Sunday With Mahalia - The Lord's Prayer

Reverend Jeremiah Wright Breaks His Silence

Jeremiah Wright, in a rare media appearance, told Sirius XM Satellite Radio's Mark Thompson that he understands why Obama distanced himself from him, but doesn't forgive the media the way it covered him.

His reaction to Obama's victory, he said, was a "mixed bag of being proud of him and being blessed to have lived" through the moment, and pain at being "put up by the media" as a "weapon of mass destruction to destroy his candidacy."

Wright, who posed what may have been the deepest challenge to Obama's candidacy, and provoked its most racially-charged moments, is now a footnote to a winning campaign. He opened little new ground, and expressed joy that his former friend was now president, and no remorse at his own role.

The negative press, and the final wave of negative ads, had been particularly painful, he said.

"I sort of never realized how that affects my family, what that does to my kids or my grandkids," he said.

Wright also seemed to dispute the notion that the inflammatory moments that aired on cable television and the Internet were out of character, though he said they were out of context.

"I’ve been preaching the same thing for 40 years," he said, saying that white audiences couldn't be expected to understand a form of worship they'd never seen, and was once practiced in secret.

He also said that Obama's chief political advisor had been the one who pressed for rescinding his invitation to perform the invocation at Obama's campaign launch in Springfield, referring to David Axelrod's "not wanting me to give a public invocation."

Wright also repeated his perception -- which helped convince Obama to cut him off after initially refusing to in his speech on race -- that politics was part of his former congregant's calculus.

"He’s running for the presidency of the United States of America, which is a country where blacks are a minority," he said. "To get the votes that he needs in electoral politics, he has to distance himself from me, because his support would dry up when certain parts of the constituency found out who I was."

His greatest disappointment, he said, wasn't in Obama, but in some of his fellows in the black church, who "just rolled over and played dead while we in the black church continue to be hammered for who we are."

Source

I was angered by the ads that ran in the final days of the campaign because they were gratuitous and harmful. But they didn't work.

God don't like ugly.

Guess Who Came to Dinner?

The following story, set in the late 90s, is an excerpt from Soul Weaving, my current novel-in-progress (which may never be completed) that explores the relationships between black gay men and black women. In light of the gay marriage vote in California and the hot topic of homophobia in the black community, I've decided to repost Dessa Rose Flowers' story today.

THESE TIGHTDRESSED HEIFERS is always lookin for a full meal ticket, while these homosexuals don’t want nothin but appetizers and will try anythang and everythang on the menu, many times over. That’s the majority of folks I see: these little heifers ain’t got nothin on their minds but trying to get them some man and don’t know no other way except to throw him the goods, and these damn homosexuals who ain’t seemed to learn nothin from all these diseases goin round.

My own boy Richie and that boy he’s been hangin around with: Lord have mercy, in all my years I ain’t felt the need to worry and now this. Well, it makes me wanna scream. But I’m too damn old, too damn tired. And besides, I done screamed enough to last this lifetime and a few more down the road.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky though. When Richie’s mama, my sweet baby sister Sadie, passed on some time ago, God rest her soul, I took in her cute little bundle of joy and raised him as my very own. He ain’t never really caused me no trouble, but everybody from old Hattie Mae Holierthanthou over at Mt. Zion Baptist, to all the ladies I’ve played Bid Whist with over the years, told me that Richie was different somehow. Hattie Mae went so far as to say, “That child sure is strange that way. You better watch out for him Dessa Rose.”

Different. Strange that way.

Well, what child wouldn’t be different or strange that way if his mama was taken to the Lord before he could barely walk, and he never even saw his daddy. Which was no fault of his. No fault of his daddy’s, I mean. That’s right: Sadie never even told the man she was pregnant. Now, back in the day, you didn’t see womens actin like that: not even tellin the daddy about the bun in they oven. But Sadie, God rest her soul, was always doin things her way. Some might even say she was ahead of her time on some matters. Like most babies of the family, she was the independent one. Now, I know, these days, girls havin babies, babies havin babies, and ain’t nobody tellin the daddies till it’s way past any time appropriate. Well, I, for one, ain’t into all them politics and such, but if this is what women’s lib was all about, then we messed up somewheres. Any daddy’s better than no daddy, and it’s about time we got that through our liberated heads.

Well, I was gone make sure that little boy got it all from me, no matter what my friends were trying to warn me about. Like Mildred. Now, Mildred is good people and all that, and I don’t like to talk about folk like they do me sometimes, but Mildred would spit the stupidest mess out her mouth with nary a thought for nobody. She comes round the house to drop off her famous coconut cake for Richie’s tenth birthday party. She finally got some real respect from the folk down at Mt. Zion after the first time she brought that cake to a bake sale down on the church lot. After she tasted a piece, I thought Sugar Waters was gone start speaking in tongues right out on that parking lot. She fell over. Umh-humh. Yes she did. A small woman she was not; it took three or four Deacons to scrape her off the concrete and hoist her back up on her feet. Most of the congregation out there flocked round the table to partake in Mildred’s special taste of the Holy Ghost.

The first time Richie laid his lips on that sucker, I could hardly get him to eat regular food. I had to wean him offa that mess for a while. But for his birthday party, I decided to have Mildred make a big one—special too.

She comes in the house with her prize-winning recipe, gives Richie the once over, as if she’d never seen him before, and Lord knows he’s been up in church with me more times than a heathen, flashes her diamondstudded gold teeth, nearly blinding me back, and declares, “Dessa Rose, baby, is you sure that nephew of yours is all right? He so timid and mosta the times he act too sissified for a boy his age. He needs a man around this house. But if that ain’t possible, girl, you better find him some boys to play with.”

If she only knew.

And it wasn’t like Richie was far enough away to even act like he didn’t hear Mildred’s blasphemin. Old Mildred, or Miss Muffet, like I calls her, to this day, might be able to bake her silly little ass off, but she sure can’t see. There was a house full of boys from Richie’s school at the party. Well, a couple at least. All right, it was mostly girls, I guess. It was so long ago I can’t remember all the details. My memory has been known to play tricks on me. Well, you know, the boy just always seemed to be more comfortable playing with little girls; boys could be so mean at times. I know Richie was a quiet child and all. And Lord knows, my father didn’t raise no fool. Do I seem like a fool to you? I knew exactly what little Miss Muffet was trying to say, but I tried not to pay her no mind. I’m sure she thought she meant well.

Doesnt everybody who meddles in other folks’ affairs?

It was kinda embarrassing, though. Not that I was ever really ashamed of Richie. Disappointed would be more like it. But I would look at him trying to cope without his mama and daddy, and know he was already going through a lot. I don’t usually take no mess—don’t like to let folks know they gettin to me. You can’t let’m see you sweat. I’m sure I’ve been too kind to most of my friends, and mosta the times folk wanna confuse kindness with weakness, but they don’t know how strong I knew I was. Strong enough to protect my boy from ridicule:

I told that bitch to shut up and get the fuck out of my house.

That was only after I got that delicious cake.

AS RICHIE GREW OLDER, I got closer and closer to wantin to find out if he was the way I felt he was. But I had to keep back. Not wantin to push too hard. Try to figure out how Sadie woulda handled it and do the same. And sweet Sadie was one of the most patient womens I ever knew, God rest her soul. So I just figured her little bundle of joy wouldn’t want me breathin down his neck tryin to figure out if he was, what he was doin, with whom, and for how long.

Well, when he enrolled in that beauty school, suffice it to say, I didn’t have to ask any questions. And it’s not like he didn’t useda sit down in fronta that TV and watch all them silly beauty pageants when he was growing up. I couldn’t see what that child saw in all that fake mess. Of course, this was before anybody thought Black was beautiful, so there was nothing but a bunch of skinny white girls prancin around, showin off too much cleavage, wearin way too much makeup. I guess the winners were supposed to do something for the human race and become somebody later on in life.

Whatever.

I knew you didn’t need to be no white Miss America to do somethin good for folk. That’s why I became a nurse. I got the calling to help people at a really young age. Everybody look at me knew I was gonna be a nurse or doctor, one. Not too many women doctors back in the day, so I always felt like I’d have a better chance at becoming a nurse. Especially since so many folk expected Black womens to take care of’m. Daddy always told me and Sadie we could be whatever we wanted to be, something to make Mama proud and respect her memory. Mama died givin birth to Sadie, so whenever Sadie got sick, I took care of her. I was tenyearsold going on thirtyfive. Daddy did the best he could, but it was hard raising two girls all by himself.

All the kids in school useda call me the First Aid Girl cause I was always the first one who wanted to and knew how to clean up the little cuts and scrapes a bunch of high energy kids was liable to get during a fifteen-minute recess. I was set up to put the school nurse out of business at the ripe old age of twelve. Once, this white girl called me Florence Nightingale. I didn’t know who the hell she was, but I figured she musta been somebody special with a name like that.

I started nursing down at Deaconess Hospital in the emergency room. A lot of trauma. After seventeen years, that wore me out. As much as I felt alive and important, this woman knew when to stop. In the early eighties, I left all that behind and ended up working at Boston City Hospital in the STD Clinic. I thought there would be less trauma.

That was about the time when all these folks, mostly young boys, started comin in with all kinda diseases. Diseases I hadn’t seen the need to treat since I started nursing. Usually, a shot in the butt or a week or two of drugs would cure’m up, but the same ones be back in a matter of weeks or months with something else. I don’t wanna bore yall with the clinical names of these things, but I hadn’t seen the likes of this in all my years nursin. Later, I’d see some of the boys I treated walkin around the hospitals with splotches all over their bodies, looking old and skinny. Some were admitted one day, dead the next.

Folks in the business started callin it gay cancer. Gay cancer. I didn’t know much at the time, but I knew it was more than some gay cancer. Nobody wanted to say anythang about the street folks, a lot of’m with tracks running all up they arms. I tell you a fool knows what that’s all about, and it’s a damned shame, I tell you, a damned shame. Nobody wanted to say anythang about the young girls and their babies who was comin in with the same symptoms. Nobody wanted to say anythang about that woman who got the blood transfusion. She was a young, white, married woman with three children who turned up in the emergency room with the same kinda pneumonia they found in one of them pregnant prostitutes. I tried to find out all I could, but there wasn’t too many places I could read about it that I could really understand.

Then the church started burying all these young Black boys. Mt. Zion Baptist Church was having more funerals than revivals and prayer meetings. There was Ronelle from choir. And I’m telling you that boy sang like a bluebird, yes he did. We lost something really special when he passed. And there was Charmain, the organist before Paulie. He could raise the roof off the church the ways he made them organ pipes testify. And then there was Dwayne Mcghee, Arthur and Wanda’s only son who had just won a scholarship to Yale that he never got a chance to use. And these boys wasn’t being shot up in the head on the streets neither.

Before you knew it, folks started burying sons you never even knew they had.

Right now, there’s this frail child that sits in the front pew most Sundays who nobody talks to. If he takes communion, nobody drinks after him. Now it’s been said that he Hattie Mae’s boy, but you’d think the two of them didn’t even know each other. Like I said, I don’t like to talk about folk like they do me sometimes, but if that there downright uptight righteous woman can’t even deal with her own flesh and blood...

Don’t get me started.

Being down at that clinic and treatin all those young boys, I got to worryin bout Richie. Like I said, my Daddy didn’t raise no fool. Do I seem like a fool to you? I put twoandtwo together real fast. That’s when I really wanted to ask Richie some questions. But I kept tellin myself to be patient. I wanted to find out how others was dealin with all of this, but nobody—and I mean nobody—was really talking. Not about the weekly funerals, not about the young girls, not about the babies, not about nothing. Even now, we know what’s causin AIDS and how folks can keep from getting it, but only a handful of folk in our community wanna talk about it. And for all the information and scoldin I’ve given out to a bunch of strangers over the past seventeen years, I still can’t bring myself to raise it with my own hard-headed boy.

And it’s not as if Richie hadn’t given me the opportunity to say somethin. He moved outta here not too long ago so he could have some privacy—that’s what he says anyway. He used to bring me by flowers every weekend, but lately, he ain’t been comin by as much. He calls to tell me he’s been busy.

But I know better. So I pushes him on it a little bit. He finally admitted that he been seein somebody. “This is the Real Thing Rosie,” he says. That’s what he likes to call me. He wants me to meet him.

Humph. Real Thang, my ass. I still can’t see how homosexuals can have the Real Thang. I try not to let it matter. But Richie won’t let up. Here he is tryin to get me to cook dinner and have’m over.

Now, I ain’t no fool. This must be something serious. I don’t get how they do things, old fashioned as I can be sometimes, but I know this must be making him happy, because when I do see him, he’s walkin round glowin like a pregnant woman.

I do worry, though.

Did I tell you that in the midst of all of this confusion and loss, I became famous? No, not because I was one of a handful of Blackfolk tryin to do anything about AIDS. That woulda been too much like right. This was different. I walked into the Talented Tenth, that Black bookstore we had some years back, and staring back at me from the shelf was a book with my name on it in large print.

I like to fell out. I don’t who I was named after, if anybody, and I never known nobody with my name. But then here I was on the cover of a book written by some Black girl named Sherley Anne Williams. Well, Alice Walker had nothing but good things to say about it, and since I liked that The Color Purple so much, I decided to pick up my namesake off the shelf.

Fifteen minutes of fame for a book I didn’t even write.

It don’t get no better than that.

I FINALLY GAVE IN. I decided to go on and cook dinner for Richie and this Real Thang he was talkin about. I don’t know what got into me, whether it was God or the Devil himself. Whatever it was, I couldn’t beat it. So I used it.

On that Friday, I had a most interesting day at the clinic. My last patient was this young, pale white boy who came in for a gonorrhea treatment. He had it in rectum. Yes, this may be more than you want to know, but even in the age of AIDS, folks are still gettin gonorrhea in the back side cause they ain’t using precautions. Most boys seem to be immune to the shame that goes along with this, especially when I wrinkles my brow. But I could see this boy was different: he was wracked with guilt: so I unwrinkled my brow. I didn’t want to get all in his business, but I have to do a brief interview about his recent history of sexual partners anyway so they can come in for treatment. I try to be as understanding as a woman like me can, but I didn’t hesitate to have a serious discussion with him about his choices in this day and age.

He didn’t really wanna focus in on what all his guilt was about, but I got the feeling it went much further than just not using precautions. But I didn’t push. He probably wouldn’t tell me any more than I needed to know. Not really my business no how. So I scheduled his test-of-cure appointment, sent him on his way, wrapped things up at the clinic, and went on my way. I had enough of my own goin on anyhow. I had to pick up my groceries.

Everything seemed like it wanted to take forever that Friday night. I waited on that bus stop for what seemed an eternity. I swear that bus didn’t wanna come, no matter how many cigarettes I lit up. When I finally got to the store, the clerk behind the register, this new girl I’d never seen before, had to check on the prices for nearly everythang I bought. She was slow as molasses in January. I knew I shouldna got in her line. It gave me much more time than I needed to get nervous about dinner. Hell, I went on and splurged a little bit and got me a cab home from the grocery store.

Now, no matter what the situation, I wasn’t gonna let no friend of my boy get secondary treatment, so I decided to cook up a nice downhome meal for us: collard greens with smoked turkey—I don’t use ham hocks no more, not since my cholesterol has gotten kinda high—country fried chicken, hotwater cornbread, candied yams, smothered corn, fried green tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, some hot peppers, a little leftover ham, and sweet potato pie for dessert.

Since everything was takin forever that Friday night, I got a late start: I’m sure you must know that the doorbell rings much earlier than I want it to. I turn down the stove, pull in a good breath, and go to open the door. Richie comes on in, and here comes a skinny little white boy after him. I do a doubletake and wouldn’t you know, it’s the same boy I saw not three hours earlier at the clinic. I like to fell out.

You shoulda seen the look on his face.

“Rosie—Rosie—Rosie!” is all I hear Richie say at first. Once he gets my attention, he says, all proudlike, “Auntie Rosie, this is my lover, Timothy.”

Lover? Humph. And white at that. Umph, umph, umph. You gonna try and tell me...? Now you can call me old fashioned, but I still ain’t understandin nothin bout men, or womens for all that matter, truly lovin each other in that way. Mavis Mannery told me Agnes Head’s boy went off to Washington D.C. some years back and got married, or somethin like that, in some mass ceremony they had during some political march or rally or some such. And I’m lookin at the two of them wonderin if they gonna go off and...

Let me not even think about that.

Well, you could imagine dinner is much more difficult than I already expected it to be. I forget all about what’s on the stove and get to wonderin where Timothy picked up that gonorrhea. I can’t let myself even believe it coulda been from Richie. But since Timothy didn’t tell me nothin at the clinic, my mind starts to wandering. I know I really shouldn’t be gettin in to all his business, but my Richie’s involved and I have to talk to somebody. So when Richie comes back up in here, don’t you dare let on that I told any of this to you, all right. I don’t know what I would do if he ever found...Well, he won’t. You got that, sweetie?

We go on ahead with dinner as planned, with me and Timothy swallowin much more than the food, while Richie just sits there, still a glowin, oblivious to everything. Honey, they don’t write’m like this on them trashy TV shows. Fortunately, I didn’t burn any food, and it turns out to be the kind of meal any boy would wanna wrap his lips around. But Timothy looks at his plate like something’s growin on it. Richie shoots him a look as if to say, “Don’t ask. Just eat.” I know my boy can cook, but I’m wondering what, if at all, he’s cookin for Timothy, among other things, cause Timothy sure don’t look like he had any downhome cooking before.

By now, the pauses is pregnant enough for triplets. My mind is a spinnin out of control, and halfway through my chicken I just blurt out: “You know STDs amongst homosexuals are on the rise these days.”

Timothy drops his fork and spits out his cornbread. Richie tries to clean up the cornbread but his elbow knocks his wine all over the tablecloth and in his plate. I reach over to try and save his food and get corn gravy all over the front of my new blouse.

It’s a mess all right.

“Rosie this is not the appropriate dinner table conversation,” Richie says, pretty calm for the situation, which, I must say, surprises me. But I’m even more surprised when I look closely at the two of them: I reckon from how they each react that Richie don’t know nothin bout Timothy’s little visit to the clinic and I look at Timothy in a completely different way. He excuses himself to go to the bathroom. That’s when Richie goes off: “Whada think you’re doing? You ain’t never brought any of that safe sex preachin at me—ever—much less to the dinner table and in front of my new—have you lost—? I know you care, Rosie. I do. But you need to save that partyline for the faggots who really need it and leave me and mine out of it!”

“Now baby, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me. I told you this wasn’t gone be easy. But I just—Look. Are you bein safe? Ain’t no tellin what you might pick up from this here boy,” I say. I’m trying my best to watch my mouth. I don’t know whether to blurt it all out or not. After so many years of nursing, of course, patient confidentiality keeps my mouth closed about some things easier than others. But my own flesh and blood could already have some infection or might get something from this boy this very night, seein as it takes a couple days for that treatment to get rid of everything, and I feel as if I oughtta be able to say something.

Timothy comes back from the bathroom and puts a momentary end to my confusion. He tells Richie he thought it best that he get going. He comes over to me, looks all sheepish in my eyes, and thanks me for the meal. Now, under the circumstances, this is quite gracious, so at least I know he was raised right. He and Richie exchange something over by the door. Richie comes back and tells me that he’s leavin too. And I’m left sitting there, alone, with a big old mess on the table.

How many places a day can go.

Richie ain’t been back by to see me since. I don’t know what to think about any of it. Maybe Richie’s the reason why Timothy seemed so guilty. Or maybe even Richie is the one—Oh no, no, no: I can’t think that about my boy.

Please don’t tell him I told you all of this. But when he comes in tomorrow, please tell him that I miss—well...

No. Don’t say nothing.

I just hope my boy’s gonna be… all right.


©2006 by Craig Hickman. All rights reserved.

The Presidential Election and Black Manhood

MICHELLE BERNARD has been all over the map this election cycle. She was one of the few analysts to point out that Barack Obama had to be the Jackie Robinson of politics just to get the nomination. He could never show anger or too much emotion.

When Sarah Palin was added to the Republican ticket, Bernard, a Republican-leaning independent, was ecstatic to see a conservative woman on a national ticket for the first time in history. She lost all logic a she extolled the virtues of that backwater sociopath from the last frontier that my mother calls the Lady from the North Pole.

But after Obama defeated McCain, she regained sanity.

When all was said and done, Bernard showed once more why she was one of my favorite analysts throughout this election cycle.

So I Be Written In The Book Of Love

KEITH OLBERMANN gets this right. A conservative Christian responds:

I know this is a hot topic, and I apologize profusely about it, but this is important and I guess I have a different take on it than some on KOS. I am a christian, who before today, was completely against gay marriage. To this, I am ashamed. I have lived my life with such 'values' of morality and right and wrong shoved down my throat all my life. It's hard to see past it. It is hard to understand or escape from the views you were raised to believe... but I have. I have risen above the majority christian standards of how life should be. I now understand.

Because this isn't about yelling and this isn't about politics. This is about the human heart and if that sounds corny... so be it.

The strong religious debaters are saying that this will hurt our children and hinder adoptions and doctors and even photographers. They say gay marriage will ruin our heterosexual lives and that it will hurt our rights and our privileges as Americans. What about their rights? What about their privileges. I now see why my former view was wrong. Why the majority of Christians are wrong.

I find myself at this moment torn. I am torn between what I was raised to believe and what I know in my heart is true. But this I do know, what is the difference between hammering to your children that they must follow their parents religious beliefs and giving gays the right to marry? I believe the first statement is far worse and deadening. Ted Haggard is a great example. This man was a strong christian and he ran a very large evangelical church in Colorado. What did we find out though? He was having a homosexual relationship with a male hooker. This was because he was suppressed of his sexuality all of his life, until the truth finally came to be revealed. This is what indoctrinating our children does.I have been indoctrinated and today I have been set free. I no longer hold the views of the anti gay marriage far right.

It seems as if the conservative christians have forgotten what Jesus' message was about. It was about love and it was about acceptance. As I recall from scripture, the pharisees didn't like this. So why do we twist the words of Jesus Christ to fit our views. Why do we use the bible as a weapon to destroy the hope of people? This makes no sense. My eyes have been open today and I can finally see. Tomorrow I will be dubbed as a 'victim of the gay agenda' This statement in general is horrendous. There is no 'gay agenda' there are people, people who want to get married. They want a damned certificate that says they are bound forever. But we wont give them that, because we are afraid our children will be gay? Are you serious!?

Is America this far gone? Can we only come so far only to be stopped by a wall that we refuse to climb over. We abolished slavery because we realized it was wrong. We gave women the right to vote because not doing so was wrong. We stopped imprisoning Japanese Americans because it was wrong. When are we going to realize that prohibiting gay marriage is wrong. Has anyone on the right seen that this makes a gay person less of an American... that we would prohibit their rights. It is not redefining the constitution... rather it is realization that gays are people. They are Americans... and they deserve every single right and every single privilege that you are me do.

So, to Mr Olbermann: Thank you. I hope there are many others that are effected by your words. I hope there are many others that change their minds, because this matters. I sat there with goosebumps as you spoke because I was appalled by my own beliefs and now I see and I admit to everyone that reads this simple blog that I was wrong and I am sorry. This is America. I think 52% of California forgot that.

California: Next time you consider raising millions of useless dollars into a hate campaign: try donating it to charity, feed the hungry, create missions trips to 3rd world countries, help the elderly, help donate to build hospitals, put money into cancer research... anything that isn't spreading indoctrinated propaganda that further spreads fear and hate.

1 Corinthians 13:13
"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

Bill Moyers: ‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This’

THIS WHOLE situation still makes me hurt. Makes me unable to organize my thoughts and feelings into a language anybody but I can understand. All I can do is share the words of others who've been able to wrap their minds around it, because much as I try, I still can't.

And it makes me hurt.

Beware the terrible simplifiers.

PA Governor Ed Rendell Praises Louis Farrakhan

IN FARRAKHAN'S presence. In a Nation of Islam Church. In Philadelphia. Gov. Rendell invited Farrakhan to Philadelphia. Does this mean that Hillary Rodham Nixon, who boasts Gov. Rendell as her most powerful surrogate in Pennsylvania, has a Farrakhan problem? The she needs to reject and denounce Gov. Rendell?

I guess she hasn't been thoroughly vetted after all. Or, there's simply a glaring double standard at work here.

What say you?

UPDATED
Here's the article that appeared in the NY Times in 1997.

Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia

Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the Audacity of Truth

By Tim Wise,

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.

Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.

But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--occasionally Barack Obama's pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity--for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go--these last words being the first ones uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an "angry black man" like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.

But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.

Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn't he say that America "got what it deserved" on 9/11? And didn't he say that black people should be singing "God Damn America" because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?

Well actually, no he didn't.

Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around--a notion with longstanding theological grounding--and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack on ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.

He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and "never batted an eye." That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and "save American lives."

But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman's own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we're the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would "never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are."

And Wright didn't say blacks should be singing "God Damn America." He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn't happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although one can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don't believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn on America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.

Finally, although one can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks--and I do, for instance--it is worth pointing out that Wright isn't the only one who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the one white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in the very same thing back in the early '90s in an interview on CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed "undesirable" including gays and racial minorities.

So that's the truth of the matter: Wright made one comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America's favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been one of those "prosperity ministers" who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Falwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.

What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock--though make no mistake, they already knew it--is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism on American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, one in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not on that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.

But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.

This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:

White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded--about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac.

And so we were shocked in 1987, when Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, because, as he noted, most of that history had been one of overt racism and injustice, and to his way of thinking, the only history worth celebrating had been that of the past three or four decades.

We were shocked to learn that black people actually believed that a white cop who was a documented racist might frame a black man; and we're shocked to learn that lots of black folks still perceive the U.S. as a racist nation--we're literally stunned that people who say they experience discrimination regularly (and who have the social science research to back them up) actually think that those experiences and that data might actually say something about the nation in which they reside. Imagine.

Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the "shining city on a hill," for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do--and this is true even for millions of black veterans--for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like "God Bless America," for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.



Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I've seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country--when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as "Negro Barbecues," involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to onlookers. They are stunned to learn that postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.

Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade--an excising of truth and an assault on memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.



Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not only extraordinarily incomplete, in that it so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. In that sense, and what few if any white Americans appear capable of grasping at present, is that "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best," portray an America so divorced from the reality of the times in which they were produced, as to raise serious questions about the sanity of those who found them so moving, so accurate, so real. These iconographic representations of life in the U.S. are worse than selective, worse than false, they are assaults to the humanity and memory of black people, who were being savagely oppressed even as June Cleaver did housework in heels and laughed about the hilarious hijinks of Beaver and Larry Mondello.



These portraits of America are certifiable evidence of how disconnected white folks were--and to the extent we still love them and view them as representations of the "good old days" to which we wish we could return, still are--from those men and women of color with whom we have long shared a nation. Just two months before "Leave it to Beaver" debuted, proposed civil rights legislation was killed thanks to Strom Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. One month prior, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to block black students from entering Little Rock Central High; and nine days before America was introduced to the Cleavers, and the comforting image of national life they represented, those black students were finally allowed to enter, amid the screams of enraged, unhinged, viciously bigoted white people, who saw nothing wrong with calling children niggers in front of cameras. That was America of the 1950s: not the sanitized version into which so many escape thanks to the miracle of syndication, which merely allows white people to relive a lie, year after year after year.

No, it is not the pastor who distorts history; Nick at Nite and your teenager's textbooks do that. It is not he who casts aspersions upon "this great country" as Barack Obama put it in his public denunciations of him; it is the historic leadership of the nation that has cast aspersions upon it; it is they who have cheapened it, who have made gaudy and vile the promise of American democracy by defiling it with lies. They engage in a patriotism that is pathological in its implications, that asks of those who adhere to it not merely a love of country but the turning of one's nation into an idol to be worshipped, if not literally, then at least in terms of consequence.

It is they--the flag-lapel-pin wearing leaders of this land--who bring shame to the country with their nonsensical suggestions that we are always noble in warfare, always well-intended, and although we occasionally make mistakes, we are never the ones to blame for anything. Nothing that happens to us has anything to do with us at all. It is always about them. They are evil, crazy, fanatical, hate our freedoms, and are jealous of our prosperity. When individuals prattle on in this manner we diagnose them as narcissistic, as deluded. When nations do it--when our nation does--we celebrate it as though it were the very model of rational and informed citizenship.

So what can we say about a nation that values lies more than it loves truth? A place where adherence to sincerely believed and internalized fictions allows one to rise to the highest offices in the land, and to earn the respect of millions, while a willingness to challenge those fictions and offer a more accurate counter-narrative earns one nothing but contempt, derision, indeed outright hatred? What we can say is that such a place is signing its own death warrant. What we can say is that such a place is missing the only and last opportunity it may ever have to make things right, to live up to its professed ideals. What we can say is that such a place can never move forward, because we have yet to fully address and come to terms with that which lay behind.

What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell one after another essential truth are demonized, not only for the stridency of their tone--which needless to say scares white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma--but for merely calling bullshit on those whose lies are swallowed whole?

And oh yes, I said it: white preachers lie. In fact, they lie with a skill, fluidity, and precision unparalleled in the history of either preaching or lying, both of which histories stretch back a ways and have often overlapped. They lie every Sunday, as they talk about a Savior they have chosen to represent dishonestly as a white man, in every picture to be found of him in their tabernacles, every children's story book in their Sunday Schools, every Christmas card they'll send to relatives and friends this December. But to lie about Jesus, about the one they consider God--to bear false witness as to who this man was and what he looked like--is no cause for concern.

Nor is it a problem for these preachers to teach and preach that those who don't believe as they believe are going to hell. Despite the fact that such a belief casts aspersions upon God that are so profound as to defy belief--after all, they imply that God is so fundamentally evil that he would burn non-believers in a lake of eternal fire--many of the white folks who now condemn Jeremiah Wright welcome that theology of hate. Indeed, back when President Bush was the Governor of Texas, he endorsed this kind of thinking, responding to a question about whether Jews were going to go to hell, by saying that unless one accepted Jesus as one's personal savior, the Bible made it pretty clear that indeed, hell was where you'd be heading.

So you can curse God in this way--and to imply such hate on God's part is surely to curse him--and in effect, curse those who aren't Christians, and no one says anything. That isn't considered bigoted. That isn't considered beyond the pale of polite society. One is not disqualified from becoming President in the minds of millions because they go to a church that says that shit every single week, or because they believe it themselves. And millions do believe it, and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

So white folks are mad at Jeremiah Wright because he challenges their views about their country. Meanwhile, those same white folks, and their ministers and priests, every week put forth a false image of the God Jeremiah Wright serves, and yet it is whites who feel we have the right to be offended.

Pardon me, but something is wrong here, and whatever it is, is not to be found at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Spike Lee Says the Right Thing

Spike Lee stands before Danny Aiello, the racist owner in Do the Right Thing

TO NEW YORK Magazine:

What do you think of Obama?

I’m riding my man Obama. I think he’s a visionary. Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I said, “Thank God I made it. Otherwise you would have taken her to Soul Man. Michelle would have been like, ‘What’s wrong with this brother?’ ”

Does this mean you’re down on the Clintons?
The Clintons, man, they would lie on a stack of Bibles. Snipers? That’s not misspeaking; that’s some pure bullshit. I voted for Clinton twice, but that’s over with. These old black politicians say, “Ooh, Massuh Clinton was good to us, massuh hired a lot of us, massuh was good!” Hoo! Charlie Rangel, David Dinkins—they have to understand this is a new day. People ain’t feelin’ that stuff. It’s like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean.

Some folks will say this language is divisive. That it undermines the unity that Obama seeks to inspire. Those folks might have a point.

But there is a mindset among many people that the Clintons are the saviors of Black people in this nation. President Clinton apologized for slavery, after all, didn't he? He was the "first Black president," right? He found refuge in the Black church, even had Reverend Jeremiah Wright come to the White House and pray for him at the impeachment hour, didn't he? He set up shop in Harlem after his second term because he felt so at home, so close to soul food, right? He's always been a friend, his loyalists say, to Black people, despite all the compelling evidence to the contrary, hasn't he?


Reverend Wright stands before Bill Clinton at the White House

But here's the thing: the Clintons have shown in this very campaign that the votes of the Black electorate are expendable. Instead of defending Reverend Wright and the Black Church, the Clintons are pushing the Wright controversy on the nation like Nixon segregationists and Dixiecrats to solidify the racist vote. But what's even more insulting, the Clintons think Black people will come back to the fold en masse should the Clintons succeed with their race baiting and secure the nomination by any means necessary.

Spike Lee has never minced his words. Has never hesitated to air our dirty laundry. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then put School Daze at the top of your Netflix queue. Black people can be complicit in their own oppression. Some call it internalized racism. Others call it the mindset of the House Negro. That's what Lee is talking about here.

And he's right.

This is a huge tidal wave, writes a commenter in the blogosphere. Shaped and hardened by this nation's collective experience. Many people are poised to end up on the wrong side of history, swept aside because of their refusal to embrace this transformational energy. While the number of folks who understand that something special is happening grows, there remains a considerable amount of people who utterly lack this foresight. In the end it will be those who wish to revel in a glory long since passed being washed away by a nation determined to create new foundations for glory yet to be realized.

Letter From Birmingham Jail

August 1963

WHILE CONFINED here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in"

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here ...I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider ...

We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience ...

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality ...

There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws ...

I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here ...If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands ...

Never before have I written a letter this long—or should I say a book? I'm afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Barack Obama's Remarks on 40th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Assassination

TODAY REPRESENTS a tragic anniversary for our country. Through his faith, courage, and wisdom, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. moved an entire nation. He preached the gospel of brotherhood; of equality and justice. That's the cause for which he lived – and for which he died forty years ago today. And so before we begin, I ask you to join me in a moment of silence in memory of this extraordinary American.

There's been a lot of discussion this week about how Dr. King's life and legacy speak to us today. It's taking place in our schools and churches, on television and around the dinner table. And I suspect that much of what folks are talking about centers on issues of racial justice – on the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington, on the freedom rides and the stand at Selma.

And that's as it should be – because those were times when ordinary men and women, straight-backed and clear-eyed, challenged what they knew was wrong and helped perfect our union. And they did so in large part because Dr. King pointed the way.

But I also think it's worth reflecting on what Dr. King was doing in Memphis, when he stepped onto that motel balcony on his way out for dinner.

And what he was doing was standing up for struggling sanitation workers. For years, these workers had served their city without complaint, picking up other people's trash for little pay and even less respect. Passers-by would call them "walking buzzards," and in the segregated South, most were forced to use separate drinking fountains and bathrooms.

But in 1968, these workers decided they'd had enough, and over 1,000 went on strike. Their demands were modest – better wages, better benefits, and recognition of their union. But the opposition was fierce. Their vigils were met with handcuffs. Their protests turned back with mace. And at the end of one march, a 16-year old boy lay dead.

This is the struggle that brought Dr. King to Memphis. It was a struggle for economic justice, for the opportunity that should be available to people of all races and all walks of life. Because Dr. King understood that the struggle for economic justice and the struggle for racial justice were really one – that each was part of a larger struggle "for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity." So long as Americans were trapped in poverty, so long as they were being denied the wages, benefits, and fair treatment they deserved – so long as opportunity was being opened to some but not all – the dream that he spoke of would remain out of reach.

And on the eve of his death, Dr. King gave a sermon in Memphis about what the movement there meant to him and to America. And in tones that would prove eerily prophetic, Dr. King said that despite the threats he'd received, he didn't fear any man, because he had been there when Birmingham aroused the conscience of this nation. And he'd been there to see the students stand up for freedom by sitting in at lunch counters. And he'd been there in Memphis when it was dark enough to see the stars, to see the community coming together around a common purpose. So Dr. King had been to the mountaintop. He had seen the Promised Land. And while he knew somewhere deep in his bones that he would not get there with us, he knew that we would get there.

He knew it because he had seen that Americans have "the capacity," as he said that night, "to project the 'I' into the 'thou.'" To recognize that no matter what the color of our skin, no matter what faith we practice, no matter how much money we have – no matter whether we are sanitation workers or United States Senators – we all have a stake in one another, we are our brother's keeper, we are our sister's keeper, and "either we go up together, or we go down together."

And when he was killed the following day, it left a wound on the soul of our nation that has yet to fully heal. And in few places was the pain more pronounced than in Indianapolis, where Robert Kennedy happened to be campaigning. And it fell to him to inform a crowded park that Dr. King had been killed. And as the shock turned toward anger, Kennedy reminded them of Dr. King's compassion, and his love. And on a night when cities across the nation were alight with violence, all was quiet in Indianapolis.

In the dark days after Dr. King's death, Coretta Scott King pointed out the stars. She took up her husband's cause and led a march in Memphis. But while those sanitation workers eventually got their union contract, the struggle for economic justice remains an unfinished part of the King legacy. Because the dream is still out of reach for too many Americans. Just this morning, it was announced that more Americans are unemployed now than at any time in years. And all across this country, families are facing rising costs, stagnant wages, and the terrible burden of losing a home.

Part of the problem is that for a long time, we've had a politics that's been too small for the scale of the challenges we face. This is something I spoke about a few weeks ago in a speech I gave in Philadelphia. And what I said was that instead of having a politics that lives up to Dr. King's call for unity, we've had a politics that's used race to drive us apart, when all this does is feed the forces of division and distraction, and stop us from solving our problems.

That is why the great need of this hour is much the same as it was when Dr. King delivered his sermon in Memphis. We have to recognize that while we each have a different past, we all share the same hopes for the future – that we'll be able to find a job that pays a decent wage, that there will be affordable health care when we get sick, that we'll be able to send our kids to college, and that after a lifetime of hard work, we'll be able to retire with security. They're common hopes, modest dreams. And they're at the heart of the struggle for freedom, dignity, and humanity that Dr. King began, and that it is our task to complete.

You know, Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends toward justice. But what he also knew was that it doesn't bend on its own. It bends because each of us puts our hands on that arc and bends it in the direction of justice.

So on this day – of all days – let's each do our part to bend that arc.

Let's bend that arc toward justice.

Let's bend that arc toward opportunity.

Let's bend that arc toward prosperity for all.

And if we can do that and march together – as one nation, and one people – then we won't just be keeping faith with what Dr. King lived and died for, we'll be making real the words of Amos that he invoked so often, and "let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Goodby to All That

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that I haven't read this staggering essay till today? I mean: really. It's not like I don't post from or link to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish on a regular basis since I caucused in Maine, which was precisely at the same time I saw why Obama matters.

But, alas, what's true is true. Better late than never. If you haven't read it yet, you simply must. It all leads to this ending:

But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.

See how Sullivan gets there.

A Follow Up

YESTERDAY, I posted Kmiec's unlikely endorsement. Here is a follow-up interview on beliefnet. A must-read.

An Intellectual Endorsement

I BELIEVE Barack Obama's breakthrough is as spiritual as it is political. His speech about race and religion has proved it. And if you don't believe me, read this, this, and this. But I also told someone just yesterday that my gut portends the swing vote in this presidential election, so long as the superdelegates don't ruin this moment in history by overturning the will of the voters, wouldn't be white men or even white women, but the educated intellectual who "doesn't need a president" as Bill Clinton is wont to say. These intellectuals come from every party affiliation, race, ethnicity, sexuality, faith and gender.

No sooner do I make that argument than I stumble upon this endorsement by a most unlikely endorser. I'd like to say I'm shocked, but that would contradict the gut belief. Read it and applaud:

Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence, and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and that he wants to return the United States to that company of nations committed to human rights. I do not know if his earlier life experience is sufficient for the challenges of the presidency that lie ahead. I doubt we know this about any of the men or women we might select. It likely depends upon the serendipity of the events that cannot be foreseen. I do have confidence that the senator will cast his net widely in search of men and women of diverse, open-minded views and of superior intellectual qualities to assist him in the wide range of responsibilities that he must superintend.

This endorsement may be of little note or consequence, except perhaps that it comes from an unlikely source: namely, a former constitutional legal counsel to two Republican presidents. The endorsement will likely supply no strategic advantage equivalent to that represented by the very helpful accolades the senator has received from many of high stature and accomplishment, including most recently, from Gov. Bill Richardson. Nevertheless, it is important to be said publicly in a public forum in order that it be understood. It is not arrived at without careful thought and some difficulty.

As a Republican, I strongly wish to preserve traditional marriage not as a suspicion or denigration of my homosexual friends but as recognition of the significance of the procreative family as a building block of society. As a Republican and as a Catholic, I believe life begins at conception, and it is important for every life to be given sustenance and encouragement. As a Republican, I strongly believe that the Supreme Court of the United States must be fully dedicated to the rule of law and to the employ of a consistent method of interpretation that keeps the court within its limited judicial role. As a Republican, I believe problems are best resolved closest to their source and that we should never arrogate to a higher level of government that which can be more effectively and efficiently resolved below. As a Republican and a constitutional lawyer, I believe religious freedom does not mean religious separation or mindless exclusion from the public square.

In various ways, Sen. Barack Obama and I may disagree on aspects of these important fundamentals, but I am convinced, based upon his public pronouncements and his personal writing, that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view and, as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them.

No doubt some of my friends will see this as a matter of party or intellectual treachery. I regret that, and I respect their disagreement. But they will readily agree that as Republicans, we are first Americans. As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or a clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment. Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen.

Sept. 11 and the radical Islamic ideology that it represents is a continuing threat to our safety, and the next president must have the honesty to recognize that it, as author Paul Berman has written, "draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe and with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined. ... wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, then naïve observers might suppose." Sen. Obama needs to address this extremist movement with the same clarity and honesty with which he has addressed the topic of race in America. Effective criticism of the incumbent for diverting us from this task is a good start, but it is incomplete without a forthright outline of a commitment to undertake, with international partners, the formation of a worldwide entity that will track, detain, prosecute, convict, punish, and thereby stem radical Islam's threat to civil order. I await Sen. Obama's more extended thinking upon this vital subject as he accepts the nomination of his party and engages Sen. McCain in the general campaign discussion to come.

Douglas W. Kmiec is Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University. He served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Former Dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America, Professor Kmiec was a member of the law faculty for nearly two decades at the University of Notre Dame.

The First Genuinely 21st-Century Leader

ROGER COHEN of the New York Times, tells us why, if elected president, Barack Obama would be just that:

The China-Indonesia-Kenya-Britain-Hawaii web mirrors a world in flux. In Kenya, his uncle Sayid, a Muslim, told me: “My Islam is a hybrid, a mix of elements, including my Christian schooling and even some African ways. Many values have dissolved in me.”

Obama’s bridge-building instincts come from somewhere. They are rooted and proven. For an expectant and often alienated world, they are of central significance.

A More Perfect Union

THE SINGLE best political speech and address on race in America that I have ever heard. It was like the Gettysburg Address, Kennedy's "Ask Not" speech, and the "I Have A Dream" speech all rolled into one. And then some. It was sweeping, profound, daring, intelligent, compassionate, vulnerable, honest, visionary, and absolutely beautiful.

I was moved beyond tears. I was moved to more action.

This wise man with tremendous courage believes in us. He spoke to us as adults. I can only hope we believe as much in ourselves. That we can act like the adults we are. He makes me proud to be American, and I'm far from your conventional patriot.

Jews & Blacks

THE FIRST paper I ever wrote in college had to do with the history of Jews and Blacks in this nation beginning with the founding of the NAACP.

One of the most important pieces of theater I've ever seen was Anna Deavere Smith's startling performance of Fires in the Mirror which dealt with the 1991 Crown Heights riots.

So, during last night's debate, when Tim Russert asked Barack Obama about the recent pseudo-endorsement he received from Louis Farrakhan, I braced. Obama denounced it out of hand. He denounced Farrakhan's anti-Semitism out of hand. He denounced Farrakhan himself out of hand.

If you are one of those who believes Senator Clinton's claims that the media was giving her opponent a free pass, that pass expired last night. Ironically, Clinton exploited Obama's denouncement hoping to score points by presenting an anecdote that she was more against anti-Semitism than Obama by claiming she rejected (not denounced) support from an alleged anti-Semitic group in her 2000 bid for the US Senate.

I'd like to say I was shocked by her petty but insulting pandering, but I wasn't. But enough about Senator Clinton.

I was more concerned with how Jewish-American voters who watched the debate perceived Obama around Jewish-Black relations and the state of Israel. Today, Shmuel Rosner provided an answer:

Obama spoke about this same issue a few days ago as he was meeting a group of Jewish activists in Cleveland. Some who attended the event and do not belong to his camp said he was very convincing. "At his best," one of them said. But in the debate he was even better and was able to score again on the same topic, elaborating on something of great importance to Jewish liberals.

Just recently we were all watching The Jewish Americans series on PBS, in which the story of Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement was front and center - and the part describing how the bond between black Americans and Jewish Americans was breaking was almost puzzling.

Obama, talking about Farrakhan - and about anti-Semitism among African-Americans, which he also denounced in his speech on Martin Luther King Day - touched a sensitive nerve when he was talking about one possibility that's inherent to his candidacy: he has the chance to restore the alliance between blacks and Jews.

This will not necessarily get Obama the votes of every Jewish liberal in this country. But it is also one promise that no American liberal Jew can simply ignore.

Here's the sermon Obama gave at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to celebrate Martin Luther King Day. It's long but it's worth it.

I Have a Dream - Martin Luther King Day

I always celebrate Bayard Rustin this day as well, the openly gay Black man who organized the historic March on Washington where the great Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech.

The Concept of God

The Sistine Chapel, “Creation of Adam,” Fresco, Michelangelo, circa 1511
Did God create humankind or did humankind create God?

WHOEVER wishes to become a truly moral human being must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.

—James Baldwin
The Fire Next Time


Random House, 1995
© 1962, 1963 by James Baldwin

tags: James Baldwin, Sistine Chapel, Creation of Adam, Michelangelo, Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Fire Next Time