It is not that Obama was oblivious to black rage and what we must do to address it. Obama insisted that whites must do their part to forge a more perfect union by “acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people,” because the “legacy of discrimination—and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past—are real and must be addressed” in word and deed. For Obama, those deeds include investing in schools and communities, enforcing civil rights laws, making the criminal justice system fair, and providing greater opportunity to the younger black generation; they include adopting the attitude that “your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams,” and that “investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.” Obama also admitted that white anger has not always been productive, that it has often been exploited by politicians and talk show hosts, and, like black anger, it has not always spoken in polite company.
Obama, however, offered whites a pass when he argued that their resentments should not be mislabeled as “misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns,” for “this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.” Yet Obama refused to say that white anger has distracted whites from solving real problems; that it has kept them from facing up to their own role in their own troubles. Obama dared not suggest that white anger leads some whites to scapegoat black folk, an easier choice than confronting corporate interests and the vicious practices of capital that undermine white people’s lives more than the paltry payoff of affirmative action to black folk and other minorities, including white women. Obama did not hint to white folk that their prejudice has cost them too, and contributes to their own suffering because it keeps them from forging ties to people of color and forming a coalition of conscience that might put an end to the economic bleeding they endure.
Role Play
Of course, Obama could not say much, or any, of that because, as Wright noted, he and Obama occupy different universes of social purpose and orbit different spheres of political interest: “I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do.”47 Wright made those comments at the National Press Club on April 28, 2008, where he had gone to cap a round of highly visible public appearances after he had been pilloried in the press and after Obama had spoken about him at length in his race speech and in several press conferences. Wright had already made a successful stop on Bill Moyers’s PBS television program, where he had ably defended himself from the unfounded charges tossed his way.48 After Moyers’s show, Wright appeared again on national television in a speech to the Detroit branch of the NAACP that proved he was very smart, droll, verbally gifted, and charming.49 Wright’s Press Club comments about the pastor’s and the politician’s competing allegiances and contrasting vocational approaches, however, left Obama ticked. He felt that Wright’s division of vocational labor was snide and dismissive and painted him as just another huckstering politician who lacked principle while tickling the fancies of the public in order to win office. It was only then that Obama totally rejected Wright and his message and severed all ties with his former pastor.
True to form, Wright was simply distinguishing the role of the prophet from that of the politician. Some black ministers balked when Wright said that God had damned the nation. When Wright was quizzed at the Press Club about Obama’s churchgoing habits, many of the same ministers winced when he snapped at the moderator: “He goes to church about as much as you do. What did your pastor preach on last week? You don’t know? OK.” Yet other black clergy refused to condemn him. Most black folk seemed to draw a practical distinction: Wright surely could not be taken to task for past pronouncements that reflected his prophetic pedigree. The man was simply doing his job, which was to defend black folk against unjust forces like the best black prophets have always done.
But the present was another matter altogether. Far fewer blacks seemed willing to extend to Wright the privilege of derailing Obama’s presidential campaign with his battle against false interpretations, misleading characterizations, and relentless media pummeling. Many black folk wanted Wright to take one for the race. Black folk had seen plenty of the prophetic, but none of the presidential, in black America, and they expected Wright to understand that and go gentle into the night of racial discretion, black solidarity, and cultural quiet. Wright’s persistent attempt to be heard after he had been savaged in the press was completely understandable; after all, his entire career of brilliantly preaching and faithfully carrying out the duties of a pastor had been reduced to a series of thirty-second sound bites that truncated his vocation with violent precision. Moreover, prophets rarely show up when it is convenient for those in power; enough black folk followed the prophetic script to know better than to think otherwise. They knew that prophets will be prophets.
That seems an acceptable stance when times are normal—meaning during times when no black person has a shot in hell to make the Lincoln Bedroom his own. But these were not normal times; this was not chronos, that is, calendar or clock time, but kairos, which for Christians means the right time and the opportune moment to fulfill God’s purpose.50 Prophets usually have kairos on speed dial; they usually have the right time on theological lock. Since this appeared to be one of those rare moments in black life when the political usurped the prophetic, Wright was unfairly made the poster child for reverse kairos—when the prophetic seemed to be the impediment, and not the instrument, of divine delivery. Wright found himself on the wrong side of the black history he had spent his life defending. Without being given a fair chance for rebuttal, Wright lost the battle for black sacred truth that Obama and his legion of followers had at least temporarily won.
Wright was thrust into an untenable position: if he dared to defend himself against the merciless attacks that were being launched his way, he would be seen as hopelessly self-serving and ego-driven, a curious charge since most political figures are nearly forced to exalt themselves as saviors and to tell us that they will not get to save us unless they get elected. But if Wright allowed his name to be taken in vain, without offering a defense, then it might look as if he had no interest in defending the prophetic stream in which he regularly swam. How Wright had come to national prominence only made things worse: he got his brightest shine, and his darkest shaming, because of his association with Obama. Wright’s notoriety and fame were incidental to, and derived from, Obama’s fame. Wright rode Obama’s wave, not by choice, but by virtue of his relationship to a potential presidential candidate and, later, the potential first black president of the United States. Wright came to light for most Americans on Obama’s terms, or at least on terms that established his relationship to Obama as the main reason we should pay attention to him. Thus Wright’s prophetic duties became subsidiary to his service to Obama as a pastoral figure and counselor. In both of his books Obama praised Wright, who, in no small measure, helped to establish Obama’s religious authenticity.
While Wright heated up the media circuit, many Americans reviled him for seeking to clarify his views and to defend himself against gross misrepresentation. It was bad enough that the mainstream had little interest in his views before they were savagely ripped out of context; it was worse still that it had little interest in hearing the complicated reasons for his views aired without the backbeat of shrill denunciations. Wright sought to take his voice back from the media hacks who’d stolen it; he sought as well to get his name back from a press that had soiled his reputation through its ignorance and its small-minded scripts of what was appropriate for black preachers to speak about. King suffered the same fate in the press when he dared move from speaking about civil rights to foreign affairs. He was in print stripped of his Ph.D.—suddenly “Dr.” was dropped from his name—dismissed as an incompetent radical, and relegated to the loony bin of marginal figures who had lost their bearings and relevance.51
If the press did
Wright wrong, it may also look as if Obama kicked dirt in his face when he was down, but that would be a poor reading of the situation Obama faced. Wright said at the National Press Club that Obama would do what politicians do—though in his case, that is not altogether true, at least not in the instance of a politician defending a friend who had fallen on hard times. Obama’s defense of Wright in his speech was perhaps not the best a politician might offer, but it was far better than what most seem willing to give. One need only think of how quickly Bill Clinton abandoned his assistant attorney general nominee Lani Guinier the moment her rather reasonable ideas got distorted by the right wing and pegged as controversial in the press. If throwing friends under the bus were an Olympic sport, Clinton might win the gold medal for a triathlon of black dissing that also included Jesse Jackson and Joycelyn Elders.
Obama insisted that he could no more disown Wright than he could disown the black church. On the one hand, it was a noble gesture. But as was true with Obama in other areas, what he gave with one hand he partly took back with the other. Obama painted the black church as containing the good and the bad of the black community—though he refused to draw a parallel with the white world. The failure to draw such a parallel turns what might be a true observation about both groups into an indictment of just one of them. Wright became an emblem of the promise and peril of black religion; before Obama’s presidential run, no such worries seemed to trouble him. Wright’s sermonizing had not caused Obama to exit the church.
Wright’s words, and those of another minister, caught up with the presidential candidate and pushed him out of the congregation that had been his church home for twenty years. Obama left Trinity after Father Michael Pfleger, the charismatic white pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago, mocked Senator Clinton in a guest sermon at Trinity in late May 2008. Pfleger dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief in feigned grief and suggested that when Clinton cried during the campaign in New Hampshire, it was because white entitlement and her status as a former first lady had caused her to feel that she deserved to be president. “And then, out of nowhere, came ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama,’” Pfleger said during his sermon. “And [Clinton] said, ‘Oh damn, where did you come from? I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’” Obama condemned Pfleger’s “divisive, backward-looking rhetoric,” and although the priest apologized for his remarks, Obama resigned from Trinity several days later.52
Eyes on the Prize
As Obama made his bid for the big prize, he increasingly began to calculate the effect of black religion and his pastor by measuring their effect on him. Few could fault Obama for giving practical consideration to what church he attended and how what might be said there would be taken as a reflection of his political and racial views. Still, it is troubling that such a utilitarian view of his religious affairs could cause black folk to measure the health or direction of black life through its possible effect on Obama, but not take measure of Obama’s effect on the health and direction of black life. Blacks must remain skeptical about elevating any single journey over the pilgrimage of the entire community, a possibility to which Wright’s bloody sacrifice in the media might sadly point.
Obama insisted in his speech that black folk must find their path to a more perfect union by refusing to become victims and by tying their plight to that of white Americans. If more white Americans were willing, in Susan Taylor’s apt phrase, to “link arms and aims” with black folk, there is little doubt that such a gesture would be proudly returned.53 Even as white folk hid behind brutally segregated barriers, most black folk shared their souls and institutions with all comers as long as they shared the black desire to be free and fully human. Obama had a valid point in challenging black folk to reach across race to forge ties with whites. It is true that blacks have at times shunned the social solidarity that might make their situations in life better. There is greater validity still to issuing such a challenge to reluctant whites who have collectively had far greater privilege and a far longer history of directly or subtly holding blacks at bay.
The Bible that Obama reads, too, demands greater responsibility from groups that have had more privilege: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”54 That holds true for privileged blacks in relation to their lesser kin, as well as for those whites who have been able to trade on their skin for security or unearned advantage. Obama’s optimism about interracial cooperation may have kept him from seeing how a number of whites feel they have nothing in common with blacks and want nothing to do with them. Those whites who feel that black folk have already got the advantage through affirmative action surely will not see the need to forge alliances. And those whites who took to the streets in opposition to Obama and his policies surely will not feel inclined to join with blacks who have nothing like Obama’s grace or standing—or his tolerance for white indifference or disdain. If Obama could split the difference between his optimism and his steely-eyed assessment of the responsibilities of people of color, as well as whites, in forging a healthy social compact, he might offer the nation a workable blueprint for racial progress. But his reluctance to broach the subject of race except when forced to do so makes that goal harder to achieve. His considerable rhetorical gifts spoil from neglect, and the nation suffers from his failure to mount the bully pulpit and offer wisdom and leadership.
A great deal of Obama’s racial reticence may have to do with the pressures he faces in the mainstream. While he has become the ultimate symbol of American life, Obama continues to face enormous skepticism about his American identity and his patriotism. Such skepticism is not unique; it reflects persistent questions about black loyalty to the nation as black critics have historically called America to account for its misdeeds at home and abroad. How Obama has handled those pressures, and how black people, and the mainstream, respond to Obama’s actions, will certainly shape debate about American citizenship, patriotism, and racial identity for years to come.
★| 4 |★
Re-Founding Father
Patriotism, Citizenship, and Obama’s America
It was a breathtaking view of Montecito, California, a coastal enclave south of Santa Barbara dubbed “the American Riviera.” Oprah Winfrey had gathered fifteen hundred folks at her palatial estate in the fall of 2007 at a fund-raiser for her “favorite guy,” Barack Obama, the man she early on favored to be president of the United States of America. The invitation hailed it as “the most exciting Barack Obama event of the year anywhere.” It was undoubtedly Obama’s most star-studded fund-raiser to date, and Hollywood’s elite hobnobbed and kibitzed: Sidney Poitier and Forest Whitaker rubbed shoulders with Cindy Crawford and Linda Evans. Obama favorite Stevie Wonder performed as Winfrey raked in $3 million for the charismatic politico who was her Chicago neighbor.1
After the fund-raiser Chris Rock cornered Obama and me at dinner.
“My dad used to say, ‘You can’t beat white people at anything,’” Rock said as Obama and I listened intently, intrigued by his proposition. “Never. But you can knock ’em out.”2
Obama and I chuckled as Rock gave an impromptu performance for a small but appreciative audience of two.
“Like if you have six and the white guy has five, he wins. If you’re black, you can’t let it go to the judges’ decision ’cause you’re gonna lose. No matter how bad you beat this man up.”
By then Obama and I were nodding our heads in agreement. We knew the odds were often stacked against blacks in the competition to get a decent shot at a job or a seat in school. We were evenly staggered in age; Rock is four years younger than Obama, who is three years my junior. We had all likely heard members of the earlier generations say that black folk have to be twice as good as whites just to get in the arena to compete. This was Rock’s version of that story, except it carried a literal punch line.
“Larry Holmes and Gerry Cooney are the perfect exam
ple of life,” Rock stated. “Larry Holmes beats the shit out of this guy—for eleven rounds. He knocks him out in the eleventh round. They had to stop the fight. The man is bloody. He’s been beaten the whole fight. They go to the judges’ scorecards. Larry Holmes is losing the fight. If he didn’t knock him out, he would have lost the title. That is essentially the black experience.”
Rock’s message to Obama was clear: he could not just beat Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, or, if he got that far, the Republican Party’s candidate; he really had to clobber them with a campaign sledgehammer. As Obama soon discovered, even when he bested Hillary for the Democratic presidential nomination and soundly defeated John McCain in the general election, he still faced enormous skepticism about his patriotism and his citizenship after taking up residence in the Oval Office. Before he became his party’s standard-bearer, while grappling with the Jeremiah Wright controversy, Obama had to battle the fear of some that he might secretly be an angry black man—that he might not love America after all. In this Obama may have come as close as ever to the experience of ordinary blacks who fight similar suspicions.
The Black Presidency Page 14