Until they find expression in either spoken or (what, I believe, is better yet) written form, ideas are basically inchoate intimations, flashes of inspiration that prompt thought in one direction or set of directions. Until they are articulated, that is, they aren’t really ideas: you don’t know what you want to say until you say it. It is for this reason that I am compelled to write this column, for upon reading Barack Obama’s recent speech on race, I feel like a camper in the midst of summer who only at the cost of being consumed alive can afford to sit idle as he is barraged by a host of mosquitoes and gnats.
Let us consider what Obama has to say about his “spiritual mentor,” Jeremiah Wright. Of his pastor’s comments that are no longer suppressed, Obama says they “weren’t simply controversial,” but “wrong” for the “profoundly distorted view of this country” to which they give expression. Wright’s vision of America is “distorted” by virtue of the fact that it “elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America,” and his “sermons” are “offending” because they “simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative” at the cost of ignoring the positive.
I emphasize these snippets from Obama’s comments because I am convinced that they offer us a crucial glimpse into what he believes in his heart of hearts. Notice, Obama agrees with Wright that America is ridden with the “injustices” that the latter specifies throughout the sermons for which the former is now under fire. Obama does not deny that these are negative features of American life; he simply thinks that Wright’s depiction of the United States isn’t altogether accurate because it fails to accommodate the positive dimensions as well. So it is accurate as far as it goes, but it only goes so far.
Make no mistake about it: Obama endorses his mentor’s vision, even if he may object to the terms in which Wright characterized it. It seems to me that no remotely astute observer can possibly think otherwise. Within his speech, after he underscores that he has “already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright,” he cautions us against disregarding him as “a crank or a demagogue,” for Wright’s comments “reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through—a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.” It is here that we find the proof in the pudding that Obama never unreservedly denounces his pastor precisely because he does in fact agree with him. While he initially claims to want to mercifully spare us yet another recitation of “the history of racial injustice in this country,” in typical Obama fashion, what he gives with one hand he takes with the other, for in the very next sentence he proceeds to run off a litany of transgressions inflicted by whites on blacks.
“But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”Inferior education, state-sanctioned discrimination, lack of economic opportunity, the disintegration of the black family, and “the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods—parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement -- all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.” Obama explains that since “this is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up,” neither their “memories of humiliation and doubt and fear” nor their “anger” and “bitterness” have disappeared. You see, Obama thinks that both the content and the tone of Wright’s language concerning America are justified, even if he personally would have preferred to have employed a less abrasive idiom.
After reading through his speech with a fine-toothed comb, as it were, this is the only reasonable conclusion that I can draw. If Obama were to take umbrage with me on this, I would in turn challenge him to tell us what exactly it is in his mentor’s comments that he rejects. If Obama genuinely believes, and I have no reason to doubt this, that America (by which he and Wright mean white America) is ultimately responsible for all of the ills with which black America is beset today, how could he not harbor the same raw rage toward it? Presumably, if not for the United States (again, for the Obamas and Wrights of the world, white America), black Americans today would have a virtually idyllic existence. There would be abundant and unrivaled job and educational opportunities, strong, loving, two-parent headed families, and little-to-no black violence. Black neighborhoods would be vibrant centers of commerce and civic organizations, places where anyone and everyone, regardless of color or age, could walk the streets at anytime, day or night.
How can Obama claim to have “profound love” for a country that did everything that it could to insure that such a world not come to fruition, to visit such misery upon a people?
Obama urges us to dialogue on race, “an issue that … this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.” This is the one thing in his speech with which I wholeheartedly agree. At this critical moment in our nation’s life, when a relatively inexperienced senator, a black man who for twenty years has had a “spiritual mentor” who is indistinguishable ideologically from black supremacist Louis Farrakhan, and with whom he does essentially agree on the issue of race, stands a very good chance of becoming the next president, it is at our collective peril that we ignore this issue.
It is at our collective peril that we ignore Obama.
