The Black Case Against Obama

It seems I have a more political taste to my post today. Right now I having to really hold myself back from commenting on the horrible California Supreme Court Case on Gay marriage that came down today. However unlike 99 percent of the people that will give their two cents I recognize I need to read the entire Opinion before commenting at length.

Anyway the New Republic has this very good piece called Maybe We Can't by Cinque Henderson- The black case for Obama-skepticism

A good read and I was struck by this part
I'm part of an Internet group of black people who yammer on about politics. You could extrapolate from polling data that I would be the lone Clinton supporter in the bunch. And, indeed, I am. A member of the group posted the following anecdote after Barack's now famous race speech:

Last week, I was sitting in a lobby chatting with the woman next to me. All of a sudden, she grabbed my hand as if she realized at that moment that I was black. She asked, do you go to church? I responded in the affirmative. Then she asked, do you go to a black church? I said yes. She said, I'm so glad that I met you. I have been really wanting to discuss this with someone. Is it true what they are saying about what goes on in the black church? I smiled and we had a lovely chat about pastors, Obama, civil rights and all things colored. She looked so relieved and really wanted to understand.

This story broke my heart. As the son of a Baptist minister, I can attest that Wright is and was an extreme aberration from how the overwhelming majority of black Christians worship. In church, black people hear about Peter, Paul, Mary, and how to get into heaven. How to forgive. How to love. Not how to vote.


But here was Barack suggesting that Wright's behavior was commonplace in black churches: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He generalized Wright's ridiculousness to distract from his individual choice to worship under a buffoon for two decades. I have a cousin who attended Wright's church for three weeks and then left, never to return. She had no interest in hearing his nonsense from the pulpit.

Barack obscured the true nature of black religious life because, to do otherwise, he would have had to answer the question, "Why are you a member of a church that is this racially divisive and such a sharp aberration to how the rest of black people worship?" When Barack beautifully suggested that the beliefs pronounced from the pulpit of Trinity in Chicago are not uncommon, he was feeding us garbage. But Barack needed to protect his reputation as a race-healer and unifier, so he told a lie about black religious life to help keep the glow of his own reputation alive. And now the evidence suggests that Barack didn't, in the end, break with Wright over his outrageous racial claims, but over his suggestion that Barack is just a politician.

That so many people have a stake in ignoring these real concerns is troubling. At least the Hillary supporters I know seem to be aware of her more unsavory traits: that she carries a knife with her that she could pull out at any minute. Not so with Obama's fans. It's nearly impossible to get them to admit any wrong in him. Given the choice, I prefer to side with the group that knows their candidate can be a jerk, rather than the group that believes their candidate is Jesus.
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