Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I've engaged in and overheard several more conversations on Wright this week. I've thought a lot about why Reverend Wright's words aren't only "problematic" and sometimes perhaps "ignorant" but also "threatening" and "scary," why Obama's "faith" in him makes Obama a terrible unknown (though Obama's two books give strong clues), why there's some sort of implication of a "betrayal" to come.

I really think the real fear has little to do with Reverend Wright himself, and little to do with Barack Obama's faith or personal judgment, but plenty to do with perceived racial allegiances and everything to do with Obama's mixed race body.

It's all too familiar -- on some level scenes from D.W.Griffith's Birth of a Nation play on the screens of white American brains. I've read since that the racist subtext of the Clinton 3am commercial and its connection to Griffith's film/primal white American anxieties did not go unnoticed (New York Times 3/11/2008 -- I'm only a bit behind). The Clinton campaign willingly traded anxieties about the ability of a female president to respond to a crisis for more insidious anxieties about the possibility that a black president might betray "us." The suffragists should not have been impressed.

For those whose memory of Griffith's revisionist history of Reconstruction America is dim, Birth of a Nation adapts a novel The Clansman with the titular character and those of his ilk as the original American heroes. After post-Civil War blacks are freed, they take advantage of the misplaced generosity of the North, engaging in debauchery. Worse, a black militia forms and determines to take over the south.

Silas Lynch ("the mulatto"), the mentee of traitor to his race and powerful politician Stoneman, organizes "his people", who not only vote but also gain office. Scenes of whites judged by all-black juries and shoeless black senators ensue (as well as famous attempted rape scenes). The white minority is disempowered and nearly disenfranchised, certainly disheartened. Miscegenation is legalized; the real horror is revealed. Only the newly formed Klan can restore order (once they discover the power of the white sheet to terrorize small children on the beach) . . .

Birth of a Nation and its images linger like a national nightmare hanging vaguely on after awakening.

I've heard the argument that Obama is not "black enough," a charge he dealt with throughout his life and in part by attending Reverend Wright's church as a means of connecting with the African American community from which he had been largely excluded by his upbringing. Now the charge is that, with ties to a Black Liberation Theologist, (explained in a Forbes Q&A with a writer on BLT) he is "too black," that he not only believes in racial equality but also, like the black militia of the Birth of a Nation, believes that black people have not only the same right to walk on the sidewalk as white people but also the right to shove whites off.

I want to talk about the economy, taxes, trillion dollar wars, health care, poverty, education, Clinton, McCain, Obama -- but we can't do that with lingering nightmares from the birth of this nation. (And be honest -- don't you kind of feel like someone is keeping us distracted on purpose?)

7 comments:

Erin said...

I totally disagree with you on this, but I'm going to post my own feelings on the Rev. Wright thing later today.

Let me just say that Black Liberation Theology is the system that this "church" subscribes to and it is racist and scary. It is pretty much the exact same thing as the KKK. I would never elect someone to office who was in the Klan nor would I elect someone to office who subscribed to BLT, which IS what Obama subscribes to. I find it racist, scary, and evil.

abebech said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
abebech said...

I'm not surprised, and I'll read your thoughts later.
The problem for me is that I find the rhetoric around it as scary as Wright's rhetoric itself.

But I'm also still left wondering "scary" how? What do we think someone who subscribed to Black Liberation Theology would _do_? This is the question that leads me back to BOTN.

Erin said...

Would you elect someone who went to a KKK organization for years? Who gave them large amounts of money? Would you be willing to overlook that because they said they didn't subscribe to or hear the most inflammatory parts of the KKK?

I feel like it is the exact same thing.

Oh, and I hope you know that I still like and respect you despite the fact that we totally disagree on politics :)

abebech said...

Erin, I'm glad -- I like and respect you too!!!

I'm looking forward to reading more of your thoughts on this subject.

D.R. said...

You make some excellent points in your post; I especially like what you say about Obama's mixed race body. It very much resembles what I wrote about today as well--miscegenation and misogyny (http://weeklyrader.blogspot.com).

I think Americans have a hard time knowing how, exactly, to *see* Obama. Until we do, there will be more episodes like last week, I fear.

Third Mom said...

"I really think the real fear has little to do with Reverend Wright himself, and little to do with Barack Obama's faith or personal judgment, but plenty to do with perceived racial allegiances and everything to do with Obama's mixed race body."

You've got that exactly right. I see Erin's point, but I see a difference between the KKK and a church. Activist ministers and priests may from time to time speak strongly on issues of importance to the particular community, and I have tended to view Rev. Wright's words through this prism.

And I agree we are being distracted on purpose and it ticks me off.