Letters to the Editor
Rocky57
Published Letters: 213 Editor's Choice: 4
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T.Renee's Aeschylus, I Know This is Coming Late in the Game...
[Read the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...Listen, I have faith in the government, too, Aeschylus, but the U.S. government has a history of medically experimenting on people of color. Did you know that as recently as the 1970s, poor black women, Latinas and Native American women were forcibly sterilized, sometimes without their knowledge, by Public Aid offices? Sometimes children as young as 10? And all of this happened, not to mention the syphilis experiments, throughout Wright’s lifetime...."
This may be just so much wasted effort. I believe it was de Toqueville who stated, if memory serves me, that Americans were "blessed" with little propensity for memory and an almost inherent predisposition to always look ahead. Marry that up with the blind patriotism that many Americans almost reflexively exhibit and you've got a situation where attempting to get Americans, esp Americans of European descent, to see why some other Americans don't necessarily swallow the pap of much of our history is akin to laying the mechanics of flight before a pig and expecting the lesson to stick. Odds on, it's just not gonna happen.
Obama was initially tolerated by many lower, middle and working class whites because his candidacy seemingly avoided the necessity of having to confront the wormier aspects of American history and social interaction. That allowed some of this demographic to vote for him in greater numbers than they'd normally vote for a black candidate. A multi-racial, well educated and "clean, articulate [in the memorable words of Joe Biden]" coloured man could allay some of the visceral reactions many whites would normally have for a "black" candidate. He was truly a "magic negro"--a term right-wing radio commentator Rush Limbaugh conjured up more out of the frustration that one couldn't treat [dismiss] him as the typical "black politician" than for any other motive--in that you could project whatever benign fantasy onto his "blank slate [as Obama has memorably put it]. The candidate's relative racial naivete also played into his initial racial teflon. On another blog, I brought up the fact that, unlike previous black candidates for national office and blacks like his wife, Obama's racial outlook and transcendant attitude was influenced by the "good fortune" of having been the issue of parents whose lineage could not be traced to the "butt end" of slavery. His parents were white and continental African and were not descended from New World slaves of African descent [if his father's lineage had been involved in N. American slavery at all it would have been to facilitate that trade--and the transportation of its human subjects--from the African interior to the West Coast of the continent, where European slavers, bound for the New World, on-loaded their human cargo] . While not having been bound by the race memory of slavery, Obama was left with an almost guileless vulnerability to the perils he'd be confronting should he seek the Presidency; perils which Michelle--as evinced by her initial reluctance to certify her husband's seemingly quixotic quest--probably understood all too well.
The fact that he'd gotten as far as he did without the inevitable backlash against his candidacy is a wonder and a testament to his inherent skills and apparently optimistic view of America and its people. But, of course, the Clinton campaign and Ohio gave his candidacy a reality check.
Even before there was even a hint of a Jeremiah Wright, working, lower and middle class and older whites began giving evidence that they weren't seeing Obama as an individual but as another "black candidate." When many of those whites saw in a 91pct black vote out of Mississippi a "biased" black vote, rather than the inevitable reaction to a slyly insulting and condescending racial campaign by the Clintons, you just knew it was the beginning of the end of any racial comity, however illusory that comity may have been, in the Primaries. Wright was just the icing on the cake. Since many whites have neither the inclination nor wherewithal to delve into the seamier aspects of American history, Wright was a shrieking wake-up call that they were now confronted with the uncomfortable realisation that Obama was closer to the Presidency than any black before him. That this white reaction to Wright, a man who's made some intemperate--and, to be sure, offensive--statements (but hardly on the order of the long-running lunatic ravings of a Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, John Hagee or a Rod Parsley--a line-up of mugs no white candidate for President has ever been made to answer for until, just recently, McCain) almost sunk Obama's candidacy ("awww, hell, here's another 'black candidate' reminding us of our nation's sins"--even though Obama had done an admirable job of keeping race out of the political picture), given the willful lack of historical context on the part of those voters, should not have been surprising to the Obama campaign. The fact that it was and that it appeared to knock Obama even momentarily off stride is not only evidence of much of Middle America's historical amnesia but further evidence of Obama's racial artlessness (which, may have been why black political and social/business figures like Charley Rangel and Bob Johnson, early on and, to be sure, at the behest of the Clintons, belittled his candidacy).
Obama appears to be a quick study; he had better be if he hopes to preserve his bid for the Presidency, given the realities of this country's political and social landscape. One of the ways he can do that is to realise the nature of the American polity (and, especially as to how it regards a particular subject*) he's seeking to persuade and the consequences of seeking to persuade it.
*e.g., given the capriciousness of race, had the two murders, by black street thugs, of two white North Carolina coeds occurred closer to the N. Carolia primary, Obama could kiss that baby goodbye.