On reacting to Obama

Daniel Larison is put off that some Obama fans are imputing racism and bad character to those who didn't like the Speech.

It is becoming depressingly common for Obama supporters to trot out accusations of racism whenever someone frowns in their hero’s direction. Frankly, if they really believe what the man says, this is unworthy of the candidate they are promoting. If an Obama presidency means four years of his fans’ hectoring everyone else about their racial hang-ups (because Obama is smart enough not to do this), it is unlikely that Obama will ever win the election.

I think it will mean that, and coming to believe that is one reason why I quit believing the Obama-As-Racial-Healer idea. He may yet become president, and perhaps deserves to be, but it's not going to take us to a better place in terms of race relations, as some conservatives like me once believed (and this is not Obama's fault, let me stipulate). But let's continue:

The telling point is that most of Wright’s critics on the right were primarily offended by his “anti-Americanism,” a term that they deploy so frequently that one wonders if even they know what they mean by it any longer. It was his offenses against their sense of what nationalism requires that have bothered them the most.

That's an interesting point to consider. As I've said before, I'm not bothered by Rev. Wright's criticism of America as a general matter. Religious leaders have the duty to speak prophetically when circumstances warrant. Anyway, I get the hives over the kind of knee-jerk nationalism you see from some right-wing pastors and congregations (I seem to recall having posted a gruesome YouTube video of some megachurch's mega-nationalistic "Salute to America" at some point, though I can't seem to find it). Daniel is right to say that for a lot of voters, any harsh criticism of this country is beyond the pale. I think, though, for people like me, it was the vehemence of Wright's jeremiads, and the batshit-crazy racist paranoia (AIDS as a government genocide project), that struck a nerve. I was talking with a black colleague yesterday about the Speech, and he pointed out that Jesse Jackson is too "hot" in his affect to have spoken so frankly about race --> Obama, by contrast, has such a cool, cerebral style that he doesn't provoke defensiveness, but invites you to listen. For the same reason Wright's hyperbolic, animated pulpit style is so inspiring to his fans, it's threatening to outsiders.

Daniel again:

Meanwhile, the reaction in Middle America generally will often be similar to the one this reader reported: mockery and disbelief. Imagine that you are someone living in the middle of the country and have been lectured to your entire life about the prejudices that you need to overcome, and then you hear that Obama, the great reconciler, has ties to someone who possesses what you have been conditioned your entire life to believe is the absolute worst sort of sentiment, and then add to that the recognition that Obama’s actual politics are far removed from yours and then guess what the response will be to his speech addressing this issue. The very resentments that Obama was explaining in his speech, for which he demonstrated at least some understanding, were inevitably going to be summoned up by any major speech he gave on this question; it is a pity that his supporters cannot make some similar display of understanding. For my part, I have given Obama the benefit of the doubt on this, probably to the annoyance of many of my readers–should the same courtesy not be extended to his critics?

That's precisely it. It's hard for lots of people to grasp what's being asked of them here, with regard to giving Obama a pass on his close association with Wright. I'll say it again: I thought Obama's speech was very, very good, and he made the most reasonable and sympathetic case possible for why Americans should be understanding of Wright's anger, and why he remained in Trinity UCC though he strongly disagreed with Wright on some issues. But having grown accustomed to a public ethic in which white people in positions of responsibility get defenestrated with great dispatch when they transgress narrowly defined lines of acceptable opinion on matters of race, many people will find Obama's reasoned, nuanced approach to the matter of his pastor and himself to be special pleading on behalf of a racial double standard.