WHAT A SPEECH: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Senator Obama was drawn into the controversy concerning what his pastor,
Jeremiah Wright preached. Though unprepared to be drawn into the issue of
race in America, Obama was forced to defend the ranting in the pulpit of
his pastor and mentor of over 20 years. Obama was fairly on unfairly drawn
into the controversy. He was seen as guilty by association.
Let me proceed by saying that I am not an Obama supporter. I am a Hillary
Clinton supporter. I love both candidates but I voted for Ms Clinton and
have been her ardent supporter ever since. So I want to take that monkey
off my back first and foremost.
A friend of mine who is an ardent supporter of Obama called me last
Tuesday immediately after Senator Barack Obama’s speech, beaming with
excitement and breathing hard on the other side of the line: “wao wao
waooo, did you watch his speech”? When I told him that I did, his next
question was, “what do you think about his speech”
“It was a powerful speech” I said.
To call it a powerful speech would be an understatement. It was indeed
phenomenal. If you did not watch or listen to that most important speech
about race in America, you just let a good thing of life pass you by. It
was a speech about race that surpassed the “We Shall Overcome” speech of
1965 by former president Lyndon Johnson in support of the voting right.
But don’t take my word for it. Take the words of the pundits. ABC’s Geoge
Stephanopoulos said it was “eloquent and sophisticated”, CNN’s Donna
Brazile tagged it “very courageous”, Time’s Jay Carney called it“exceptional” and “breathtakingly unconventional” speech.
So if you are one of the people that said that words don’t matter, you
might want to re-examine your opinion about that. Moreover, it was only
with words that God created the world. It was not just a speech about
race; he turned it to both a speech about race and a political speech. It
was full of substance on the issues.
But, first of all, I want to start with this speech:
“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war….And we are
criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any
nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t
stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a
way of even putting nations in their place”
Many people would conclude that the above speech was made by Pastor
Jeremiah Wright! No! The above speech was made by the greatest civil right
activist and a pastor himself. It was made by the great Martin Luther King
Jr. about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta,
Georgia on February 4, 1968.
If the internet or the cable news had existed at the time, the press and
the right wing would have played it over and over again to discredit him
as anti-American in his effort towards civil rights, class justice and
racial equality. I guarantee you that had Martin Luther King Jr. swapped
places with Rev. Wright and been Obama’s pastor, he would have suffered
the same fate. But now everyone is shouting blue murder against Rev.
Wright, the right wing and the other closeted racists are showing an
outrage. What a double standard. In the world of the Youtube, 24-hr cable
news, blogosphere and the internet, everything you said is taking out of
context.
If you look at all the prophets in the bible, you will see that they had
never been on the good books with the government. Remember, Prophet
Elijah, John the Baptist and even Jesus Christ railed against the ills of
the government of their day. John the Baptist’s head ended up on a plate
and Christ ended up on the cross. So there is nothing that Rev. Wright
said that was out of character with the role of a prophet of his time.
Rev. Wright would only at worse end Obama’s political career and that in
essence was what Obama speech about the issue was to address.
Many Americans are disconnected from the black issues and what blacks go
through everyday. Some see it as an unnecessary complain. Black churches
are the places that not only provide a spiritual closeness to God; they
are also places that have that Sunday-Sunday therapeutic event. Many
people looking in from the outside would not understand that. I will come
back to Rev. Wright’s speech.
Back to Obama’s speech on race, one would ask whether the speech achieved
the objective it was set to achieve. I think it did to some extent. First
off all, the speech about race is long overdue for him. It is an
untouchably topic for many politicians, mostly the white folks because of
its caustic nature. So who else is more eminently qualified to give it
than Barack Obama. As a son of one of the blackest men from Kenya and a
white woman from Kansas, he could be said to have America of many sides
inside him. He could comfortably blend in any race.
He was able to douse the political tension brought about by the
controversial pastor. At least he was able to reduce the bleeding even if
he did not entirely ‘tourniquet’ it. He tried to distance himself from his
pastor without entirely throwing him overboard. He tried to reject his
speech without rejecting the man. In trying to justify not rejecting his
pastor he said:
“I could no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I could
no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother…..who once
confessed her fear of black men who pass her by the street, and who more
than once uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe”
Obama found himself in a very delicate situation. To throw his pastor
overboard for political reason will portray him in a bad light as an
unfaithful friend. He would even lose support of some black who would see
him as opportunist. To leave him without condemning him will not fare well
with his political ambition. It is like a proverbial tsetse fly that
perches on a scrotum, if you smash it, you crush it with the scrotum, if
you leave it alone, it would continue to suck, so what do you do?
I quite agree with Obama, you have to put in context the history of black
people. The slavery, the racial inequality, poverty, disease, disparity in
education and opportunity and all other odds against the black people must
be put in context. It is not just the obvious incidents of racism and
racial inequality, but the mental aspect of it.
But I must say that to compare what Obama’s grandmother said with what
Rev. Wright was preaching in his church was like comparing a hunchback
with a sickness, they cannot be the same. They are not comparable. Rev.
Wright cannot take the place of Obama’s grandma. One can choose his
pastor, but one cannot choose who his family members are. Moreover, what
grandma said was what is being said in every American household black or
white. There are lots of racial stereotypes in this country. Anyone that
says that he never uttered any racial or ethnic stereotype in his life
will not be very far from being a liar. But it does not make him racist.
Even black people are afraid of black people. If a person black or white
is walking on the street, and sees one or two black men behind him even in
a daytime, there is that butterfly feeling in your stomach. Even Jesse
Jackson himself, who is the epitome of black leadership admitted to that
fact.
When I was new to this country, I was living in South East Washington DC.
Anyone that knows Washington DC very well will know that it is a black
neighborhood and very notorious area. I didn’t know at the time that I was
living in a lion’s den, even though my area was not as bad as other areas
in Southeast. There was a weekend, in the heart of winter that I went to
visit someone in Northwest DC and stayed until after 9 pm. Unknown to me,
the Metro Bus stops plying at 7pm on that Sunday. I called my cousin, who
at the time, I was staying with to come and pick me up, but he was already
at work. So I waited for the bus for more than an hour under very intense
winter weather. When I could not find any, I decided to take a cab. When
the first cab came by and asked me where I was going, I told him
Southeast. The man quickly sped off. About five more cab drivers did the
same thing! After what seemed like an eternity, one came by and stopped
for me. Fortunately for me, the cab driver was from Ghana and he noticed
that I was a ‘brother’. I told him where I was going and he told me a sad
story of how he was robbed in southeast just a month ago and that in fact
that day was his first day of work since the incident. It was like a
person seeing a mosquito for the first time after his bout with malaria.
He told me that inasmuch as he wanted to help me, there was no way he
could take me to southeast under any circumstances. He told me that the
only person that could help me was an older black cab driver. He wished me
luck and zoomed off. Since I could get a much older black cab driver, I
had to hump for 3 miles to connect bus that would take me my place. To
make the long story short, I got my first baptism about what it entails to
live in a black neighborhood.
Every society has that stereotype about other people based on their
experiences with even people that do not represent the generality of the
ethnic group. That’s a fact of life. Tribalism is to Nigeria and other
African countries what racism is to Americans. Every tribe in Nigeria has
one stereotype or the other about the other tribe. Even people from the
same tribe still have some stereotypes or prejudices about other people
from their own tribe. Also even people from the same state or even the
same town have that about each other. Even Harry Truman, who was said to
have used some kind of epithets for Jews and Blacks in private, is still
revered for desegregating the armed forces and for recognizing the Jewish
State.
So it would be wrong to compare grandma’s comments with the preaching of
Rev. Wright. It would also be wrong to refer to her as a “typical white
person”. Other than her private comments about her fears about blacks, she
never spread racial anger, at least not to our understanding. But Rev.
Wright’s comments were not only racist but anti-American no matter how you
look at it. What are the controversial comments? He stated that the U.S.
government invented HIV “as a means of genocide against the people of
color” He claimed that Sept. 11 was a kind of retribution for America’s
bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and that the “chickens are coming home
to roost”. He also said that the government gives drugs to black people to
enslave and imprison them. He also made the charge that the U.S.
government under Franklin Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor, but lied
about it. However, the worse part of many things he said was where he said“God damn America” instead of “God bless America”. It is sad that his
church even proudly sells those speeches on DVD to make money. It is over
the top.
The worst part was that he did not connect his oratory with a charge to
people to come together. He was a preacher. If he cannot see the light at
the end of the tunnel, then I must say that he was preaching hate in the
pulpit! What kind of future did he foresee for little kids that attend the
church with their parents? I don’t know what his intention was, but I know
that some of the so-called black leaders use racism as a bargaining tool.
They use it to exploit the poor and the uninformed. They tell them what
they want to hear and come to their church. They spread all kinds of
rumors about how bad the other side is without proffering any solution on
how to make the races come together for the common good. In other to be
relevant, they would like discrimination to continue unabated. Many of
them will never seek unity or stretch their hands of fellowship to other
races. That was what Rev. Wright’s failed to do and that was why he put
Obama’s presidential ambition in jeopardy.
But why should Obama’s political ambition be in that situation because of
his pastor? Why should Obama try to distance himself from his pastor and
his speech? The reason why there might be a political price for him was
that this pastor wasn’t just any other pastor. Rev. Wright was his mentor.
He has known him for 20 years. The pastor was the person that introduced
him to Christ. He officiated the wedding between Barack and Mitchell
Obama, and baptized Obama’s 2 daughters Malia and Sasha. He was more than
a pastor to him, he was a family and in fact a father figure to Obama that
never really know his father. That is one reason why it is hurting his
campaign.
Another reason was that he was a church member of that church for 20 years
listening to the same or similar anti-American preaching! Obama initially
said that he never heard him preach the anti-American or racist words. I
do not know whether he wanted anyone to believe that or not. It would have
amounted to a blasphemy if he in his speech denied hearing or knowing that
Rev. Wright has a radical view about America. That would have dealt
another blow to his campaign he based on transparency and honesty.
However, I felt better that in his speech, he stated: “Did I ever hear him
make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?
Yes”
But the main reason why Rev. Wright’s words hurts Obama’s candidacy is
that Rev. Wright’s words stood in a stark contrast to what makes Obama the
phenomenon. Obama’s candidacy gained lots of traction because he portrayed
a different kind of politics. He was the candidate that attracted both
blacks and whites, old and young, gays and straights and many of the
divides. He is bi-racial and his politics is to transcend race. His
politics is also touted as that of bringing people together; and that out
of many, one people, “different colors, one people”. So for him to sit
down there and listen to Rev. Wright’s preaching for 20 years is very
troubling and surprising to say the least. Many whites have difficulty
imagining Obama giving Rev. Wright a standing ovation, and cheering and
roaring in wild approval as he preaches hate and anti-American tirade. It
is inexplicable. Not only that, he was said to have given $22, 500 two
years ago to the church that in the full glare of adults and kids spew
hate and intolerant. That is what the problem is.
Also it undercuts another Obama’s strong suit which is that he is the
candidate with the judgment to be president. He argued that to be
president, good judgment trumps long years of experience in Washington.
His argument was that he spoke against the Iraq war in his 2002 speech as
a state senator, a war that turns out to be a disaster, while his two
opponents, Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, voted to support the
war. So the judgment of being against the war became his argument of being
the most qualified to be commander-in-chief. His being able to exercise
good judgment on “day one” was bought by many especially the anti-war
liberals. So it cut both ways. His judgment of sitting down and watching
the Rev. Wright speech Sunday after Sunday for 20 years undercut that
argument on his judgment. It was a very poor judgment for him to think
that it would not come back to bite him in the butt. And thinking that in
a world of youtube and cable news, that no one would notice or ask
questions? Is it not lack of judgment to think that when you are coming
out for president especially in a most grueling campaign like this, that
every aspect of your life would not be under the scrutiny? But is it far
on him to ask that question? You bet. Every other candidate that is viable
has no more personal life. That’s the nature of the beast.
No matter what anybody thinks about American politics, it is dirty. It is
a very “rough and tumble” kind of politics. Anybody that thinks that the
republicans would not do anything to retain the white house is living in a
world different from ours. Their antecedents show that that is the case.
So I must fault Obama for not foreseeing the danger ahead. Mere removing
Rev. Wright from the dignitaries of his last year’s declaration for
president and removing him from his campaign team would not have solved
his problems.
The fight is for the Reagan republicans. The fight is for the votes of the
white men who are becoming the swing voters in this nomination fight and
in fact the general election. Whether or not they would come back to
Obama’s column is yet to be seen.
Another problem for Obama caused by Rev. Wright sermon was the issue of
patriotism. It put Obama in a different light. It would not have been a
problem for him if there were no other instances of what some people view
as anti-patriotic. His not wearing a US flag pin saying that it was only a
symbol and that patriotism does not begin and end with symbol, was a
tactical blunder eating up his argument as a candidate with a better
judgment. There was the allegation of Obama not placing his hands at his
chest while the Pledge of Allegiance was being said, along with his wife’s
statement that for the first time in her adult life, she was proud to be
an American. Again, the republicans’ false charge that he swore with a
Koran when he was sworn in as a US Senator, and his endorsement by the
radical Louis Farrakhan all added up to put a dent on Obama claim of
patriotism. The silver-lining for him would be that the question of
whether or not he is really a Christian, unlike what his middle name,
Hussein, suggested; would have been put to rest.
His speech put on the front burner the issue of race. That is a good
thing. Everybody is jumping up and down as if they have never noticed for
the first time that there is racial inequality in the land of the free.
What we fail to hear about in the discourse and nobody seems to care; is
the issue of discrimination on the grounds of national origin even by
fellow blacks. It is the case of African-Americans against Africans in
America. Many people of different nationalities have suffered one kind of
discrimination and another. I do not know any Nigerian that has never
suffered any form of discrimination because of where they came from. So
who will speak out for us? Who will put it in the front burner for us?
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that you can get over 1 million
Nigerians or people of Nigerian descent that have already participated in
the primary election or would participate in the future primaries. Many
more would still participate in the general election. We are a minority
inside the minority.
By Chukwudi Nwokoye
Upper Marlboro, Maryland, USA
*Chukwudi Nwokoye writes in from Upper Marlboro, Maryland, USA.
nwokoyeac@hotmail.com