I have white friends, people who ought to know better, who are shocked, shocked that a minister of the cloth would say the things Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said.

Rev. Wright, in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, is the retired pastor of Barack Obama’s church in Chicago. He has been caught on YouTube saying highly critical things about the U.S. government and its alleged mistreatment of African-Americans over the years. Probably the most incendiary quote was this one, from Wikipedia:

“‘The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color’, referring to AIDS origins theories, and ‘The government gives them the drugs [referring to the Iran-Contra Affair], builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people…God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.’”

I have to ask those white friends of mine and others like them: How could you not know this was going on? How could you be unaware that many black Americans believe HIV is a government plot against them? That their government has been foisting addictive street drugs on them with malice aforethought? That they’ve been treated by that same government as less than human since, oh, slavery?

[I said “many.” Certainly not all black Americans believe such stuff. But as Senator Obama said in his big speech on race a few days ago, a “legacy of defeat” still flourishes in many corners of black America — mostly within the underclass, but also in the upper strata — that leads some African-Americans to believe the worst, including even paranoia about HIV plots. In light of syphilis experiments on uneducated, unsuspecting black men at Tuskegee, maybe such paranoia, though ridiculous, becomes understandable.]

I am not here to defend Rev. Wright, but to ask again: Why the heck are we whites so surprised? Aren’t we listening?

Guess not.

A lot of us whites seem to think race isn’t much of a problem these days, and things certainly have changed for the better. We see black faces in the White House (Rice, Powell), on the screen (Rock, Berry), on the courts (Magic) and the links (Tiger), even in some boardrooms (Richard Parsons of AOL, Bob Johnson of BET). We see black faces in our workplaces too and some are doing well; some have become our friends, or anyway workplace buddies. And now one African-American has a good shot at becoming President. But as that individual correctly stated in his speech:

“For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.”

And, I would add, in the pulpit. My white friend Richard says, “I cannot imagine any Catholic priest saying, in public, ‘God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.’” But actually the Catholic priests of the liberation theology movement have made many similar denunciations of repressive governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.

So did our secular saint, Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King is currently being held up as the anti-Jeremiah Wright, but here’s what he said in a 1968 sermon at his Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta [quoted by E.J. Dionne in today’s Washington Post]:

“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.”

So what is it with us whites? How can we so quickly forget Dr. King’s truly radical critique of America, and the even more radical critique of Malcolm X who many of us now profess to revere? Folks, I even listen to Louis Farrakhan. I detest him as an anti-Semite and worse, but I know he speaks for a segment of black American society, so I pay attention when he speaks and try to understand where he’s coming from.

I try to listen to the conversations of ordinary black Americans too, and participate in them when I can. It isn’t so hard, even if you don’t have black friends. Here in the Washington area, just tune in to the call-in shows on WPFW-FM, 89.3. In Chicago, where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately, tune in WVON-AM, 1690. Heck, on a good day you can even get a semi-earfull on C-SPAN.

Since slavery ended 143 years ago, our society has been stuck on this question of race. We can’t get past it because we won’t talk about it — not in an honest, open and forthright way, anyhow. We’re all of us, white and black, walking on eggs, afraid we’ll come to blows (or worse) if we say what we really think. And not only do we fail to talk; we also fail to listen, to creep out of our comfort zone and try to hear what the other guy is saying, even if it makes us squirm.

But change might be at hand at last. This presidential race has handed us a golden opportunity. Mr. Obama, responding to political pressure, has shown the leadership to take the question seriously. He is inviting us all, white and black, to start saying what’s on our minds, and thereby perhaps start to push the 800-pound gorilla out of our living rooms forever. I for one hope we accept the challenge.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I’ll be in the Chicago area from March 28 through April 12. I am “Writer in Residence” at Thurgood Marshall Middle School (3/28-4/5) and Albany Park Multicultural Academy (4/6-12), teaching 7th and 8th graders to write narrative. How cool is that?