Peace On That

At the end of every church service, the pastor of a southside church I attended would say, 'govern yourself accordingly'. This is what Rev. Wright failed to do. The Press Club is not a Sunday morning sermon and they are not apt to respond as a black congregation would. They brought him in looking for cannon fodder and it was his job to leave them with understanding. He was given the world stage to finally present himself in such a way that he would leave as a teacher and prophet and not as a demagogue or as an albatross around the neck of Barak Obama. He failed miserably.

For the past several months I have supported Rev. Wright and Barak Obama. I still support Rev. Wright but there comes a time when a friend must be set aside. Barak Obama is running for the most important and most powerful political office in the world. He will represent the will of the American people – all of her people. And her people have a problem with race relations. We know that. We have seen how they have used Barak’s middle name in disparaging ways. We have seen how they used a photo of him in native African apparel as a means to frighten people. And we have seen how they use Rev. Wright’s words as a means of communicating that Barak Obama is really a black separatist and cannot be trusted. This is the way of the world but we must be smart in combating the lies.

Rev. Wright spoke some truth at the Press Club. However, his rant about defending the black church was off. His statement about the government creating AIDS to kill black people is off. As an aside: the reason that black people can believe the government created AIDS is because the government has in the past purposely infected black people. Remember the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment? Finally, giving the Q-Dog sign might not raise an eye in the black community but on the world stage, it will.

As intelligent and articulate as we know Rev. Wright to be, he failed himself and Barak Obama. The Press Club wanted tabloid snippets and they should have been given intellectual diatribes. Questions should have been answered in such a way as to raise the dialogue from mere politics to the mental condition of this country with regards to race. That didn’t happen and it was a lost opportunity on the reverend’s part.

Barak Obama had no choice but to distance himself from his pastor. There are black people that will disagree with his move but again, Barak Obama is running for President of the United States. There is more at stake and sacrifices must be made for the greater good. In the black community, we tend to want to criticize individuals that don’t stay “down”. That leads to some placing themselves in situations that are not healthy for them. See Michael Vick. See Pacman Jones. And if he is not smart, we’ll see Derrick McFadden fall.

I’m sure it hurt Obama to have to denounce his pastor in such a public manner. I have family that I don’t care to be around but I would hate to have to make an announcement to the world about them. This is the way of politics. But this issue had to put to rest before the General Election and to make the Superdelegates comfortable. There will be some that will say Obama waited too long but they weren’t voting for him anyway. There was a need to have Rev. Wright speak for Rev. Wright and not the Obama campaign. It is now time to focus on the task at hand and that is winning this nomination and beating McCain in November. The attempts to use Rev. Wright as a weapon against Obama will continue - that’s politics. For the sake of both men and this country, I hope they use wisdom and govern themselves accordingly.