Flagging Oval Office hope among African-Americans

Les Payne

May 5, 2008

'I think you can stick a fork in Barack Obama," said the patriarch of a respected middle class, Connecticut family Friday. "He is done."

A creature of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's generation, the black postal worker had given Obama no chance for the White House when he first launched his campaign. Wright had mirrored John the postal worker's pessimism about America when lecturing Howard University students in '06: "No black man will ever be considered for president no matter how hard you run."

Evoking this prophecy before his claque at the National Press Club, Wright mugged through a fiery condemnation of the U.S. government. He damned it for AIDS and racism and stoked a protesting Jewish group by praising Louis Farrakhan as a most important national voice.

"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago," Obama said of his former pastor. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate. ... They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs."

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Prior to this "needless distraction," Obama's harvest from 42 primaries had surprised African-Americans and even softened the pessimism of John the postal worker.

"This darling of the media will be kept before white America, like a rock star, as long as he does their bidding," John e-mailed his nieces and nephews. "He is enjoying every minute of it. Rev. Wright is a narcissistic egotist the media have [persuaded] that it's more important for him to be in the spotlight than for Obama to be president. It's as if he's running for president.

"Obama has cut ties but the damage has already been done," John predicted, as his storm clouds roll back into place. The Illinois senator, he says, will lose Indiana Tuesday, then North Carolina, and, however impossible it might sound, the Democratic nomination. "I hope I'm wrong about this, but I don't think so."

A respectful nephew, a generation behind Obama, begged to differ with his Uncle John.

"I believe Obama will win North Carolina, although not by the whopping margin he would have - thanks to Wright," said Rashad, who works as a defense attorney in Hartford. "Wright has probably swung the pendulum in favor of Hillary ... [but] I think we also need to pay attention to how the media has operated during the entire campaign." Once Clinton the presumptive nominee was challenged by this "unknown commodity," Rashad e-mailed his uncle, the media gave him a push because they sensed the "story" value.

Spurring each candidate, as needed, toward an exciting photo finish in the summer, Rashad said that the media, at another, strictly business, level, were giddy over the prospects of those "mighty ad revenues."

As for Rev. Wright, the "post-civil rights era" Rashad speculates that Obama's self-satisfied former mentor expects to get paid for his treachery in book deals, lecture fees, and otherwise. His mother, Mary, a deeply religious church organist, wondered, "whatever happened to keeping religion and politics separate?"

A niece of the family chimed in that "while Black Liberation Theology is not the only social philosophy of the black church, it helps define our culture and experience."

It is certainly no less authentic, she wrote, than the preaching of Gloria Steinem, Newt Gingrich and Bob Jones, or the TV ranting of Bill O'Reilly and Hillary Clinton.

"Uncle John is right," Rashad added. "If Obama loses the nomination, we will never hear from Rev. Wright again except maybe in a 'Where are they Now' episode."

As with John the postal worker, the Wright affair has caused a troubling pattern of re-thinking among African-Americans who had dared pause to hope during the Democratic campaign.

Obama aside, America must decide if such smoldering anger - and it's widespread among blacks acquainted with their country's racial history - will continue to find justification among its most patriotic citizens. Hope without substance is indeed lost.