Barack Obama is fond of Dr. King’s oft-quoted phrase – “the fierce urgency of now.”
So when is it urgent for the right and the white majority to discuss racism or any of the other ‘isms’ that deter this great country from living up to its touted principles?
It’s simple really – when it is convenient or expedient for them to do so.
The recent resurgence of debate over whether or not Obama should distance himself from his pastor is just the most recent manifestation of the right’s strategy of discrediting those who are often only nominally progressive by linking them to others who are much more progressive, even radical.
One of our buildings on campus is named after a Republican congressman, B. Carroll Reece, whose archived correspondence contains a letter requesting he distribute a newspaper article that reported alleged links between Harry Truman and communists to “Negro” newspapers – no doubt to undermine African-American support for Truman’s Civil Rights platform.
So what has made it convenient and expedient for the right and the white majority to talk about racism now? Barack Obama, the first front-running black presidential candidate, and his family are members of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, led by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.
Wright and the church are partially informed by a philosophy that stresses the importance of traditionally African-American family and community values. Wright himself is a fiery orator who does not shy away from being openly critical of the white and wealthy power structure of this country and this country’s legacy in reference to people of color at home and abroad.
Now, apparently, it is fiercely urgent for the majority to discuss Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s alleged racism and Barack Obama’s connection to it.
The problem is that the evidence presented – a video featuring excerpts of some of Wright’s more inflammatory sermons and the church’s Afro-centric philosophy – does not really support the accusations of racism and bigotry leveled at Wright and the church. Supporting and affirming traditional African-American family and community values in a city (and country) whose history has been marred with segregation and racism and its lingering legacy and contemporary manifestations is not separatist or racist.
Rev. Wright’s criticism of America’s legacy at home and abroad – yes, even when he suggests we were not innocent victims in the 9/11 attacks – is not racist. It’s not even unpatriotic.
Moreover, it certainly does not indicate that Obama is racist, unpatriotic, or even all that progressive. It certainly does not indicate he is a radical. At a recent campaign stop in Philadelphia, Obama said that Rev. Wright’s words “expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America . . . As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity.”
Obama either lacks the insight to know, or the courage to say, that unity and reconciliation must first be preceded by truth and justice.
Obama goes on to acknowledge the legacy and contemporary manifestations of racism and to sing the praises of Wright’s legacy and ministry (excluding his inflammatory remarks), but never acknowledges that it was racism that motivated the attacks on Wright.
Instead, he dismisses Wright as a well-meaning, but bitter carry-over from the Civil Rights Movement generation and thereby gives rubber stamp approval to the racist attack.
When racism, classism and other ‘isms’ are really at play, such as in the slandering of Rev. Wright and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the right and the white majority don’t want to discuss ‘isms.’ Instead they want to fabricate reverse racism as they have done in the case of Rev. Wright and as some ETSU students have done in regards to the existence of a Black Affairs Association on campus.
It is the fact that there are those who have the privilege of deciding when and when not to discuss racism, who have the privilege of fabricating reverse racism in order to abolish the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, and who have the privilege of ignoring real manifestations of racism, that provides evidence of racism in this country.
Next time we talk about racism and classism, let’s look at the fierce urgency of the cradle to prison pipeline, the fierce urgency of Katrina’s survivors, the fierce urgency of unequal education – not the fierce urgency of convenience.

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