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Barack Obama information junkie that I am, I recalled instantly that Barack, just as he had mentioned his past drug use and other controversial issues in his book Dreams From My Father, he also mentioned the episode with his grandmother. I kept waiting to see it mentioned somewhere, anywhere and perhaps analyzed in context (I know, silly me).
Anyway, The Speech is not, I repeat NOT, the first time Barack has mentioned his grandmother and race. The relevant passages are from page 87-89 of the paperback edition.
Or, if you don't have the book handy, you can read the excerpt I posted on my blog in the post
Did Barack Throw Grandma Toots Under The Bus?
I just got a distressing email from a high level Washington State Obama volunteer asking for my help to counteract a flood of hate posts currently innundating the Oprah.com message boards. I'm not usually engaged in the Oprah community, but I don't think we Obama supporters can ignore what is happening there. Trying to converse with right-wing operatives is a dead end, but if Obama and Oprah supporters post positive messages en masse there perhaps we can drown out the din of hate.
Thanks for passing this info along.
Best,
Donna
First, it is a question of moral relevance. Obama decided to equate these two individuals as being equal in their sin. While both are clearly wrong, they are not equal. By spreading hateful words to an entire congregation and on DVD, Wright hopes to influence a great many people with his hate, bring new members to his congregation, and make money for the church from by selling his sermons.
Grandma's words were wrong, too, but it can be argued, to a lesser degree.
I take offense because, like Obama, I have racism in my family. I have heard racist comments from my father-in-law, uttered in front of my children! I called him on it, told him that I thought his comments were wrong, and reiterated to my children that they were wrong. I personally, could not allow the comments to be excused. I could not allow my children to believe, under any circumstances or for any reason, or in any context, that my father-in-laws comments were acceptable. I told them it was a sin. We all sin, and we are all held accountable for our actions.
I am disappointed in Obama for two reasons.
First, he has contradicted himself in this speech. He lied repeatedly when he said he had not heard any 'controversial remarks.'
He admitted he lied, with out further explanation or contrition.
Second, he did nothing, as far as I know, to personally confront his pastor, and call him on it BEFORE it became politically necessary to save his campaign.
Moral relevance is dangerous because it it seeks to erase moral absolutes which are the foundations of a just society.
We have been asked to excuse and forgive Wright, and Obama's grandma, because we must understand the context in which the comments were made. Did Obama's grandmother ever feel remorse? We will never know. Does Wright remain 'unapologetic'?
As a white person, I have often been in Obama's position. Associated with and related to people who hold resentments and prejudices. I feel tainted, dirty even, if I do not speak out. I feel awful about myself when I sin, and I ask the Lord for forgiveness.
I hold Obama to the same moral standard I hold myself.
I am sadly, disappointed.
I am sure that any one of these other three will meet your exacting moral standards and that you will be proud to place your x beside their name in the election. But, you don't need to demand any more from Obama, you don't need to torture him and tear him apart in your head..just relax and choose someone else.
Go in peace.
It was such a ham fisted attempt to make Obama look scary that it was kind of funny. At first I was really bothered, but realized anyone that could be swayed by crap like this would have NEVER voted for Obama anyway.
Last night I spoke to a very good friend about this flap. He's white and a republican and we've had many heated discussions about race. He said he was a little bothered by Wright, but understands because of the context and history. I'm not black, in case you might wonder if he said it just to be polite. And he's voting for Obama.
this is a stupid gamble for audience and we should not fall for it.
but we do, and at this stage an anthropologist is more needed than a "political analyst". that's how low we already got. sorry, they got us. whoever "they" are; seems to be one of those darn mentality problems.
How much more directly can Obama confront this? I would have been supremely disappointed if Obama had completely disavowed Wright, the man. Because that's the craven political thing to do. But maybe that's more palatable to you, I don't know.
You're obviously bothered by Wright - I wasn't even bothered by what the man said in the first place. But I don't know who you're trying to convince with the parsing of words and concern trolling about the moral authority of the civil rights movement being devalued. There are such things as context and history. You can look it up. And if you think that "G-D America" makes no sense given his and our history or that his paranoia on HIV is completely out of left field given Tuskegee, then fine, that's your choice.
I can't fathom the minds of people who are concerned/offended by black people who express their anger or bitterness given the history. What I can't figure out is whether they believe black people have nothing to be angry about, or that they just should never talk about it.
And many of us believe that our spirits do, in fact, choose who we come through.
Obama's analogy was real, true, and correct.
http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/NationalLies.html
-----------------------------------
Truthseeker,
All of what you spoke to anon 6:49,I couldn't have said it any better myself!
Our society refuses to acknowledge that many black folks join the military due to opportunity and not misguided patriotism, just as generally many people period, especially white kids, join because they were the B- to C (or worse) students in high school, liked the fact that you could buzz cut your hair and be hardcore and travel, make money (very little), and otherwse have meaning in your life other Wal mart, botched football scholarships or getting pregnant at 18.
Facing the truth's tough...
happy Easter
I'm also a few months from being an adoptive parent who will be forging a family who has no thick blood to fall back on.
When Obama referred to Rev. Wright as an uncle, as a family member who he couldn't disown if he wanted to, I heard a Christian sentiment that teaches that we're all family and that, the sooner we learn to treat each other as such, the better off we'll all be.
And treating each other like family means pausing to understand the circumstances underlying polemical comments like Rev. Wright's instead of rushing to judge and peddling the Scary Black Man over the airwaves. The history lesson in the middle of Obama's oratory that contextualized both Rev. Wright's comments and the reaction to them was the highlight of Obama's speech for me because in that moment he treated America like his family and tried to form a bridge for understanding and reconciliation between divided parties.
It's nearly unfathomable to me to imagine, after 8 years of misunderstatements, a presidency as eloquent and informed as Obama's will be.
Obama's speech was a political speech, it's main objective to address the 'Wright controversy' that he knew was coming. The speech was intended to for a primarily white audience in order to keep his candidacy from imploding.
Was his speech successful in a political sense? I don't think so. And I told you honestly why. I know many more whites who will move towards Clinton and be reluctant to vote for Obama should he be the nominee. I agree with much he had to say about understanding our different perspectives, but crossing the line into paranoia and mass generalizations is counterproductive, and so is denial. I have been sitting on the fence, leaning towards Obama. I won't vote for Clinton. I don't know what I will do.
Everyone here is onboard with Obama and want to see him elected. I'm just offering my perspective.
I'm not in denial about our racial tensions in this country, but I do fell Rev. Wright does more to keep the tensions high than diffuse them. Obama can't do this alone, he needs you and me.
To argue that Rev. Wright has somehow undermined the moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement is simply ridiculous. The moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement is not what is at issue here.
If anything, I suspect there is a segment of the white population who voted for Obama are re-evaluating their decision. They voted for "a different type of AA", not one who agreed with the rantings of a Rev. Wright (or Rev. Sharpton or Rev Jackson).
I realized Obama disagrees with some of Rev. Wright's believes, but they couldn't have bothered him that much or caused him that much distress because he listened to them for 15 years.
"The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."
The problem with your logic is that you're making the inference that Wright stood at the pulpit for 20 years and consistently spewed hate about whites and engaged in anti-American rhetoric. I think that's an absurd assumption.
You can have whatever opinion you want, but I would have to believe that anti-American and anti-white sentiments in CHURCH are going to be the exception to the rule when a pastor is giving a sermon. And most people don't give up on something because it's the exception to the rule. They deal with it, even if they dislike it and disagree with it.
When it becomes the rule is when people have a problem. But I have a hard time being convinced that because we've seen 30 sec clips of Wright here or there that that automatically means and shows what kind of preaching he did every single Sunday for twenty straight years.
I'm just not buying into that.
Just STFU! Fact is--The media is trying to derail a viable black candidate! Rev Wright gives the S.O.B.'s a reason to alert the white voters so they will stop voting for Barack.
America will never own up to her failures of the black race! 221 years later, when America has a chance to make it right---She fails----AGAIN!
I'm going to vent a little here. I am sorry if it is tangential. It doesn't feel tangential to me but I have weird ways of understanding things so it might be
From what I know, white anti-racists including but certainly not limited to Wise have for many many years been having elaborate conferences and building organizations and getting grants and other funds and writing and saying stuff.
Tim Wise in particular has been a white man who for many years has making an actual living off of saying and writing stuff that people of color have been saying and writing. And he gets lauded because in comparison to other white people what he says has much less BS in it.
I have been thinking about this white anti-racist thing in reference to the dynamics with Senator Obama -- because of how incredibly functionally irrelevant the work of white anti-racists has been (IMO) in actually affecting the way that white people collectively comprehend reality.
Tim Wise and co will say that white people will listen better to other white people so that's why he and others should be the ones saying things (and in his case and some others, making a wage of of it).
Barack Obama spoke for himself. Other Black people from various perspectives spoke and are speaking and writing about this as is obvious here.
But so now, predictably, here comes the white anti-racist whose one claim to attention is that he is white and so (the story goes) is uniquely qualified to be heard by other white people so his words should be lauded even though nothing he says is particularly more useful analytically than what anyone else is saying. He certainly isn't uniquely insightful apart from that IMO.
What exactly has all that energy and time and conferences and discussion groups and etc etc from the white anti-racists, and all the money/resources flowing to the white anti-racists, for all these years -- what exactly has that done to actually affect the overall white comprehension they claim to be all about affecting, that's what I want to know. Because they have been taking resources and talking and writing for some time now and so far as I can see it has not had any sort of real visceral affect on white comprehension in a collective way.
And yeah I knew in this situation with Senator Obama it was only a matter of time before Tim Wise Himself would come along and write something seeking to "explain" what others have already explained, and do it on the basis that as a white person he has the ears and attention of other white people in a unique way. That's the story.
I would like to know if anyone is holding Tim and other white people who have been taking resources in the name of "educating other white people" really accountable. Instead of just lauding his words which are usually more or less accurate and predictably appear over and over and over again whenever racism comes up nationally, predictably saying what others have said, predictably "explaining" and "analyzing" issues that others have done already --
I would like to know who is holding him and other white people who have been making a living off of being professional anti-racists (as teachers hired for expertise in this area, as consultants, as speakers/writers etc) accountable for what their methods are, what their strategies are, why their work has not had more of an impact, as we can see right now in this situation?
All those words, the conferences, the words words words, the assumed "best" strategy of raising individual white awareness, after the resources that have flowed into white anti-racist "work" -- as far as I can see, it hasn't made one bit of real difference in how white people collectively actually respond to situations like this.
But Tim Wise stays on course, offering more words and more and more, defining and talking and writing and riding the story of "white people can hear other white people better." And the white anti-racist "work" will continue overall, riding on that story and not seeming to take a harsh look at itself and asking why it has not made a real impact on white collective "awareness."
Like I said above, sorry if this is a tangent, I know I'm upset about the dynamics against Senator Obama for a lot of reasons right now.
This is the point that Obama's surrogates are failing to make. It's killing me watching former objective journalists like Anderson Cooper repeatedly making the claim that Obama listened to such sermons for 20 years. The snippets that they have shown span more than 5 years, which is clear evidence that in the review of hundreds of sermons spanning at least a decade, they only found 4 snippets.
Clearly, they are not indicative of the vast majority of the sermons that Wright has delivered. And it's an ugly false indictment of the church's congregation to think that thousands of black folks showed up every Sunday morning to hear hate sermons.
What is really pissing me off is how few of UCC's white leaders are coming forward to defend the church. The president of UCC, who is white, could go a long way to helping the church and Senator Obama just by virtune of attaching his white face to the church.
If there are still people who wish to conclude that Barack Obama is an abject failure, well then that's what they need. Leave them to live on their own bile and hatred.
A little-known politician just came and spoke life to our dreams. That doesn't happen too often.
He admitted he lied, with out further explanation or contrition."
This is completely untrue. Senator Obama never admitted to hearing any of the sermons that have been played to the public. He's admitted to being in the church when things have been said that "may be considered controversial." He went on to explain in a later interview that the Rev. would frequently use street language when chiding the congregation about infidelity and such. He never reversed himself!
If BO felt that these beliefs were wrongheaded, why maintain the close relationship? Note I didn't say leave the church, I said end the relationship.
If you can't understand that rational (not racist) people are thinking along those lines, you need to talk to people outside your circle.
No, they can't, and won't, because they don't want to be on record stating that Americans are a bunch of racist voters, too nearsighted to see past a video of a black man who is angry at the country. To explain why Wright makes Obama unelectable would mean explaining that whoever thinks so also thinks Americans are racist and easily scared by a video of an angry black man and who thinks that Americans will be only too ready to believe that Obama is just such an angry black man, and therefore is to be feared. In other words, those who think Wright makes Obama unelectable also think the absolute worst of the American voter. And who wants to publicly admit that?
Ridicule works, and maybe this can be turned into something. I saw the briefest snippet of a black commentator asking Pat Buchanan if he was scared of Wright and Obama and Pat looked stupid and said "no, no, it's just that it was racist and divisive, blah blah"
If the Clinton campaign is indeed using Wright to convince supers, then I want her on the record saying this crap about the American voter.
I saw his sorry @ss on Chris Matthews when the brotha asked point blank----"what are you afraid of". Yes, Pat Buchanan did look like a fool. And the nerve of him to call someone racist--as if he isn't! MOFOS!
I do not know much about Tim Wise but I referenced the writing after seeing it on Racialicious because I was not hearing too many Whites saying anything beyond what the pundits have been offering the last few days.
I have already expressed my anger and disgust here with this latest political ploy so I will not focus on it at the moment.
I don't think Tim Wise's comments are more credible because he is White and I agree he is saying what many here have already said. I just wanted to pass on the essay.
Peace.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/us/politics/20memo.html?_r=1&ref;=politics&oref;=slogin
When Clinton was then asked specifically if her campaign was pushing the Wright story -- she shrugged and took the next question, ignoring the reporter.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/03/clinton-doesnt.html
I understand. Plus I learn so much from everyone here. No offense taken.