Can Obama disprove his guilt by association?

    Barack Obama burst on the national scene four years ago during the Democratic National Convention. His personal history and vision on race was fresh and appealing to millions in America.
    That’s pretty much where he’s been and what he’s represented until six weeks or so ago when viral videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright themselves burst on the national scene. Obama responded to the “shocking, stunning” words of his former pastor by giving one of the most profound speeches ever given on race in America. Even most of the detractors of the Democratic Party frontrunner praised the brilliance of his speech but then….they argued, he needed to do more.
    Obama needed to not only denounce what the man said, he needed to denounce the man. A few days ago, after Rev. Wright came out of his self-imposed public exile and elaborated on his “stunning and shocking” words, Obama did just that.
    Well, as it turns out, that’s still not enough for Obama’s detractors. They want him to explain why he stayed in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ for so long. Why Rev. Wright remained his pastor for so long. In effect, they want him to prove the unneccesary.
    When my post, Wright Here, Wright Now, went up on the ebonyjet.com website, there were plenty of comments. One from a reader who identified himself as Andy Shep—after several exchanges between him and me—concludes, “Mainstream America is not going to embrace the anger that Wright has made visible. If they feel that in his heart Obama resents them, or would appoint people to higher office who resent them, they will not vote for him.”
    Our ebonyjet back and forth is below.  But first, I’d like to present a Vimeo video entitled, White People, Get Over Yourselves. In the viral video, Dan Charnas, a young white man, says, “In America, black people have always endured white peoples’ negative, prejudiced opinions about them.”
    Charnas later says, “America is run by an undereducated, white majority. Black people have just had to deal with it.”
    Check out the video, and then read the prevailing mainstream America opinion as it appeared on ebonyjet.com.

White People, Get Over Yourselves from Dantrification on Vimeo.

Andy Shep says:
anyone who believes that AIDS was invented by the government to kill black men hates people who look like me. It is not in my best interests to vote for someone who hates me. There are those of you who know better and have stayed silent, because of that men like Wright don't even know how inflammatory they are. You can believe all white men to be racists and murderers and you can become president, I don't think you can do both. Obama has not denounced Wright enough.
05.01.08 at 10:20 PM

Monroe Anderson says:
AndyShep: The bar seems to keep moving on Obama's denunciation of Rev. Wright. What would be enough? Have you any suggestions? Or, would God Damn Rev. Wright satisfy you?
05.02.08 at 3:03 PM

Any Shep says:
Obama's problem is the timing of his comments distancing himself from Wright seem to coincide with bad polling data. White people see it as a political move. An eloquent speech that addressed what Wright said, why Wright may have said it, and why he was wrong could turn the negative into a positive. There is White resentment over Black anger if he addresses it he can win by a landslide. Many still believe he privately agrees with Wright, including Wright, and he's known him for 20 years.
05.02.08 at 7:43 PM

Monroe Anderson says:
Any Shep, let me see if I understand this correctly. Whites resent it that blacks are angry because, after all these years, there is still racial discrimination, economic inequity and white privilege in America?
05.02.08 at 8:27 PM

Andy Shep says:
Wright is just a product of anger, and because of his anger he can't move forward and won't let anyone else move forward either. Wright was not angry alone. Mainstream America is not going to embrace the anger that Wright has made visible. If they feel that in his heart Obama resents them, or would appoint people to higher office who resent them, they will not vote for him. You can live in the problem or live in the solution.

    I invite you to comment on what Dan Charnas, Andy Shep or I had to say right here on this blog or comment on the ebonyjet.website on my exchange with Shep.

Comments

[Believer]

Obama is a fraud. As a uniter, anyway.

Obama was so adept at "community organizing" - the Saul Alinsky method of agitating the disaffected - that he was soon teaching others. Nice to know he can make people unhappy.

His association with Wright and his church was necessary to achieve his goals. Politically, it gave him credibility in the Black community. But his idea was to merge the church with his radical politics. It then becomes more effective. So you join a Christian church.

What a great place to stir up anger and resentment. A ready audience. Already large and growing larger. Especially when they hear they're owed something. A person of authority. One who surely tells the truth: it's God's word and in a House of God, afterall!

Take no responsibility for your lives -- there's a BIG pot of cash in Washington I can dip into. Look, I already got myself some of it! How do you think Michelle buys all those shoes? I sprinkled some on Pfleger too! About $220K!

It's called "earmarks." No, no not named after me. I know I got big ones, but this was going on long before I got there.

Just doing the Lord's work. Maybe he is Santa Claus afterall.

[gshinn]

You are as wrong as can be. The "economic pressure" of Europe was on Northern Industry, not Southern Cotton (remember the south thought european nations would recognize the stars and bars because of "King Cotton"). This pressure was eliminated by various protective tariffs. As for your "proof", remember I specifically said that prior bad acts by other people is not proof. I'm sorry your tin-foil hat is interfering with your vision (and common sense), but you still have to provide actuall proof or you and reverend Wright should fit yourselves with white sheets and hoods so that you can be clearly idenified as the racist haters you are.

[Frank Coconate]

I'm a Italian American from Chicago. I would vote for Obama , but my concern is not Reverand Wright. My concern is his association to Mayor Daley in Chicago. When Obama first ran for US Senate, I voted for him. Than he made the deal with the devil for Daley's support, support he didn't need.
Mayor daley is your modern day gangster boss!

[Monroe Anderson]

GShinn, you're only partially informed. The South was in economic decline due to economic pressures put on it by Europe--not because free labor was dragging them down. They were also being pressured by the Northern industrialists who didn't cotton to their economic advantage.

As for the "racist lie" from Rev. Wright, let's see...The American colonialists gave the Native Americans blankets infested with small pox, wiping out entire villages. There was the Tuskegee experiment in the 1930s. The enslavement of black men continued in the South until the dawn of WWII: read my Slavery by Another Name blog. And, black children were used as guinea pigs eight years ago to see his sludge remedy the effects of lead poisoning. It seems to me that any thinking, knowledgable American might be tempted to question that the U.S. government had a hand in the spread of AIDS or not.

[gshinn]

No, Monroe, the South did not prosper from enslaving our ancestors, their economy was incredibly backwards by 1861. That's why they lost the war: Lack of manufacturing, lack of population (no cities), lack of wealth. The north didn't win that war man on man. We didn't have to. We swamped them with our superior economy. An economy made superior because of a lack of slave labor meant more innovation. No slave labor meant more cities, more factories, more people. As for Rev. Wright not being a hater, unless you have actuall proof that white Americans have actually used HIV as a WMD, Rev. Wright is making nothing more than his equivalent of "The Elders of Zion". That is to say I baseless racist lie. Put up or shut up. Where is your proof. Oh, prior bad acts by other people is not proof. We have gotten to this point many a time in our private exchanges. This is when you change the subject. I am sure you will now as well.

[Pepper Miller]

Monroe:

I don't recall any candidates current or past, that has had to denounce someone. How come with Black folks its either or? -- And we do it to ourselves. Either Obama or Dr. Wright?

On March 19th, The Huffington Post wrote a piece about the different standards for Black and White Preachers. In many cases these men of the cloth made stronger statements than Dr. Wright. No one's talking about these guys or holding them to the carpet. Still looks like and feels like racism to me.

The link is below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/different-standards-for-b_b_92337.html

[Monroe Anderson]

GShinn, I hope whatever meds you're on are legal. Rev. Wright a hater? Since when did telling the truth make one a hater? Even taken out of context, there are solid basics of truth behind what he said. The South didn't prosper off the free labor of Africans? Whose history books and what economists are you reading?
btw, did you listen to what Dan had to say in his video of was his truth too sobering for you as well?

[gshinn]

Two comments, first what does Obama have to do to separate himself from Wrights racist hatret? Nothing. It's too late. The denunciation he made last week had to be made in March. Instead of denouncing the hater, he thought he could just denounce the words, as though one can separate Hitler from his words or George Wallace from his words. Comment two, Joyce needs to take a second look at the development of our country from 1607-1861. She claims that slavery created the wealth of this country. As incorrect as anything could every be. The North developed far faster than the South, an economic advantage that accelerated as Northern states abolished slavery within their borders while the South became more and more of a slaveocracy. Slavery didn't create a wealthy nation. It retarded the economic development of the region of the nation most dependent on it. Oh, as far as retroactive pay, how do you calculate it and how do you or I have a legal claim to it given laws then or now?
Sen. Obama screwed up and screwed up badly. Breaking bread with people like Wright and Billy Ayers are the absolutely wrong kind of associates for a politician who's candidacy is based on being one who can bring our nation together. If one associates with Klansmen he is likely a Klansman. Birds of a feather flock together. Sen. Obama's chickens have come home to roost.

[rawdawgbuffalo]

they are resentful, at least some, all about us

[Joyce]

The young man in the Vimeo video gives me hope for the future of America!

Any/Andy Shep acknowledges the fear of retribution that I can imagine someone who is guilty of crimes and knows his victims are aware that he is guilty might feel.

Shep expresses the sentiments heaped on the Harold Washington administration when he became the first African American mayor of Chicago, the black children who integrated schools in the south only because the National Guard was sent to make it happen without physical incidents, and black and minority families who moved into all-white neighborhoods across the country and found burning crosses on their front lawns and worse. The fear was expressed when a man of peace, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. felt the call to fight for equal rights and
was rewarded with deaths threats, FBI surveillance, and finally murder.

Black people are not going away so do what the video suggests, get over it. Put Black history into context, and in all history books about United States of America history, acknowledge the free labor slaves supplied that built the wealth of this country not with just the cotton-picking details, or darkie tales of singing spirituals in the fields. Yes, we did create the only true American art form... But also recognize the skills that many slaves brought with them to this country: Seamstresses, architects, blacksmiths, potters,furniture designers, chefs and more...

A gas tax break is silly. But getting retroactive pay, our 40 acres and our mule would work!

Oh, and an apology.