Barack Obama vs. Jeremiah Wright on Race
March 18, 2008 by adamsteward
I’m going to post an extended quote from this morning’s speech by Barack Obama on race in Philadelphia. As I’m sure everyone is aware, there has been alot of uproar over comments made by Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama refers to Wright’s comments as using “incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation, and that rightly offend white and black alike.” Notice that nowhere in the “univocal condemnation” is there any reference to the actual accuracy of Wright’s claims about race in America. This is because of the unfortunate matter of fact that Wright happens to be right about the nature of race in America, for the most part.
Now, as far as I can tell, the only incidence of Wright’s “incendiary language,” is when he stated that 9/11 was a judgment against America’s racism, a reminder from the third world that black people haven’t gone away, etc. This is wrong, and we should rebuke him for it, just as we did Rev. Jerry Falwell when he blamed it on gays and lesbians. But all of the other things he says are only offensive to people who want to maintain a pristine image of America as a peculiar nation in the history of the world, a city on a hill shining out freedom and justice to all. To those who experience the brutal reality of America from the underside, he is simply telling things as they are.
Obama, then, is distancing himself from his pastor because he falls in that first camp of people. His hope is absolutely not audacious: it is exactly the same message with which Ronald Reagan swept the nation in the 80’s, telling people that on the inside they really are good and loving, that to be American is to be a magnanimous lover of all races and creeds, etc. Put simply, in the words of James Cone, Obama believes in an American dream, whereas Wright believes in an American nightmare.
In the following quote, notice how Obama sees the fundamental character of America as a nation struggling against bondage and oppression.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least 20 more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution — a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty and justice and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part — through protests and struggles, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience, and always at great risk — to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this presidential campaign — to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for president at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together, unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction — toward a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people.
Clearly, Obama sees the true American spirit as something existing somehow separate from the racist, oppressive structure of slavery upon which the nation was built. This removal of the American spirit from the concrete scenarios of America as it has actually existed turns Obama’s promise of hope into an empty cipher. If real change is to come in America, it must begin with a radical commitment to the truth about who we actually are. The real place of hope in politics is not to look towards the future with our backs turned to the past, but rather to look our pasts squarely in the eyes, and believe that in spite of what we discover to be the truth about our birth, there will yet be resources made available to us for healing.
Scott Stephens, in a recent essay at Faith & Theology, makes an important statement in regards to a similar desire on the part of the Australian government to distance the present generation from the guilt of its forefathers:
For me, this leads to an inescapable conclusion. The reason that Kevin Rudd had to reiterate that this apology “does not attribute guilt to the current generation of Australian people” is not because we don’t believe we are complicit in the misery of indigenous Australians, but because we know that we are and don’t want to have to admit as much. As a nation, we have a pathological aversion to guilt precisely because of the objective guilt we all share.
Barack Obama is in a unique position, precisely because of his complex personal history of sharing in both the lineage of privilege and oppression, to demand that this generation not see itself as innocent of the guilt that this nation bears. It is time for a genuine movement of repentance in America for the way in which we have built ourselves up on the backs of slave labor. It is not the time to put up our hands and protest our essential goodness.
I think that this speech is interesting, and watching its reception is also interesting. I think its fair to say that it is one of the best examples of political rhetoric in recent years, although it might also be said that gaining that distinction has been made much easier in recent years. This speech is certainly more nuanced than those to which we have become accustomed.
I think that your criticism of it is apt, but that you analysis of what might actually address our national guilt cannot be produced from within the framework of nationalism. Can we conceive of a nationalism that does not depend on visions of infinite progress? Can americans, as americans, repent? Should we even expect that sort of language from within the ideology of nationalism? I think that your analysis is correct but that such a position of repentance requires the sort of people that nationalism cannot produce.
This sort of speech is effective insofar as it appropriates theological language to the service of the nation - and this speech was full of theological language - but it is effective toward the ends of the nation and not toward the theological ends. This language, language about hope and reconciliation, is employed here for the purposes of securing Obama’s candidacy. He may - and probably does - actually believe the theology that produces the language he uses in this speech - including the black liberation theology language - but that language loses its efficacy when it’s removed from the ecclesial community that’s appropriate to it.
Chris, thanks for this very astute comment:
Perhaps my post might have indicated that I have an actual expectation that America qua America might be capable of this sort of thing. With you, I absolutely agree that in order for America to exist as it is, it absolutely has to avoid such self criticism. But this doesn’t mean that the church can’t make this demand all the same, just so long as we ourselves are actually embodying a community of repentance.
Rev. Wright and Obama’s insincere denucement of his performance before the National Press Club made a Repuclican out of this lifelong Democrat.