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Author: Chukwudi Nwokoye Esq.
Posted to the web: 4/5/2008 11:04:31 AM

Senator Obama was drawn into the controversy concerning what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright preached. Though unprepared to be drawn into the issue of race in America , Obama was forced to defend the ranting in the pulpit of his pastor and mentor of over 20 years. Obama was fairly on unfairly drawn into the controversy. He was seen as guilty by association. Let me proceed by saying that I am not an Obama supporter. I am a Hillary Clinton supporter. I love both candidates but I voted for Ms Clinton and have been her ardent supporter ever since. So I want to take that monkey off my back first and foremost. A friend of mine who is an ardent supporter of Obama called me last Tuesday immediately after Senator Barack Obama’s speech, beaming with excitement and breathing hard on the other side of the line: “wao wao waooo, did you watch his speech”? When I told him that I did, his next question was, “what do you think about his speech” “It was a powerful speech” I said. To call it a powerful speech would be an understatement. It was indeed phenomenal. If you did not watch or listen to that most important speech about race in America , you just let a good thing of life pass you by. It was a speech about race that surpassed the “We Shall Overcome” speech of 1965 by former president Lyndon Johnson in support of the voting right. But don’t take my word for it. Take the words of the pundits. ABC’s Geoge Stephanopoulos said it was “eloquent and sophisticated”, CNN’s Donna Brazile tagged it “very courageous”, Time’s Jay Carney called it “exceptional”  and “breathtakingly unconventional” speech. So if you are one of the people that said that words don’t matter, you might want to re-examine your opinion about that. Moreover, it was only with words that God created the world. It was not just a speech about race; he turned it to both a speech about race and a political speech. It was full of substance on the issues. But, first of all, I want to start with this speech: 'God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war….And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place” Many people would conclude that the above speech was made by Pastor Jeremiah Wright! No! The above speech was made by the greatest civil right activist and a pastor himself. It was made by the great Martin Luther King Jr. about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta , Georgia on February 4, 1968 . If the internet or the cable news had existed at the time, the press and the right wing would have played it over and over again to discredit him as anti-American in his effort towards civil rights, class justice and racial equality. I guarantee you that had Martin Luther King Jr. swapped places with Rev. Wright and been Obama’s pastor, he would have suffered the same fate. But now everyone is shouting blue murder against Rev. Wright, the right wing and the other closeted racists are showing an outrage. What a double standard. In the world of the Youtube, 24-hr cable news, blogosphere and the internet, everything you said is taking out of context. If you look at all the prophets in the bible, you will see that they had never been on the good books with the government. Remember, Prophet Elijah, John the Baptist and even Jesus Christ railed against the ills of the government of their day. John the Baptist’s head ended up on a plate and Christ ended up on the cross. So there is nothing that Rev. Wright said that was out of character with the role of a prophet of his time. Rev. Wright would only at worse end Obama’s political career and that in essence was what Obama speech about the issue was to address. Many Americans are disconnected from the black issues and what blacks go through everyday. Some see it as an unnecessary complain. Black churches are the places that not only provide a spiritual closeness to God; they are also places that have that Sunday-Sunday therapeutic event. Many people looking in from the outside would not understand that. I will come back to Rev. Wright’s speech. Back to Obama’s speech on race, one would ask whether the speech achieved the objective it was set to achieve. I think it did to some extent. First off all, the speech about race is long overdue for him. It is an untouchably topic for many politicians, mostly the white folks because of its caustic nature. So who else is more eminently qualified to give it than Barack Obama. As a son of one of the blackest men from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas , he could be said to have America of many sides inside him. He could comfortably blend in any race. He was able to douse the political tension brought about by the controversial pastor. At least he was able to reduce the bleeding even if he did not entirely ‘tourniquet’ it. He tried to distance himself from his pastor without entirely throwing him overboard. He tried to reject his speech without rejecting the man. In trying to justify not rejecting his pastor he said: “I could no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I could no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother…..who once confessed her fear of black men who pass her by the street, and who more than once uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe” Obama found himself in a very delicate situation. To throw his pastor overboard for political reason will portray him in a bad light as an unfaithful friend. He would even lose support of some black who would see him as opportunist. To leave him without condemning him will not fare well with his political ambition. It is like a proverbial tsetse fly that perches on a scrotum, if you smash it, you crush it with the scrotum, if you leave it alone, it would continue to suck, so what do you do? I quite agree with Obama, you have to put in context the history of black people. The slavery, the racial inequality, poverty, disease, disparity in education and opportunity and all other odds against the black people must be put in context. It is not just the obvious incidents of racism and racial inequality, but the mental aspect of it. But I must say that to compare what Obama’s grandmother said with what Rev. Wright was preaching in his church was like comparing a hunchback with a sickness, they cannot be the same. They are not comparable. Rev. Wright cannot take the place of Obama’s grandma. One can choose his pastor, but one cannot choose who his family members are. Moreover, what grandma said was what is being said in every American household black or white. There are lots of racial stereotypes in this country. Anyone that says that he never uttered any racial or ethnic stereotype in his life will not be very far from being a liar. But it does not make him racist. Even black people are afraid of black people. If a person black or white is walking on the street, and sees one or two black men behind him even in a daytime, there is that butterfly feeling in your stomach. Even Jesse Jackson himself, who is the epitome of black leadership admitted to that fact. Every society has that stereotype about other people based on their experiences with even people that do not represent the generality of the ethnic group. That’s a fact of life. Tribalism is to Nigeria and other African countries what racism is to Americans. Every tribe in Nigeria has one stereotype or the other about the other tribe. Even people from the same tribe still have some stereotypes or prejudices about other people from their own tribe. Also even people from the same state or even the same town have that about each other. Even Harry Truman, who was said to have used some kind of epithets for Jews and Blacks in private, is still revered for desegregating the armed forces and for recognizing the Jewish State. So it would be wrong to compare grandma’s comments with the preaching of Rev. Wright. It would also be wrong to refer to her as a “typical white person”. Other than her private comments about her fears about blacks, she never spread racial anger, at least not to our understanding. But Rev. Wright’s comments were not only racist but anti-American no matter how you look at it. What are the controversial comments? He stated that the U.S. government invented HIV “as a means of genocide against the people of color” He claimed that Sept. 11 was a kind of retribution for America ’s bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and that the “chickens are coming home to roost”. He also said that the government gives drugs to black people to enslave and imprison them. He also made the charge that the U. S. government under Franklin Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor , but lied about it. However, the worse part of many things he said was where he said “God damn America ” instead of “God bless America ”. It is sad that his church even proudly sells those speeches on DVD to make money. It is over the top. The worst part was that he did not connect his oratory with a charge to people to come together. He was a preacher. If he cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, then I must say that he was preaching hate in the pulpit! What kind of future did he foresee for little kids that attend the church with their parents? I don’t know what his intention was, but I know that some of the so-called black leaders use racism as a bargaining tool. They use it to exploit the poor and the uninformed. They tell them what they want to hear and come to their church. They spread all kinds of rumors about how bad the other side is without proffering any solution on how to make the races come together for the common good. In other to be relevant, they would like discrimination to continue unabated. Many of them will never seek unity or stretch their hands of fellowship to other races. That was what Rev. Wright’s failed to do and that was why he put Obama’s presidential ambition in jeopardy. But why should Obama’s political ambition be in that situation because of his pastor? Why should Obama try to distance himself from his pastor and his speech? The reason why there might be a political price for him was that this pastor wasn’t just any other pastor. Rev. Wright was his mentor. He has known him for 20 years. The pastor was the person that introduced him to Christ. He officiated the wedding between Barack and Mitchell Obama, and baptized Obama’s 2 daughters Malia and Sasha. He was more than a pastor to him, he was a family and in fact a father figure to Obama that never really know his father. That is one reason why it is hurting his campaign. Another reason was that he was a church member of that church for 20 years listening to the same or similar anti-American preaching! Obama initially said that he never heard him preach the anti-American or racist words. I do not know whether he wanted anyone to believe that or not. It would have amounted to a blasphemy if he in his speech denied hearing or knowing that Rev. Wright has a radical view about America . That would have dealt another blow to his campaign he based on transparency and honesty. However, I felt better that in his speech, he stated: “Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes” But the main reason why Rev. Wright’s words hurts Obama’s candidacy is that Rev. Wright’s words stood in a stark contrast to what makes Obama the phenomenon. Obama’s candidacy gained lots of traction because he portrayed a different kind of politics. He was the candidate that attracted both blacks and whites, old and young, gays and straights and many of the divides. He is bi-racial and his politics is to transcend race. His politics is also touted as that of bringing people together; and that out of many, one people, “different colors, one people”. So for him to sit down there and listen to Rev. Wright’s preaching for 20 years is very troubling and surprising to say the least. Many whites have difficulty imagining Obama giving Rev. Wright a standing ovation, and cheering and roaring in wild approval as he preaches hate and anti-American tirade. It is inexplicable. Not only that, he was said to have given $22, 500 two years ago to the church that in the full glare of adults and kids spew hate and intolerant. That is what the problem is. Also it undercuts another Obama’s strong suit which is that he is the candidate with the judgment to be president. He argued that to be president, good judgment trumps long years of experience in Washington . His argument was that he spoke against the Iraq war in his 2002 speech as a state senator, a war that turns out to be a disaster, while his two opponents, Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, voted to support the war. So the judgment of being against the war became his argument of being the most qualified to be commander-in-chief. His being able to exercise good judgment on “day one” was bought by many especially the anti-war liberals. So it cut both ways. His judgment of sitting down and watching the Rev. Wright speech Sunday after Sunday for 20 years undercut that argument on his judgment. It was a very poor judgment for him to think that it would not come back to bite him in the butt. And thinking that in a world of youtube and cable news, that no one would notice or ask questions? Is it not lack of judgment to think that when you are coming out for president especially in a most grueling campaign like this, that every aspect of your life would not be under the scrutiny? But is it far on him to ask that question? You bet. Every other candidate that is viable has no more personal life. That’s the nature of the beast. No matter what anybody thinks about American politics, it is dirty. It is a very “rough and tumble” kind of politics. Anybody that thinks that the republicans would not do anything to retain the white house is living in a world different from ours. Their antecedents show that that is the case. So I must fault Obama for not foreseeing the danger ahead. Mere removing Rev. Wright from the dignitaries of his last year’s declaration for president and removing him from his campaign team would not have solved his problems. The fight is for the Reagan republicans. The fight is for the votes of the white men who are becoming the swing voters in this nomination fight and in fact the general election. Whether or not they would come back to Obama’s column is yet to be seen. Another problem for Obama caused by Rev. Wright sermon was the issue of patriotism. It put Obama in a different light. It would not have been a problem for him if there were no other instances of what some people view as anti-patriotic. His not wearing a US flag pin saying that it was only a symbol and that patriotism does not begin and end with symbol, was a tactical blunder eating up his argument as a candidate with a better judgment. There was the allegation of Obama not placing his hands at his chest while the Pledge of Allegiance was being said, along with his wife’s statement that for the first time in her adult life, she was proud to be an American. Again, the republicans’ false charge that he swore with a Koran when he was sworn in as a US Senator, and his endorsement by the radical Louis Farrakhan all added up to put a dent on Obama claim of patriotism. The silver-lining for him would be that the question of whether or not he is really a Christian, unlike what his middle name, Hussein, suggested; would have been put to rest. His speech put on the front burner the issue of race. That is a good thing. Everybody is jumping up and down as if they have never noticed for the first time that there is racial inequality in the land of the free. What we fail to hear about in the discourse and nobody seems to care; is the issue of discrimination on the grounds of national origin even by fellow blacks. It is the case of African-Americans against Africans in America . Many people of different nationalities have suffered one kind of discrimination and another. I do not know any Nigerian that has never suffered any form of discrimination because of where they came from. So who will speak out for us? Who will put it in the front burner for us? Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that you can get over 1 million Nigerians or people of Nigerian descent that have already participated in the primary election or would participate in the future primaries. Many more would still participate in the general election. We are a minority inside the minority. *Chukwudi Nwokoye Esq. writes in from, Maryland, USA. nwokoyeac@hotmail.com