Obama's Speech on Race in America

March 18, 2008

Old Roads is not a political blog.. but there is something about Barack Obama that draws me in. It has appeared that Obama is on the brink of being accepted as a black candidate for president of the United States. Lots of people seem all right with his skin color, but the sermons clips from Jeremiah Wright bring up a deeper question: is America ready for a candidate who not only has black skin, but is also identified with Black culture.

A parallel phenomenon can be seen on our televisions. We grow accustomed to seeing black actors stand with white ones in commercials and various programs, but the world in which these black actors stand is always that of mainstream white America. We pat ourselves on the back for racial acceptance, but we never learn to see Black America. That is, we never see the living rooms and daily struggles that are reality for a many blacks in our country.. instead we get images of suburban life filled with black actors.

The Jeremiah Wright incident tells us that Barack Obama is indeed coming from the Black community.. and his refusal to completely disown Wright as his preacher speaks to his enduring commitment to it (in sharp contrast to Clinton and his "Sister Souljah moment" in 1992). Obama is not going to stand before us and say that everything is OK with respect to race in our nation. In this speech he describes a church that may sound strange to mainstream Americans:

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

This is the alternative world that Obama is asking Americans to care about.. and to try to hear. That strikes me as an incredibly brave maneuver.. and one that I am not convinced Americans will want to hear.

Wright's statements have been extracted from their context and characterized as political discourse outside the proper bounds. Karl Rove (a man known for loving kindness) labeled these words "extreme and vicious comments about our country." This misses entirely the important place that Black literature and discourse has in our body politic. America is not univocal in its response to major events.. we can recognize a mainstream voice but also something else: a voice dissenting from that main narrative. This counter voice often gets its most eloquent expression from Black Americans.

James Baldwin makes this point near the end of his essay "The Fire Next Time":

The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed that collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's more direct and virile, that American women are pure. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that... [344]

That "collection of myths" sounds a lot like contemporary political talking points. I am sure Sean Hannity would do a verbal war dance over anyone who said that America might not be the greatest country ever.. or that America can't do anything it likes. But no matter Hannity, we are indebted to the dissenting voice that reminds us of our failures. African American literature (such as "The Fire Next Time") is included in the Library of America and required on most university reading lists for this very reason.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright by his comments shows himself to be a part of this dissenting and often angry tradition.. and as such he should be embraced and allowed to have a voice. Obama appears to have it in him to move beyond this dissenting shout.. that is the unmissable message of his books and speeches.. but it is to his credit that he will not pretend that the triumphal voice of mainstream America (which got us into this unending war!) is the only one out there.