Reverend Wright's America

Everybody who is going on about the Reverend Wright and Senator Obama seems to be missing the fact that the problem is inherent in Mr. Obama's candidacy. He is running on a coalition of blacks and of prosperous middle class whites. There are inherent contradictions in such a coalition. The Reverend Wright has just graphically illustrated what some of them are.

If you read the responses, black people did not object to anything Reverend Wright had to say.  Contrary to what people of both colors would have us believe, blacks often are not particularly fond of whites.  Prosperous white people for the most part did not feel challenged by his remarks. They are in a position to patronize blacks and they do.  Working class whites are not in a position to condescend to blacks and they resented Wright's remarks.  They see black hostility as irrational ingratitude for what feels to them a painful policy of affirmative action, which they see as being largely at their and their children's expense.

I think we are seeing replay of the gulf of perceptions during the OJ trial. Every white person I talked to thought it was obvious that he was guilty. Every black person found it obvious that he was not. Even though everyone heard the same evidence in crushing detail.

My impression is that Wright's remarks also showed the same gulf of perception. He seems not to have heard that slavery has been gone for 145 years and Jim Crow for 40 years. That slavery was destroyed at a cost of a million young white men's lives during the Civil War seems unknown to him. But then again I am white and I thought OJ was guilty.

My theory is that Wright unconsciously DOES want to throw Obama under the bus. This man has spent his entire adult life condemning American society for its racism and unfairness. If Obama is elected president, what happens to Wright's cherished sense of grievance?  If the nation elects Obama, Wright's whole reality and self-justification would crumble.  It would be hard indeed to continue to rail against how racist white America is when it had just elected a black president.  It would be harder still to denounce the racist government when it was headed by a black.  Where would he turn for excuses?