Obama and Rev. Wright

I'm curious if Obama honestly thinks the American people are idiots. Hopefully this issue gets more light in the general election. The issue here isn't race. It's his judgement, which he's trumpeting to be superior to those who have experience.

I had to write this for a Political Sciences class in college, so I'd thought you'd enjoy it.

Senator Obama recently had to deal with the"Reverend Wright Issue". Rev. Wright
was the pastor, and is the Pastor Emeritus of the United Trinity Church of Christ, a church that
Senator Obama attended somewhat regularly for the last twenty years. The senator had his children baptized by Wright and he was married by the reverend. The problem? Rev. Wright has been known for his prejudiced, race-charged and conspiratorial sermons. He has accused the US government of manufacturing the HIV/AIDs virus (despite no proof) infecting black men with syphillis (despite no proof) and oppressing Palestinians and Africans, despite our billions of dollars in aid to those areas. Senator Obama started to dip in the polls and was scheduled to give a speech on race to deal with certain questions and the issue in general. His speech had a few main themes, mainly race in general, race in this election and his
association with Reverend Wright.

When he touched on the issue of race in general, for the most part I completely agreed with him and thought it to be excellently written and delivered. The main point I wholeheartedly agreed with is that blacks and whites need to understand each other and come to a much more honest position with each other on race. Blacks need to understand that few whites today really do harbor racist or bigoted opinions and that America is quite color blind compared to Germany, where Neo-Nazis threaten to be represented in the Reichstag again, or in Zimbabwe where race-based confiscation of property continues. Obama also sympathizes with many whites in speech, realizing that few of them benefited from their race at all, especially the later European immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe. In addition he also makes whites realize that merely because they are not racist and because they did not benefit from their race, does not make racism in America go away. He acknowledges that many cases of alleged "racism" in America are in fact bogus and credit conservatives for revealing them to be so. But he also touched on the fact that many unbigoted and non-racist whites do unconciously ignore racism in America. There are a few parts of this theme however, that I do contend with, though they are not part of the main theme and are mainly side issues.

For instance Senator Obama claims that slavery is this nation's "original sin." While slavery
was black mark in this nation's reputation, it was by no means an American invention and America often has a better record of fighting against racial bigotry and slavery than most. President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens once said,

"I abhor slavery. I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British Kings and Parliaments as well as by the laws of the country ages before my existence." (Barton, Original Intent, 289)

While America inherited a system of slavery, it did much to combat the institution and the legacy of racism. I believe that calling slavery "this nation's original sin" clouds this fact. Lastly I think one, and possibly the only real failure of this speech concerning race in general, was the fact that the race dialogue focused almost solely on whites and blacks. Latinos have been living in what is now the United States for almost 500 years. Asians have been emigrating to the US since the early 1800s. Yet it seems like every time a new call for a dialogue on race is made, these two fundamental groups in American society are cast into the sidelines of the dialogue.
The senator then moved on to race as being a part of this election.

As someone who is bi-racial, who raised in a heavily Latino region of the United States with a Mexican-American father, who yet has an Irish surname and very light skin, I often lament the fact that race inevitably becomes part of any race. As the pundits buzz to themselves about the possibility of a McCain-Rice ticket and dissect former President Clinton's comments on Obama and Jackson or Senator Clinton's statement concerning President Johnson and Dr. King, Senator Obama was correct in saying that those issues of race is an uncessary distraction from the real issues that concern America. On this issue, Obama deserves to be lauded by the right and left alike.

Now when Obama touched on the issue of his association with Rev. Wright, I was disappointed. The issue at hand is not about the fact that Rev. Wright has done some laudable things. It seems like every unsavory and downright evil character in history has done some laudable things. The Communist secret police in Russia crushed organized crime and Pablo Escobar provided his community with teachers and hospitals. Such nuances make Rev. Wright's character more complicated, but it doesn't justify their speech or actions, which is the issue at hand. Obama rightfully condemns those statements, but doesn't answer questions why Obama would chose to associate himself with a man who would make those kind of statements, which is the issue at hand. Had Obama come out, repudiate Rev. Wright, left the church and admit to it as a mistake, it would have been viwed as an honest and respectable move that would have ended this thing. However I think that this will come to haunt him later as he moves into the general election.