[Dialogue] Spong 5/7 Jerimiah Wright (and the devil)

[KroegerD at aol.com]

May 7, 2008 
Jeremiah Wright – Racial and  Tribal Politics  

The emergence of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright into the presidential campaign  
is, I am sure, an unexpected and probably unwelcome diversion for the Obama  
camp. It gets him, as they say, "off message" and lays bare those elemental  
places in the human psyche where race and tribe collide. People seeking to  
exploit this issue for political purposes may well be racially motivated, but it  
is not just race, it is race tied to deep tribal emotions that is being 
mined.  
Few people like public attention focused on the dark side of a nation's  
history. Indeed there is pressure, both internal and external, to keep  
unacceptable shadows out of sight. This desire, however, tends to come only from  those 
who live on the top of the social ladder, it does not work well for those  on 
the bottom. Jeremiah Wright is, therefore, a voice that establishment figures  
do not want to hear, for they do not want to listen to themselves defined as  
oppressors. It is, however, difficult for the oppressed not to name their  
oppressors for what they are.  
Slavery was a legally recognized institution in the United States in the  
17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The colonists, predominantly both European and  
Christian, did in fact traffic in human cargo that involved kidnapping Africans, 
 treating them inhumanely, breaking their wills with both fear and the lash,  
refusing to allow them to be educated, and tearing apart families by selling  
them individually. White males regularly used black females for sexual 
activity,  producing in America a mulatto population that was without equivocation 
defined  as black. This country was committed to a capitalistic economic 
system, but the  power structure of America did not allow that system to work for 
people of  color. Whites owned both the bodies and the products of black labor, 
so any  wealth created accrued not to the slave but to the master.  
Given that situation, it should surprise no one that the victims of this  
treatment would not regard the ruling class as virtuous. They did not appreciate  
capitalism since capitalism never rewarded them. Patriotism never grows among 
 those who are a nation's exploited. When anger, therefore, emerges from this 
 dark history, it is hard to condemn it is inappropriate.  
In the distribution of power in this nation, people of color were always left 
 out. Physical labor was all they had to sell and it amassed no economic 
power in  times of slavery and only the barest crumbs in times of segregation. 
Political  power was not available to them since voting was rare. Black males did 
get the  vote after the Civil War, but their ability to do so was compromised 
through  poll taxes, constitutional requirements and the vigorous use of both 
threats and  fear. Social power was also non-existent among those who were 
defined as the  underclass.  
Thus the one institution that black people "owned" was their church. Far more 
 than white people have ever realized, the black church was their primary 
source  of power. The black church was the one place where black dignity was 
conferred,  black opinions were honored and black leadership was recognized. The 
black  church was the center of black life and a powerful organizing force that 
whites  have never fully understood.  
It was no accident that the leadership of the Civil Rights movement was made  
up largely of black clergy. It was the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Rev. 
 Ralph Abernathy, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev Al Sharpton, the Rev. Floyd 
 Flake, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, and on and on we could go. These 
leaders  were the only people in the black community not directly dependent 
economically  on the white power structure. Their salaries were paid by the 
sacrificial gifts  of the people they served. Two of these black clergy, Jesse Jackson 
and Al  Sharpton, actually ran for the presidency of the United States. They 
were both  treated benignly by the press for people assumed that their efforts 
were  symbolic, more like tilting at windmills than serious candidacies. The 
voting  rights law signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 made voting easier 
for  black citizens and black candidates could count on these votes. There 
was little  hope then, however, that a broader coalition might be led by a black 
candidate.  The pattern was that the black vote ultimately became part of a 
larger  consensus, normally led by a white candidate. That pattern, however, 
was  destined to change.  
In Boston, Massachusetts, in the summer of 2004 I was in attendance, as a  
member of the press, at the Democratic National Convention that nominated John  
Kerry for president. He received the endorsement of Al Sharpton, his fellow, 
but  unsuccessful, aspirant for that office. Al Sharpton addressed that 
convention at  length with colorful "preacher" oratory. The one thing that was 
obvious to me,  however, was that the torch of black leadership was about to be 
passed to a new  generation. This shift was personified in two rising leaders.  
Harold Ford, a five times elected member of the House of Representatives from 
 a predominantly black Tennessee district, was present. He would win the  
nomination of the Democratic Party for the vacated senatorial seat in his state  
in 2006. He was bright, well-educated, articulate and urbane. He was believed  
capable of crossing the racial divide by winning white voters to his side in  
sufficient numbers to win Tennessee senate seat. The second figure was a 
young  42 year old state senator from Illinois, named Barack Obama, who was chosen 
to  give the keynote address by the presumptive nominee, John Kerry. Obama 
was a  Harvard Law School graduate, chosen editor of the Harvard Law Review, who 
 was at that time the nominee of the Democratic Party in Illinois for the 
office  of United States Senator. His address was powerful and electrifying, 
lifting  people beyond the fears that divided blue states from red states, and 
beyond the  boundaries of regional, sexual and racial politics. When I filed my 
column that  week from Boston, I noted that I had finally seen the future. Here 
in both  Harold Ford and Barack Obama were African Americans who could 
navigate the  political waters, build coalitions beyond race and who had the ability 
and the  potential to become the president of the United States. Fate would 
dictate  different paths for the two rising stars. In the 2004 election Barack 
Obama was  a huge winner in Illinois, projecting him to a national status. In 
2006 Harold  Ford was defeated narrowly by the Republican nominee, Robert 
Corker, who clearly  played the race card to achieve his victory. People still 
remember that ad with  a scantily clad white woman winking at Harold Ford as she 
invited him to join  her at the "playboy party." I did not anticipate that 
Obama's bid for the White  House would come as soon as 2008, but when he 
announced that he was running an  immediate recognition spread throughout the nation 
that here, at last, was a  candidate for whom both the party nomination and the 
presidency were clearly  within reach.  
Obama's campaign projected him as a unifier able to articulate tomorrow's  
dream, one who would bring about the changes for which the nation yearned. At  
first some black leaders questioned whether Senator Obama was "black" enough to 
 win the black vote. In the Iowa caucuses, an almost all white state awakened 
the  nation to his potential as a leader. Then in primary after primary he 
won  sufficient votes to move from being a viable candidate to a leading 
candidate,  to where the nomination became "his to lose." America stood on the 
threshold of  seeing a black president. Those unhappy about that began to do what 
politicians  always do, find something in his background that would cause racial 
fears to  rise, making him unelectable. Enter Jeremiah Wright, pastor of 
Trinity United  Church of Christ, serving a predominantly black section of Chicago 
and counting  among his members Senator Barack Obama and his family.  
The sermons of this man had been videotaped for years. Quoting snippets from  
them, the Obama critics tapped into the anger of the oppressed that had 
always  been there. Jeremiah Wright's post 9/11 sermon was particularly rich in  
passionate, rhetorical and potentially damaging material. Wright was quoted in  
one short out-of-context sound bite as saying not "God bless America" but "God 
 damn America." Suddenly our tribal honor appeared to be under attack. What 
was  the context of such a remark? It was a review of what Wright called 
"majority"  acts of terrorism in America's history: terror by European settlers 
against  Native Americans, by whites against African slaves, by the government 
against  the Japanese Americans in World War II. His point was that if a nation 
persists  in this kind of oppressive behavior, it will eventually create 
sufficient hatred  towards itself that will someday make that nation a target for 
other's hate.  Those who had been oppressors of their victims can hardly expect 
their oppressed  victims to praise them for it. Victims of American oppression 
can not say "God  bless America," they rather ask to have those tactics 
damned. It was strong  stuff, but it represented the message of the black church 
for decades. Whites  simply had never heard it before. Could a black candidate 
nurtured in this kind  of church ever lead America as its president? That 
became the essence of the  political debates. To bring together racial fear with 
tribal zeal is a powerful  combination. To run sound bites out of context can 
also be a powerful shaper of  public opinion, This is where we are now 
politically as a nation. Someone,  seeking to destroy America's first viable African 
American candidate, had linked  him to the historic anger of the black church. 
This caused some citizens to  rethink their broader instincts that enabled them 
to be Obama supporters in the  first place. It was and still is a critical 
moment in the national  consciousness.  
How will it play out? Time alone will tell. What is already obvious, however, 
 is that racial fear is still alive and well in America and people will face 
and  deal with it whenever they cast their vote. What is also clear is that 
when  newcomers to the political process achieve power, someone else has to lose 
it  and no one does that easily. Obama is still favored to win the 
nomination, but  one may expect more of this racially tainted fear in the general 
election. That  is when we will determine whether or not a new consciousness has 
emerged on race  in America.  
John Shelby Spong  
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Katherine Honts of San Jose, California, writes:  
Do you believe in the devil?  
Dear Katherine,  
No!  
Evil is real, but an external being who causes it is a human projection of  
part of our own reality into the external world of being. The devil is an  
excuse, someone to blame, part of the system of control that religious  
institutions set up to keep themselves dominant.  
Belief in an external devil has done more harm than we can imagine. Executing 
 the witches of Salem, Massachusetts, is only one of them.  
It is time for the human race to grow up and let go of these childish ideas.  
John Shelby Spong 



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