Hello blog.
I don't believe I have ever ignored you for this long before - more than two months. It's not like nothing has happened in that time. Maybe nothing I felt I could add much to. Recent primary outcomes have not been surprising. They have gone the way the pundits said. As sorry as pundits have proven themselves to be at picking winners (remember when Rudy was a given because he was polling near 60% nationally?..or when Hillary was the same for nearly the same reason?), that Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania have gone as predicted (Texas was closer than predicted; Hillary won the popular vote, but the delegate count is very close, and in fact Obama may end up with a small edge there due to the caucus results) indicates how obvious these outcomes must have been.
I guess I didn't feel I had much to add. It all seemed right out there - their traditional coalitions holding true to form, and their strengths and weaknesses as candidates remaining such. There was an interesting swap of unforced errors - Hillary's Tuzla fantasy and Obama's characterization for why rural Pennsylvanians go to church and own guns. Both of these were amusingly dumb for national candidates running for the highest office in the land. They were, really, just amusingly dumb, period. Hillary, what are you talking about?..ok, so then if you misspoke tell us what you were remembering instead? Barack, um, have you spent any time with people, mostly white, in the rural towns of Pennsylvania? Only a small amount of time would have been required to see that they attend church because they are faithful people, and they own guns because they will hunt anything that swims or runs and for which a hunting license can be obtained. They LOVE to hunt. That's why they have guns, Barack! They may also indeed be "bitter" about the loss of manufacturing jobs owing in part to trade agreements disadvantageous, certainly in their thinking, to the United States. But if they are bitter, it's not why they own guns and go to church. He has asked for people's votes more for his judgment than his experience, yet such a loose comment shows incredibly poor judgment. But what is more poor than the comment, and this applies equally for Hillary and her Tuzla fairytale, is not simply acknowledging and apologizing for the error. Barack has insisted that the point he was making was factually correct, he just mucked it up in expressing himself. And Hillary has only gone so far as to say she "misspoke", hoping for it to be quickly covered over with the steady accumulation of campaign dust, while counting on America's famously short attention span.
I just heard Reverend Wright finish his comments at the National Press Club. He chose to not (perhaps he did during the question and answer period, which was not broadcast on CSPAN radio) address any of the quotations which have become youtube famous, the "not God bless America, goddamn America" comments. He instead made two attempts: (1) to explain the founding influences of the black church as insight into the style and content of its modern-day message, (2) to attempt to correct mostly white perceptions of the black church - its style, its message, but also of other things black, like black music, how black children learn, and even dancing styles - as "deficient" when they are actually just "different". But his speech was so brief, he didn't offer much in the way of example. I was, as a white person, surprised to hear that I or white people in general see the black church, black ministry as deficient. Deficient in what? In his speech, he jumped abruptly to this supposition, and advanced it in the present tense. While his words on the founding influences of the black church were all in the past tense, this part of his speech was all very much in the present. But he never once told me how white people find the black church deficient. Also, whites have always liked "black" (it's in quotes because whites and others write, perform and enjoy this music, too) music - whether it was Motown in the 70s, disco in the 80s, jazz since forever, or hip-hop now. So where's the deficiency? Scholars and politicians, on the topic of education in America, will regularly cite that the performance of black children is at or near the lowest among the usual demographic groups for which such statistics are kept. So one could say that is a statement of "deficiency". But does Reverend Wright maintain those children are actually doing well in school?..or does he argue that "white" teaching methods are predominantly to blame for the poor performance, and that therefore a fundamental change in such teaching techniques would change the performance from poor to excellent? If so, he should be writing that book, that is, the book on what these techniques are, because for these black children currently in the schools there is literally no time to waste.
My point is that I have no reason to believe that white America finds black America deficient. That's far too broad a charge. I do think a fair portion of white America may find Reverend Wright deficient and as incorrectly loose in characterizing white attitudes toward blacks as Barack Obama was in characterizing Pennsylvanians' attitudes towards guns or religion. He incorrectly broadens the criticisms of white America beyond himself to the black church or to black people. This is naive or clever. I'm guessing it's some degree of both. In providing the slave underpinnings of the development of the black church, his challenge to a white audience was and is to explain how whatever current-day style and content of the black church owes to those underpinnings has any relevance 150 years after slavery was abolished and over 40 years after civil rights and voting rights legislation made it illegal to discriminate on race, acknowledging fully that the simple passage of the law did not make it so, but that 40+ years later, if you attempt to deny a black person employment or pay given competitive skills, or access to anything in a prejudicial way, that everyone from a human resources department, the EEOC, and the courts and the law as well as public opinion, are on the side of the black person. If Reverend Wright's historical overview was intended to explain or give insight into what he said from the pulpit that many found so offensive, then he needed to explain how the former is relevant to and explains if not justifies the latter, or if was the case, provide the clarifying context the media mostly omitted in its treatment of his remarks. He did not do this, though perhaps during the question and answer period.
He did mention, repeatedly, however - in fact it was obviously one of the points he wanted listeners to take away from his speech - that the black church is about "liberation, transformation, and reconciliation." As to the third of those, this white person did not hear from Reverend Wright anything which seemed to have reconciliation (with whites, I assume) as its goal. He made some suppositions of a perception of deficiency by white people which he did not explain. And he made some explanations about the historical undergirdings of the black church from slave times and how they manifest to this day in the style and content of the black church, without clarifying how they impact that style and content, and the degree to which such impacts have relevance so long after slavery and unequal protection under the law were both abrogated.
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