The Preacher and the Politician

Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and Race in America

Clarence E. Walker, Gregory D. Smithers

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780813929200
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Barack Obama's inauguration as the first African American president of the United States has caused many commentators to conclude that America has entered a postracial age. The Preacher and the Politician argues otherwise, reminding us that, far from inevitable, Obama's nomination was nearly derailed by his relationship with Jeremiah Wright, the outspoken former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago. The media storm surrounding Wright's sermons, the historians Clarence E. Walker and Gregory D. Smithers suggest, reveals that America's fraught racial past is very much with us, only slightly less obvious.

With meticulous research and insightful analysis, Walker and Smithers take us back to the Democratic primary season of 2008, viewing the controversy surrounding Wright in the context of enduring religious, political, and racial dynamics in American history. In the process they expose how the persistence of institutional racism, and racial stereotypes, became a significant hurdle for Obama in his quest for the presidency.

The authors situate Wright's preaching in African American religious traditions dating back to the eighteenth century, but they also place his sermons in a broader prophetic strain of Protestantism that transcends racial categories. This latter connection was consistently missed or ignored by pundits on the right and the left who sought to paint the story in simplistic, and racially defined, terms. Obama's connection with Wright gave rise to criticism that, according to Walker and Smithers, sits squarely in the American political tradition, where certain words are meant to incite racial fear, in the case of Obama with charges that the candidate was unpatriotic, a Marxist, a Black Nationalist, or a Muslim.

Once Obama became the Democratic nominee, the day of his election still saw ballot measures rejecting affirmative action and undermining the civil rights of other groups. The Preacher and the Politician is a concise and timely study that reminds us of the need to continue to confront the legacy of racism even as we celebrate advances in racial equality and opportunity.

Notes

Introduction

1. Kevin Sacks, “A Time to Reap for Foot Soldiers of Civil Rights,” New York Times, November 4, 2008 (hereafter NYT).

2. A process that Obama began with his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (see David Mendell, Obama: From Promise to Power [New York: Amistad Press, 2007], 3).

3. Abby Goodnough, “Massachusetts Votes to Keep Its Income Tax,” NYT, November 5, 2008.

4. Many of the Republican Party’s voter base demonstrated the importance of issues like gender and sexuality after Senator John McCain announced his vice-presidential running mate was Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Much of the initial response from Republican voters was openly chauvinistic; the following comment of one correspondent to the Houston Chronicle was typical: “Other than a pretty face, what is Gov. Sarah Palin going to bring to the Republican ticket?” (August 30, 2008). For scholarly analysis of race, sexuality, and gender in the United States, see John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Julian B. Carter, The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo, In-Between Bodies: Sexual Difference, Race, and Sexuality (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007); and Jared Sexton, Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiculturalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).

5. Quoted in Martin Fletcher and James Bone, “Hugs and High Fives as a Spirit of Harmony Blows into Windy City,” Times (London), November 6, 2008.

6. http://www.conservapedia.com/Barack_Obama.

7. Sarah Smith, “Police Foil Plot to Kill Obama,” Channel 4 News, http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/police+foil+plot+to+kill+obama/2673987; Jonah Goldberg, “‘Hear Me, Earthlings!’ Citizen Obama Addresses the World,” National Review, August 18, 2008, 18; David van Drehle, “The Five Faces of Barack Obama,” Time, September 1, 2008, 33; David Freddoso, The Case against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2008), 121. For a brief summation of Obama conspiracy theories, see “Explaining the Riddle,” Economist, August 23–29, 2008, 20.

8. Bruce R. Dain, A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Jerrold M. Packard, American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002); John M. Giggie, After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Clive Webb, Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); George Lewis, Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement (London: Hodder Arnold, 2006).

9. http://www.shitskin.com/presidentshitskin.html.

10. Jay Felsberg, “Board Won’t Fire Teacher over Obama Slur,” Florida Freedom Newspaper, October 17, 2008, http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/howard_11960_article.html/board_sims.html.

11. Sarah Smith, “Police Foil Plot to Kill Obama.”

12. See TV by the Numbers, http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/01/16/oreilly-vs-olbermann-through-thursday-january-15/11035#more-11035.

13. Bruce A. Williams and Michelle X. Delli Carpini, “The Eroding Boundaries between News and Entertainment and What They Mean for Democratic Politics,” in The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics, ed. Lee Wilkins and Clifford G. Christians (New York and London: Taylor and Frances, 2008), 181. See also Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter, The Nightly News Nightmare: Television’s Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988–2004 (New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 2007).

14. See NationMaster, http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/PBS-Newshour; Robert J. McKeever and Philip Davies, Introduction to US Politics (New York: Pearson Longman), 82. For further analysis, see James T. Hamilton, All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Mark J. Rozell and Jeremy D. Mayer, Media Power, Media Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 2008).

15. Greg Hitt, “The New Southern Strategy,” Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2008; Christopher Dickey, “Southern Discomfort,” Newsweek, August 11, 2008, 22–32.

16. C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971); Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (1992; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 272, 443; Holland Thompson, The New South: A Chronicle of Social and Industrial Evolution (Charleston: Biblio-Bazaar, 2008), 53.

17. Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 18; Stephen D. Shaffer, Charles E. Menifield, Peter W. Wielhouwer, and Keesha M. Middle-mass, “An Introduction to Southern Legislative Coalitions,” in Politics in the New South: Representations of African Americans in Southern State Legislatures, ed. Menifield and Shaffer (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), 17.

18. Hitt, “The New Southern Strategy.”

19. Jack Bass, “In Dixie, Signs of a Rising Biracial Politics,” NYT, May 11, 2008.

20. Jason Horowitz, “Black Congressmen Declare Racism in Palin’s Rhetoric,” New York Observer, October 7, 2008, http://www.observer.com/2008/politics/black-congressmen-declare-racism-palin-s-rhetoric.

21. Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995; New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), v.

22. Kate Phillips, “Palin: Obama Is ‘Palling around with Terrorists,’ ” Caucus, NYT political blog, October 4, 2008, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/palin-obama-is-palling-around-with-terrorists/; Cliff Kincaid, “Is Barack Obama a Secret Marxist Mole?” Canada Free Press, March 19, 2008, http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2289. Ann Coulter’s article about Obama’s memoir inspired one reader to write, “For the first time in my adult life, I’m really proud to be a . . . typical white person” (see Ann Coulter, “Obama’s Dimestore Mein Kampf,” Human Events, April 2, 2008, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25831&keywords=dimestore+mein+kampf).

23. For a sampling of opinions that emphasized “not really knowing Obama,” see Jack Kelly, “Obama’s Fishy Associations: Still No Answers to Questions on Ayers and Others,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 12, 2008, http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08286/919158-373.stm; and Frank Diamond, “We Don’t Really Know Obama,” Bulletin: Philadelphia’s Family Newspaper, October 22, 2008, http://www.thebulletin.us. For Obama’s lack of experience, see Judy Keen, “The Big Question about Barack Obama,” USA Today, January 17, 2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-16-obama-experience-cover_x.htm; “Obama Lacks Experience to Be Next President,” Letters to the Editor, Delaware Online, October 8, 2008, http://www.delawareonline.com/; Evelyn O. Hassell, “Obama Lacks Needed Experience for Office,” Shreveport Times, October 31, 2008, http://www.shreveporttimes.com/. For Obama’s “split personality,” see David Brooks, “The Two Obamas,” NYT, June 20, 2008.

24. Obama has himself made comments that many interpret as “postracial.” For example, he claimed in 1995 that the “world will [eventually] look more like Brazil, with its racial mix. America is getting more complex. The color line in America being black and whi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• “They Didn’t Give Us Our Mule and Our Acre”
• The “Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost”
• “I Don’t Want People to Pretend I’m Not Black”
• “To Choose Our Better History”?
• Text of Barack Obama’s March 18, 2008, Speech on Race
• Notes
• Index