIf we apply a single standard, we are denying the fact that synagogues in Brookline are very different from African-American churches in Illinois. We can, and should, express our strong disagreement with the particularities of Wright's sermons, but if we stop there — and every political advisor in the land would have urged Obama exactly to stop right there — we will continue in our fantasy that there is a single culture, a single set of values, a single set of assumptions, a single view of history, a single vision of the future, a single set of constraints, a single set of opportunities for all in our imperfect union.
Obama is asking us to do what is perhaps hardest. What it takes adults to do. Obama in his speech is asking us to embrace difference and simultaneously to transcend it. That's why Obama presented contexts that not only helped us white Jews in Brookline understand why a Black pastor might say such things, but also acknowledged how race seems to white folks who don't see why they should be disadvantaged for outrages they did not commit.
Unless we accept double, triple, multiple standards, we are invisible to one another, and thus to ourselves. The thoughtless insistence on a single standard is unseemly and unhelpful, especially when it comes from those who live in privilege for whatever reason.
Jeff, you and I live in what is pretty much a white part of Boston. As far as I can tell, Brookline has made very little progress in integrating itself in the 20 years I've lived there. We're stalled. Stuck. Now, who did I hear talking about this just yesterday?
We as Americans need to seize the hope Sen. Obama presented us yesterday. It, at long last, gives us a way forward.
Read more HuffPost coverage and reaction to Obama's speech
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First, I must admit that I’ve been less than charitable to the more outspoken and aggressive Obama supporters—I’m guilty of referring to them as Obamaloons on occasion—and I’m sure that’s quite offensive to a person who is very fired up about a candidate that inspires them to such a zealous advocate.
Secondly, I have felt that to such advocates nothing short of glowing admiration makes it through their perception filter, so I’m somewhat skeptical that what I’m going to suggest is going to have any impact...but here it is anyway:
After reflecting on recent events concerning senator Obama, I’ve come to the conclusion that I would like him to succeed in his bid for the Democratic nomination; many issues that are important to me as a self-defined progressive are firmly mired in what can only be defined as “gray areas,” as they either fall into categories of concern that cannot be illuminated sufficiently at this stage, or are simply too hypothetical or politically volatile to be discussed honestly in the context of a political contest. Ultimately that happens with all candidates in regards to some potential constituents.
My suggestion, as was foreshadowed earlier, is to those supporters who are—shall we say—aggressively enthusiastic. Please don’t misunderstand me…I’m not taking a hypocritical stance here; I can get generate some pretty heated and unsavory comments myself on occasion, so I don’t mean to belittle anyone or talk down to anyone with my suggestion.
So, here it is: CHILL OUT.
I know this probably seems a waste of space for such a simple suggestion, but I just want to make sure that what I’m proposing is accurately understood.
I think right now is a somewhat volatile time for senator Obama, and I fear that the more aggressive of his supporters may be doing more harm than good. His detractors have grown in number in recent days, and I sense in some posters an uneasiness that could lead to realignment of their support. I don’t think this will be the case for many, but some were distressed by the Rev. Wright incident and subsequent speech by Obama, and I think there sensibilities are assaulted by supporters who attack them as somehow being traitors because they have let it be known that these incidents have shaken their faith in Obama—some shaken much more than others.
While this political season has shown just how unreliable political polling can be, current polls suggest that the rise of these issues is beginning to impact senator Obama’s efforts in a negative way. Alienating people who have stepped back to consider the ramifications of all of this will not help Obama’s cause.
I believe the key is to STOP and damper-down the impulse to post fiery rebuttals to those “on-the-fence” who are attempting to come to terms—sometimes through blunt and misinformed statements and questions—with issues that for them has called senator Obama’s candidacy into question.
I would suggest restricting yourself to rational discussion. I know, it is difficult not to reply harshly (and sometimes profanely) to comments that seem biased, racist, or just plain hateful and stupid, but I think the benefit of such self-regulation would be worthwhile.
And if you’re wondering, yes, I still have some issues with senator Obama’s platform, but I’ve decided he’s the best option we have this time around. I think many who are on the fence now will come to the same conclusion—but some who are more Independent/centrist-oriented in their political views will defect to (shudder!) McCain. And folks, four more years of criminal GOP rule just WILL NOT DO.
So chill out; you know, it’s the old saying “ya get more flies with honey than with vinegar."
Amen brother!
Some enterprising person with generous amounts of time should put the speech on a website, match up each anti-speech person with a pro-speech person and let them annotate the speech back and forth with each other. Maybe they'd just end up cursing each other out.
As someone who studies historical, the total ignorance about our history that I'm hearing is frightening and depressing. As someone who has studied race, slavery, emancipation, the willful ignorance on race is maybe even more depressing. I am depressed about it way beyond what it says about Obama's nomination or ultimate election.
is there really no way to speak to each other respectfully?
Well, guess what? I wasn't in a corner.
I didn't attend a racist church. I didn't listen to racism. And I didn't support a church that spewed racism for 20 years.
He makes a speech about race and everyone thinks he has done something courageous? Did you forget why he had to make this speech? Is everyone just suddenly stupid?
No, his speech was not courageous. If I heard a preacher say such things, I would get up and walk out. And I don't even consider that courageous. It is just the right thing to do.
Yet he stayed and supported that church for twenty years.
He didn't renounce Wright's racism until it was politically expedient for him to do so. That is the height of hypocrisy.
Let me know when he decides to tell the truth, and I'll be interested in what he's telling us to do. Until then, I'll continue to do what I've always done - reject racism in all its forms.
Many of our cultural differences come from living very separate lives. We occupy the same space, but don't know each other. Mention "black history" and you get all kinds reasons from white folks about why they don't need to know it. Mention BET -- Black Entertainment Television -- and see how many cries of "reverse racism" it elicits. Yet the paradox is ABC, NBC, CBS and all the rest program to a recipe: black folk are the "hip friend" or "angry" (Omarosa?), the "comic" and in all cases subordinate to the white protagonist.
Quick... name a black news anchor on primetime.... There isn't one.
When John McCain was derailed from his candidacy in 2000, it revolved around a smear that he had "fathered" a black baby. That smear was circulated in South Carolina by "christian conservatives" and Karl Rove, Jr. Bush's "brain" . How refreshing would it have been if McCain had tackled the issue of race back then. After all, it was revealed the Strom Thurmond had a black daughter, as the result of a "less than concensual" relationship between him and a young family maid. Thurmond kept his daughter a secret until his death. McCain's child was not black but adopted from Bangladesh. McCain could have spoken about the importance of family and caring for children of all colors and how the "sin" of racism was used for political gain. But he didn't.
At least for me, Obama continues to amaze and impress. To not just touch, but fully embrace the razor-sharp issue of race in the middle of one of the tightest -- and most divisive -- presidential primary seasons in our history is astonishing. To do it with such purpose, and directness, historic.
We need to stop fretting around the edges of the issue. There is a double-standard. That's easy. The question we have to answer is why -- after all this time -- do we still have it and how to get rid of it.
We can't answer it in a 30 minute speech. We can't answer it by yelling at each other -- as satisfying as it is sometimes. But we can answer it.
I would not vote for a person who attended or supported a radical-right Christian church, and I will not vote for someone who attends or supports a militant, angry, anti-white church.
The best way to combat racism is to not be a part of it.
And Obama has supported a racist church.
If, you listen to Rev. Wright he is not Anti-White there are many white members of the United Church of Christ ... and racism is a power formation ... to not acknowledge it is to support it ... to pretend things away does not transform them ...
So, Monique I guess you have to not vote which is a statement in itself ... or you can honestly listen to what Senator Obama and the other candidates are saying ... is there a possibility you can ... or is your problematic not really one at all?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/19/antiobama-preacher-unlea_n_92471.html#postComment
Those of us who live in & around Boston barely have a clue about politics in the greater USA.
We think we know how it OUGHT to be, but we don't realize how it IS. I include myself. That's
what these two guys are telling you. Me too, mostly.
Barack's speech was stupid. He must of had a 3yo help him write the speech. He mentions some poor 9yo girl whose mom got sick and lost her job. The 9yo girl wanted to help the family budget so she decided that she could cut the food budget by tricking her mom into thinking she loved muster and relish sandwiches. So she ate the sandwiches for a full year.
I would love to talk to that girl. Why didn't mom go get food stamps. Barack's trying to change the system but there is already a government program to help people in that situation. If mom didn't go get food stamps then something stinks in the entire story. In fact the whole story is unbelievable. In fact I can't believe his advisors would let him tell that story to the voters. Are we that fringing stupid to swallow it? Yup, there are people that will turn their heads and stomach anything because Barack is their hero.
http://www.center4research.org/poverty5.html
This is a clearinghouse site which links you to everything from the Children's Defense fund on ...
Please do the research before commenting ... I know before I went to grad school and the Clinton's cut AFDC I never thought I would make ketchup soup before ... but, I did ... and it is the reality ...
But even from my admittedly heathenistic standpoint, the call to cast off Rev. Wright is disturbing. I love talking with religious people, many of whom have totally different views from my own. Often, I find what they say quite awful, such as the college friend who sympathetically told me that due to my non-participation in his religion I would burn in hell. But the conversations broaden my understanding, and that's invaluable.
I have no idea why we would want a President who only surrounds himself with people he agrees with totally. I want a President whose exposure to radically different thoughts and motivations causes him to examine his own boundaries, to test at what point something is a "step too far". It's hard not to look at the current President and wonder what might have been, had he had any real exposure to opposition thought -- because I don't think he's a fundamentally bad man, Bush. But I think he cast off anyone outside his strict ideology, and when you do that, you lose perspective.
Religion is tricky. Sure, a lot of what Rev Wright sounds totally nuts... but then again, some doesn't. It's hard to hear the AIDS accusation without remembering that the Tuskegee syphilis experiment truly did kill African-American men. And the anger against the American government, viewed through a historical lens, should not be condoned but is also not totally unjustified. Then again, my mother was raised by Irish Catholic nuns who told her that non-Catholics were subhuman -- quite literally, subhuman.
But here's the thing. Despite being raised by those wacky nuns, my mother did not swallow everything they said whole. She has a brain and she lived in the world, she saw society changing in a way those nuns couldn't. She married my father, a Protestant, one of those very subhumans she used to sanctimoniously pray for as a child (all the time thinking Protestants go to hell). She still goes to church, she occasionally objects to homilies, but nothing's perfect.
You can take in the good while identifying the bad, and Obama clearly does not believe the more inflammatory bits of his pastor's sermon. Reverend Wright's voice is important in his life, but why should Obama be accused of blindly following that voice, no matter what it says? It's hard to hear someone you love and admire saying something you disagree with, but it also helps you strengthen that boundary between what YOU think is right and wrong.
You know, if anything, Senator Obama's speech seems to have ignited a resurgence in people's ability to connect with a greater good. Thank your for your post. It has been one of the best that I have read here.
I find it ironic, but the far-right pundits who have been so eager to put forth this 'Wright issue' may want to remember a little quote from Isoroku Yamamato:
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
... he spoke these words after bombing Pearl Harbor.
I also remember Yamamato's words! How perfect an analogy! Obama has indeed awoken a sleeping giant! Let's keep the resolve growing!
You say the working class are saying "Democrats are cowardly anti-American sissies..." I think you are generalizing a bit here. If that is what the working class thinks it is because they are fed lies. Here is A Rev. who is a former Marine being viewed as unpatriotic, while "chicken hawks" like Dick Chaney, Rush Limbough, and the whole host of neo-con pundits are viewed as patriots. I think It is time for Democrats to fight for truth about who is more patriotic and who has done more to sacrifice for the country.
Oh, sorry--you said "the working class." My bad.
By the way, do you happen to sell any of your time for money? You know, as in "working," and being a member of the "class" that "works"? And if not, how is it that you have such superior knowledge about "the working class"?
As for the original post by David Weinberger--pure sophistry. But let me translate that big word for any "working class" readers who may be lurking here. It means "intellectual dishonesty."
There was another Reverend, Reverend Falwell who I had a lot less respect for, who has said the following things "The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews." "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers ... AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." "God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." "There are almost as many alcoholics as there are negroes."
The new testament says "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned."
I raise these quotes because they are/were highly influential, but the world did not disavow Reverend Graham for his clearly anti-semitic words, the conservative wing of our political landscape did not disavow Reverend Falwell for extremely incendiary comments...
And the new testament preached in churches around the globe is advocated by Priests and Ministers almost daily, yet we do not disavow christian leaders for oftentimes fervently preach that if you do not accept Christ that you are doomed to be condemned. Logic says that if you support that that you are supporting a church leader who is essentially saying that a large part of the American population everyday is doomed to be condemned, but we do not ask politicians to disavow church leaders.
If we sit and listen to sermons in any church, synagogue, or mosque, there will be much said that some or many will find offensive.
Religious leaders take positons everyday based on their upbringing, experiences, and religious learning. We should be bigger people than to take a religious association and judge the character of an individual based on that association. I would argue that it is more important to judge a person by how they believe inside and that leaders become stronger leaders by understanding differing views rather than putting our heads in the sand and ignoring that those views ever existed.
Wright's statements are not that radical. What scares small minded people is the shouting, the African garb, and the color of the audience. Strip away these things, and in substance you hear the same thing in many different venues.
It's another to call down 'God's Wrath' on America for whatever transgressions bug you.
Or at least, it would be if you believe in this sort of hooey. Many do, supposedly.
'What scares small minded people is the shouting...' Indeed, like a certain German tyrant of yore.
That, and any ensuing bolts from the blue.
You know, that part that says 'thou shalt not kill'....
Bible says those who break the commandments are in danger of hell's fire.
Did you read about the Tuskegee Experiement? of the several hundred men, 40 wives and 19 of their children contacted syphilis.... and were denied treatment.
Did you know the Tuskagee Experiement made the entire black community so suspicious they
question how AIDS got spread so quickly, and avoid transplants and blood donations?
Its a HUGE permission for the bigots to complain, and demand, and threaten not to vote for Obama..
You said: " Wright's statements are not that radical. What scares small minded people is the shouting, the African garb, and the color of the audience. Strip away these things, and in substance you hear the same thing in many different venues." (never mind that their American roots go deeper than most whites). "
So, if what the Reverend Wright was "preaching" was being "preached" in Moslem Mosques across the USA, you would agree and be comfortable with that? How about on an Airplane?
You said: "The reaction of many to Wright and Obama's speech reflect the view that many non-blacks still see blacks as "outsiders" or not truly "American" So, in Obama's spin of "One America" why do we have a "Black America", "Black Community", etc?
You said: "(never mind that their American roots go deeper than most whites). " People with black skin grow up in the USA buying into a "Black America, Black Community"... So, Actually, Obama has NO roots in "Black America" then... His Father was Kenyan...
I basically agree about reactions... Rev. Wright re-acted over and over by blaming and enabling... A better response (rather than re-action) would be in telling young people with black skin to STOP blaming others for individual choices... Even if "Whites" supposedly brought crack to "Black America," blaming "Whites" will not keep you out of Prison for you making a very BAD choice...
The Obama's choice in their "Spirit Adviser" may speak to Loyalty, but NOT to GOOD Judgement... Sure does make Michelle's lack of Pride in the USA make sense though... Which "Country" is Michelle proud of? The USA, or "Black America"...