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ELEVEN Race, Religion, and the Race for the white House DwigHT N. HOPKiNS One of the fascinating developments in the 2008 presidential election has been the insertion of black religion and black theology into the discourse. For instance, on February 10, 2007, Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the White House. Shortly after, the New York Times published an article that suggested that Obama was beginning to distance himself from his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and that Obama might be linked to a radical form of black Christianity. Occasionally throughout 2007, some corporate media attempted to link Rev. Wright with Minister Louis Farrakhan. Because Rev. Wright was Obama’s pastor, then, in the logic of some corporate media, Obama was tethered to Farrakhan. Yet the controversy did not gain traction until the beginning of 2008. On Thursday, March 13, 2008, America and the world woke up to an amazing media production. On that day, ABC television released a thirty-second sound bite of three of Rev. Wright’s sermons. The public saw ten seconds each of three sermon excerpts. By the next day, Friday the 14th, the number one American presidential news stories in the United States, and increasingly globally, were the following questions: How could Senator Obama have such an angry, racist-in-reverse, nonpatriotic black pastor, and was this the form of black religion that Obama believed in? 182 . DwigHT N. HOPKiNS Not only did some corporate media, Republican candidates, and Senator Hillary Clinton begin to raise questions about Obama, but the very base of his campaign supporters became shocked. On that Friday on the blog site of the Barackobama.com Web site, one could find some of Obama’s staunchest supporters trembling in confusion, fear, and suspicion. It seemed as if Obama’s ground troops were disintegrating. In fact, the contention and the anger on that Web site was so deep that some Obama supporters were accusing other bloggers of being Hillary Clinton trolls. A troll is a supporter of one presidential candidate who blogs on the Web site of an opposing candidate’s blog site in order to cause disruption and sow false information among that candidate’s core supporters. On that Friday afternoon, I was in the Fox News studio about to go on live television when one of the reporters called me over and said he was printing a major news development. We waited for the printer to stop. Then he handed me a statement by Senator Obama. Obama announced in this brief press release that he denounced the thirty-second sounds bites and that he was not present when they were preached. I went on television, and of course the first questions I was asked were whether I agreed with “God damn America” and that “9/11 meant chickens coming home to roost.” Over that weekend, a political storm unfolded and the domestic and global media looped the thirty-second sound bites over and over. The following Tuesday , I was in the NPR (National Public Radio) studio doing a live interview when our program was cut short because Obama was about to begin a live broadcast. Everyone hurried to the back of the studio where six TV monitors hung on the walls. I grabbed a seat on the floor and watched Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech. Standing in Philadelphia, draped in American flags, Obama gave his first major speech on race, religion, and the black church. Still the uproar persisted. Every day for about three weeks I did television, radio, magazine, newspaper, and Web interviews on the topic of black religion , the black church, and black theology of liberation. During one of those weeks, I had to cancel and reschedule classes for a later date due to media interview requests. My email, home phone, and cell phone messages were filling up. I did media from 9 A.M. to 10 P.M. for those seven days. The questions of reporters began to repeat themselves: What is black religion, what is the black church, and what is black liberation theology? These requests continued for several weeks. However, as the country and the world moved away from the initial thirty-second sound bites, the media questions started to ask for a more nuanced explanation. Then Rev. Wright announced a major press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. On Monday, April 28, I sat at a VIP table in front of the podium as Rev. Wright gave...

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