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REVEREND Jeremiah Wright Jr., five years ago, vehemently delivered
an inflammatory homily against his nation America for its
government’s long history of slavery of Africans, and then its
segregation and discrimination of African American descendants.
Snippets of these vitriolic sermons have constantly played ad
nauseam on television programs because the charismatic minister
happens to be the person who inspired Barack Obama. Five years ago,
the Christian firebrand was a little known regular angry black guy.
He did not make headlines or television news then but does now in
the the context of a highly volatile and emotionally-charged race to
the US presidency. Ill-spririted broadcasters have asserted that
persons of inspiration to Obama are necessarily his persons of
emulation. Really? Fidel Castro was educated by spiritual Jesuits
yet turned out to be an atheist and communist fanatic.
Wright is certainly wrong. His view of America
is static. His resentment of America came from two hundred and
twenty one years ago when American patriots stained their political
constitution with the slave trade. This perspective, tainted with
bitterness, is still shared by many African-Americans and immigrants
from Asia, Africa and Latin America. A victim of his past, Wright
continues to denigrate the greatness and compassion of the American
people, who have long transcended the enslavement and segregation of
the African-Americans to become the world’s remaining united and
prosperous superpower. America has changed and America can
continuously change. Wright is wrong when he refuses to admit
America’s progress towards a positive direction.
Obama is correct. The American Constitution
proclaimed the ideal of equal citizenship and promised its people
liberty and justice, and a union that could be perfected over time.
The words on a parchment more than two centuries ago was not enough
to deliver African slaves from their bondage or provide them their
full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. But
Obama, with a genetic make-up that straddles three continents, is
precisely moving in that direction as many of his American
ancestors, both black and white, have done—towards narrowing the
gap between the promise of American ideals embodied in an antique
parchment and the reality of these challenging times in assuring a
better future for children regardless of their color or creed.
Moving in that direction precisely means, as Obama rightly stresses,
continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of
American life, such as better health care, better schools, and
better jobs for all Americans.
However, media has been a victim of its own
static racist views as Wright in trying to portray Obama as an angry
black man. Obama is not just black but half-white raised by
Caucasian grandparents. As much as he cannot disown the black
community and its inspiring but fiery Jeremiah Wright neither can he
disown his Caucasian lineage and his nurturing white grandmother,
who would utter racial and ethnic stereotypes regarding black men to
her growing half-black grandson. Both black minister and white
grandmother are part of Obama, part of his lineage, part of America.
If he rejects any of them, then he rejects his reality, he rejects
his bloodline, he rejects America. But he does not. America is a
country he loves. Still, race is an issue that he dares confront
rather than ignore because many Americans, whether white or black,
whether Asian or Latin American, whether Christian or Muslim, still
harbor those deep-seated racial and cultural biases.
Obama has emerged from the racial divide,
overcoming the odds of his color, and now sincerely struggling to
clear the path for future generations to believe in themselves and
to believe that the union of immigrants and slaves and white people
can be perfected in America. He has decided to confront the issue of
an historical anger that finds its voice in the barbershop or around
the kitchen table. He has decided to confront the vitriol of a fiery
preacher who voices his rage in the pulpit and the pews on Sunday
mornings. But he courageously confronts the anger existing within
the white community, who are eased out from opportunities because of
affirmative action policies in school and welfare programs. As he
absorbs the emotional outrage of his people, and responds with
compassion and understanding, Obama is the only politician who has
resolved to uplift his nation from the quagmire of its racial
hostility.
America is not a perfect union albeit those same
words were enshrined in its Constitution. As each generation of
Americans struggle and strive for betterment, with idealistic young
people shaping their own attitudes, beliefs and openness to change,
they are already making history in the coming American elections.
With an Obama presidency, the finish line in the marathon to a
perfect union of America will have come crucial miles closer.
ericmallonga@yahoo.com
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