Like many other African-Americans of my age group (34) and older, I am, in large measure a product of the African-American church. A multifaceted and multipurpose institution that, since the times of slavery, has served a myriad functions. Community center, spiritual base, social networking hub and nexus of political organization. It was the rock-solid foundation of the black church that first gave voice to brave visionaries such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others. We, as an African-American people, have always been able to rely on the guidance, the stability and the leadership of the church in times of peril and in times of joy. It served as our collective backbone as the physical shackles of slavery fell, emboldened us to stand up for our rights as the social and bureaucratic bonds of Jim Crow were broken and as a new generation began to take their place, slowly but surely, in the halls of academia, business, entertainment and public life in this country.
With that said, there is another side of many black churches and their teachings that doesn't get publicized to outsiders. You won't find these sermons on days when the Clintons or any other non-minority guests are sitting up on the stage.
As much as the themes of promise and hope and optimism for the future are preached in many circles of African-American spiritual life, so, too, are the motifs of victimhood and remembering the pain and scorn and 'the white man's out to getcha'. It is infused, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly, right along with the lessons learned of Paul on the road to Damascus and the Sermon on the Mount. It is burned into the mind of many small black children that he is not American but he is African-American and he will encounter a wall of hatred, a nation ready to scorn and mock and step on him if he is too successful or too unapologetic. It preaches that there are two Americas and two sets of rules that he, unfortunately, is on the wrong side of. Even if that child's path is unimpeded, that paranoia that this programming and those lessons manifested still exist. Every time a scowl is thrown our way or a taxicab fails to see our hail, we wonder...'was that it?...was that the vile racist scourge preparing to eat me up?'...or was it just a person having a bad day or a daydreaming taxi driver who missed the opportunity for a fare.
Here in 2008, many black preachers like Jeremiah Wright take their sermons almost directly from the pages of sermon books from the 1960s without regard or care that we are in a new time. Without pause to think that maybe, just maybe, we have finally overcome. Maybe we finally did reach that Promised Land that Martin talked about just days before his death. Maybe the social medicine that America was forced to take some 40 years ago has cured the patient. Maybe we are in a post-racial time after all.
The problem is this. Old school pastors like Wright, like the Reverend Al Sharpton and many others cannot fathom this. They cannot understand that while individual instances of racism or classism or sexism will always exist, the institutionalized barriers to the success of African-Americans throughout the country have been smashed to bits. There will always be individual instances of redlining or racial violence or intolerance but to hold every white American accountable for the actions of a shrinking few only keeps the wounds open. Only keeps those forces that Barack mentioned yesterday, those who use hate as their sword and intolerance and bigotry as their shield, emboldened and justified in their sick way of thinking.
You'll hear differently in younger African-American churches. Congregations with members who only know a world with a free Nelson Mandela, where the best golfer in the world has brown skin and the prospect of becoming a success is not a pipe dream as it was for their parents. A world where college is a reality and making it out of the hood does not have to include a basketball, a microphone or a gun. It's a beautiful world where any man or woman can take hold of their own destiny and make it closer to their American Dream. We are there.
For whatever reason, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is insisting on making himself a central character in the sideshow that has become the quest for the Democratic Nomination for President. For some reason, he's chosen this crucial time to be as vocal, as incendiary and as divisive as he can be.
Rev. Wright is a very intelligent man and he knows that such a distraction, such polarizing speech as he's been engaging in, will do nothing but harm to Barack Obama's chances not just for the nomination but against John McCain in the general election. I pray that this is not the ULTIMATE instance of 'crabs in a barrel'. That Wright is not somehow fueled with some sort of personal vendetta against Barack and has thus taken up a cause to ruin his chances at the office. That would be, without a doubt, the highest form of treason against black America. To cause the downfall of the first African-American Presidential hopeful, 40 years after the death of Martin Luther King, to quench the flames of your own ego.
End of the day, Obama is handling all this the right way and he's still on track to win the nomination and the Presidency but this act by this one preacher, hopefully, will get many in the African-American community taking longer, harder looks at what we're being taught and led to believe about our own potential and our place in this country. And, honestly, what some in the pulpit are prepared to do to make sure that we don't achieve TOO much as to invalidate their politics of division, their sermons of victimhood and their profitable agenda of displaced blame.
