I wrote my good buddy Paul Bunyan that I was concerned about the white backlash to the Wright controversy. When the general public gets wind of the worst of what Wright has said, I’m afraid it will doom Obama. Paul kind of talked me out of it. He said:
You really think it dooms him? I don’t. The African American church is an intense thing, really almost inseperable from being black in america. Or at least that’s what black friend of mine in grad school told me. This church was the way he found to connect to that, which he was not born in.
I think it depends on how crazy this Jeremiah Wright guy is. Hmm.. site’s down…hmm…wikipedia….
I think it’s okay. I was afraid of some anti-semitism, but looks like the worst is some anti-Israelism, a little Blaming-America-for-9/11, and a lot of Blackness-centered theology. Here’s an excerpt:
“Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!” There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. “We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!” The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: “And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!”
Uncle Sam here again, responding to Paul Bunyan quoting Rolling Stone (above). My thinking has expanded on the subject, mainly due to the point of placing the Black Church in the context of American freedom of religion. It got me thinking, and I wrote this while I was traveling the highways and byways of America:
As an American, I appreciate what it means to have the black church. I have actually been a big fan of some of the rhetoric of Farrakhan, and at times even dig where he’s coming from. He takes care of his own, and believes in wholesomeness, speaks truth about his own people’s problems, and aspires to greatness (as does Wright). His last formally racist comments were 24 years ago, and if you read them, there is the interesting distinction he makes between the “true Jews” which he respects, and the “false Jews,” which he doesn’t. Similar distinctions have been made about Christians through the millenia, and in the Bible, even by Jesus when referring to a “tepid Christianity” (most famously quoted by Dostoevski), and so anyway it’s possibly not 100% straight up Jew hating. It’s probably more complicated.
The million man march was a huge moment in our history, and Farrakhan’s speech there rocked my world. I even love the way some black churches have taken aspects of Islam and connected them to black people, half-baked as it may sound to a true Muslim. It’s enough truth with enough creativity that enables it to fly.Black people have had their culture ripped from them and to have a new American-style made up culture to bolt onto such a fragmented experience does make sense. But Wright and his ilk, starting with Farakkhan, broke from the Black Muslims, and focused more on roots. And what these connections to “roots” do is nothing short of transformational. Look at Muhammad Ali. Without the Black Muslims, he never would have been who he was. He could not have been the true Champion of the World, the all time greatest, as Cassius Clay. And to anticipate what Obama is gonna do when it all hits the fan about Obama and Trinity, Ali in all his name changing self creation is at its heart as American as it gets. So Trinity kind of does this same “connection with your roots” thing, only not so much with Islam as with Africa itself. Not perfectly or perfectly true, but better. But neither is the Jewish people connecting with 2000 years ago Israel entirely true. But it’s true enough and it gives the identity the Jews need to survive. People need that historiocity. It’s crucial. So 1) it saved Obama, and 2) it’s a super American thing the way it saved him. The challenge is how not to lose a sufficiently large % of votes when people simply SEE what that Trinity website looks like. I appreciate that it’s not that different than a Huckabee or a Romney. Americans have these intense churches with intense sermons that we get a lot from. But in the case of Trinity, it has a militant tone. And black people still scare white people, though the heroes of the 20th century have begun to dismantle that. But Obama offers proof that when white people mix with black people, musically, socially sexually, through fighting or sports, or even if just mixing DNA, black people win. Obama is half and half, but he’s black. He is way more white then black, but because black is so much more powerful, he’s still “black.” America is ready for Bill Cosby, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. I doubt we will ever be ready for anger from a black presidential candidate though. So once this story gets circulated, and people feel the anger coming off the page, it will be on Obama big time to somehow let the anger out, and reassert himself as a man of peace. But from all I’ve seen so far, I think he’ll do it.
