Bill Bennett and John Cribb have an interesting and optimistic take on the President-Elect’s coming inauguration, especially in terms of what it means for the future of race relations. They make some excellent and rather optimistic points that deserve attention:
Barack Obama did not run as a black candidate. He ran as a Democratic candidate. He ran as a U.S. Senator from Illinois. He ran as a progressive. And, even though he is a black man, he did not run as other black presidential candidates before him — as a black man. He ran as an American. And America, by larger margins than in recent elections, voted for him.
To be sure, we did not accept Barack Obama’s political prescriptions or platform, but — like so many other Americans who voted for John McCain — race was not the issue for our opposition. Nor was it the issue in the decisions of tens of millions of Americans who voted for Barack Obama. Having moved beyond a politics or candidacy based on race, a lot of lessons were taught on November 4th of last year; they will be taught again and amplified on January 20th of this year.
The election of Barack Obama confirms a new self-evident truth: that there is no ceiling to achievement in America based on race. Yes, of course, there is still racism in America. But there are no more viable excuses based simply on race. A black man or woman can become President in America — or anything else he or she wants to be. The recipe, as it largely was for Barack Obama, is to take a serious education seriously, to work hard, and to maintain a strong family ethic. The message to non-black America is that the Huxtables are not just a fictional drama or sitcom of the past; a version of the Huxtables is now about to run Washington with the paterfamilias leading the free world. A successful, upper-middle-class black family now serves as a role model for the success of the rest of black America and the rest of non-black America, too.
However, their recollection of the Rev. Wright Affair is so weak that I can only describe it as praising with faint damnation:
Then came the videos and audio of Barack Obama’s pastor and friend, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, broadcasting a racially divisive and un-American creed that cast even greater doubt on an Obama candidacy. Senator Obama reassured many that Wright’s view of America was not his view, saying what so many of us truly believed in our hearts and minds. Despite the ranting and raving of later-day racialists and those who still had their doubts about the meaning of our nation’s founding, Barack Obama said that the U.S. “Constitution […] had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law,” that it was “a Constitution that promised its people liberty and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.”
Quite right. But when Barack Obama’s pastor refused to take the hint — or lesson — from his pupil and candidate, he ultimately had to be cast aside, as Barack Obama full-throatedly denounced Reverend Wright and ultimately quit his church. The days of doubt about America’s commitment to equality and liberty, for Obama and, happily, so many Americans who wanted to move beyond racial categorization and reference, had passed. Professor Harry Jaffa put it this way, reminding us: “Lincoln at Gettysburg said that the nation, at its birth, had been dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Earlier, Lincoln had said that the proposition of equality was the ‘central idea’ of the founding, from which all its minor thoughts emanated.” Barack Obama seemed to understand that. And so did the voters.
This is highly misleading on a number of counts. First, it completely side-steps the fact that our president-elect attended a racist church, where crackpot theories about the government engineering AIDs as a bioweapon against African Americans were greeted with credulity. He gave money to this church, was married there, raised his kids there. When Trinity first started to make news, Obama acted surprised even going so far as to say that he didn’t think his church was “that controversial.” And lest we dismiss Wright’s theories as idiosyncratic and not representative of church as a whole, don’t forget that Trinity’s new pastor — thrity-something Otis Moss — refused to disavow the AIDs charge when asked directly about it.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, when Wright’s sermons were made public he managed to turn a moment of personal shame — close association with, financial support for, and glowing adultations of an avowed racist — into a meditation on national race relations; though professing disapproval for Wright’s comments, he failed to identify a single one of them specifically. It was only a few weeks later when Wright publically and personally insulted him that the Senator turned on him. Throughout, the entire affair, Obama was deft, clever, smooth, and utterly craven.
I do not beleive that Obama beleives that AIDs is a government conspiracy, nor do I believe he is personally a racist. He was, however, perfectly willing to coddle an outspoken racist up to the moment when it became politically impossible to continue to do so. Whatever the positive effects Obama’s presidency may have on race relations, they must first overcome this shame.
A week from today, Barack Obama will be my president, too, and I hope for all of our sake’s that he is successful, that we do well by him, and that Bennett and Cribb are more accurate in their predictions than I am. But I do not share their optimism.
Posted by Tom in Audacity of Hype, Race