Ruminations of an Expatriate

The fact that purely political circumstances have forced Obama to address the nation relative to the matter of race, and to answer for the remarks of the pastor of his church is sickening. The whole episode illuminates an appalling double standard.

No Caucasian candidate, past or present, has been called to answer for the bigoted remarks of their pastors or clerical supporters. Candidates have been occasionally called to repudiate such comments, but never to answer for them. But, then again, the bigoted comments of such prominent republican clerical lunatics as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and et al, have not been aimed at the Caucasian economic and political power elite, such as were those of the Rev. Wright.

The episode clearly illustrates the racism which continues to permeate USA society.

I am one who shared a dorm room in 1968 with an 18 year old African-American fellow from rural North Carolina whom I often found crying in our room, from his home sickness and alienation amongst an only recently marginally less than all Caucasian student body. Often he told me he was going home, though, ultimately he persevered.

I shared a roach infested one bedroom apartment in Wash. D. C. with an African-American fellow during much of 1970. And for nine weeks in 1970 I shared a tent in a Cuban sugar cane cutting camp with Black Panthers from L.A., whom treated me, a wet behind the ears 20 year old, middle class Caucasian kid, with great kindness, and often tenderness.

None-the-less, I recognize the racism that resides within me. Evidenced, for instance, by the anxiety I noticed years later while approaching a group of young African-Americans on the street in Seattle, and such. And I don’t think I am at all unique in this respect.

Racism continues to be the great contradiction in USA society that must be addressed straight on. And I think Obama did that today. He pulled few punches. A characteristic I find very refreshing in Obama is his honesty to tell us what we may not want to hear and to tell us it is our responsibility to effect change.

Kudos to John McCain for defending Obama and waving his campaign staff off of the Rev. Wright story and shame on Senator Clinton for not.