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Thursday, May 1, 2008
Wright, Obama and the black church
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A black female columnist in Barack Obama’s hometown newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, essentially accuses him of “acting white” in his response to the incendiary anti-American rhetoric of Jerimiah Wright.
Wright’s speeches, which prompted Obama’s criticism, were “given in defense against an orchestrated assault on his character and on his ministry,” wrote columnist Mary Mitchell. She took Obama to task for denouncing them. “There is no institution in the black community more respected than the black church,” wrote Mitchell.”And the notion that white pundits can dictate what constitutes unacceptable speech in the black church is repulsive to most black people.”
A predominately black crowd of Wright supporters who gave him a standing ovation at the National Press Club “cheered, clapped and punctuated his speech with shouts of ‘amen,’” she noted. “So, when Obama says America was ‘offended’ by Wright’s harsh language, he isn’t speaking for or to Black America. He is speaking to White America.”
She continued:
“As much as I want to see Obama make history by becoming the first black man to be elected president, I don’t want to see a warrior like Wright denigrated to prove to white voters that Obama is not a radical.”
The Wright-Obama episode does, as Mitchell suggests, offers a rare window into America’s racial divide. Mitchell, like Wright, attempts to portray his particular anti-American radicalism as a microcosm of the black church, and therefore protected from criticism by “white pundits.” She, like most liberals, sees conspiracies and orchestrated campaigns — this directed at Wright — where none exists.
Far be it from this “white pundit” to offer commentary on how anybody, black , white or otherwise, should interpret scripture or what the rituals and practices of any church should be. But at some point the doors open — as they have on Wright’s ministry — and what’s said there is judged against fact, values and beliefs of the larger community, and the intellectual soundness of the interpretation of events or scripture. In Wright’s case, it’s not a question of interpreting scripture, but of political radicalism and virulent anti-Americanism.
While I’m not in a position to have an opinion on what transpires in black churches on Sunday morning, if his conspiracy-laced anti-Americanism is indeed the black church in America, as Wright declared at the National Press Club, we — blacks and whites — are in trouble. And so is the ministry.
It would certainly be a call to massive integration of churches, both ways, to make certain that rhetoric such as Wright’s is challenged on Sunday and Monday and Friday — and not just when it surfaces in a campaign where a candidate is trying to appeal to all.
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