Ebony's Pearls

Goblin Grimace
Originally uploaded by nodigio

Yanno, I haven’t heard Obama say the most important things about his pastor crisis. There are at least two that need to be said and I have no idea why they haven’t said them. One is that Williams is a Black preacher, and what he says and does in his church is what Black preachers do. If the rest of America wants to understand the Black culture in America, they need to tune in to what these preachers are saying. Personally, I think Black preachers have done more to hold back Blacks than almost anyone. I mean look at Jesse Jackson. How can one man so hurt an entire race of people and still be venerated as a Good Man?

The second is that this is America and while Obama – a Black man in America who attends a Black church (and really, it doesn’t matter which Black church Obama attended – if you look, they are all fairly similar) – may not agree with everything Williams says, as an American and more importantly as a politician, it is his duty to defend Williams’ right to say what he does. Williams is preaching the truth as he sees it. It’s different from the truth others see – we all see truth as it relates to us. Facts may not change, but truth does. What Williams and other Black preachers are doing is not all that different from what preachers like Oral Roberts are doing – working up their congregations with rhetoric. In America, this is legal and protected by the Constitution.

In both cases, Obama has a strong position, if he’d just take it. The first one – that Williams is a Black preacher and Obama is a Black man – should be obvious to all Americans, but sometimes, the obvious needs to be said. Obama went to a Black church because he’s a Black man. If other Americans don’t like what they hear coming out of Black churches, then this isn’t a negative on Obama, it’s an opportunity for us to all hear what’s being said. We need to accept that what goes on in Black churches is something Blacks believe in, and we need to work with that information – all of us, together, to find a meeting point. Blacks believe things about the rest of America that isn’t true as the rest of America sees it – why not? Where does it diverge? Why does it diverge like that? How can both sides work to better life for everyone involved? What wrongs are there, and how do we redress them – all of us against one another, for one another? This should so clearly be a Talking Point in Obama’s platform, one that would appeal to all Americans. It fits with his stated ideology. This is an opening to heal breaches in American society. Why isn’t Obama addressing this?

In the second one, yes, we have to hear a lot of things we don’t like. That’s part of being in a free society. We are free to not listen to what we hear. We are free to say the truth as we see it. We are free to point out flaws. We are free to voice opinions. We are free to engage in spirited debate. We are free to try to influence others through our words. Every word we say is a form of manipulation – it’s impossible to talk and not change things through our words. Our silence is just as telling and manipulative as speech is. If Obama were to support Williams instead of denouncing him – not support Williams’ words so much as his right to say those words – he would be demonstrating a good trait of a potential president. He’d show he was willing to defend even speech with which he’s come to disagree because this is America, and Americans – of any color or ethnicity or gender or degree of wealth – can speak freely and openly. What’s said in these Black churches isn’t hidden. It’s always been right there if we ever wanted to hear it. We just haven’t wanted to hear it. Well, now some muckraker has made it part of the campaign. The best way to clean the mid off it is to expose it, open it up further, and agree that Williams has the right to say what he does. And Obama has the right, as someone working to represent all Americans, to listen to what Americans are saying. More, Obama has the ability to work among a larger pool of Americans than any other candidate. The question is – does he have the skill to present what he hears from one group to other groups in such a way that the other groups can hear and relate to it?

We’re all human. We all want pretty much the same basic things – comfort, mostly. We all want to be comfortable where we live – that comfort encompasses a lot of things: the comfort of knowing we won’t be shot in our homes, of knowing our children can play outside without being hurt or killed, of knowing we can go to the store and not be treated as a thief, of knowing we can ride the bus and not be intimidated, of knowing we can wear what makes us feel good without being raped or killed for it, of being able to get a job that allows us to support ourselves and our family, of knowing if we ever have to deal with the police that we’ll be treated with respect. It’s not a race thing, it’s a human thing. Some races, some genders, some social classes suffer more because we have less comfort. That lack of comfort is what Obama needs to address. He can use Williams as a springboard to open discussions on what makes us uncomfortable and how we can work together to bring all of us into a more comfortable zone.

None of us like being targets, but there are an awful lot of us living in America who feel as if we are targets, whether it’s because of our skin color, our gender, our age, or our social class. Some people deliberately bait others into targeting them, and some people see even the most innocent acts as a deliberate attack. Obama could use Williams to address these things, to get it all out into the open where we can see what’s happening and work on fixing it. Together. Not one group working to fix another, but all groups working and adjusting and fiddling to fix all of us. We’re all broken – some with too much blind privilege and some with too much rage and some with too much fear, and so on. We have to fix ourselves. We need to be able to see what we need to fix, and that takes openness.

It’ll hurt. There’s no doubt about it. America is in for a period of deep pain, regardless of which candidate earns the presidency. Bush will be seen as the absolute worst president America has ever had, and the president after Bush will be tainted with Bush’s errors, because this president, if we choose a good one, will have to do some very unsavory things to fix America. Obama isn’t the best choice, but of the three main contenders, I see he has the best chance of setting America onto the healing course we need. But only if he accepts who he is and embraces what America once was and can be again. We’ll hate him. There’s no getting out of that. But history a hundred years from now may well love him.

To do that, he has to listen to Americans. All Americans, not just the ones he thinks might vote for him, certainly not just the ones who give him money. I’ve given up on Clinton ever hearing anyone but herself, and McCain is just as bad. Neither one of them can be bothered to listen to anyone else. They’ll bull their way through to whatever they want regardless of what others may need. It's "their" programs, not "our" programs, "their" projects, not "our" projects, "their" America, not "our" America. They don't live in the same world most of america does and they haven't a clue what life is like below the median.

Obama can sometimes hear past himself. Ocassionally, he talks about "us" instead of "you". There’s a teeny bit of hope with Obama, but that hope is fading as he stops listening to us, and becomes more like Clinton or McCain.