race matters

by Aaron Rodriguez

Published: April 8, 2008

I held off on speaking about the Rev. Wright controversy for a number of reasons. The primary one being that I know two ministers at Trinity United Church of Christ personally and, having been to the church on several occasions, I wanted to gauge the reactions of those who were slandered before I commented. There’s no need for me to defend the church now because others have already pointed out that in our sound-bite-obsessed culture, the church and Rev. Wright were misrepresented. In addition, I honestly don’t believe that Trinity or Rev. Wright need defending. If you still think the people at that church are racist, then you either based your judgment on a 4 second video clip or you know nothing about the history of race in the United States. However, there is an issue that I feel I should comment on, as this controversy made one thing abundantly clear to me: America is not ready for a Black president.

Oh America might be ready for a president that just happens to be Black, but we’re still a long way away from having a Black president. This is by no means an indictment on Barack Obama’s “blackness”. The concept itself is an insult both to Senator Obama and African-Americans as a whole. What I mean by a Black president, is someone who sees America through the lens of a Black American, someone who shapes his policies and ideology with Black America in mind, someone who brings over four hundred years of struggle to the White House. I’m not suggesting that these qualities don’t define Barack Obama. He attends a church that preaches Black liberation theology for heaven’s sake. But that Barack Obama, can’t win. However, the Barack Obama that just happens to be black, can.

We all heard Senator Obama’s brilliant speech on race, and nearly all of us walked away from it with a sense of hope that, with enough work, things can and will get better. The speech was an honest and frank assessment of race relations in America, and while I think it did a marvelous job of framing the problems of race, it is really only a political tool; a tool which, while useful in bridging gaps between the races, won’t necessarily lead to greater racial understanding. I say this because of the barrier that separates the two races understanding of reality. Obama was accurate in his portrayal of how average working class whites and blacks view the issue of race. The problem is that the people of the former race form their ideologies from within the framework of a position of power. People who deny the existence of white privilege, who think that black people are lazy, etc. are often the ones running the show, and on too many occasions - President. But the closest thing we have to a black president is a man who has to publicly denounce the views of his own pastor because they represent the feelings of many African-Americans.

This is why America isn’t ready for a black president. An African-American candidate can’t win if he thinks that maybe, just maybe, America isn’t the great savior of the planet. When your people have been on the losing side of many of America’s domestic mistakes, you tend not to have such a glowing opinion of the nation. And this isn’t to say that by and large African-Americans dislike America, because that simply isn’t true. I’m a socialist and I wouldn’t want to live in any other country. However, the blind patriotism that envelopes the red states and the belief that the system really exists to reward those who work hard enough, is absent in many African-American communities. Of course many of the aspects of America that have been detrimental to black people are also detrimental to whites, poor whites in particular. It’s just that when you come from a community where the oppression was explicit for such a long time, you are more willing to accept that America is flawed.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I never supported Barack Obama’s candidacy because I thought that if he won America would become a utopia. I support him because if nothing else he can serve as a source of inspiration, and given all of the controversy of the past few months, he can serve as a mirror with which Americans can examine themselves as well.

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