Behind Every Obama, There are Rev. Jeremiah Wrights

Hongera! to Ndugu na Bwana Barrack Obama for delivering the historic Philadelphia speech on March 18, 2008. Its candid tackling of racism and of the injustices suffered by Africans in America refresh my hope that politicians are capable of giving their countries a reality check, rather than reducing themselves to flattering misguided egos all the way to the ballot box. I take great pride in this historical moment when Obama extended beyond the tag of aspiring to become the country’s “first black president” and revealed himself as a courageous human being with the audacity to speak the truth and the audacity to hope that America would, just this once, be mature enough to accept it.

But like Mwalimu Zeleza , my awe following Obama’s brilliant speech was mixed with the sinking feeling that if the United States was truly on the path to reconciliation, a black man should not have been the one making that speech. The United States should be ashamed that such a blunt and historical look at racism should be pronounced by a member of the society that has been the victim, rather than the perpetrator, of racist injustice. If the bulk of the country was interested in the racial reconciliation that it likes to sing about, it would know that true reconciliation begins with repentance, not voting for a black president. But, as the mainstream media which circulated the snippets of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons has demonstrated, Euro-America continues to be allergic to apology and repentance when it comes to non-Europeans.

More than that, the media has revealed that mainstream America is sick and desperate. For a society that faults victims of its injustice for expressing their pain and anger, a society that needs to be reminded of its history by those very victims, rather than by its own conscience or a sense of justice, is a society that has ceased to be human.

That is why the snippets of Rev. Wright’s sermons on AIDS, September 11 and racism in the United States remain not only prophetic, but true. In fact, I’ll go on record by saying that I agree with every snippet circulated, and I know that I am not alone. Americans need only do a search on Google and You Tube to know that many more blacks – and other human beings worldwide – have been saying the same thing as Rev. Wright. And we say those things not simply because we are angry, but also because we know those things to be true.

While Obama may distance himself from Rev. Wright’s statements which are so unpleasant to right-wing America, I am confident that there are the billions of Africans worldwide who would consider Rev. Wright’s words as relevant and inspiring today as when they were in the 60’s. And so by painting the Reverend as extremist, America continues to bury its head in the sand and pretend that there are no blacks who would be only too happy to have the same platform and express themselves with less reserve, decorum and civility as Obama.

In fact, by zeroing in on Rev. Wright, the media has foolishly expanded Rev Wright’s audience and given courage to the millions others out there who believe what he says but only whisper it in private conversation. And those millions are not just “old uncles” whom prominent black leaders may occasionally disagree with: we are also young people born long after Jim Crow and who emotionally and historically feel the intense pain that their ancestors bore physically. We are young people languishing in plantations guarded by prison guards in the US and by inept African elites in the continent who are burdened by an inferiority complex. These younger people sing this pain through hip hop, write it in novels and poems, blog it on Zeleza Post and research the causes of their suffering in schools and libraries. Therefore, the media pundits who thought that they would discredit Obama by circulating bits and pieces of Wright’s sermons as representative of his decades-long and illustrious career are barking at the wrong tree.

Moreover, it is Rev. Wright’s audacity to pronounce the sermons now exciting the media that made Obama the courageous man that he is today. I am not simply talking about the “audacity to hope” which Obama borrowed from Wright for his autobiography, but also about the fact that courage is contagious. Even the most cowardly of us cannot remain unmoved after listening to a man such as Rev. Wright who is willing to make such bold pronouncements and damn the consequences. Without those sermons, Obama would not be the man he is today, able to capture the sentiments of black America that are only human but for which white America would like blacks to feel guilty. That is why credit goes to Rev. Wright for Obama’s moment of brilliance.

At the risk of trivializing Rev. Wright’s illustrious career, I would say that his unmerited predicament at the hands of the mainstream media actually enhances Obama’s profile and acceptability. For by painting Rev. Wright as an extremist, the media may be pushing voters into the hands of Obama rather than away, in the same manner that America only listened to Martin Luther King when faced with Malcolm X. And in the same way that Britain embraced Jomo Kenyatta when the Mau Mau took up arms, or Euro-America heaps accolades on Nelson Mandela, whom they had previously branded a terrorist, in order to avoid the legacy of people like Steve Biko who insisted that freedom for black South Africans goes beyond the black vote and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That is why Africans who are impatient with the slow pace of our liberation from racist tyranny should endorse and affirm the statements by Rev. Wright that Obama has shied away from, and with the attitude that Malcolm X expressed to Coretta Scott King in 1965: “I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.”

Meanwhile, America would be foolish to trivialize the truths boldly spoken by Rev. Wright in order to dismiss an entire people whom it is brutalized for the last 4 centuries and feign righteousness for its deadly foreign policy. As Obama eloquently said, this is a good time for America to face up to its problems rather than sweep its unpleasant truths under the carpet of patriotism. As he put it, “if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.”

But more that, America should be grateful that Obama, despite his courage, still made some concessions, such as relegating our bitterness with racism to the past and ignoring the fact that unlike European immigrants who feel that they need not bear the legacy of slavery under the founding fathers, African immigrants do not have the choice to avoid this legacy when their chances to achieve the American dream are cut short by the bullets of the NYPD. And the African immigrants who deal with this nightmare are the few who are able to penetrate America’s borders after overcoming the humiliating visa requirements that Europeans do not have to go through.

Obama is the best presidential candidate that America has right now – a man who has made certain concessions to white America but still captures the enthusiasm of the black world that is skeptical about the impact of his presidency on their daily lives. If right-wing America is wise, it should cease wasting its time attempting to trash Obama’s leadership on the basis on Rev. Wright’s sermons. Instead, it should grab the opportunity to vote Obama as president and run with it. Otherwise, it will have to deal with the rest of us who feel that Obama does not take a strong enough stand on racism, reparations, the Prison industrial complex, the war in Iraq and Euro-American imperialism in Africa, or who think that a black president for 4 or 8 years is far from enough to counter four centuries of continued mental, economic and military assault from a Euro-America stuck in what Frantz Fanon aptly termed as “immobile movement.”