It probably had to happen. Maybe better now than later. But still profoundly depressing to see that the practical effect of The Speech was to push down Obama's numbers significantly among Democratic voters, according to Gallup.
I do not fault the candidate for campaigning on the premise of a post-racial culture. I do not tax him with naivete. To my knowledge Obama never denied that the old divisions and wounds are real. But it took the firestorm over Jeremiah Wright's sermons to show yet again just how real the wounds are. And, more importantly, just how real white fears and white naivete remain four full decades after the murder of Martin King.
The Speech was brilliant, no doubt. But the Democrats, mostly white, who no longer support Obama want to know why he stayed in that Chicago church. It must be because he really is one of "those" Black people -- one of those with a big chip on their shoulders. Uh-oh.
As it is Good Friday, and as I am a minister (and yes, of Rev. Wright's tribe -- the UCC), let me suggest that white people still want forgiveness without repentance. They only want to hear from Black folk who will tell them not to worry -- that it's okay -- all is forgiven and forgetten. And Obama didn't say in Philadelphia that all is forgotten, nor did he condemn his pastor for having a long memory -- for sharing the collective memory of the terror and suffering experienced by Black people on these shores.
All of this put me in mind of James Baldwin's unforgettable insight that "whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves."
And that, in turn, took me deeper into Baldwin, whose sense of the twinned tragic histories of Black and white Americans remains unsurpassed.
I will simply let Baldwin do the rest of the talking here. As someone once said, the truth will set you free -- but first it will make you damned uncomfortable. Baldwin wanted white people to be released from the burden of their racism. But first he had to tell the truth.
So here is some classic Baldwin to ponder on an Easter weekend, a time when the full reality of human failing meets with the hope of something new:
"I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
"Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable."
"People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. "
"People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned."
"The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions."
"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."
"There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now."
"No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable."
"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."
"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."
"The future is like heaven -- everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now."
"[The Negro past] of rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for his women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible."
" [Whites] are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it....I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be 'accepted' by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this-which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never-the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed."
"Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety."
"A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do."
"Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have."
"People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression."
"It's no credit to this enormously rich country that there are more oppressive, less decent governments elsewhere. We claim superiority of our institutions. We ought to live up to our own standards, not use misery elsewhere as an endless source of self-gratification and justification. Of course, people tell me all the time in the West that they are trying, they are trying hard. Some have tears in their eyes and let me know how awful they feel about the way our poor live, our blacks, or those in dozens of other countries. People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street."
"I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness. In the church in which I was raised you were supposed to bear witness to the truth. Now, later on, you wonder what in the world the truth is, but you do know what a lie is."
Obama either did not know what was being said in his own church or did know and aceepted it. In addition he first said he didn't, then said he did know. Either way the American people deserve to know which it was and why; perhaps he has an explanation. Meantime, excuse me if I don't trust anyone of any color that preaches "GD Amercia" and "black values" "white values" "Portguese Values". I'd like to hear support for American values including equality for all.
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=3658
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105529/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Edges-Ahead-Clinton.aspx
QUESTION: Baldwin said "Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable."
Yet he seems to NOT apply that STATE to himself, or other "Negroes" based on some of his other comments...
Did he believe in the Purity of Heart of those with white skin tones who stood up and ended Slavery?
My Ancestry is basically (Heinz 07, LOL).. I am of English, Irish, Dutch, Welsh, French, German and Cherokee Indian, Ancestry... My so called "roots" I am supposed to know... I speak American "English"...
I will NEVER be a "WHITE" Person... I will never meet a "BLACK Person... I will never be a "SMOKER"... I will never be an "ALCOHOLIC, DR, TRUCK DRIVER, LOGGER, or any other LABEL... I AM that I AM... The closest to a "labeling" I might accept would be I AM of Godly Nature... Spirit Nature... I accept the Nature of my Godliness as well the Godliness of the Nature I AM that I AM... That ALL that is Natural, IS!
I agree that some, make that most People, Believe they are a Physical Being, who have a Spirit... I have a Vehicle I drive, but I do NOT mistake me for that Vehicle... Nor would I mistakenly identify me, by the color of my vehicle...
WE learn Language and much more by Osmosis (a usually effortless, often unconscious, assimilation )... I wanted to know if I learned Racism by Osmosis...
Hence my deep pondering... Belief in a "Black America, Black Community, Black People" is a Racial and skin color Segregation in my observation and pondering... Done from "within", as much from "without", so to speak...
Personhood is equally of Godly Nature... Is a "BLACK" Person a Fact of Godly Nature, or a taught/ learned Belief??? Is the Spirit animating the Body, Black, White, Yellow, Red, Brown, or any other color??? I asked ME, would I, do I, color Segregate Spirits??? Does skin color create a "Black" Person??? Or, "White" Person... Personhood is Equality... Racism is inherent in belief...
Sorry, but I did not (could not) follow all of what you were saying, but I will try to answer what I perceive to be your basic question.
My interest in reading Baldwin is not as a polemic or for any other reason other than to read the words of someone who was absolutely gifted in his ability to express his personal experiences and observations. My desire to read his works is not based on a premise that I must, or that I necessarily agree with him; though I imagine that as an African American who grew up in the American South in the generation just after Baldwin's that our observations and experiences will be quite similar.
When it comes down to what matters most to me, it is not race, not gender, not nationality, sexual orientation or most of the things that so readily divide us; but who I am as a soul on this planet doing the best I can to be the best that I can with what The Divine has given me. What matters most to me is who we all are at the core of our beings and how our abilities to express that Essential Self is stifled and damaged by outer forces. In a nutsshell that is the tao of me. That is why I want to read Baldwin.
Hop that answers your questions.
Why would an angry black preacher provoke this much outrage or deserve to be labeled anti-American any more than any of the multitude of people that have preached condemnation of this country? It is misplaced, misspent outrage that is driven by the politics of the right - the side that gave hate speech to America.- injecting the right into the middle of the democratic primary race. What!! The most outraged people had no plan, never intended to vote for Obama, but clearly want to drive the democratic nomination process. Working the gullible into a rage, and controlling elections in this country has become the favorite past time of the Right-minded, the side that can ill afford to practice quilt by association. So, to divert the real outrage and the very real anger of the people for the criminal cabal in the White House and their illegal war, the Right has succeeded by creating outrage over a phony scandal.
Seems to me people need to tend more to their problems of today, concentrate on moving forward then pointing fingers and crying over the past.
But I suppose that if you stand up and let the past go that makes you responsible for your own self today ... what a horrible notion that must be.
The real problem is that the speech represented his true attitude, and I heard a man who has not transcended racial anger himself. He can hard lead the country anywhere on that issue.
The truth is that he and Wright have more in common than not. The language of Wright is described as a "bit rough" and minimized. OK, but the truth is that Wright and Obama have startled even AA pundits who had assumed he was above that old thinking. No, he's not above it.
The truth is that Obama generalizes about white people.
AnninCA, it's fine that you didn't like the speech. But, it's not fine for you to continue to lie about Rev. Wright when his true, full words are as close as YouTube. You should thank God for the anonymity of the internet, because in the real world your words would have a name - slander.
AnninCA, congratulations. You're on the list.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/gregmcgannon/gGgMbn
For those who had questions about him because of anything related to the recent smear campaign directed toward him, this had shown to largely answer them for people.
Now I respect all voters. And I'm sure voters for any candidate are largely good. But the idea that some voters want to bring everyone down because Hillary is going down is poor character.
The truth is, it's not good to spread lies and hate.
Let's focus on what matters.
That was the the "clear focus" of the speech you missed.
Fact: Ellis Island was only one of 30 US immigrant processing stations, and 17 million immigrants were processed through Ellis Island ALONE in the 62 years it was an active immigration portal to America. There have been 3, 4, 5 generations of immigrants and descendants who were processed through these processing stations, with the bulk of the immigrant population arriving here as "steerage", a term Obama and his team know absolutely NOTHING about. In 2000, the number of immigrants to the US reached the 1 million per year mark, with 1.25 million in 2006. These numbers DO NOT! include figures on illegal immigration.
Fact: Obama, by (stupidly, in my opinion) using the term "whites" and "white people", has condemned and laid blame on millions and millions of people, proud immigrant families and their descendants, who had no part in segregation or slavery. This is beyond comprehension, that a man with his own multi-ethnic background, is so ignorant about the history of immigrants in this country. It is almost beyond belief. Yet, he wants those same descendants, of those very immigrants, to support his desire to be their President. Obama, Wright and anyone else who believes guilt is hereditary and follows skin color, should hand out boxes of guilt to newly arriving, light skinned immigrants to the US. Don't be shy, meet them at the gate with what you expect them, and their descendants, to shoulder for eternity.
I do not blame Obama for Wright's racist and hate filled speech, but I do hold him responsible for his own. I expect a definition of this group of "white" people everyone keeps talking about- esp. Obama. I EXPECT the ignorant, color based racism and vitriol from the uneducated and superstitious, but not from a Harvard educated Presidential candidate who says he seriously wants to mend racial divides in this country.
Mr. Obama, as the proud descendant of (light skinned) proud immigrants (1892), you will not get my vote.
MRFisherman76
"In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."
Unless your idea is that he should throw his hat into the ring and just be coronated based on his color?
He did choose this competition.
You see only what you choose.
i don't know why people think Wright said anything out of malice. he saw an injustice and he spoke out against it. i don't think obama was as candid as everyone is claiming, but i guess we have to continuously spoon feed white america.
baldwin said it righteously
"All of this put me in mind of James Baldwin's unforgettable insight that "whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves."
what people are failing to really think about is not the one man who was shouting from the pulpits but the hundreds of black folk who were yelling in agreement. who felt as if his words struck a cord in the center of there heart.