When friends ask me why I'm supporting Barack Obama I enjoy saying it's because of his name. As a fellow former black kid with a funny name, I believe there are certain invaluable lessons that one learns while growing up in this country with a "non-traditional" American or Anglo-Saxon name. I would even argue that this experience is instructive in building character because of how it forces a person very early on in life to think critically about his or her relationship with this country. One finds in Obama's speeches and writings decades worth of evidence on the outcomes of his meditations on his relationship with this country -- and what often gets neglected is that his resounding conclusion in all these meditations is that he belongs here. The audacity of Obama's hope is not simply that he wants to play a part in changing the future, but that he wants to play a vital role in changing America's future.
Obama is intelligent enough to be eminently cynical of this nation's capacity to change. Rather than be cynical, Obama has instead opted to be hopeful, a decision that as the recent events surrounding his relationship with his former pastor Jeremiah Wright reveals makes him a curio and a contradiction--but only in the minds of others -- not his own -- and rarely in the minds of African Americans. Black folk know that his campaign would implode were he ever to cross the line not set up by us between empowering and angry. We also know that the longer this campaign goes, the test is not whether he has any skeletons in his closet as Hillary Clinton's recurring claims about being vetted suggests, but rather does he have the intestinal fortitude to withstand what is sure to come his way. Clinton is correct in posing this question and exceptionally shrewd in allowing it to linger in the air throughout this campaign. With so much at stake in this year's campaign and recent history having proven itself so deceptive, democrats have had to go to bed the last eight months worrying about whether Obama is the second coming of Gary Hart or Howard Dean -- and have begun losing sight of the fact that he has thus far proven himself to be neither.
In a political scene dominated by familiar names whether in terms of notable families such as Bush, Clinton or McCain, or, whoever is next to enter the catalog of dubious distinctions, it is the kid with the funny name that seems to be doing the most to make his family proud. Obama's speech in Philadelphia today about race in American politics addressed many of the curious contradictions that have beleaguered this nation in regards to race. Curious contradictions in this nation's fascination with bloodlines prompted Strom Thurmond, and Thomas Jefferson before him, to keep some of their kinfolk in the closet. Meanwhile, in his attempt to disable our preoccupations with facile conversations about race, Obama has persistently made public his families taxing accounting of race and reconciliation.
Curious contradictions declaring that African Americans are free to exhibit dexterity in dance, sport, and style, but not in thought, we are to be pleased with passage of laws professing civil rights but should refrain from pursuing an equal education and other means to ensure these rights, are too often par for the course in this country. Buoyed by the controversy that his association with Reverend Wright finds him in, Obama reiterated that the problems of the color line neither begin nor end with Reverend Wright; they are to be found in this nation's tattered public education and healthcare systems, prisons rolls, and an economy teetering on collapse.
A sermon as much as it was a speech, Obama's address today reminded married together the prevailing elements his campaign: a change is gonna come and the answer our friends is blowin' in the wind.
Read more HuffPost coverage and reaction to Obama's speech
Follow Ferentz LaFargue on Twitter: www.twitter.com/professorf
My sadness lies in the fact that when faced with two real issues on the table (the Wright issue and the enormous race issue), detractors seem to just pick up the Wright issue and conveniently ignore the elephant. That says to me that those people are not ready and unwilling to move this discussion forward. Even giving credence to both issues suggests that while someone still may be deeply offended by Wright's comments, that they realize this game is bigger than that. You don't have to stop being offended to realize that the olive branch is also being extended to the country.
Well let me say this. Many of those who solely focus on Wright are not ready for a black president. As a matter of fact, they never were. Any black person who has grown up in this country is somehow associated with an angry black man/woman who is angry with America. Shocking, I know. Therefore, this debate would come up with any black candidate to run for office and get this far because it is a real, tangible issue, and it is divisive. But the issue once on the table is, what now? This larger, stale race issue has been sitting in the breadbasket for years. But it's so moldy and stinky that no one dares go near it. So it will sit and fester, while we get angry at people getting angry and everyother issue that is an effect of the bread, but no ... we don't get near that basket.
Unfortunately, the pattern that I'm seeing suggests that there are those content with being offended about how angry some people are, without asking the next logical question: Why are they angry? Anyone who asks that latter question will find that there are rational reasons for this anger. Is it the most productive? No. But ingoring the issue isn't productive either and leaves us in the perpetual stalement that Obama referred to. Why are so many working-class white people angry at minorities? We could sit here and focus on their anger, or we could ask why are they angry and what can be done about their problems? Screw his campaign, because to me its bigger than that. It's clear to me that there is only one productive way forward on the table. Why so many people are choosing the same old path baffles me. On second thought, unfortunately, it doesn't baffle me because time and time again people steer away from the difficult path, the path that requires them to work with someone on the other side for something better for everyone. But I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that people see beyond Wright and to this opportunity we have to move forward.
Btw, Ferentz -- beautiful piece.
Should we allow a person who's associated with someone with anti-American beliefs, run for the presidency? Perhaps, he was crossing his fingers, in hopes that his relationship with Jeremiah Wright would never come to the attention of the American people.
It may be worth examining what underlies the outrage of those who who parrot this position. Is it the idea that no one should ever speak ill of a member of one's family outside the family? If that's the basis for the outrage, then those repeating this trope must believe that the expression of racist attitudes within a bi-racial family is an ill that should remain locked up forever in a box labelled "family secrets" rather than being acknowledged so that the wounds such attitudes have caused the American family may begin to be healed.
Why does Obama's loving description of his grandmother and acknowledgement of both her devotion to him and her racial fears strike the author of the previous comment as a "back handed smack"? Because the author sees Obama's speech as a cynical political manoeuver rather than as an expression of his core beliefs during a political season in which his candidacy was inevitably going to raise these issues at some point.
The millions of people who have voted for Obama during the primaries are ready to put the racial divide that is a fact of our history behind them, even if doing so requires honest and sometimes painful introspection and public debate. They recognize his authenticity and reject the cynical assessment of his motives that the previous comment offers. If enough of our core American values, including celebrating our differences as one of our greatest assets, have survived the debasement of our national politics over the several decades, we will be able to seize this moment to find a better way forward. If not, we are doomed to more of the same fecklessness and cynicism that have brought us to the present sorry state.
The spin on Rev. Wright's comment has been so furious, so constant, you'd have thought it was one of Adolph Hitler's diatribes. What Wright might have said in these 30 seconds of tape, and perhaps many other times, is not anything as vile as many right-wing preachers the Republicans have sucked up to -- remarks from pulpits about AIDS being God's judgement on homosexuals, for instance, was not an uncommon contention. He also was not suggesting people go out and grab a gun, or plant a bomb, or round up "undesirables" and banish them. He was expressing frustration in an oratical style that's extreme, harsh, but nonviolent and within the bounds of free speech.
How could all these resentments my fellow white citizens have about a lot of things (some of them, as Obama pointed out, quite justified) be catalyzed by the mere idea of a black leader attending a church where things were said that he does agreed with, and other things were said that he doesn't agree with? It takes me back to the Malcolm X days, when he was branded Public Enemy One for voicing a mixed bag of concerns -- some harsh and strident, others constructive and inspiring. Even MLK on occasion said things that white Americans found very hard to hear.
Pastor Wright's long career of miliary service, assisting the poor and homeless, providing shelter and succor to a very large black congregation, is totally eclipsed by soundbites because we can't deal with the anger many black men of his generation feel -- or the complexities of faith and friendship. There's no balance or empathy, only condemnation.
The mass reactionary moralizing over this, over Elliot Spitzer's pathetic self-destruction, the "gotcha" mentality in info-tainment, is rising to fever pitch. I wonder what the rest of the world thinks about us as they watch us tear ourselves to pieces over two candidates who are dedicated public servants, with enough love for this country to put up with this constant firestorm.
Now I'll sign off, and await the enevitable hate retorts tossed my way, under that dubious immunity email gives us. I wonder, if we were not all anonymous in these exchanges, might we would be more civil?
I appreciate your anaymous remork. That is why I started posting under my own name. I noticed that I would be a little over the top in my responses when cloaked in anonymity. Since I am unabashedly in favor of Barack Obama and willing to embrace his ideas for moving this country into the 21st Century, I decided to be me and keep a closer eye on how I communicated my beliefs.
It has made me soften my language and rhetoric as well, since I am held accountable as Jason Everett Miller and can't hide behind a name like Assholeof theCentury.
I am convinced that if Obama was caught CLUBBING BABY SEALS on the head on tape, you would STILL find some kind of BIZARRE exuse to vote for him.
This is the liberal medias fault. They HYPED the guy to death when nobody knew much about him. Now they are left holding the bag with a guy who is simply unelectable in the general election.
I love my parents and my grandparents and although I denounce the racist hatred that they had within them, I know too much about the good hard work they did and the love they had for God and most of humanity to denounce them as people.
I love Obama. I love the speech he gave. May we all start to open up to each other about the climate of racial hatred that surrounded us as we formed our ideas about our selves and those who are like and those who are dissimilar to ourselves.
This home to me, Philadelphia, opened world's of new beliefs and experiences to me, ... foods and languages, religions of every sort, ... arts and music, landscapes and museums, rivers, bays and oceans, ... Cities like New York, and Baltimore, ... Washington DC, and Boston.
Barack Obama brings the hope to me that I have held since moving to Philadelphia in 1964.
We must begin again, ... imagine America beginning over.
He wants you to tell him that it was OK for him to build a 20 year relation ship with a racist. I will not do that . I am not racist , I did not have slaves.
Dont let him use race again(sigh) to make you feel guilty .
He just had to answer . WHAT ANTI-AMERICAN THINGS DID YOU HEAR WRIGHT SAY??AND WHY DID YOU STAY THERE AND SUBJECT YOUR FAMILY TO THIS HATERED??
How dare he try to start a race war.
And for those in certain political circles who say that Obama's candidacy is "finished", and that he's "lost all credibility" .. they should read the transcript of his speech again, and read it with understanding. Sen. Obama is a fighter, so I'm not about to count him out yet.
Its really not his fault he has been listening to wright for 20 years.
Obama is a Liar and a sneak
Then, let's talk.