The Elephant in the Room: Obama on Race

I'm warning you right now. This is long.

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Before my dad, Sean Connery, was a pastor he was a high school teacher. He taught a class called "Modern Problems". This was the 60s, so you can imagine some of the topics. As "black power" was birthed out of the civil rights movement, Dad took the controversial step of inviting a leader from the Portland chapter of the Black Panthers to address his class. (And yes, he nearly lost his job over it). He tells of this young man coming to his class and giving a passionate and sometimes angry speech to the mostly white class but how during the Q&A he softened, allowing for some genuine dialogue.

But that wasn't enough for Sean. He knew that the conversations he was having with his students about race were being conducted in a white context. He wanted to broaden their understanding and so he gave them the option of going with him to services, with the permission of the pastor, at the largest black church in Portland. (He made this trek for at for at least 3 years straight, each year the group of students growing larger).

I remember going with him. First of all, for the first time I felt different, a little puddle of white in a sea of black. I remember feeling awkward and uncomfortable. But even as I, as we, stood out like the proverbial sore thumb, we were welcomed and literally embraced by the church members.

It was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. The church was packed, for one thing, with hundreds of people filling the pews. I was astonished by the fashion, the very definition of "Sunday best". These people weren't just dressed in nice clothes, like the folks at my church. They were decked out: the men in gorgeous 3 piece suits and swell ties, the women in vibrant dresses with jackets, scarves and huge hats. I can still see one woman in a lemon yellow suit, large feathers bouncing on her veiled hat.

Church started with prayer. A loooooong prayer. (Sean said it clocked at 25 minutes). A prayer during which the deacon thanked God for everything, from the pillow on which he laid his head to the floor he stepped on when he got out of bed; a prayer of detailed gratitude.

Then there was music. I knew the hymns, but I'd never heard them like this. They would start slow and soulful and then cascade into rich, spirited gospel. There were drums and bass guitars. The pianist would go from standard gospel playing to full-on rocking as the choir swayed as one. Then, to my wondering eyes, came the dancing. Mennonites don't dance under any circumstance. Now I was surrounded by people who were, at a minimum, standing and swaying with the rhythm. Other parishioners would be in the aisles dancing and clapping, singing along or lifting their hands toward heaven. There was a wildness to it that I didn't understand, a passion I'd never seen. Dancing for Jesus? People did that?

Somehow the pastor would bring all this under control for his sermon. But the worship experience was hardly sedate. People called out "amen" and "praise Jesus" as he spoke. They applauded, laughed and shouted. The pastor would make a point and say, "Can I have an 'amen'?" and the whole congregation would call it back to him. It was interactive worship.

I remember something else. I remember the pastor at one point looking straight at my daddy and calling him "brother". What I didn't remember was the context. Sean says that he was railing at his people for dying their hair and doing other things to try and be "more white". He was, clearly, urging them to embrace their heritage, to be proud of who they were and telling them not to pander. He wasn't trying to suggest there was anything wrong with white folk being white but he wanted to instill pride in his own people. It was appropriate for him to do so because in that church, on Sunday, his ministry was to black people. He knew they had to go out from their sanctuary (literally) and live in a white world for 6 more days until they could again find some respite in a place built on their culture, their experience, their way of doing things.

It's important to understand that.

I don't talk about race much because, like a lot of progressives, it makes me uncomfortable. I prefer to focus on how far we've come. One day I was hugging a little girl who sometimes rides in my car pool and one of her classmates asked, "Is that your mommy?" Rosie is dark as a bar of bittersweet chocolate. That another child could think I could be Rosie's mother was one of those signs to me that we are living in a different society, one where the next generation, at least, has the chance to get some of this stuff more right than we have.

But racial and cultural identity are real. So is the racism and prejudice that come with it. So is white privilege and anger and all the rest of it. I think Barack Obama was hopeful that his candidacy could be about something other than race because he would prefer to think, as do I, that we are more or less passed "all that". Barack and I can be sweetly naive like that. But when the hateful words of his former pastor came to light the issue came up. Of course it did. Because however uncomfortable it makes any of us, it is always right there, just below the surface. Race is the elephant in the room and just like a dysfunctional family that ignores Uncle So and So's unfortunate behavior at holiday, Americans try to ignore it.

Obama couldn't ignore it anymore. He had to address it head on. Now, he could have done the politically expedient thing: denounce Wright's words, dismiss him from his campaign and move on. That's the formula for these situations, which happen in nearly every political campaign. But Obama knew that Wright's comments required more than that formula so yesterday, steps from the Liberty Bell, he faced it in an eloquent (well, duh) and straightforward way. He did it with courage and resolution.

Context matters. The words of Rev. Wright matter within the context of the black experience in America. Obama's denunciation of those words matter within the larger context of his experience with that church and that pastor. Unfortunately, the way news is reported in this country means that the context isn't going to be in play. News organizations are going to cull the sound bites that suit their agenda. If they are for Obama it'll sound good, if they're against him the selected bits will stir the pot further. That's seriously unfortunate because yesterday Barack Obama gave a speech that every American should hear, a speech that in it's entirety has the potential to actually get us talking about race in a meaningful way. It was, I dare say, a speech whose time is long overdue.

I fully understand that you can't drop everything and watch this right now. The run time is nearly 40 minutes. But I'm asking you to keep it in mind and when you've got some time, maybe later tonight, between say, dinner and whatever passes for must-see-TV for you on a Wednesday, watch this. At the very least, take 10 minutes and read the transcript.

One of the reasons I support Barack Obama is because I sincerely believe he is the right guy for this moment in our history. America, which has never been perfect, has never strayed so far from her ideals as we have in the last 7 years. But there is a promise in our founding documents that we should seek to reclaim and Barack Obama has what it takes to embolden ordinary Americans like me to engage more fully in that process. That he has emerged to push us in that direction is simply a beautiful, beautiful thing.

That is all. Tomorrow I'll do something completely light and fluffy.