Finally
Barack Obama Makes History
This is a moment in American history without parallel. An
electrifying event that, for the first time, put measurable
weight to the soaring poetry of Martin King, Maya Angelou and
Michael Eric Dyson. A moment not forced upon white America by
jurists or rifles, but a moment sponsored by and embraced by a
diverse people whose measure of a man transcends generational
hatred. Best of all, it is a moment for all people—not just
blacks or whites, but for Americans of every ethnicity. As
universal and relevant a moment as Neil Armstrong setting foot
on the moon, there is Barack Obama. Nominated not because we
have overcome our racism,
but in spite of it.
The
polls in Montana and South Dakota closed
9:00 PM on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2004, netting senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton an upset victory over Senator Barack Obama in
South Dakota, a state Obama was favored to win. It was the
latest in a string of victories for the New York senator, who
was making her case for the uncommitted, so-called “super”
delegates, to take the Democratic nomination for president away
from Obama—who was leading by the most elected delegates—and
instead nominate her. For his part, however, Senator Obama had
been respectfully and politely dealing with Senator Clinton in
past tense.
While the New York senator continued her increasingly shrill and
troublingly sophomoric attempts to move the goal posts as it
suited her, Obama ran his race according to the rules: the
candidate with the most delegates wins. And, on June 3rd, Barack
Obama claimed victory, becoming the Democratic Party’s
presumptive nominee for the office of President of the United
States.
This is a moment in American history without parallel. An
electrifying event that, for the first time, put measurable
weight to the soaring poetry of Martin King, Maya Angelou and
Michael Eric Dyson. A moment not forced upon white America by
jurists or rifles, but a moment sponsored by and embraced by a
diverse people whose measure of a man transcends generational
hatred. It is a moment long in the making and one desperately
needed by a country left in disarray by self-absorbed, failed
leadership. Best of all, it is a moment for all people—not just
blacks or whites, but for Americans of every ethnicity. As
universal and relevant a moment as Neil Armstrong setting foot
on the moon, there is Barack Obama. Nominated not because we
have overcome our racism, but in spite of it. For the first time
in my life, tangible evidence of the American ideal being
available to everyone. The living embodiment of hope.
I’m going to admit the weight of my own cynicism never allowed
me to believe this could happen. Racism is alive and so very
strong in this country that I still have my doubts the nation
can or will elect an African-American as its president. Mind
you, Obama being half-white has been a virtual non-issue
throughout the campaign. He has been, and likely will continue
to be, referred to as the African American candidate, the black
candidate. When the fact is, Obama is just as white as many
white Americans who, despite purist claims to family honor, have
black blood somewhere along their family history.
The truth is, the Puritan America, the easily-definable America,
no longer exists. Blacks have, generations ago, come to accept
the fact that, with the possible exception of first-generation
immigrants, we, as a people, are no longer purely anything. Our
ostracization, generationally perpetuated, is, therefore, wholly
disingenuous and hypocritical, as black Americans are indeed
Irish and German and British and Italian. There are likely no
essentially pure Africans among our indigenous black population,
and it is only the arrogance of whites that keeps us in
society’s margins with asterisks pinned to every accomplishment,
including this one. For white Americans to believe there is not
even one drop of black blood in them is the most sophomoric kind
of arrogance. And, by U.S. law, if there is even one drop of
black blood, that person is considered to be black.
Barack Obama’s success codifies the universality of the American
ideal. An ideal which was never articulated to include blacks
(or women or Native Americans, for that matter), but an ideal
which nonetheless prescribes a universally applicable and
qualitative truth. It is an ideal which has traveled a rocky
road as America—white America—has matured beyond its own
selfishness only slowly and under extreme duress. Pundits are
running around crowing about how the Obama nomination signals
that racism is behind us, which is simply more white arrogance.
Obama’s nomination is a virtual symbol of racism as, had Obama
been white, his opponents would have left the stage along with
John Edwards months ago.
By accepting the increasingly obvious math and reading the
handwriting on the wall, Edwards treated Obama like any other
candidate, putting Edwards’ own ambitions on hold for the sake
of party strength and unity. Senator Clinton, however, refused
to treat Obama as a candidate, running instead a mean-spirited
campaign of dogged attrition against a *black* candidate, giving
refuge to “hard-working Americans, hard-working white
Americans…” made uncomfortable by Obama’s audacity. How dare he
run for president. At minimum, Senator Clinton’s campaign was
indescribably selfish, with Mrs. Clinton losing as many friends
as she made. But, in the waning days of her parade, it became
apparent her campaign was less the triumph of women over
authority than it was the refuge of jittery whites afraid Obama
might cost the Democrats the White House.
I don’t have national figures, but here in Ourtown support for
Obama among black churches has been minimal. Support among white
churches has been non-existent. White Christians will probably
make this about abortion and gay marriage and stem cell
research, the three tent poles of George W. Bush’s 2004
re-election. There America was sold out by well-meaning
“Christians” spreading lies about John Kerry’s war record and
telling people he’d put abortion clinics on every street corner.
Gay abortion clinics. The profound ignorance of white
evangelicals, their stupefying willingness to be lied to as any
excuse to support so-called conservatives, undermines their
claim to the cause of Christ. Jesus never asked us to be stupid.
Jesus never required us to be disingenuous liars, backing other
disingenuous liars whom we know full well are lying to us, just
to keep up appearances as so-called conservatives.
It is now three and a half years later, and George W. Bush has
not done one blessed thing about abortion, gay marriage or stem
cell research. All of that was political bluster to win over
simplistic, easily led white evangelicals whose organizational
strength is vested almost entirely in their ignorance. In their
willingness to march in lock-step and chew on talking points
issued from the Carl Rove mind control machine. The vast
majority of these people are not intellectuals. They do not
question, do not think. Do not invest themselves in truth.
Rather, every time I see one of these “Christians” on Fox News
or something, they are parroting, word for word, the
conservative party line.
It may shock you to discover who Christ is. The record shows us
conservatives *despised* Christ because Jesus spoke truth to
power. The conservatives of His day, like our double-chinned
white neocons, considered themselves pure and spotless, while
covering an underbelly of corruption and ignorance fueled by
fear. White folk—most especially white conservative
Christians—are simply terrified out of their hats by Barack
Obama. Not by the man himself, per se, but by what he
represents: an end to the quietly held notion of white supremacy
here in the United States.
Here, the black church is concerned only with Sunday’s offering
plate. There might be, maybe, three black churches in town who
even *mention* current affairs from their pulpits. Most churches
here exist in a vacuum, with too-long blowhard sermons about
nothing. About Noah and the Ark. Samson and Delilah. Jesus Feeds
The Five Thousand. And then the hoop begins, the blaring organ
music, folks catching vapors, and then off to the chicken joint
to wile away the hours gossiping.
I’d frankly be shocked to discover more than five black churches
who will even mention the historic value of Barack’s apparent
victory this Sunday. Many black pastors will tell you they don’t
mention it because they don’t want to appear to have endorsed
Obama and jeopardize their church’s non-profit status. But, if
these men were truthful, they’d tell you they just forgot to
mention it. Forgot because this stuff isn’t on their radar.
What’s on most of these pastors’ radar is (1) themselves—how
important they are and the sound of their own voice gassing on
all morning long, and (2) the offering plate. Criticize me all
day if you like, an objective view of a random sampling of
traditional black churches will show the emphasis not on Christ
but on the pastor. And while some small percentage of our
churches will, in fact, make note of the thunderous importance
of the week’s events, the overwhelming majority will make little
mention of it or no mention at all.
We are just not involved. We are not involved because our
pastors are not involved, are not teaching or inspiring us to be
involved. Our pastors are not involved because they are, in
shockingly large numbers, tragically self-absorbed. Men In Hats.
Here, many pastors wear these large, gregarious fedoras for no
apparent reason. Just to be seen. They are going from the house
to the car. From the car to the church, from the church to the
car, from the car to the buffet joint (where they sit and
eat—yep—with their hat on) from the buffet joint to the house.
What on earth do you need a big hat for? But this is the mindset
of these guys and the people who blindly follow them,
complimenting them on their hats of all things. These men are
not particularly politically aware, and the many crisis and
tragedies going on the world right now are simply beneath their
notice. Most of the pastors I know watch local news—local
news—which leads with stuff like the new catcher on our AAA farm
team and school board elections while China suffers one of the
most massive earthquakes in history. Beige and tan news, slanted
to routinely and officially refer to the Iraq War as “The War On
Terror,” which is patently insulting to those of us who
completed third grade and know Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do
with 911 and, in documented fact, had no terrorists until we
went there. This is the news our pastors listen to while
channel-surfing for the ball game. In their hats.
And we, in our ignorance, keep running out and hiring the same
guy to lead us. We get one knucklehead after another, someone
who fits our profile and comfort level. Someone who perhaps
looks or sounds like C.L. Franklin, but that’s just a shell. C.L.
Franklin had guts. C.L. Franklin might have laid down on the
tracks for us. C.L. Franklin would have, at least, taught us to
be independent thinkers rather than enfeebled intellectual
eunuchs.
We didn’t support Obama here. Some of our churches may be taking
vicarious credit for his win or may be now jumping on that
bandwagon, but during this overlong campaign season, we just
ignored him. I have not heard the name “Barack Obama” mentioned
from a black pulpit in this city.
We don’t support John McCain, either, which, in many ways, is
just as bad. The Democrats, including Obama, have successfully
labeled McCain’s candidacy as “Bush Term Three,” which is not at
all true. But it is not for me to stand up for John McCain, his
campaign needs to define itself. It surely needs to stop ceding
the black vote to Barack Obama, which I find insulting. It makes
McCain seem racist to assume all black people think alike and
will vote the same way. McCain’s biggest problem is he’s running
as a conservative Republican when he’s actually neither. McCain
is a moderate Republican at best. And despite his inability to
silence the echo of his “100 years in Iraq” sound bite, McCain
is most certainly no George Bush—a man I’m sure McCain despises.
But we don’t know that because McCain hasn’t told us. Hasn’t
spoken to us. McCain is not mentioned in our services. If he is,
it is usually with an oblique sneer and elbow jab, which is more
ignorance on the part of our pastors: to treat us like children
and perpetuate the nonsense of Democrats = good and Republicans
= bad, racist, evil. John McCain is neither of those things, but
our pastors don’t know that and just perpetuate the Bad
Republican childishness. McCain deserves a fair hearing, he
deserves our benefit of the doubt. For, if we exclude McCain on
spec, without a fair and open hearing, we ourselves become
guilty of the very hate that has been perpetuated against us. We
become no better than our ignorant oppressors, writing off
someone at face value because somebody *told* us he was exactly
like Bush. McCain is nothing at all like Bush.
Should Barack Obama win the White House, he should win our
support because he earned it, not just because he’s black. Not
just because he’s a Democrat. Not just because he’s not John
McCain. By barring the church house door to John McCain, we
demean Obama’s candidacy. Unless and until Barack Obama can win
because he’s Barack Obama—because his ideas are better, because
we trust him more to lead this nation—then all of this is just
what whites think it is: blacks backing anybody black.
Lastly, it is worth noting Obama couldn’t win the nomination
until he stripped himself of key vestiges of his blackness,
notably his former pastor The Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright and
Nation of Islam leader The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.
What bothers me a great deal about the whole Reverend Wright
business was that the former pastor’s incendiary remarks were
incendiary only when stripped of the context of the pulpit and
placed into a political arena. This is the utter insidiousness
of institutionalized racism, where comments made in a barnyard
are taken out of context, flash-edited and dropped into an
inappropriate forum—say, the opening bell on Wall Street. Those
comments were never intended for Wall Street. That was a dad
hollering at his kids in his own back yard. But the argument
seems to be that all comments by a black man, made anywhere,
must be universally acceptable and pass certain standards of
political correctness.
Standards I believe Reverend Wright’s comments (and many of
Minister Farrakhan’s) could indeed pass, if they were not
chopped into the most vitriolic of sound bites. If I had a tape
of a white woman reciting a recipe for chocolate chip cookies,
please trust me that I could re-edit what she was saying into
something terribly racist and offensive, especially if I dropped
those cookie comments into an incongruent forum, such as a
whorehouse or political forum. The rail job done on Reverend
Wright was shameful. Like many if not most black Americans, I
found myself scratching my head wondering what the hubbub was
about. Not only were Reverend Wright’s comments not at all
shocking to me, they were not original. He was not saying
anything we, as a community, have not said ourselves—only in
barber shops and beauty shops and barbeques and, yes, in church
services.
Wright’s words were not new, were not controversial, were not
even entirely his. It was, for me, no big deal, not even the
notion of the government having created AIDS and/or the crack
epidemic. It’s not about my agreeing or disagreeing with
Reverend Wright: that rumor is out there. It’s *been* out there
for decades. Is Wright a crackpot? Who knows. But castigating
him for commenting on issues and theories that have been part of
the lexicon of black culture for decades is just political
nonsense. Maybe some *whites* are hearing this rhetoric for the
first time, but I doubt that, too. I believe many whites are
*pretending* to have heard this stuff for the first time via
Jeremiah Wright, and are claiming to be shocked and appalled
when they are, in fact, neither. Wright, and to a lesser degree
Farrakhan, are merely hand-holds for whites clinging to racism.
They don’t want to vote for Obama and they are shopping for a
reason. For many of these folks, it’s all gut-check time,
they’ve just got a bad feeling about this guy, and they’ll reach
for anything—Wright included—to justify that apprehension.
The very last thing any of these people want to call that
apprehension is “racism.”
To Minister Farrakhan’s credit, he has not fired back. He took
the hit—Obama forced to disavow him, which was stupid. Obama had
no formal ties to the Nation of Islam. Nobody’s asking John
McCain to disavow Appalachian rednecks or the polygamist
cultists. But, to succeed, Obama was forced to neutralize his
own blackness by repudiating the most high-profile black leader
in the country. As I mentioned elsewhere, I do not worship the
god of Louis Farrakhan. But I respect him and defend his right
to say whatever is on his mind, I have yet to hear anything from
Jeremiah Wright that has, frankly, shocked me. I’d have
preferred Wright follow Farrakhan’s lead, the minister likely
realizing defending himself would most certainly torpedo Obama’s
chances. By speaking out (and writing his forthcoming book),
Jeremiah Wright has tarnished his otherwise strong reputation.
He comes across now as selfish, as a nut. He may go down in
history as the man who torpedoed the first viable black
candidacy for president of the United States. A move made all
the more foolish and selfish considering, if he’d just shut up
for five months, he’d then have a free forum to say whatever he
likes.
I resent the Jeremiah Wright-Louis Farrakhan rope-a-dope. No
white candidate would be forced to denounce his own whiteness
the way Barack Obama has been forced away from his own
blackness. This whole business was perhaps the most pure
evidence of the insidious racism employed to damage Obama. By
denouncing these leaders, Obama hurt himself with the black
community, many of whom may disagree with these leaders’
statements while certainly understanding them in fuller context.
But Obama was not given any other choice. He was forced to
either become somehow Less Black or exit the stage. Black
America not being quite as ignorant as white America (or,
perhaps, white politicians) apparently think, we know what was
going on. And the climate only served to polarize us that much
more, black America celebrating Obama’s achievements while also
having that bitter aftertaste of Obama being forced, again and
again, to make concessions and compromises no white candidate
would have been asked to make.
None of which minimizes the historic significance of this
moment. But American should not kid itself. Obama’s presumptive
nomination is hardly evidence of the end of racism in this
country. It is, in fact, historic because of it.
Christopher J. Priest
8 June 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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