Hailed as the "post-racial" candidate capable of leading our country into a new era of American politics, Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has captured the nation's imagination. Even now, fighting off a resurgent Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) while simultaneously censuring the would-be policies of Republican nominee John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama evokes an image of the anti-politician, hovering above the fray of politics-as-usual and representing a new, more civil breed of public discourse.
Yet while the junior senator's rhetoric on change and American "togetherness" has been captivatingly eloquent, so too has it been misleading and contrived. The unraveling of Barack Obama's unholy relationship with Pastor Jeremiah Wright has not only revealed a candidate whose actions contradict his espoused beliefs, but it has also exposed a man who has been deeply influenced by and remains disturbingly loyal to a raving conspiracy theorist, a swindler whose vilification of America is matched in vileness only by the oppressive mantra of victimhood that he seeks to instill in the minds of black Americans.
For some, the implications of Barack Obama's relationship with Wright and his Chicago church are overstated if not wholly irrelevant. Though these individuals employ a host of unconvincing strategies in an effort to explain away appearances of impropriety, their defense ultimately comes down to one point: Wright said it, Obama did not.
And, here, Obama supporters have a point. The words "U.S. of KKKA" did not emanate from Obama's lips. Nor did the senator accuse Americans of "[believing] in white supremacy and black inferiority" more than they believe in God. However, Obama did attend the specific church led by the specific pastor who unleashed this poison from his supposedly sacred pulpit. He returned time and time again to hear Wright's sermons for more than twenty years - a period during which it is inconceivable that he managed to avoid Wright's "more radical" elements - and sat silent and inactive in the face of boiling intolerance. And he went beyond tacit complicity in Wright's malevolence, donating thousands of dollars to a church that served as an ideological outpost for deception, paranoia, prejudice and even hate.
Both politically and personally, the Obama-Wright relationship is a call for Americans to open their eyes. At the political end of the spectrum, Barack Obama has rooted his campaign in a message of hope, his ability to deconstruct traditional sociopolitical and racial divides, and his determination to unite Americans around a vision of the country of which we can all be proud. Yet, for more than two decades, Obama has sought spiritual guidance from a dangerous mind.
Whether seeking this advice in private or silently absorbing it on Sunday mornings, the senator has looked up to a man who considers the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 a "wake-up call" to white America that people of color have not "gone away" as "the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns." He has been married by, and asked for his two daughters to be baptized under, a man whose political maxim is "God damn America" for building bigger prisons to house black inmates addicted to government-provided drugs; "God damn America" for killing innocent people; and "God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." As a politician promising to restore decency and trust to American life, it is unconscionable that Obama failed to condemn or, at the very least, disassociate himself and his family from a voice (a voice within his own state, his own community and his own church, no less) that is unabashedly divisive and dishonest.
More disturbing, however, are the personal implications of this relationship. When an individual, especially one who is not especially religious to begin with, joins a church, it is safe to assume that something about that specific institution resonates with him. Moreover, when someone frequents a church for over 20 years and forms a close personal bond with its leader, it only makes sense that the church and the leader's message largely coincide with that individual's worldview. These are not controversial or outrageous assumptions. Removed from this contentious context (and even within it), these observations rely on both common sense and experience.
Therefore, in looking to Barack Obama, we see someone who, on some level, connects intellectually and spiritually with the vision of Jeremiah Wright's church. We see someone who has made a choice to expose his young children, during formative periods of their lives, to a carefully selected brand of religiosity and social commentary, a very personal and serious decision indeed.
Sadly, the message that Obama has chosen for himself and his family is a message of victimization. It is a voice that in no uncertain terms tells black Americans that a government "run by rich white people" has infected them with AIDS, addicted them to drugs, financed the oppression of their racial brothers and sisters in Africa and continues to enslave them through a combination of crooked institutions and overt racism. Although Wright never explains how he, a bitterly anti-government black man, managed to stay AIDS-free, out of jail, off of drugs and rich enough to recently start construction on a sprawling mansion in a neighborhood overwhelmingly populated by rich white people, the pastor nevertheless imposes a conspiracy-laden mentality of victimhood onto his parishioners.
In doing so, he undercuts the imperatives of personal accountability and human agency, telling his congregation members that they are mere pawns in a grand game of white-man chess. As such, he pollutes society with an instigative, racialized rhetoric that lends itself to social cleavage and reopens the slowly healing wounds of our country.
Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright are not the same person and should not be treated as such. Where Wright ought to be eschewed to the margins of social and political discourse in this country, Obama is in many ways a refreshing exception to the stale politics that have rendered segments of our government myopic and ineffective. However, just as it is unwise to equate these two on the basis of their long-standing relationship, so too is it injudicious to deny the obvious implications of that relationship.
For all his oratory brilliance and political acumen, Barack Obama forgot that you are only as good as the company you keep. Fortunately for the American people, the company of Jeremiah Wright has laid bare the myth of Senator Obama's audacious hope and exposed the reality of his daring hypocrisy, while other candidates still remain.
Matthew Ladner is a junior majoring in international relations.
