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The week in review


Dear World,

Cokie Roberts does NOT speak for me.

The Bible is America’s favorite book, followed by The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. My head hurts. I suppose it could be worse. America’s favorite book could be Mein Kampf or something written by Danielle Steel.

First Lori Gottlieb got a book deal to expand on her article advising women to settle for whichever men they can. Now that book will be turned into a movie. I can actually understand this, too. The more outrageous your idea is, the more attention it gets. The more attention, the more views and hits. Then the more ad revenue, the more profit. This is a cash cow — of course they’re going to milk it. If any man or woman will take advice on something like whom they will vow to spend their lives with and create children with from a spoiled Beverly Hills dabbler, that’s their problem. Adults make even worse decisions than that everyday. But I wonder how Gottlieb, or anyone, would feel after finding out after a time that they had been the settled for — the person his or her spouse looks at and thinks, "Well, she’s all right enough, I guess."

Single people are being blamed for the bad environment. Because they cohabitate separately, they use more electricity than if they were in a single household. That’s the new theory, anyway. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that families now live in McMansions full of electrical appliances. Or that most households have more than one TV, including one per child’s room. Not to mention more than one computer, cell phones and iPods charging, outdoor lights lining the walkway, etc. It also wouldn’t have to do with the fact that there are now SIX BILLION PEOPLE in the world!

Six teenage girls and two teenage boys in Florida will be charged as adults after videotaping themselves beating a 16-year-old girl unconscious for insulting them online. Oh honey, you should see what they do to you in prison.

Cyber bullying is one thing, a whole other post, a separate crime on its own. But this was a single girl writing things online. As the police chief said, writing childish insults on MySpace does not justify being beaten unconscious, beaten again when you come to, permanently losing hearing and sight on one side, and having it all filmed for the entertainment of others.

I can actually understand the mothers who defend their criminal offspring. Think about it. They’re not defending their children — they’re defending themselves as parents. They’ve created the monster, much like Bush created the war; now they can’t admit that they’ve failed.

Consider the first thing the mother said in the Today Show interview, clarifying that she does have custody of her daughter. She wanted to clear up her own reputation first: she is not an unfit mother who has lost custody or would give up her daughter. She wants you to know that she alone raised one of these girls.

As for their kids, these parents cling to tiny details about the attack because they need to somehow justify having raised a pack animal, an adult-in-training, who plans, carries out, and participates in these uncivilized, illegal acts. That involves cruelty, apathy, a lack of self-control, and ignoring right from wrong. At the very least, you’ve raised a coward who would stand by and watch a girl get beaten unconscious.

Every parent involved will have an excuse: "My child didn’t hit. My child warned her not to come in the house. My child was insulted online. My son didn’t know what was happening behind the door he was guarding." Because to admit that your child did this, you admit that you failed as a parent. They can’t admit that to the world; more importantly, they can’t admit it to themselves. And if the parents cannot own up to their own mistakes, their kids never will.

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Commentary

The Black Church Arrives on America’s Doorstep

Best of In The Fray 2008. What Obama’s race speech didn’t acknowledge.


Presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) makes a stop at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown, Iowa.

Those who personally witnessed Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech on race were riveted by what many consider to be an address of historic importance. Given the sobering nature of the moment, ovations from the Constitution Center audience were few and far between. However, at least one remark by Obama drew applause: It was his recalling of the well-worn saying that the “most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.”

This truism pushes out beyond the pews and continues to be played out long after Obama’s speech ended. Whether critical or laudatory of Obama’s words, the predominantly white editorial voices in the mainstream press largely agreed that Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s comments were scandalous, racist, and far afield of sober public opinion.

On the other hand, many of my fellow black folk and people of color understand why Obama had to distance himself from Wright’s remarks, but they don’t necessarily disagree with those remarks themselves. (In the same way, many people of color understand that Michelle Obama’s comments about being proud of the United States for the first time in her life were politically clumsy, but not the least bit unreasonable.) They might not openly discuss this around an integrated office watercooler, but such expressions of sympathy with Wright’s point of view can be found in side conversations at the office, inside people’s homes, in Internet chat rooms, and in the barber shops and hair salons that Obama references in his speech. And despite Obama’s claims to the contrary, this conversation is happening across generational lines, among the embittered and the upbeat alike.

Even the comments by Wright considered to be the most incendiary — the idea that the violence directed against Americans on September 11, 2001, was karmic comeuppance for America’s legacy of imperialism and violence abroad — resonate widely in the black community and in houses of faith. Just like Obama condemned Wright’s remarks, Elijah Muhammad sanctioned Nation of Islam Minister Malcolm X because he made the “chickens coming home to roost” comments about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, comments that also tread on what is considered to be sacred political ground.

Reverend Wright is hardly a fringe figure on the American religious scene. The church where he pastored until recently, the Trinity United Church of Christ, has over 10,000 members. The reason Wright’s views figure so prominently at Trinity and countless other black churches is because the black church, going back to the time of slavery, has always been the place where black folks have indulged in conversations considered subversive.

Furthermore, Reverend Wright is not unlike countless other kente cloth–clad ministers throughout the country with sizable followings who are critical of everything from right-wing politics to hip-hop music. These messages are inseparable from a promotion of self-determination, self-help, and self-love, which some might dismiss as Black Nationalism.

In the same way the black church incubated so much political activity during the civil rights movement, Trinity United Church of Christ was compelling enough to Barack Obama that he was a member for 20 years and gave tens of thousands of dollars to it. For politically conscious black folk — particularly members of the middle class who are acutely aware of glass ceilings — their church can provide a space where racial justice is viewed in spiritual terms, a sanctuary where hard truths can be spoken and where righteous political action can be inspired. The Bible — a text that champions struggles against state power, oppression, and injustice — is the perfect trumpet of this message.

While Obama bravely waded deeply into the waters of race, he profoundly understated how much Reverend Wright speaks for a great deal of black people across the country, including Obama himself. That is something from which neither America nor candidate Obama can hide.

Mark Winston Griffith is senior fellow for economic justice at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy.

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