Ethics That Matters: African, Caribbean, and African American Sources

Chapter 7: Race, Religion, and the Race

99 Chapter 7 race, religion, and the race for the White House .Dwight N. Hopkins. one of the faScinating developments in the 2008 presidential election was the insertion of black religion and black theology into mainstream political discourse. On February 10, 2007, Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the White House. Shortly thereafter, the New York Times published an article that suggested that Mr. Obama was beginning to distance himself from his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and that Obama might be linked to a radical form of black Christianity. Also, occasionally throughout 2007, some corporate media attempted to link Rev. Wright with Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan ; and, if Rev. Wright was Obama’s pastor, then, in the logic of some corporate media, Obama was tethered to Farrakhan. Still, the controversy over Senator Obama’s religious affiliation 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 , when ABC television released to the public a thirty-second video clip consisting of a provocative trio of ten-second sound bites excerpted from three of Rev. Wright’s sermons.1 By the next day, in the United States, and increasingly globally, the lead news story about the American presidential race asked the following questions: How could Senator Obama have such an angry, racist-in-reverse, 100 Dwight n. Hopkins nonpatriotic black pastor; and was this the form of black religion that Obama believed in? Not only did some corporate media, Republican candidates, and Senator Hillary Clinton begin to raise questions about Senator Obama, but the very base of his campaign supporters became shocked. On Friday, March 14, in the blog section of Obama’s campaign Web site, you could find some of his staunchest supporters responding 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 were so deep that some Obama supporters were accusing other bloggers of being trolls for Senator Clinton.A troll is when one political candidate’s supporters post onto an opponent’s Web site with the intention of causing disruption and sowing 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 that 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 sound bites featuring Rev. Wright and that he was not present when they were preached. I went on television; and, of course, the first questions that I was asked were: Do you agree 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 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 candidate Obama was about to begin a live broadcast. Everyone hurried to the back of the studio, where six television monitors hung on the walls. I grabbed a seat on the floor and watched Mr. Obama deliver his “A More Perfect Union Speech.”2 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 or reschedule classes due to media interview requests. My e-mail, home phone, and cell phone race, religion, and the race for the White House 101 messages filled up. I made media appearances from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. for seven days straight. The reporters’ questions began to repeat themselves : What is black religion? What is the black church? and What is black liberation theology? These requests continued for another several weeks; but, eventually, as the country and the world moved away from the initial sound bites, the media started to ask for a more nuanced explanation. Then Rev...