Stones, Mountains, Audacity, etc

In his article entitled “Obama’s Indoctrination,” Ralph R. Reiland begins by exploring a variety of statistics derived from a branch of the Justice Department to expose the “murderous fires” within the black community. He then moves to rebuke religious leaders for fueling the flames before congregations. He specifically accuses Jeremiah Wright of acting as if it is beneficial for young black people to hear that the very world they live in is eternally and irrevocably pitted against them. Using Obama’s call for the firing of Don Imus as an example of the senator’s previous intolerance of hate speech, Reiland paints Obama’s silence as acquiescence with Wright. In his closing, the author portrays an Obama who aids in preying on the fears and prejudices of a people “overdosed on rage and victimhood.” As such, Obama’s actions have completely conflicted with his messages of hope, new politics, and change we can believe in, rendering him unfit for the presidency.

Reiland’s work is no doubt convincing but has its limits, and a particular one that must be noted, is his obvious disdain for Wright, and his coinciding rejection of all that Wright claims. Clearly, Wright’s call for God to “damn America” is very much between the two of them, but his comments on the degradation of women, the high percentage of imprisoned, and the rampant drug usage, all true of most black communities are issues in need of debate. Reiland is not wrong in his claim that boiling rage and demagogic ranting are not the answers, but neither is silence. Though knowledge may at first “jack up the level of the resentment and racism,” it will be an unequivocal part in dousing these flames within the black community. Reiland would be correct in claiming Obama’s “aforementioned Kool-Aid” is bitter or problematic, but not so in denying it could very well be the panacea American race relations need.

In his work on the civil rights movement, “A Stone of Hope,” David L. Chappell devotes a chapter to discussing the “prophetic ideals” that served as an engine for civil rights. He states that the influence of the late Martin Luther King Jr. is the “best” place to start. Much to the credit of his famous “I Have A Dream Speech,“ Dr. Martin Luther King has historically been conveyed as somewhat of an idealist hoping for mankind to right its wrongs in and of itself. But Chappell’s work explores King’s rejection of liberal optimism as well as his deviation from the “fundamentalism” of his father’s church. King did believe in the ability of the oppressed to usher in change, but not without further subjugation to oppression. In light of Chappell’s King one can better understand the actions of Obama concerning Wright. Obama is aware of his optimistic excesses, and also of Wright’s hopeless pessimism. Perhaps in exposing himself to Wright, Obama intends to find the middle ground from which King so powerfully commanded all but a bloodless revolution. Just as King carved his “stone of hope” from a “mountain of despair,” Obama could very well be extracting his “audacity of hope” from a larger source of pre-existing anguish, dejection, and resentment.