Obama's strandedness

I was not going to write on the Reverend Wright controversy anymore, but I simply cannot resist the urge to speak out in defense of Obama whose remarkably honest press conference yesterday laid bare the intricate and extremely exhausting process of navigating between the so-called black and white worlds. The fact that his strandedness between these worlds sends many white Americans, including most of the "pundits," into a panic mode shows the yawning gap between these worlds 146 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and 44 years after the ratification of the Civil Rights Act. The massive call to Obama to speak to the two worlds in different voices has been the most depressing development of this campaign. On the one hand, it is demanded that he explain to the white world the fiery and what many pundits have disturbingly called "wild" behavior of his pastor. I cannot pretend to "understand" the "African American church," but I have had the pleasure of attending several black churches while I was a member of the choir in my undergraduate college. These visits, coupled with the scattered things I have read about the African American experience, were enough to acquaint me with some of the basics of these services so when I saw the clip of the Reverend Wright I was not "shocked at his wildness" as many of the white pundits have continually reminded their viewers. Their reaction and the adjectives (such as "wild") they use to describe the Reverend have been deeply disturbing because they echo the racist portrayal of the "savage black man." To the extent that the criticisms of the Reverend have focused on the actual manner in which he delivers his sermons, I can agree with him that these criticisms have been directed at the church and not himself. On the other hand, the Reverend's performance at the Press Club shows an appalling lack of understanding for the trouble he has caused to the Obama campaign which in turn, shows his unwillingness to understand the way the white voters respond to his sermons. As a result, Obama is thrust in the middle of this gap and forced to shout to each side but in a different cultural language since the two sides cannot hear each other. As a racially "mixed" man in a country where race pervades many aspects of life, Obama has struggled with the role of a cultural translator his whole life, as he describes in Dreams from My Father: "As it was, I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere" (82). Yesterday's press conference showed an exhausted Obama, still being forced into this role and still trying to believe that the worlds would indeed cohere.

The incessant call for Obama to explain the actions and words of another African-American, while white Americans are rarely (if never) called to speak for the actions of other whites, shows the prevailing mode of thinking that groups all African-Americans, or anyone associated with that world, into one camp. This morning's Times' editorial makes the very same point: "It is an injustice, a legacy of the racist threads of this nation’s history, that prominent African-Americans are regularly called upon to explain or repudiate what other black Americans have to say, while white public figures are rarely, if ever, handed that burden." (McCain has never had to distance himself from the bigoted Pastor John Hagee). Similarly to the nationalist thinking that pervades my own home-country, racist thinking reduces individuals to their racial category. In talking about the struggle of many "mixed" individuals to navigate these different worlds, Obama writes: "The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals" (100).

Obama's campaign is a call to all of us to stand with him in the gap and try to persuade the people from both sides to jump into the middle and stand with him. It remains to be seen if he will succeed, but he sure looked lonely at that podium yesterday!