Kumbaya or Fire and Brimstone
How fast things change. Just a few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton was making political capital by mocking Barack Obama for being a starry-eyed dreamer:
"Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The sky will open. The lights will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect."Today, Barack Obama is being painted by others as some kind of racist black man who calls on God to rain down fire and brimstone on white America for sinning. He's being condemned for association with a firebrand preacher who has issued such calls from the pulpit of Obama's own church.
Obama is no more a racist than he is a starry-eyed dreamer. Both caricatures are attempts by his political opponents to undermine him and his call for a end to the politics of personal destruction that has corroded public discourse in this country, a call to turn the page, a call to change.
Make no mistake. Obama's association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a problem that can do serious harm to Obama's campaign, even if guilt by association is unjustified. Many voters will hear only the sound bites, decide that Wright preaches racism and nothing else, and that Obama buys into everything Wright says, no matter that they cannot point to anything Obama himself has ever said or done that is racist. Just the fact that Obama didn't leave the church years ago is enough to condemn him in many people's minds.
Instead, Obama denounces the expressions of anger and division by the Rev. Wright, without disowning the man who brought him to Jesus, the man who also preaches a message of hope and renewal for his black community. Obama filters the good from the bad to craft his own positive, uplifting message of change. A unifier can emerge from a church that sometimes harbors anger and frustration. This should not be surprising. One who has personally experienced the polarizing effects of race in America from both sides understands the kind of change America needs. Obama's own background (white, black, Hawaii, Kenya, Kansas, Indonesia, Harvard, south Chicago, Washington DC) positions him to rise above the crippling effects of racial divisions in America. If America turns its back on Obama for things his pastor said, the racial divide will only deepen. America would be the loser, not Obama.
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