Obama en Wright: Verschillende Worldviews
Door Ted Glick | „Wij moesten niet door om het even welke hevige omwentelingen gaan dat Europa om werd gedwongen te verdragen aangezien het zijn feodaal verleden afwierp. Onze passage van landbouw aan de industriële maatschappij werd verlicht door de zuivere grootte van het continent, de enorme landstreken van land en de overvloedige middelen dat nieuwe immigranten toestonden om voortdurend te vernieuwen.“ Barack Obama, de Moed van Hoop, p. 55
Jeremiah Wright vatte het verschil tussen hem samen en Obama in zijn gesprekken vorig weekend als, „ik doe welke pastors doen. Hij doet welke politici doen. Ik loop niet voor bureau.“
Maar er zijn meer aan het dan dit.
Toer. Wright is unapologetic Afrikaanse Amerikaanse preacher die geen aarzeling sprekend de waarheid in het beste van de godsdienstige prophetic traditie heeft. Hij gebruikt het woord „imperialisme.“ Hij spreekt over „onderdrukkers“ en de „onderdrukte“ en „wens van de God voor een radicale verandering.“ Hij zegt, nauwkeurig, dat „u terrorisme op andere mensen niet kunt doen en het nooit verwachten om op u terug te komen.“
Barack Obama, zoals van een dichte lezing van de „Moed van Hoop“ en een overzicht van zijn Democratische politieke carrière van de Partij duidelijk is, is allen over het stijgen binnen de wereld van de Democratische en Republikeinse partijen, de collectieve duopolie. En als u aan die politieke wereld en het worden Voorzitter door het geëngageerd bent, is het verrassend niet dat u dingen als vergoelijkt de V.S. zou doen. de geschiedenis, als citaat hierboven. Het beleid van Genocidal naar Inheemse mensen, de afschuwelijke werkelijkheid van de slavernij en Jim Crow, de invasie van Mexico en overname van veel van zijn grondgebied, zelfs de Burgeroorlog en de Wederopbouw: nergens in Obama boek richt hij deze truths van onze geschiedenis.
Obama bovengenoemd op zijn 29 de persconferentie van April waar hij met zijn pastor van 20 jaar brak die, „wat aan me duidelijk werd was dat hij een wereldmening voorstelde die tegenspreekt wie ik ben en wat ik me voor bevind. En wat ik in het bijzonder geïrriteerdd me denk was zijn suggestie dat mijn vorige denunciation van zijn opmerkingen op de een of andere manier het politieke posturing was. . . so where I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS and suggestions that somehow Minister Farrakhan has been a great voice in the 20th century, then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.”
It is true that a handful of statements made by Wright in response to questions from the press at the National Press Club gave them an opening to caricature him as too radical, too out of touch with the U.S. political mainstream, the political mainstream that Obama has been laboring mightily, for years, particularly over the past 16 months, to steer in a somewhat more progressive direction.
It is also true that, faced with near-certain, continued media attention on the Obama/Wright relationship, Obama needed to address the “worldview” differences between them, which are real. But was it really necessary for him to use words like these in doing so: “divisive and destructive,” “the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” and “a bunch of rants that aren’t grounded in truth”?
Obama said that “when you start focusing on the plight of the historically oppressed, you lose sight of what we have in common. . . it doesn’t describe properly what I believe, in the power of faith to overcome but also to bring people together.”
If he truly believes that he’s different in this way than Wright, then he didn’t read all of Wright’s National Press Club speech, or he deliberately discounted major parts of it, like this conclusion:
“The prophetic theology of the black church has always seen and still sees all of God’s children as sisters and brothers, equals who need reconciliation, who need to be reconciled as equals. . . Reconciliation means we embrace our individual rich histories, all of them. We retain who we are, as persons of different cultures, while acknowledging that those of other cultures are not superior or inferior to us; they are just different from us. We root out any teaching of superiority, inferiority, hatred or prejudice. And we recognize for the first time in modern history, in the West, that the other who stands before us with a different color of skin, a different texture of hair, different music, different preaching styles and different dance moves; that other is one of God’s children just as we are, no better, no worse, prone to error and in need of forgiveness just as we are. Only then will liberation, transformation and reconciliation become realities and cease being ever elusive ideals.”
Barack Obama has made a genuine effort to run a different kind of campaign, one which is more issue-oriented and less about the divisive and dishonest personal attacks that often characterize what passes for “political debate” in this country. But in this case, the case of Rev. Wright, Obama has failed his own test. The corporate media has made him bend his principles.
If Obama wins the Democratic nomination and if he wins the Presidency, which I continue to hope he does as the best candidate when compared with Clinton and McCain, we can expect to see more examples of Obama rejecting consistently progressive positions. Hopefully, he will feel that it is incumbent that he follows through on much of his generally progressive campaign rhetoric and fights for generally progressive government policies. But like Jeremiah Wright, we need to be prepared, no matter who is elected President, “November 5th, I’m [we’re] coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.”
Government of, by and for the people: that must be the objective. We aren’t going to get it on November 4th, 2008, but if we don’t lose our critical consciousness, if we don’t defend indefensible positions, if we speak truth to power, whether Democrat or Republican, and if we keep working to find the ways to come together into a powerful, grassroots-based, multi-cultural independent progressive movement, we can make progress this year toward that long-term objective.
Ted Glick is active in the climate movement. He is a supporter of Cynthia McKinney’s Power to the People/Green Party Presidential campaign. He can be reached at indpol@igc.org
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This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 5:50 am and is filed under Political News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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