getting back on the wright foot

i haven't blogged in quite a while because i haven't had much to say, but the goings on of this year's presidential campaign has gotten many minds and more mouths working, so why not mine? i've been watching the coverage on cnn, msnbc and foxnews, as well as googling information about the various candidates and their accomplishments and backgrounds. growing up in chicago, where politics is a collision sport, i've seen firsthand the best and worst that can happen during the political process. us chicagoans still tell each other, jokingly, during election time, "vote early and often."

having said all that, this campaign has been a knock-down, drag-out street fight that i'm sure has old man daley and big bill thompson giving a standing ovation from the netherworld. the he said/she said, he did/she did and he didn't/she didn't reminds me more of 4 year-olds tattling on one another than ivy-league educated political debate, but such is politics in the era of blogs and surrogates.

speaking of surrogates, reverend jeremiah wright has jumped to the head of the "who can kill their own candidate" class with the resurgence of several of his seemingly anti-american and racially divisive diatribes. pundits everywhere are calling for rev. wright's head much the same way they did geraldine ferarro, so i give them points for being fair. but i find it interesting that nobody has asked the question, "how many black folk think like this?" white folks probably don't want to hear the answer.

before i go on, let me qualify myself a little bit; i'm an african-american man who was raised in a middle class home with both of his parents, who grew up in an "integrated" society. my schools were all integrated, my lutheran church is mostly white and i've spent years in the white male dominated "corporate america". while i have friends of all races and cultures, my ear is in tune with the voices of african-americans much the same way an irish or polish-american surely is: we understand our community in a way an "outsider" can't. not to say that any ethnic group is monolithic, there are rich and poor, educated and uneducated, and all other sorts of differences within any group that alternately cause disonance or harmony, but there are shared experiences that bind that group together.

with that in mind, no wonder rev. wright got cheers and a pat on the back while delivering his so-called "inflammatory" statements. while people throw around terms such as "the race card", and "disenfranchisement", i'm sure quite a few in that audience could give more instances of either or both than cnn could run 24/7 for the rest of the decade. and while many blacks don't agree with how he says it, rev. wright's words aren't far off from the thoughts of more african-americans that you think.

take the congregation of trinity, for example. one of the largest mega-churches in chicago, its membership includes many of the more affluent blacks in chicago, people who have obviously benefited from the american dream. but at what cost? i know several members of the congregation, any one of whom could tell stories of having been humiliated or degraded because of their race and/or gender. some stories are more unkind, even gruesome. those memories run deep and don't go away. not everyone stoically endures like jackie robinson or joe louis. many became angry and outraged, and developed a hatred of "white" society. but, unlike skinheads or the klan, they don't persecute, terrorize, or hunt white people. they go about their lives as any other law-abiding american citizen, but that hate still simmers.

then came the dvd and youtube and white folks are now starting to see into the minds of black folk, uncensored. did they think that louis farrakhan was the only one? if you beat a dog every time you feed it, that dog may never bite you, but it will never love you.

sure, it could be said that i'm making excuses for rev. wright because i happen to be in support of sen. obama. truth is, i don't really care for the man or his church. too many ministers get too full of themselves to remember what their true calling is, and i believe he is one. additionally, warts and all this is my country, which many of my family members have fought for, including my hero, my father, so damn anybody who would damn the united states. but that's not my point.

now that you have a little knowledge of what's on some black folks' minds, what should you do with it?