Another Angry Black Preacher
Let’s ask the hard question about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Is he as far outside the African American mainstream as many of us would like to think?
Because Barack Obama’s speech on race in America was so candid about both the legitimacy of black and white grievances — and the flaws in those grievances — it carried the risk of offending almost everyone.
One of the least remarked upon passages in Obama’s speech is also one of the most important — and the part most relevant to the Wright controversy. There is, Obama said, a powerful anger in the black community rooted in “memories of humiliation and doubt” that “may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends” but “does find voice in the barbershop or the beauty shop or around the kitchen table. . . . And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.”
Yes, black people say things about our country and its injustices to each other that they don’t say to those of us who are white. Whites also say things about blacks privately that they don’t say in front of their black friends and associates.
