Clarence Page: Wright's past, Obama's future

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0504pagemay04,0,617535.column

Wright's past, Obama's future

Clarence Page
May 4, 2008


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I think Obama got it right in his Philadelphia speech on race when he tried to explain his former pastor's words without condoning them. "The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society," Obama said. "It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress had been made; as if this country—a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old—is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."

But, as Obama went on to say, we know that America can change—and it has changed. As our elders prophesied to my generation of African-Americans back in the 1960s, opportunities have opened up. It's up to us to prepare ourselves to step inside, rather than stand outside the door complaining about it.

Instead of joining with Obama's call for reconciliation, as Wright has done on other occasions, Wright flamboyantly issued a taunt at the National Press Club. With his finger raised defiantly toward the firing squad of news cameras, he recalled saying to Obama last year, "If you get elected, November the 5th, I'm coming after you, because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people."

Oh, really? After all that, I don't imagine that a President Obama would be eager to return Wright's phone calls. Wright may have single-handedly done enough damage to make sure Obama never gets to the Oval Office.

If so, Wright probably will blame the white man for the defeat, but the rest of us will know who helped.