Customer Reviews

The Preacher and the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and Race in America

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I don't think I'm alone in feeling that political books often come across as stuffy, dry, and quite frankly, tedious. This book is none of those things, one: because the subjects being covered are inherently compelling, and two: because the authors do such a thorough job researching race and media in America, and the historical significance of Obama's nomination.

This is a compelling, accessible, and concise history book suited not only to traditional history buffs but also to the readers of the current generation, with their interest in YouTube, Wikipedia, face book, and other social networking and quick-news sites. Unlike most authors of historical non-fiction, Walker & Smithers actually take the comments of bloggers and other members of the public seriously. (Something the book reviewers of Publishers Weekly take the authors to task for, since PW does not consider online comments worthy of consideration by scholars. See the PW's review below.)

Walker & Smithers' unique book weaves together modern commentary on race, religion, and the 2008 election with the little-known and often misunderstood history of the African American church in America. They also locate Rev. Wright's controversial speeches (only a handful of which ended up on YouTube) within the traditions of the black church. Finally, using Obama's published memoirs and other sources as guidance, the authors probe Obama's personal struggle with his own racial identity--both before and after he won the historical 2008 election.

If you're interested in the history of race in this country and the power of the media to shape our understandings of the past and present, you won't be disappointed with this provocative and highly relevant book.

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Review from Publishers Weekly, Nonfiction Reviews: 9/21/2009:

The Preacher and the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and Race in America Clarence E. Walker and Gregory D. Smithers. Univ. of Virginia, $22.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-8139-2886-9

This stimulating discussion brings needed historical perspective to 2008's election-season brouhaha over then candidate Obama's longtime minister, Wright, who was lambasted for making what were widely considered to be racially divisive remarks from his pulpit after September 11. Historians Walker and Smithers argue that the currency given to the idea of American society as "color blind" or "postracial" saddles the culture with "a dangerous level of historical amnesia." The debate over Wright can be properly understood only in the context of the country's racial history and an anxiety among some white Americans over black "otherness" and, more specifically, how the black church "decenters whiteness as normative to Christian identity." While generally supportive of Wright's perspective, the authors criticize the minister for an equally unhistorical and essentialist strain of Afrocentrism. While the supporting evidence can sometimes seem thin (a random blog post, for example), the authors show there is much to ponder and discuss in the relationship between Obama, Wright and the dominant culture as, against claims to the contrary, they cogently reassert race as "the central social fissure in the United States."

The Preacher and the Politician is a fascinating and well-written book on race, the media, and the relationship between the two during the 2008 election. It also provides a succinct overview of the history of race and religion in American, while maintaining the interest of the reader. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to understand more fully the complexity of race and representation in America.

The book proves that the only racists in America are, its black population. It does so using the following well-rehearsed narrative logic of American racism: First of all (as far as one can tell from this book) white people either, do not exist (they have no return addresses; to a man and woman, they are completely blamless when it comes to the issue of race), or, they are like gods who exist, but only somewhere in the non-racial existential blame-free ether, well above and beyond the normal civic responsibilities of ordinary mortals: They cannot be blamed for any of America's racial evils, for they do not engage in racial hatred or distrust (only blacks do that); they do not foment violence (only blacks do that); they do not collude to undermine equality for blacks (only black's lack of ability does that), they do not riot and destroy property (only blacks do that); they don't preach racial hatred from the pulpit on Sunday mornings (only the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, does that); and of course they remain innocent of structural racism, structural violence, and the politics of racist destruction (only Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton do that).

In this book it is a given that except for a few blood-curling racists (always from the South), white people are all peace-loving Christian people, with uniformly high non-racist values, and not a mean-spirited racist bone in their collective body, etc., ad infinitum. Therefore, they are not to be made to feel guilty for things they (obviously) did not take part in (things that in any case, always happened in the very distant past, of course. Contemporary racism must have emerged from the ether too? ) However, somehow, despite their collective innocence, and even though they are completely detached from America's contemporary racial situation, whites always manage to make a cameo appearance from out of the blame-free ether to take credit for any civic good and racial successes that may have been "forced upon them," or that may even have been imagined, or more likely, promoted by the always racially active imagination of the always racially defensive and carefully racially managed U.S. press. (Given their innocence, one wonders why it would have been necessary for racial successes to have been forced upon them?)

Oh, of course, the book does not say any of this directly, only indirectly, oozing up through the subtext.

In the narrative of this book, ostensibly about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and President Barack Obama, but which whose subtext is in fact really about why white people do not exist, we learn through the subtext, about all the reasons why white people are just phantoms that possess the ability to swoop down from the blameless racist ether to issue new edicts on the racial situation, to demonstrate that if they were to be guilty of anything it would only be for trying to make the racial situation better. (Why can't black nationalists and militants like Reverend Wright just see this? Obama sees it.), and then once they are exonerated for things they never did in the first place, they simply again just ascend back behind the blame-proof racial ether shield, in the sky.

Thus according to the subtly crafted narrative style of this book, no whites exist except in the racist past. And no contemporary Americans are racists, per se. They all have a "get out of the racist jail-free card." What might at first look like racist attitudes are in fact just their collective fear of what blacks might do; their concerns that blacks are not patriotic enough; their discomfort at what black activism might do to the serenity of the tidy social order; their collective concern about how blacks are threatening their values. It is their collective white concern about how blacks are always stirring up controversy: Thus it is the blacks who are the primary hate-mongers, who will not seize the opportunities put right before their eyes by "good white people." It is about how whites (for no discernable reason) are just uncomfortable with full equality for blacks: They do not understand black people; they do not understand why they are so full of hate; why most of them are like Reverend Wright: restless militants, wanting to tear down, and are unable to see, the greatness of this country, etc, (again, ad infinitum).

Although (throughout history) there were a handful of southerners (always southerners) who "appeared to be racists" in the past (Well, least they alone were guilty of slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, a century of Apartheid, racist caricaturing, and profuse use of the "N-word." But does this really define one as being racist? Maybe they were just being "good old boys" doing what they had learned from the fallout of slavery and the Civil War? There has to be a non-racist reason for all of this? Maybe blacks did something to cause it all? They usually do, you know?)

In the present, the only whites "suspected of `maybe' harboring racist attitudes" are the working class across the Mid-west: those who voted against Obama for not looking like us, for not seeming to share our values, for being a socialist and "palling around with communist terrorists," a tax-and spend democrat, for having the name Hussein, and for being an illegal immigrant to boot. But again, even these Mid-westerners are not racists, because, even though they used such ostensibly coded racist language under the not so well covered non-racist rationale to vote against Obama in droves, this in and of itself never defines a white person as being a racist. (In fact, as we will see, absolutely nothing can ever define a white person as being a racist. They are all self-declared non-racist and that is the end of it, period). The opposite is also true. If you are a white person, and you "voted for" Obama, that very act defines you as, and immunes you from, being anything but a "USDA certified" non-racist. Either way, if you are white, you cannot be a racist.

However, that ironclad electoral logic, apparently hold only for gods: that is to say only for white people. If you are Black and you voted for Obama, then (again by definition) you are a racist because you obviously voted for Obama only because he was also black like you. (Yet, whites voting for another white candidate is, unrelated to being racist.) And since 95% of blacks voted for Obama, that means that the only real racists in America are its black population. QED

Such is the underlying logic of the narrative of this book. There are no individuals of the white race who are either responsible for the excesses of racism, who harbor race hatred, or, are self-defined as being racist (except a few "southern good old boys" who all existed in the past. Southerners are the only whites with a fixed address). All other American whites are as pure as the driven snow. Therefore, in America there are no white racists because there are in fact no white people: They are a phantom people who show up only in the backdrop and the subtext of the narrative, and then (except for a handful of Southerners) with no return addresses, and only to take credit for whatever little racial goodwill that might exist.

All of the continuing contradictions in American society have nothing at all to do with these gods of the stolen Native American land. In their hermitically sealed racially blameless universe, structural violence embedded within structural racism does not exist. In any case, they of course were not around when our foundering fathers built those structures and made all of their tragic mistakes that led to the present racial situation. And of course these nonexistent white people keep reminding us that they had absolutely nothing to do with slavery or any of the other remaining consequences of 500 years of racial brutality, anyway: as if slavery and the other consequences died with Lincoln's artfully constructed Emancipation Proclamation.

In relief then, this book is an orgy of blamelessness: It is a white catechism that exonerates all whites of all racial sins even as it declares that they never committed any in the first place. The only racial evils in the land are self-evident: They are the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Affirmative Action (for Blacks that is: Affirmative Action for white women, apparently is okay). Obama, of course has ascended into the blameless ether himself, the heavens that is, one mulatto, among all the other white gods.

Four stars for the excellent civil rights history that was appended to the subtext of this clever narrative.