Today Barack Obama took the high road. He offered his version of what "race" is in this country and it was honest, pointed and necessary. It was necessary to further illustrate that despite ill advised assumptions, America is NOT a black/white nation. America is a nation that looks like Barack Obama; that looks like George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton; that looks like Bill Richardson. It is a nation that looks White, Black, Asian and Latino. We are a nation that looks poor, wealthy and in-between. To reduce these issues to "minute" details of our society yet tear each other apart because of these same details, is to deny the essence of what the nation is and has become. It is also a nation that despite these things still at times wants to pretend to be only black or white.
This weekend, I went to dinner with a group of nine friends. My two Filipino sisters were the first to arrive, then me, a short African American woman, with her very tall white significant other and followed quickly by two more black women, a Jewish cancer survivor, two red heads and another tall man. We sat around our table; a microcosm of America situated in the small but diverse community of Louisville, Kentucky. In Kentucky, we are America. We represent what happens across this nation in smaller towns and bigger states and cities than our own. We don’t come together and ignore that we are all different. We celebrate and toast to the differences we have and the joy that we have found as friends for years. We acknowledge each other and we stand by one another unequivocally.
Having said this, at times each of us has made a statement or done something to anger and rouse the disagreement of others in the group and yet we do not disown the offending person. We argue it out. We disagree. We fuss. We sometimes cry but we do not go away. We do not send them away. We solve the problem. America, too often, thinks that sending a problem away will make it disappear. This is not the case.
Ignoring our problems does not make them disappear. Disowning our friends, family, and pastors does not make them go away. Barack did what he should have done, disagreed with his friend. That is ALL he needs to do. He in no way is obligated to appease those who somehow believe sending Dr. Wright away will eliminate the "problem". The way that Dr. Wright feels is the way that many children of the civil rights movement feel. America was unfair. America still is unfair at times and American can be chided for being wrong. Just as slavery and Jim Crow were wrong, the Katrina debacle was a glaring failure of the American system. It highlighted the ugly side of this country that not only mistreats individuals because of the color of their skin but because of their disadvantaged economic situations.
New Orleans is a city that has a large black population. On the news, after Katrina, we saw many black faces but in those crowds were also Whites and Hispanics and other poverty stricken Americans. Americans. So Dr. Wright was angry about this situation, the same as so many of us who watched in absolute horror, as the images came out of Louisiana leaving us feeling helpless to do anything but cry and scream in anger at the leaders of America. We all questioned America. We should have and should always question anyone who allows the symbol of "America" to go unchallenged and without reproach for its obvious wrongs.
Obama doesn’t agree with Dr. Wright. So he said this. Dr. Wright does not agree with the politics that allowed Katrina or those that led to an event like 9/11. He said this. Even if his comments were wrong or uninformed, he disagreed with something and he made his feelings known. We all only need to do this. We don’t need to disown each other because we don’t always agree. That would be false, disingenuous and for Barack Obama it would not end the questions regarding his relationship with a man he’s known for nearly half of his lifetime.
Obama was right. America needs to be open enough to recognize his response to the "Wright" issue. Agree or disagree, but do not disown the man because he did not falsely disown someone else with whom he had a difference of opinion. That would be wrong.