The pundits have spoken: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright just may become Barack Obama’s Achilles heel. His extreme rhetoric, expressed with a fire and brimstone that is standard practice for preachers inthe black church. And his target — the white power structure — certainly makes him seem racist and anti-American.
But to view this — pun intended — as a black-and-white issue is to be tone-deaf and stuck in a, well, black-and-white world.
This is what the Rev. Wright said (from ABC.com, which also has the video):
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.
“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.
Strong stuff, but what of the content? Wright is offering what so many black critics of the white power structure of offered over the years, with the kind of fire that resonated during an earlier time but that is not ready for prime time during a presidential election when a black candidate is running. The history of blacks in the United States has not been a good one and continues to be marred by injustice and economic disparities. Some of what is happening is the fault of some in the black community, but the despair that exists in the inner-city creates an atmosphere ripe for drugs and the growth of gangs.
And that is what Wright is talking about, however undelicately.
The other piece, of course, is 9/11, which has become like a national religion — our innocence on the world stage a matter of unbreakable faith. Wright calls that innocence into question and, in the process, seems to excuse the terrorists for acts that are inexcusable.
I’m not condoning Wright’s comments, but it would be foolish for us to believe he is some crazy extremist living on the fringe. Until recently, he had been the pastor of a large mainstream, multi-ethnic and racial church in Chicago that counts as parishioners not only Barack and Michelle Obama but Oprah Winfrey.
Wright’s words are extreme and terrifying, but tney are not without substance. That, more than anything, is what should bother us.
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Hank Kalet 