I'm still confused some by the latest Rev. Wright hoopbla and not completely sure what to make of it. I'm not so much in agreement with the guy as I am blown away by the fury he's provoked. I don't quite get it. Is Wright really anymore outrageous, than say, Michael Moore? Are his claims any worse than people who blame Hurricane Katrina's 1,800 deaths on gays? What is it about Wright which inflames the media so much more than any other blow-hard? I suspect that some of this has to do with the moral double-standard that black folks have always labored under, that it's related to the reason why black parents tell their kids to be "twice as good," that it has something to do with why Barack Obama's only shot at the presidency is to run a near flawless Jackie Robinson campaign.
In other words, the moral problems of black folks (hubris in the case of Wright) are always overblown. There is something in certain sectors of white America that expects all black people, at all times to act like white people did them a favor by bringing them here in chains. Indeed, Martin Luther King's whole approach to defeating segregation rested upon a sort of surrender, a relinquishment of anger at white racism. Of course when King asked the same of white America--a'la Vietnam, poor garbage workers--he was shot. There is a price to pay for setting aside that anger, that side of us which still feels scars of slavery. Forever, you're held to that outrageous standard, and should one of your own flash that old angst, the vultures began to circle.
There is a running meme going among blacks and whites that Wright is now sabotaging Obama's campaign. But what no one is seeing is that the game is rigged. Obama was sabotaged twenty years ago when, instead of going the Tiger Woods route, he dared to explore and drink deep in the beauty/pathology/irony that is black folks. From that point forward, he was marked. Now in his pursuit of arguably the highest office in the world, Obama finds himself dogged by the "nigger rules" which apply to all black trailblazers--no pessimism, no crying, no Farrakhan, and no rage.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/04/wright-wright-wright/5248/
