Obama's Speech: The Right Solution for the "Wright Problem"

On his controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama opines:

"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality."

This is almost entirely unchartered territory among unsailed waters even amidst a candidacy that was anything but probable. Really, when I say you'd have to go back to 'I Have a Dream' to find an exhibit of unabashed honesty and authenticity to match the speech given by Obama it's not hyperbole. His eloquence, his dignity and his inward examination have prepared him well through his journey to touch upon so many truths and so many unbreachable subjects that have been so historically buried and undisturbed and honestly -- no one else could have made this declaration. One who seeks to unearth the dichotomy between being the nationalist that births a love of all that is of America yet is also confined and chained to an ethnic label/race that forms and molds how you're supposed to automatically view others of your country which often unconsciously leaks a bias in your reasoning when evaluating larger issues need look no further than this speech.

The man, facing impossible doubts about his character and judgment, reaffirmed to people ready to jettison his campaign those same qualities that led them to his corner. Obama spoke about perceived injustice being the motivation that drove his pastor into delivering the disagreeable and contemptuous sermons being played in continuation and about how his Reverend was from a different generation who lived through a different set of realities, unique and distinct, to his evolution of thought. However, the reality is that the hands of justice always have and always will move quicker to condemn then set things right. What was impossible for Jeremiah Wright, became more possible for Barack Obama and will become even more possible for the generation of his children and my children and the children of so many hopeful to erase the borders of division that permeate throughout society and hold people to seeing enemy in their brothers and sisters and not partner in a shared plight. Obama further demonstrates a worldliness that seems absent or at least lies dormant in the presentation of his contemporaries.

He's a layered being, as his very genetic makeup would suggest he would be. People really need to concentrate on this fact and stop being distracted by agenda led news makers and propaganda machines that seek to blur that glaring difference between him and the others.

I just hope the media will credit him as fast as they discredited him for comments that he himself never made but has had to answer for and hold accountability on the basis of.


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