Hearing Reverend Wright
Editorial for the South County Spotlight, published May 13, 2008
It may sound odd, but I felt a strange sense of loss watching Barack Obama sever himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
To many observers, Sen. Obama seems to have acted too late, leaving him tainted by a relationship, however basic, with someone who denounces America as evil, accuses its government of practicing viral genocide, and calls on God to damn its excesses.
But by shunning Wright, Obama abandoned the one thing that made him so appealing – a campaign that seemed a true call to excellence and inclusiveness – and turned it into politics as usual. Where the mere willingness to hear an opinion outside the increasingly narrow range of societal acceptability is interpreted as an endorsement of the idea and the person who holds it. Especially if the idea has to do with racism.
I know a bit about racism. I am 54 years old and white. I was raised in segregated Arkansas. I didn’t find it strange that adult black men and women referred to me as “Mr. Jeff” when I was only 6 years old. I didn’t question that my lower middle-class white family could somehow afford a full-time black housekeeper who served as my surrogate mother. And, at the time, I didn’t think my grandfather was a racist when he made me scrub my hands with alcohol to cleanse me of the contamination from the black migrant farm workers I’d touched while working at his small general store.
It would seem, based on my own childhood history, that America today has transformed itself in terms of its attitude about race. We have a black candidate who may well be the Democratic nominee for the presidency. We hear the mantra that we’ve finally transcended the issues of race and discrimination, with even some black commentators joining in the demands that Obama publicly sever even the barest of ties to Rev. Wright.
But when Obama did as they asked, he didn’t just sever his ties to Wright. He also cut himself off from the surprisingly large number of black Americans who share Rev. Wright’s beliefs. In spite of how uncomfortable it may make us feel, many black people in this country didn’t need Wright’s sermons on YouTube to come to the same conclusions. They found their proof all around them in the ghosts of our racist history.
I can understand, because I’m one of the ghosts. My name is Jeff, after my maternal grandfather, Jefferson – Jefferson Davis Brame. Who am I, still bearing the abbreviated name of the president of the Confederacy, to declare their beliefs nothing more than a paranoid delusional system?
I can understand, because I spent two years of my life obtaining a master’s degree in psychology from a traditionally black university, Bowie State, just south of Baltimore. As one of a small number of older white graduate students among an undergraduate body comprised of many young inner-city black students, I was constantly confronted by beliefs and ideas that were essentially identical to those of Rev. Wright.
A black classmate, Joel, tried to help me understand. He was a youth pastor at a large church in Washington, D.C. A church in many ways similar to the one led by Wright. Joel said he was constantly calling the media to cover the positive things happening in his church and his neighborhood: Children marching for peace; teens saying no to drugs; parents dedicated to providing the best environment for their children.
But no one came. Yet, every weekend, satellite news vans were prepositioned throughout the same area to ensure the fastest coverage of any shootings that might occur. Seeing this, Joel had sadly begun to believe that the black community would never be anything more than what white America wanted it to be. And found himself open to the idea of some greater organization behind it all.
I could hear Joel’s sad acknowledgment somewhere in the angry words of Rev. Wright. I could feel his abandonment of hope in true change as I watched Sen. Obama transformed from the inclusive leader the country needs into the candidate that white Americans wants him to be.
I wouldn’t call that paranoia. Just frightening.
