Steve's criticism of HC was based on who she is having around her. Obama has had the reverend around him for 20 years.
I really disagree with you on this, Neal. What you look for in a church or a reverend is very, very different from what you look for in political advisors. There are plenty of angry and/or bitter black people around, and, frankly for good historical reasons. Especially people of Wright's generation. It is easy for white people to say that times have changed, they should give up their anger. OK, I buy it that they should "give up" their anger. But I also know and understand why many can't give it up. Just as plenty of white people can't give up their bigotry. It will take the passing of generations for this too to pass. Sure, it warps people. My father and grandfather were, in their own way, warped by the anti-semitism they experienced in their lifetimes. They built a shell of distrust about gentiles around themselves. Even when the anti-semitism was largely (but not completely) gone, they still felt that way, they still believed that it was only a matter of time before people in this country too would turn against Jews once more, and our family would have to leave. Again.
But just because Wright was scarred and warped by the racism he had experienced, just because it affected his perspective in some respects, doesn't mean that the whole man was warped. It doesn't mean that he didn't have a moral center. And it doesn't mean that Obama or any decent person couldn't sympathize with him and the church at large, accept his pastoral leadership while not accepting everything the man stood for or said. Indeed, remaining in the church was one way to counterbalance what Wright said with other members of the church. It could easily have been a way of remaining in touch with the bitter past--which was still at least a psychic reality--even while looking to the future, preparing to overcome that past. By all accounts, the church did a lot of good for the black community in Chicago. You join a church warts and all. I doubt I would completely agree with the views of any rabbi of any synogogue I would belong to. I know plenty of Catholics who disagree vehemently with much of the explicit dogma of the Church, and yet still go to Church and consider themselves good Catholics. People who have had abortions. Who have used birth control. Who actually like sex for its own sake (imagine that!).
I think you've gone overboard on the Wright business. Anyone who has experienced bigotry first hand, who has read deeply about Jim Crow and the "separate but equal" farce that existed for generations in the South, surely can grok how Wright's soul was shaped by anger and mistrust. |
