The anger is real

I'm not done reflecting on what the recent controversy over Common means for our American culture or the 2012 presidential race. I see strands of a connection between incidents that have emerged over people/institutions like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Shiloh Baptist Church and now Common.

One obvious connection is that if you are Black, have ever expressed anger at racism in this country, and now have some connection with Barack Obama - you will be attacked mercilessly and your words will be used to sow the seeds of doubt about Obama.

People have recognized that one of the reasons President Obama was palatable as a candidate is that he didn't scare white people with the stereotypes about "an angry black man." It should probably come as no surprise then that the right wing has branched out in their attempts to discredit him with associations with angry black men.

Its interesting to note how the Republicans want to attach themselves to black men like Clarence Thomas and Michael Steele - men that, at least on the surface, express no anger at the ravages of racism in this country. So perhaps its not the color of skin that troubles them, but the prospect of facing reality.

All of this took me back to Obama's speech on race during the primaries when the first and most virulent attack came on his association with Rev. Wright. Here's what he said about it:

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow...

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

Yes, the anger is real...and we have to come to grips with that. I remember having to do that - when African Americans I know and work with exploded with bottled up rage over something that, to me, seemed a small provocation. As I listened, I heard not only the storehouse of every day events that had gone unspoken over the years and the precarious nature of what it means to not really belong. I also, as Obama describes, heard the historical anger that has built up over centuries to walk right along side the present. As white people, I don't think we have a clue about what it means to carry that baggage of anger around on your shoulders every minute of every day.

And so now, what the right wingers are telling African Americans is that any expression of that anger - no matter how much it is couched within attempts to move on - is a threatening act that must be stifled in order to live in their world. As Obama says, that "only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."

In the coming election, I suspect that widening that chasm is the goal of too many on the right. We have to decide if we want to let them do that.