Big Smoke Street Corner

Wright or Wrong

20.03.08

Filed Under: Society

The news keeps constant coverage over Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s possible negative effects on Barack Obama’s campaign, and I want to say ‘despite‘ Obama’s speech, but that would be beating around the bush.

The issue, to me, is that his anger is being construed as outrageous in its vitriol. Preaching to the choir? Perhaps. Counter-productive? Arguably. Outrageous? Not in this America. The rhetoric coming back that this is consummate hatred as compared to righteous indignation is bordering on reprehensible. It’s as if the commentators are howling, ‘How dare Blacks be angry about their lot?’

Obama did much to point out on the national level what I had assumed was obvious: Black anger, while not politically correct, is not unwarranted, and while the issue is at best on pins and needles, to demand penalty by association (Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Black Nationalist movement?) and, by some circles, a public apology (and even comparisons to Don Imus) is adding insult to injury to what is clearly an open wound in American society.

The Youtube videos and network coverage of Wright finally allowed race to come to the fore in the election instead of sliding around the periphery, alluded to but not directly discussed, and Obama’s speech opened up a constructive, intelligent dialogue on the subject. To prematurely close that debate because Rev. Wright’s rhetoric was too harsh on some pundits’ ears is, to me, the real outrage.

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