Okay, here’s how it is. You can lambaste me, ridicule me, delete me, deny me, kick me off Kos forever, but I assure you, I am not alone, and if you silence one you disagree with because it makes you uncomfortable, you have sacrificed the all the influence you have over your fellow citizens, and all you will ever have.
I do not think Reverend Wright is the monster he has been made out to be. I am heartsick that Obama has joined the chorus against him. And I feel we are lost as a society if we don't confront what Wright really said: Fearlessly, and without agenda or strategy.
At first I was an Edwards supporter. But when Edwards – who spoke unapologetically about another of the country’s deep divides, class – dropped out, I thought, well, okay – I can deal with this. Clinton was out of the question; I’ve never voted for a Clinton in my life and I don’t intend to start now. But I liked Obama for all sorts of reasons, and I was happy to shift my support to his candidacy.
I shouldn’t just say "support," actually. I don’t just support anyone. I’m emotional, and a little obsessive, and when I support a political candidate, which I haven’t done with any gusto since Paul Wellstone ran for Senate in 1990 (I’m a native Minnesotan), I go a little nuts. And I went little nuts for Obama. My fella did, too. We gave him money. I made phone calls.
Remember that brilliant fundraising ploy last month, when he said he’d pick five people from his contributors to have dinner with him? One of us gave every day, each of us improving on our story. Who doesn’t want to have dinner with Obama? (The same strategy from Hillary would have bombed.)
For many months, Obama did not disappoint me. We watched him practice what we call the "43 principle," from the I-Ching, in debates: "The best way to defeat evil is to make energetic progress in the good." We marveled at his comic-timing when he did Letterman’s top 10; we identified with his bowling score.
We loved him, and loved how he used the word "love" on the campaign trail. When the Reverend Wright controversy emerged, we didn’t blink: We admired how he stood by his friend while at the same time contextualizing his comments for a conscious, present-day audience. We agreed with the person who said "He cares more about his country than about his candidacy." Bravo, we thought. Daily.
I’ve been busy the last few days, trying to make deadlines (I write for a living). And so all I heard of the Reverend Wright speech at the press club was what the media – and indeed Obama himself – told me. It sounded like he'd gone bat-shit crazy, ranting about a government plot to seed HIV in the black population; talking as if 9/11 was all our fault. "Where was the guy we saw on Moyers?" my husband-to-be wondered, as we mulled the media reports and Obama’s repudiation. "We liked him. Who did they see?"
So finally, tonight, I had time. Time to sit down and watch the speech and hear the questions and answers; time to read the whole transcript. Twice. And, I learned, we've all gone and done it again. What I read, what I saw, was not the conspiracy-theory-fomenting crazy man I’d been warned of, but the same eloquent, witty, brilliant man I’d seen on Bill Moyers. I was stunned.
First of all, I learned, the had called for an open discussion about race:
Maybe now, as an honest dialogue about race in this country begins, a dialogue called for by Senator Obama and a dialogue to begin in the United Church of Christ among 5,700 congregations in just a few weeks, maybe now, as that dialogue begins, the religious tradition that has kept hope alive for people struggling to survive in countless hopeless situation, maybe that religious tradition will be understood, celebrated, and even embraced by a nation that seems not to have noticed why 11 o'clock on Sunday morning has been called the most segregated hour in America.
We have known since 1787 that it is the most segregated hour. Maybe now we can begin to understand why it is the most segregated hour.
Second, the questions from the moderator were insulting and insane.
MODERATOR: Some critics have said that your sermons are unpatriotic. How do you feel about America and about being an American?
To which Wright wisely and rightly responded:
I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?
Third, he did not disrespect Obama: I don’t know where anyone’s getting that. Obama speaks as a politician, because he is one. Now more than ever.
I want to stay passionate about Obama, really I do. But the heart wants what it wants, observed Woody Allen, and my heart just isn’t in it. I’ve lost that lovin’ feeling, you might say. Which is not to say I don’t want it back. I just need a better argument that "he did what he had to do," or "Rev. Wright is an asshole." Because Barack Obama didn’t have to do anything. He doesn’t have to be president if it means selling his soul. And Wright’s words in the past few weeks have been the most reasonable I’ve heard in the mainstream media for a decade.
If we are interested in what Cornel West calls "unarmed truth," which "allows the voices of suffering to speak," we should listen to this man.
Yes, just as Wright said, the U.S. government allowed syphilis to spread unchecked among an African-American population to study the progression of the illness, just as Cornell University researchers tested the spread of infectious disease and the efficacy of antibiotics on the Navajo in the 1950s.
Yes, the government sold biological and conventional weapons to Saddam Hussein. Actually, I think Wright let us off easy: If you read Stephen Kinzer’s book Overthrow, or Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, you know that the U.S. government did much more and worse, deliberately and by design, to many even more innocent people.
And yes, the attack on Wright was indeed an attack on the black church, as well as a denial of our own guilt and shame as a nation – a nation that 150 years ago still enslaved people because of the color of their skin; that in my lifetime only fully granted people of color the right to vote. We don’t want to face this, and so we hate Wright for it. Obama doesn’t want to force the country to face this, because he believes he will lose the election if he does. And so Obama has to repudiate Wright for it.
None of which makes what Wright is saying any less true. Or any less, in a word, beautiful.
REVEREND WRIGHT: John 3:16, Jesus said it much better than I could ever say it, "for God so loved the world." World is white, black, Iraqi, Darfurian, Sudanese, Zulu . . . God loves all of God's children, because all of God's children are made in God's image.
and
God's desire is for positive, meaningful and permanent change. God does not want one people seeing themselves as superior to other people. God does not want the powerless masses, the poor, the widows, the marginalized, and those underserved by the powerful few to stay locked into sick systems which treat some in the society as being more equal than others in that same society.
God's desire is for positive change, transformation, real change, not cosmetic change, transformation, radical change or a change that makes a permanent difference, transformation. God's desire is for transformation, changed lives, changed minds, changed laws, changed social orders, and changed hearts in a changed world.
As the Gospel of Thomas tells us, "If you bring up what is inside you, what is inside you will save you. If you do not bring up what is inside you, what is inside you will kill you."
Citizens, Patriots: This is what is inside of us. Bring it up, or it will kill us.
And help me love Obama again.
UPDATE: Evidently Republicans typically go around quoting Cornel West and arguing for an honest dialogue about race in this country. As I didn't know this, I caused some confusion among readers. So let me just assure you: Not everyone who refused to vote for Bill Clinton was a Republican. And even I do know some Republicans who did.
Citizen Rat is not a Republican, either, near as I can tell, but he wrote this. And it's awesome.