Once upon a time, one of the greatest writers America has ever produced, Amiri Baraka, covered the 1988 Democratic National Convention for Essence magazine. (Baraka later wrote a whole book-length essay on Jesse Jackson’s relationship with Black people from the assignment.) In the excerpt I read in Baraka’s reader, he quotes Jackson as the Reverend delivers his main address:
Conservatives and progressives, when you fight for what you believe, right wing, left wing, hawk, dove, you are right from your point of view, but your point of view is not enough.
To which Baraka responds in his essay: How can the slavemaster and the slave be right?
That line is key to understanding Baraka’s public sadness about how the Black Power political coalition of the late 1960s and early 1970s degenerated into Reagan-era compromise.
I never forgot that brilliant question. And I thought about it yesterday while I scanned the text of Obama’s speech.
Then I saw the speech this morning, reading along as he spoke.
I saw and read how Obama clearly threw Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the bus, but grabbed him before it decided to back up over Wright’s broken body. The senator will pay for this compassion for a looooong time, ’cause many will not remember that his white grandmother was with Wright under there.
Mixing metaphors, he knocked it out the park and made the best lemonade I’ve ever tasted. 🙂
Obama constructed a complex speech because he is trying to create a complex reality in which the (sons of) slaves and the (sons of) slavemasters are both right—that they both can agree and come to that “common ground” Jackson spoke about 20 years ago. Publicly, I can agree with that perspective while privately I can wonder about his racial socio-political equations.
If anybody can make American racial common ground a reality (and actually win the Presidency because of it), it’s Obama. The speech was, by any standard, a powerful moment in the history of 21st century American politics.
March 21st UPDATE: Ladies and gentlemen, Jon Stewart. 🙂
Drums in the Global Village 
Great analysis and recall professor. I just posted something to the NABJ listserv that referenced the United Church of Christ’s kinship with my denomination, Unitarian Universalists. Barack Obama’s speech indeed was complex, and it is frustrating that so pundits have comprehension problems. But we knew many of them were ignorant. Sigh.
Has anybody heard the entire Wright’s controversial sermon? Well, if you listened to — of all people — Rush Limbaugh, who played on longer section of the sermon, what Wright concluded was despite all that had been done to African Americans, God still would not permit us to hate those who hurt us.
Obviously, I am an African American man. And clearly, yes, I take a certain pride in seeing Obama’s appeal to the wider nation and the greater planet perhaps as a validation of my own worth.
That has been a struggle for me my entire 50 years on this planet. Even as I achieved success in this society, I was reminded of the cost paid for it — both mine and that of family who came before me. I do not hate, and I give my hurt to God to keep me from lashing out. But there still those moments, and I have seen them this year, when things happen that spark those memories, those hurts, those fears, that anger.
A few nights ago I watched am ESPN documentary on the Black players and coaches from historically Black colleges, and the barriers they faced. Many overcame them. Many were eaten alive. Their story is, on some strange level, what passes for normal in our society, as if being ‘better’ than we once were on issues of race and gender is good enough. It isn’t. We should never have needed separate laws to ensure that we treat all American like Americans, but that is was the best we could do at the time.
‘They treat us better’ is not what I tell my children.
If we spend our lives settling for “better” and not striving for “best” then we reduce ourselves to being a nation of people who simply wish to get by. That is not the promise of America that may father and uncles fought for in Vietnam, that my grandparents sacrificed for during World War II, that my ancestors died for during the Civil War.
I have long loved my country, even when my country did not love me. I agonized over celebrating July 4, since technically I most likely would not have been free on that day. Even as I celebrate Juneteenth I do so with sadness since it marks a day when we learned that we had been freed but had not been told.
But I do know one thing – I am so glad this conversation is finally happening with something at stake. It is along time coming, and I for one never thought I would live to see it. I can only imagine how my 80-year-old friend, a jazz musician who played in the old “Chitlin Circuit” must feel after all he has seen.
This conversation may cost Barack the election. I hope it doesn’t cost our country, my country, even more. The world is watching us. They want to see if we really believe all the hype about justice and equality for all, that we all really are created equal, or if we will simply surrender to factionalized differences that are no less destructive than what we see in other countries around the world.
Either way, the genie is out of the bottle.
James Michael Brodie
Infidel, Gentile, Pagan, Miscreants, are derogatory terms used in different religious belief systems. Intolerance of others is acceptable as long as the perpetrator does not become the victim. The action and reaction of those who abuse and cause destruction of others. Never respecting the basic rights of those who interpret Gods will differently.
When we take a critical look at what we have been taught to believe and how it may have a negative impact on others, them we all can have a conversation of unity. No other ethnic group on this planet has suffered more than those of African ancestry. When other groups stand up for them, then we can all secure the future of the rest.
If not, then the conversation of equality and justice is meaningless.
Black people have always stepped up for the basic human rights of all, but those who cry now can never see themselves standing up for the African. Why!
The universal order dictates “what goes around, comes around”.
So where do we go from here? Does all of this go to the back pages of the news?
Or does this become a litmus test for social discourse on humanity?