Blah, blah, blah

The Atlantic Monthly offers a good assessment of the media’s reaction to Jeremiah Wright and his condemnation of racist U.S. policies. The uproar of many white pundits was less to do with the content of Wright’s message - as demonstrated by their rampant de-contextualizing - and more to do with how that message shattered their dearly-held conceptions of who Obama is.

Many white people finally realized Obama cannot be colorblind because he, in fact, is a black man with the lived experiences of a person of color in a racist society. And because of that, he may very well - let’s hope - share some of Wright’s opinions.

No matter the rhetoric he employs, Obama cannot be “post-racial” in a world that still churns profits and white comfort out of oppressions based on race.

His glamour explains a campaign paradox: how a man who wrote a race-conscious coming-of-age memoir about his search for a black identity could be touted as a “post-racial” candidate. The allure of his origins obscured his own account of his inner life.

That’s one reason the revelation of his religious mentor’s racially charged sermons proved so potent. Obama’s association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright revealed to white audiences that the senator is a self-defined black man who listens sympathetically to—and might even share—the angry grievances of other African Americans. His rhetoric may be inclusive, but he is not colorblind. He does not, by his mere existence, make America’s racial divisions disappear.

“The peril of Obama,” The Atlantic Monthly