Barack Obama is to give today a major speech on religion, race and American politics. He would never have given such a speech were it not for the controversy surrounding the hate-filled rantings of his minister and religious mentor, Jeremiah Wright. Obama's tactic apparently is to dismiss Wright as part of the past and to ask Americans to simply ignore him. Here is Obama:
"Now, we benefit from that past. We benefit from the difficult battles that were taken place. But I'm not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together. And that's part of what this campaign has been about, is to say, let's acknowledge a difficult history, but let's move on," he said.
No one doubts that moving beyond anger and division is preferable to wallowing in them. But that is not exactly the point here. The point is why Barack Obama chose for over 20 years to associate himself with a man and a church that are so obviously drenched in racism. Obama himself in the above quote seems to admit there was a time for "anger" and "bitterness" and division. What precisely was the right time for a racist world view? Rod Dreher posts some language from Black Liberation theologian James Cone, who apparently is a major influence on Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ. Here is Cone:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.
Dreher retorts, "Wow. Either God wants to destroy white people, or He is not worthy of worship. This is racist idolatry." One can sympathize with Prof. Blanchard's analysis of why such views might be attractive to some African-Americans, but one must call these views what they are.
Obama wants us to "move on" because he does not want to explain why he chose to closely align himself with a racist church and minister. There are three possible explanations.
1. He knew what Wright believed and stayed because he endorsed it.
2. He didn't really know what Wright believed.
3. He knew what Wright believed and stayed because he found it politically expedient.
In none of these scenarios does Obama come out looking good. What we know of Obama suggests that #1 is unlikely. He is not a hater. Likewise, #2 seems unlikely because Barack Obama would have to be dense beyond belief to have not figured out that he was attending and getting his family deeply involved in a racist church. So that leaves us with #3. What does that tell us? Barack Obama was content to associate himself and his family with a deeply racist man and message simply because it was helpful to his Chicago political career. See Shelby Steele's must read in the WSJ today for some context. The upshot:
How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?
What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?
In this sense Obama made the choice many white Southerners made in the early 20th Century. As Jonah Goldberg argues in his best selling Liberal Fascism, the second iteration of the Klu Klux Klan that existed at the time pursued many policies aimed at social renewal, such as prohibition, while, yes, also being a racist and religiously bigoted group. But many people joined in spite of this racism because the of the Klan's other activities and because it was a way to get ahead in a perverse form of social networking. So someone like West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd would join the Klan, as Byrd did, not motivated by racism, but motivated by other matters. But what does that tell us about such people? They'd be dense not to know of the Klan's racist views and activities. But they joined anyway. While bigotry may not have been a primary motive for such people, clearly the bigotry of the Klan was not so offensive to them that they refused to join. That is damnable enough.
Obama seems to have made the same calculation. One doubts that he takes black liberation theology seriously, for, as Steele points out, Obama's own mother is denounced as evil in that theology simply based on her skin color. But Obama was not so offended by the racist theology that it stopped him from pursuing his political ambitions through this church and its minister. That is damnable enough.
Sen. Obama appears ready to attempt to convince us that scenario #2 listed above is the truth. He will have to portray himself, this man who is a Harvard grad, was on Harvard Law Review, taught Constitutional Law at Harvard, and is a U.S. Senator, as being so stupid that he didn't know what was being said in his church by his religious mentor. He didn't really know his mentor's true views until he started running for president. One must say that anyone that naive and that thick has no business being president.
But he might get away with it. We'll have to see.
Recent Comments