Obama Resigns From Black Nation
by BAR executive editor
Glen Ford
"Obama's lurching exit from Trinity Church shows that he
can't tolerate Black nationalism of any kind."
Having this weekend severed a 16-year relationship with
Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, Barack Obama might as well let the
final shoe drop and resign once and for all from Black America, a polity he
refuses to recognize or respect despite garnering 90 percent of Black electoral
support. Never in African American history have Black people's collective
affections been so callously rebuffed by an individual Black recipient. The
fact that Black people's "love" for the Illinois Senator is wholly unrequited
is obvious to everyone except wishful Obamites - a pitiful spectacle to behold.
If there is a tie that binds more tightly and unthinkingly
than the romantic urges of adolescents, it is the pull of nationalism. African
Americans have the misfortune to be self-shackled to Obama by deep historical
yearnings to wield power through their own racial representatives, as other
"nations" of people do. The problem is, Black Americans find themselves trapped
in a threesome, in which the object of their Black nationalist aspirations is
hopelessly enamored of someone else: the mythical white American nation.
"Barack Obama is
true-blue to the slaveholding forefathers and heroic blond mothers of the
storybook U.S. of A."
"I categorically denounce any statement that disparages
our great country," said Obama, in banishing Trinity's retiring senior
pastor Jeremiah Wright from his inner circle, in
April. Obama believes in One-Love - of the white fairy tale kind that
despises the "use [of] incendiary language to express views that have the
potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both
the greatness and the goodness of our nation." Barack Obama is true-blue to the
slaveholding forefathers and heroic blond mothers of the storybook U.S. of A.
His intense (white) nationalist fealty to the Indian-killer and slave-whipper
compels him to reject out of hand the African American version of U.S. and
world history - to compulsively dismiss both the Black counter-narrative and narrators,
like Rev. Wright. And if some stray white man in a clerical collar wanders in,
assaulting white sensibilities with denunciations of white skin privilege and
other unwelcome language, Obama can be counted on to slap the wayward priest
down, forthwith.
"I am deeply disappointed in Father [Michael] Pfleger's
divisive, backward-looking rhetoric," said Obama, appalled at the
effrontery of a man whose parishioners call a practitioner of "blue-eyed black soul,"
who mocked a Hillary Clinton character bawling that "a black man" was
"stealing my show." Pfleger, pastor of predominantly Black St. Sabina
Catholic Church since 1981, has been described in the corporate press as "Chicago's renegade priest."
He was invited to Trinity Church specifically to expose "white entitlement
and supremacy wherever it raises its head." Otis Moss III, the 37-year-old
"hip-hop
pastor" who took over from Rev. Wright, seemed thoroughly pleased with
59-year-old Father
Pfleger's performance, as were the knee-slapping deacons arrayed behind
him. Nevertheless, Father Pfleger found it necessary to make a blanket apology
for his joyful exuberance, and to specifically beg the pardon of Barack Obama
for mixing the presidential frontrunner's name into the skit.
"My words are inconsistent with Senator Obama's life
and message," said Pfleger. He was right. Obama's life and message have
nothing to do with Black liberation, of the theological or secular variety.
Both Reverends Pfleger and Wright support in practice African American
political self-determination and general Black nationalist aspirations - goals
that are repugnant to Obama, who behaves as if on constant guard against
perceived insults to white folks' (and America's) sacred honor.
"Obama's life and
message have nothing to do with Black liberation."
Rev. Wright was also correct a month ago in characterizing
the shameless corporate media attacks on his liberationist teachings as an "attack
on the Black church." Obama pulled his family out of the 8,000 member
congregation because, in
his words, "our relations with Trinity have been strained by the divisive
statements of Reverend Wright, which sharply conflict with our own view."
But Wright had already retired. Clearly, Obama is not comfortable with the
youthful new minister, Rev. Moss, either, or with the congregation that
supports him, or with Trinity's political ties to the radical Catholic priest,
Rev. Pfleger - who until a few weeks ago was actively working on Obama's
campaign. Obama is distraught with the whole Black church scene - which seems
to attract trouble with white people. As the Washington Post reported
on Sunday:
"Obama acknowledged that joining another black church, where
‘there's a different religious tradition or a worshiping style' might be
equally problematic as his membership in Trinity. He said he probably will not
make a decision about a new church until January."
By all rights, Obama ought to just keep on steppin' out of
Black America entirely, since his real problem lies with the two-edged sword of
Black nationalism. The great irony of the Obama phenomenon is, his fundamental
strength in the Democratic primaries - near-universal Black support - is based
on an ideology that is a nightmare to white voters and to Obama, himself: Black
nationalism. As cunning and cynical as Obama may be, he cannot tame the
nationalist impulses of his Black supporters and thus lives in terror that they
will spoil his game among white voters.
Of course, Obama constantly claims that most Black folks are
as politically deracinated - rootless - as he is, but that's never been true.
Black nationalism has always been pervasive in Black America, and Obama can no
more wish it away than he can pretend white racism out of existence. As the
late, great historian Herbert Aptheker noted in his 1971 volume Afro-American
History: The Modern Era, in a chapter titled Consciousness of Afro-American
Nationality: "No other people" express this concept of nationalism so consistently
"over 200 years." Arch enemies Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois at the
turn of the 20th Century both spoke in Black nationalist terms.
Dubois referred to African Americans as "a nation," while Washington described
southern Blacks as "a nation within a nation." Even the politically passive
pre-Revolutionary poetess Phillis Wheatley remarked in 1772 how pleased she was
that "so many of my nation" [Blacks] were embracing Christianity.
"Obama is distraught with
the whole Black church scene."
Black nationalism is everywhere that African Americans
exist. It's the bond that makes perfectly sane people collectively embarrassed
by the antics of Michael Jackson. In 2008, it causes millions of normally sober
African Americans to binge on Obama'laide, to drink constantly to the political
health of a man who gives not a damn about them, and who actually flees from
their presence like a plague.
Black nationalism has scared Obama at least temporarily out
of The Church!
In his ceaseless attempts to meld Black realities and white
illusions, Obama tries to marginalize Rev. Wright by calling Wright's belief
system "generational" - another word for outdated - only to have Wright
replaced in the pulpit by a "hip hop pastor" whose politics is perfectly
compatible with Wright's, and with the radical white clerical elder, Rev.
Pfleger. At that point, Obama must head for the door, family in tow, never to
return.
University of Chicago Black political scientist Michael Dawson writes
that "the black movement that is developing in support of [Obama's] campaign
has some of the markings of black nationalism." Specifically, Obama is buoyed
by a "middle-class" type of Black nationalism - the kind that is more common in
politicized Black Christian churches and professional groupings than Nation of
Islam circles. Obama's lurching exit from Trinity Church shows that he can't
tolerate Black nationalism of any kind, if it gets in the way of white
outreach.
In the end, Black people's one-sided love affair with Barack
Obama can never be consummated. He recoils at every stage, answering love with
unconcealed revulsion. One day soon, we'll take the hint.
Of course, the real deal is former Georgia congresswoman
Cynthia McKinney, presidential
candidate for the Green Party ticket. McKinney reports she's leading in the
Greens' delegate count. Unlike Obama, whose politics is substantially to the
Right of most Blacks, Cynthia McKinney loves you back.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted
at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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