Senator Obama and Reverend Wright
In today's newspapers, I've been reading a lot about the breach in the relationship between Senator Obama and Reverend Wright. It must be a painful time for both men, as it's tough whenever a conflict occurs. I can understand both sides though. If I were Obama, I'd be angry that any person is assuming that he can speak for Obama's real feelings. I think Reverend Wright should only speak for his own opinions and not assume he can speak for Obama. It must be frustrating for Obama to have to try to defend himself for opinions that he has never espoused. I can also understand Reverend Wright's side too, though. He must be frustrated to have his words be taken out of context by the media and to have his views be caricatured.
From what I know, it seems like Obama and Wright have real differences in the way they view the world. It seems like the difference between the way a liberal views things and the way a more radical person views the world. It's something I've been interested in these past few months. I've always been left of center, but these past few months have been the first time I've thought about whether I'm a liberal or whether I'm more progressive. From what I've learned, it seems like liberals want to reform the system but basicly see the system as being sound. Radicals tend to see flaws that are too embedded in the system for reforms to be anything but band-aids and see more radical changes in the system as needed. In my ears it seems like Obama is a liberal reformer. Reverend Wright's comments seem like that of someone who is more radical.
The differences between liberals and radicals is nothing new. In the antislavery movement, there were the radical abolitionists, like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, who wanted the quick abolition of slavery and the Republicans, like Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery but were only willing to oppose the spread of slavery on any new territories. There was the difference between Susan B. Anthony, who felt the right of women to vote would lead to more power to women, and Emma Goldman, who felt that the vote was less important than radically restructuring the economic system to give women economic power.
I decided recently to look up some African American history, and found the difference between Booker T. Washington, who wanted African Americans to gain industrial skills and accomodate segregation laws and work behind the scenes for change, and W.E.B. Du Bois, who wanted a stronger more explicit fight for civil rights and integration and the educating of the best and brightest African Americans in the best colleges. There was the difference between Martin Luther King, who appealed to the conscience of America to live up to its highest American ideas to gain civil rights for African Americans, and Malcolm X, who felt more skeptical of American society and felt African Americans should learn to have pride in their heritage and culture and learn to help themselves.
It's sad that Obama and Wright had such a falling out. I personally think the radicals and the liberals need each other. I think radicals are like the canary that people used to put in mines to see if there are dangerous gases for miners. The radicals are the first to point out problems in our society and they're the first to come out with solutions. In the same way, I think a social movement needs liberals and politicians sympathetic to change to water down radical solutions and make them palatable to the rest of society. Jules Feiffer, the radical cartoonist who worked for many years in the Village Voice, said:
"I've always seen liberals as people who've taken radical ideas, whether from socialists or communists, finding ways to redefining them, relabeling them, reforming them, compromising them, and then improving the society with them. And the liberal's job generally has been to process and homogenize the more radical notions out there for some time and make them acceptable to the mass society. And to that extent, liberals have played an important part. That liberals innovate anything is questionable. But that they innovate anything worth innovating is doubtful. The innovation comes from more radical sources generally."
- Angelo Lopez's blog
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Wright was right on one claim.
Rev. Wright said one thing with which I heartily agree, our chickens have come home to roost and now the Reverend is being roasted for speaking at least one truth.
What do Iraq and Iran have in common? Oil, of course. When oil was discovered in Iran in the early 1900's the British moved in. In 1951 the Majles, the freely elected Iranian parliment passed a law, sponsored by Mohammad Mossadeq, the popular nationalist prime minister, nationalizing the British oil company. (He had the audacity to think Iran should have a fair share of the oil profits!) The Brits then withdrew. Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi attempted a coup, which failed. CIA and British intelligence organized "Operation Ajax" with conservative Iranians. It successfuly overthrew Mossadeq. The Shah returned to power, instituting western reforms.
Many conservatives Muslim clerics opposed these reforms because the Shah passed, in 1961, a Land Reform law that redistributed lands of the land owners, a minority of the populace. Among the many land owners stripped of their land was the Shi'ah Muslim religious establishment. Thus the stage was set for the 1979 revolution which saw Americans captured, held for 444 days, released and diplomatic ties severed.
In the meantime a local Iraqi thug, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni muslim, was busy gaining control of his nations oil reserves. When he finally succeeded he, too, was removed by American forces, this time military, on the pretext that he was a Muslim terrorist. Thus control of the vast middle east oil reserves has driven American middle east foreign policy since the mid 1900's.
Now folks suppose some foreign power were to come here and secretly and sucessfully overthrow our democratically elected government, and install laws and customs offensive to our culture. Would we be happy, would be not resist until we were successful in expelling the invaders? That's what happened in Iran in 1979. Supporting the Sunni Iraqi thug, in a 1980-81 war we hoped would remove the Shi'ah Muslim clerics from power, did not make us very popular in Iran, especially amongst it's clerics, one of whom inspired a radical Saudi, Osama bin Ladin, to strike at the very heart of American capitalism.
Indeed the Rev. Wright is right, at least on this one issue; our chickens have some home to roost.
Rich
re Obama and Wright
Interesting comments, Angelo. I don't see, however, where the Rev. Wright claimed to be speaking "for" Obama's real feelings. Rather, he gave his opinion that Obama did what was politically necessary to distance himself from statements that he didn't dare to be associated with. That's an implied criticism, of course, and the pundits certainly picked up on that, even after the rather low-key Bill Moyers Journal interview. That would naturally irritate Obama -- but I think the Rev. Wright was very right on that point. I think most of his 'inflammatory' statements are quite reasonable, and the rest are at least defensible, but it would be a losing proposition for any candidate to try to present a sympathetic interpretation of them.
Certainly the Rev. Wright is generically 'radical' while Obama is far from radical. (I think it's a stretch even to call him a liberal reformer since what he's selling is more a style of leadership and a style of political process than a program of reform -- and there's a case that I still intend to make that he's more conservative in practice than liberal.)
But I think the current flap is more about conflicting ways of being "black" than it is about radical/liberal distinctions. Obama is caught in the contradictions of trying to be "post-racial" in a society that is still very "racial". The Rev. Wright represents the prophetic tradition in the Black Church which speaks to the many race-based injustices that still exist in the USA. The favorable response of the black clergy audience at the National Press Conference shows that they get it, where most of the national white audience, or consumers of sound bites, clearly still don't get it. That puts Obama in a tough spot.
It occurs to me that it's possible that the Rev. Wright purposely raised the stakes during the Detroit and Washington speeches so that Obama could have a good excuse for dumping him completely and then have a chance to undo much of the damage that's been done. Giving Obama a clear "Sister Souljah" opportunity made a severing of their relationship at this late date seem reasonable. Without the new events, with their extra flamboyance -- which was still within the performance parameters of the Rev. Wright's church style -- Obama would simply have appeared too indecisive in taking so long to break things off with him.
That this is a black/white problem is, I think, borne out by the relative absence of comments about McCain's relations with the religious right or about Clinton's involvement with the religiously conservative "The Fellowship". Also, PA Governor Ed Rendell, who got a lot of coverage as a Clinton backer in PA, got no questioning, nor did Clinton, about his strong praise of Minister Farrakhan back in 1997, in terms very much like the Rev. Wright's -- except more fervent and elaborate.
About the relationships between liberals and radicals, I naturally agree with you (a la my previous Mau-Mau and Moderate posts). Martin Luther King, Jr., however, became much more radical than you give him credit for. At the time of his death, he was bitterly criticized for his anti-war position and his economic radicalism or populism which featured a guaranteed annual income as its starting point.
He sounded more like Wright than like Obama. Gina-Marie (truthteller) quoted this recently, from a MLK's sermon against the Vietnam War, given at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, just 2 days more than 41 years ago: “And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, ‘You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God.’”
That sound a lot like the Rev. Wright, yes?
How about "“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.” (Another sermon at Ebenezer Baptist: ”The Drum Major Instinct”, February 4, 1968)
His final sermon, never delivered because he was killed on the Thursday night before he was scheduled to preach it, was titled "Why America May Go to Hell". It was about economics and the Poor Peoples Campaign. His family believes that campaign was the reason why he was assassinated.
Obama and any other "serious" candidate would run as fast as possible away from the latter-day words and person of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Finally, a further point about liberals and radicals. In the Deep South, in the civil rights movement, "liberal" became a pejorative term for many of us. Liberals were the ones who said "I agree with your aims, but you're going too fast, your words and your actions are too extreme." Rather than being mediators for change, liberals or moderates can be, and have often been, impediments to change, choosing instead to smooth the surface of the status quo without ever challenging the underlying power relationships. Of course, sometimes Mau-mau and Moderate works.
Bill
re:re:Obama and Wright
Great comments everyone. I agree with most of what all of you wrote. I was influenced in my post by the book on Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln that Bill recommended a while back (thanks Bill). I thought the relationship between the radical Douglass and the moderate Lincoln was mutually beneficial to both. I agree that King became more radical in his later years, but he was still basicly appealing to America's conscience (and specifically to white America's conscience) while Malcolm X was appealing mainly to black audiences. It's similar to Abraham Lincoln, who appeal to American to live up to the values of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and to Frederick Douglass, who was more expicitly critical of America.
I think the problem with liberals in the 1960s was that while they were making much progress on giving African Americans progress on political rights (like the voting rights act, fair housing act, tearing down segregation and Jim Crow laws) but they weren't as successful on advancing African Americans on the economic front. I think that points up the successes and failures of the Great Society programs. That's one of the reasons King was criticizing the Vietnam War, that funds were being redirected from the Great Society's War on Poverty to the Vietnam War. RFK was experimenting in Bedford Sty with getting businesses to collaborate with community leaders to try to revitalize slums and I think liberals like Gene McCarthy were trying to find liberal alternatives to the Great Society.
I'm wary of Reverend Wright's comments because the nuance of his positions are getting lost by the media. Most white Americans won't understand the context of his comments, and they are just getting what is filtered out of the media. He may be reinforcing the idea that he's in the lunatic fringe with comments about AIDs being a government plot, when not many Americans may know about past experiments by the government on African Americans in the early 20th Century (like the Tuskagee experiment that was mentioned in earlier posts).
Wright and Obama
I will probably draw some fire for this comment, but don't discount the possibility that this break with Rev. Wright was a set up. Denouncing Rev. Wright and distancing himself as Obama did was excellent politics. Obama's electability just went up. The possibility that Rev Wright got a little eccentric deliberately and that Senator Obama was then going going to denounce him very well could have been a well planned political exercise.
I listened tlo Rev. Wright's talk at the Washington Press Club and thought he was great. If I lived in the Chicago area, I might drop in to his church every now and then. Other than the U. S. government deliberately infecting the African American community with AIDS, I thought all of his other ideas were straight. The U. S. government is guilty of not doing enough about AIDS. I bet if AIDS were ravaging the white hetero-sexual community, there would be some major action quick on the part of the government.
re: a set up
No fire from this precinct. I'm glad to see we're on the same wavelength, Jim. I wrote about this last night before going to bed, without posting it -- which I will after posting this. The set up idea is plausible. I'm inclined to think that it might have been a unilateral decision by the Rev. Wright, but it could have been a joint decision. But of course we're only speculating...
I, too, liked all of the Rev. W's weekend talks -- from Moyers to the Detroit NAACP to the National Press Club. Even the AIDS issue, while I'm inclined to disagree with him, isn't as far out as the media folks make it out to be. It does have some credibility among African Americans and, based on known history, there's always reason to be suspicious of what our government is doing. At the very least, the Rev.'s comment that he thinks "our government is capable of doing anything" is worthy of respect.
Bill
Interesting...
Sad but true.
This is a terrific post. Thanks for it. This is absolutely true. I can't figure out though if it makes me sad or excited. I can certainly understand a radical's frustration at a watering down of ideas, but I can also understand the pragmatist's understanding that society isn't ready for systemic change.
I feel both pulls within me.