I've supported Barack Obama since Iowa, and I will admit that it makes me proud to be volunteering for the first African American with a real shot at becoming president. I have met African American supporters and it's moving to see how proud of him they are. I've gone canvassing in predominantly black neighborhoods and felt the excitement, seeing multiple yard signs already in place, talking to excited voters, and noticing on the way out that one woman had put the doorhanger I had given her in her window to publicly show her support.
Despite my pride in being part of Obama's historic campaign, I realize now that I may have been naive, believing we could elect an African American president without having a difficult conversation as a nation about race. We already expect Obama to not only run a fully "post-racial" campaign and avoid talking about the injustices that African Americans have suffered. Is it really fair to expect him to not only avoid talking about race relations, but to have no association with more traditional black leaders who still view whites as oppressors and believe that African Americans have gotten the short end of the stick?
Electing a black president would be an enormous step forward for this country, but if we expect him to be fully "sanitized", not only refraining from talking about race relations but distancing himself from anyone who talks about it in a provocative way, we'll never get there. A President Obama would mark enormous progress for this country, but it would not magically let us off the hook for the racial injustices of the past or the latent racism that plagues us to this day.
Some of Jeremiah Wright's statements were offensive, and I don't condone them. In fact, I resent being called an oppressor and being made to feel guilty just for being white. I'm a 24-year-old woman, way too young to remember Jim Crow or race riots over desegregation. My great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland, and nobody in my family ever owned slaves. So I don't like being made to feel guilty for the injustices committed against African Americans in the past.
But I can't deny that I grew up relatively well-off. I can't deny that I have had it easier because I'm white, and that this was even more true for my parents and my grandparents. As offensive as Wright's choice of words were, it is true that I, as a white woman, "ain't never been called a n*gger." It's true that I have never had to worry about being pulled over because I was driving a nice car, or worried that a job application would be ignored because I had a name like Aisha or Shanice. So maybe I shouldn't be immune to ever being made to feel guilty or uncomfortable.
I don't for one second believe Barack Obama shares the anger or resentment towards whites that is evident in his pastor's statements. He has no reason to. He may have struggled with his racial identity growing up, but his life story is an American success story, the "skinny kid with the funny name" who has gone from a rocky childhood to a serious contender for president of the United States. His father grew up poor in Kenya and was able to come to the United States and get an education due to the generousity of the United States government. That is the story Obama told when I went to see him speak at American University last month, and everything I have heard him say, as well as what he wrote in his books, conveys nothing but pride and gratitude for this country.
There is no doubt in my mind that Obama does not share his pastor's resentment towards whites, but his pastor's resentment is shared by many in the black community, particularly among the older generation. When Martin Luther King moved to Chicago in the 1960's, he characterized the response to his open housing marches as the most "hostile and hateful" display of white racism he had ever witnessed, worse than anything he had witnessed in the South. In the book Bearing the Cross, David Garrow quotes Martin Luther King as saying that northern whites were practicing "psychological and spiritual genocide" when reflecting on his experience in Chicago. That is the climate in which his pastor and many of the parisioners of his church grew up. It is unrealistic to expect Obama, who spent years working with inner-city blacks and black churches on the streets of Chicago, not to have any ties to people who harbor more militant views.
Obama's pastor made comments that are inexcusable, but he is also a respected figure who has done a lot of good for his community. He was not some radical pariah, as the media is now making him out to be in questioning Obama's decision to associate with that particular church.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is revered today, but some historians argue that he has been sanitized by history. In 1964, King wrote that "our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race...We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population." In 1967, King spoke out against the Vietnam War, calling America the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." This statement is not all that different from Wright's post-9/11 comments. So one has to wonder, if Obama had grown up 20 years earlier and marched with King in Chicago or looked to him for spiritual guidance, would we be questioning his judgment and calling on him to denounce King?