Obama will never rid himself of Wright
Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 02:52:04 PM PDT
The question that is in the public arena is how Barack Obama, unlike his many trivial associations with embarrassing individuals, could have had the relationship he did over the course of almost two decades with Jeremiah Wright.
I am now reading "Audacity of Hope" and based on this amazingly candid auto biography, and certain similarities in my own life, I have some thoughts on this that I want to share.
Obama was blessed with having a mother that most of us could only dream of having. Of course she loved her oldest son, but more than that, she seems to have respected him even as a child. Obama talks about how she, although an atheist, took him to many different religious services so he would have an understanding of what was offered.
She was a brilliant and compassionate person, for whom race was the very least of the qualities that she considered in friends, and more. Not only was Obama's mother a non believer, but more importantly, so were his mother's parents who raised him.
Barack, then calling himself Barry, was a bright outgoing kid, who one day, he never describes the incident, or maybe it was a forgotten series of events, discovered that he was not exactly the same as all of his other friends. He was, to use the language of those days, a Negro, colored, a black kid.
One of my earliest memories, when I was out playing with the neighborhood kids, or when I first went to kindergarten is the other kids would ask, "What are you?" They meant are you Christian, are you Irish, are you Italian.... My answer was, "I'm Jewish." And for some, things changed. Not a lot, but enough. I would guess Obama had similar experiences of answering "who he was."
It seems to have been a long process, from changing his name from "Barry" to "Barack," he was saying he was not just a darker white kid. He also defined himself by becoming a scholar, by voraciously attempting to understand the disciplines that objectively defined how people see each other. There was no fear that such studiousness was acting "white," since this was part of what he was.
One of the greatest fears we humans have is isolation. The practice of shunning, a form of punishment of certain fundamentalist groups is considered the ultimate in cruelty. We need to belong in the same way we need to breathe.
In "Audacity of Hope" Obama goes into extensive detail of what his religion meant to him. While a few months ago to counter the canard that he was really a Muslim, he said, "I'm a devout Christian, who has been going to church for decades and prays daily to Jesus Christ," this is not the impression given in his book. He specifically says that his walking down the aisle to accept baptism, by Reverent Wright, I would imagine, did not mean that he gave up doubts and critical thinking.
Reverend Jeremiah Wright was not Obama's spiritual guide, he was his welcome into a community where he was unconditionally accepted. It didn't matter in this congregation whether he was black or white, whether he won an election or not, whether he was rich or not........everyone belonged. And Wright was the focal point of this accepting group.
It's not that Obama never heard Wright's bombastic version of Black Liberation Theology, it's that it didn't matter. Wright was not advocating a mass resistance, or any type of violence; he was giving voice to a common experience, that is not that different to what we Jews do every passover when we revile Pharaoh for what was done to us.
I have never agreed with the unconditional admiration that so many on Dailykos feel towards Obama. I always saw him as just another human being with his full quota of limitations and failings. But right now I have nothing but sympathy for what Obama must be going through, and believe it or not, also for Reverend Wright. Wright had provided Obama something that was not so much spiritual, as it was a place of belonging to a man who wasn't given this as a birthright.
Their affection was real, even if they spoke a very different dialect of the same language. And in that congregation of The United Church of Christ, it is Jeremiah Wright who outranks Barack Obama; and the Reverend was not about to let anyone challenge that, his life's work.
As an atheist I long for my own Reverend Wright, to be in a place where there was a common focus, where the message is of peace love and charity. If the leader were just a bit nuts, it would be a small price to pay.
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Addendum: From a comment. Here's an interesting articlefrom New Republic that covers the same ground as this diary, with a slightly different slant.
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