Syl Jones tries to jam words into Barack Obama’s mouth – and, by extension, into everyone’s head.

Somewhere in the middle of Barack Obama’s speech about race in America, one can imagine him thinking, “I’m tiptoeing through a minefield and my feet haven’t been blown off.” Yet, that is. There’s still time.

After all, the comments by his pastor Jeremiah Wright have been characterized as anti-American,

I suppose there’s a bright side to inventing HIV to keep the Third World down?

and Obama himself has been cleverly linked to those comments.

Mr. Jones:  if I spent twenty years in a church where George Gordon Winrod was the minister (and know Jones is old enough to get that reference), do you think one would need to be unreasonable, much less “clever’, to “link” me to racism and anti-semitism?

But let’s cut to the ventriloquism:

From a political point of view, Obama hit the ball out of the park with a sweeping, personal indictment of racial politics in what will be remembered in the black community as The Speech. He sought to communicate his unique perspective as an interracial American and to do so honestly, hoping that his listeners and his critics would engage as adults.

But here’s what Obama couldn’t and didn’t say, because his political viability hung in the balance. Think of these as the redacted remarks from the junior senator from Illinois:

And think of my responses as the heckling that Obama’s redacted thoughts Syl Jones’ projections deserve.

“Why am I being asked to justify the comments of a man who is free, as is any American, to say what he wishes, to express his unique point of view?

“You” aren’t.  “You”‘re being asked to spell out how much impact the caustically-racist beliefs of “your” former spiritual advisor have had on “you”, by people who also have that same right.

“How many of you have relatives — not pastors but members of your immediate family — who use the N word, who disparage blacks, Hispanics and Asians with regularity?

“You” mean using terms like “ice people?”

Not me.  Not a single one.

“Were you running for president, would you be expected to repudiate your grandmother or your crazy uncle or even your father for making what you might consider to be racist remarks? I don’t think so.

How many of “you” would have publicly hailed that crazy uncle as “your”spiritual advisor, and made him a part of “your” presidential campaign?

“Why is Jeremiah Wright being condemned for essentially repeating the beliefs that millions around the world have expressed: that America is fundamentally racist?

Because America is not fundamentally racist.

Or let me put it another way; all of humanity is fundamentally racist.  Many if not most of the world’s languages have racism codified into them; they have many words for “human”, of descending value, depending on how close to the speaker’s town, tribe or nation the “human” hails. And given that racism is a fundamentally human condition, can Jeremiah Wright or Syl-Jones-via-Obama name a single significant, racially heterogenous country in the world that has done more to expunge racism from its public life?  That’s fought a civil war, the bloodiest war in its history, whose causes all linked back, directly or indirectly, to racism?  That’s so completely politically transformed itself (over the past sixty years) to try to repudiate racism?

I’m sure any book Jeremiah Wright could use to look up the answer is too soggy with splittle to be of much help.

But how about you, Senator Obama Syl?

What is it about ‘fundamentally racist’ that you do not understand? A nation that has consistently denied people of color equal opportunity, that uses antiquated laws to enforce unequal justice between offenders based on race, that incarcerates a huge percentage of black men, that even puts them to death in far greater proportions than white men — a nation such as this is indeed fundamentally racist, and the fact that so many of you refuse to understand this shows how ignorant you really are.

What is it about “made cataclysmic efforts to atone for that history”, “show me the consistent denial of opportunity to people of color in the past twenty years, and I’ll show you an endangered species, socially, legally and politically”, “even black commentators with any integrity note the corrosive effects of popular culture, government “aid” (and, yes, 400 years of devaluing the black male) and its manifestation in black-on-black crime” that you do not understand?

“Why isn’t it enough that I have come before you as a man and said that I want to bring us all together, and that I have shown you my own personal values time and time again?

Blame “your” fellow travellers, who’ve gone over the social lives of every single conservative candidate in my lifetime with fine-toothed combs looking for dirt…

…that they didn’t credit in their books!  That they didn’t call their “personal spiritual advisors”!  That were not their spiritual avatars!

I did not call the Clinton campaign racist when they attempted to belittle me and my candidacy as ‘a fairy tale.’

If “Fairy tale” is racist, perhaps the problem is that people like Jeremiah Wright, Syl Jones and Jesse Jackson have stripped the term of all meaning?

I have stuck to the issues

Huh?

“I suspect that even if I am elected president, what I actually do will never be enough, because the dead weight of those who are determined to win at any cost — whether through racist invective or personal smear campaigns — will bring this country down to its lowest common denominator. The truth is, even if I am ready to be president, America may not be ready for me.

“America” – part of it, anyway – suspects that “you” aren’t ready for prime time, that behind “your” moderate rhetoric beats the heart of a far-left Chicago ward heeler (since goodness knows there’s not much else back there), and – worst of all, that bringing that up is going to have your water-carriers, like Syl Jones, calling us “racists”, when all we are doing is subjecting you to the same scrutiny any other politician gets – and, in this age, deserves.

“If we were having an adult discussion about race, and if the majority of you listening were able to accept the diversity of views that exist on this subject, I wouldn’t need to say any of this.

And if “you” could accept genuine “diversity of views”, “you” wouldn’t be stupid enough to be putting this condescending internal monologue out there.

I would be judged on my merits as a man, without the persistent reading of tea leaves to which I have been subjected.

Then it’s “you” that are the racist, Syl  Senator Obama.  “Your” merits as a man are scarcely up for debate – I’ve seen not a single credible commentator attack you, personally.  Your merits as a candidate for president are completely fair game.  “Your” choices in spiritual advisors are what’s being questioned, here, and if “you” think it’s any different for a white candidate, the “you” are the one that’s not ready for a mature dialog.

That in itself is a sign of the systemic racism against which I am swimming in an attempt to change the course of the nation.”

And that, itself, is a sign that “you” are the one that’s hiding behind the most convenient possible definition of racism.

But Obama didn’t say this.

Good for him.  He’s too smart for that.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Campaign '08. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.