Barack Obama gave a brilliant piece of oratory last night. I didn’t see it, but reading the transcripts on the internet the next day uplifted me, inspired me, and pissed me off, because I don’t have cable right now and I couldn’t watch it.
The speech was made in response to the furor that people had been engaging in regarding Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who was also a part of his campaign. He had recently made some comments that white people would call “inflammatory (which they did)” and black people would call “your regular Saturday morning at the barbershop (I think I just heard someone yell the word “cracker.”)” Wright was let go from Obama’s campaign as a result.
There have been some black people who are faulting Barack Obama’s decision to let his pastor of 20 years, go. This is the man who introduced Obama to his Christian faith, baptized him and his children and married him to his wife. To fire someone with whom you share such a deep and personal relationship, to some, is unthinkable. And there are many pastors who believe that Barack has unleashed some sort of unthinkable, unspeakable, evil upon the Black community.
And already, there are those who feel that Obama’s speech is a way for him to spin the damage done by Jeremiah Wright. There are those who feel like he was only saying what he had to. These people claim that there was no way that Barack could have attended this man’s church for 20 years and not known that he was a hate-monger. This is merely a ploy to save face in the aftermath of what could potentially end his run at the White House.
Barack Obama is on the verge of making history. He is closer to winning the Presidency than any non-white male has ever been. He is the first among us to have a realistic shot of becoming President. Did you really think that he’d risk throwing all of that away for Jeremiah Wright? What did you think he was going to say?
Let me state, first of all, that I believe that he believed every word of the speech he delivered. I don’t believe there was any deception or hidden agenda behind his words. I believe that, even though it was probably a prepared speech, it came from his heart and the world that he described in that speech is what he truly wants for America. I believe that should he become President, this is what he’ll work towards.
Having said all of that, it didn’t matter who was delivering the speech, I don’t think that any politician would have been well-served by getting behind the podium and saying, “Man, you ain’t neva’ lied!”
The fact is, there are two versions of America. There’s the America that Black people see and then there’s the America that everyone else sees, and to a certain degree, both of them are real and true. There’s a reason why a lot of Black people listen to such people as Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton or read books about the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. It’s something that Black people have known since we got off the boat. You heard Barack allude to it in his speech. It’s not that we’re all cracker-hating people. You have to go to the Arab world or most Indian reservations to find that nowadays. No, it’s just that the realities of the world that many of us have lived in don’t always match the vision that America has tried to sell to everyone else. Naturally, we respond better to a message that we believe is reflecting reality.
The problem with that message is, it only resonates with Black people. Doesn’t matter how true it is. Doesn’t matter how many cops you saw beat up your cousin or how many white women have followed you around the store, or how many times you were called the n-word in high school. As Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have learned, no white people are going to vote for you to govern them if you’re unapologetically going to put Black folks at the front of the line. And if you think white people are a hard sell, just ask the harmonious Barack Obama how hard it is to get Asians, Latinos, and East Indians on your side if you’re black.
My point is, you can’t get the White House talking about what you’re going to do for Black people. And you can’t get to the White House if you show you’re in favor of a message that White folks are gonna think is threatening. Black people are like, 12% of the population. There isn’t a single candidate that we can elect all by ourselves. If that was the case, then Dick Gregory might have had a chance. So for any Black candidate to have a realistic chance, they better have the message that Barack has had.
Again, none of this is to say that Barack is being disingenuous about his feelings on race, but it is to say that unless he wanted to watch his Presidential aspirations go down faster than three shots of Patron at the club, he had to distance himself from everything that his former pastor was saying. He can feel that way behind closed doors all he wants to (if he does), but as far as white folks are concerned, he doesn’t agree with anything that came out of his mouth. And Black people, if you really want him to be President, then you’ll just shut up and let him do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment