29/03/2008

Why post about Obama?

You may have been wondering why I'm publishing posts on the Obama campaign in a blog that's supposedly about an Afro-Brazilian who died 85 years ago and didn't even call himself "black."

The reason is this: the negative events taking place in the US as a result of a "half-black" African-American running for president have been plaguing Brazilians since Querino's lifetime. How can a person of African descent express Black Pride without making whites uncomfortable? Is it possible, as many whites allege, for a black person living in a white-dominated society to be a racist?

The questions of racial and cultural mixture, and efforts to overcome the massive gap beween black vs. white achievement and income levels when blacks received no means of "levelling the playing field" with whites, in terms of education or professional skills after "emancipation" in the US or Brazil have everything to do with Querino's life and struggle.

24/03/2008

In black churches, fiery sermons are the norm, not exception

Part of the reason people might have been surprised to hear Wright's comments about race in the United States...boils down to the fact that in many ways, blacks and whites in America still live segregated lives.

"White people don't live in our neighborhoods," Ward said. "They don't worship with us."

Fellow churchgoer Maggie Bullocks said she was not surprised that people who are unfamiliar with such fiery-tongued preaching might misinterpret Wright's sermons.

"But the United States is supposed to be a country where people can voice their opinions," she said. "You don't always have to agree."


SFGate
SAN FRANCISCO


Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, March 24, 2008

The Rev. Amos Brown's Easter sermon at the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco didn't have much to do with Jesus' crucifixion or resurrection from the dead and instead covered everything from skyrocketing gas prices and the subprime mortgage crisis to race relations in the United States and presidential politics.

During his fiery Sunday morning speech, he called President Bush a "one-eyed man," told the predominantly African American congregation that the country is as segregated now as it was 50 years ago and said "America is running on fumes right now ... we are on the wrong road."

It's no coincidence that Brown's raspy-voiced, roaring sermon sounded vaguely familiar to the controversial sermons delivered by Sen. Barack Obama's longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Brown and Wright are friends and graduated years ago from the same seminary class in Dayton, Ohio. Brown, whose own sermons have sparked controversy and grabbed headlines, has a picture of Wright in his church office.

"I don't want nobody to accuse me of being angry," Brown said from the pulpit. "I'm just excited about the Gospel."

Excerpts of Wright's sermons as he rails against the United States and accuses it of responsibility for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have been airing regularly on cable news stations in recent days, creating a political firestorm for the Democratic candidate for president that prompted his speech last week on race relations.

Brown and many congregants at the Third Baptist Church wonder exactly what the controversy is all about.

Wright's sermons are no different than sermons that get delivered every weekend in black churches around the country, said Gordon Greenwood, a lawyer who attends the Western Addition-area church. "And it's not just churches," Greenwood said. "You could walk into a black barber shop or beauty shop and this is being talked about all day."

Brown, who is active in San Francisco politics and is president of the city's Housing Authority Commission, came under fire in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks for a sermon he gave in which he asked what America had done to invite the attacks upon itself.

On Sunday, he told a packed church that the criticisms being hurled at Obama for his close ties to Wright are part of a conspiracy aimed at damaging the candidate on the issue of religion because there's not another negative issue out there that has tarnished his reputation.

"What you are seeing happening to Barack Obama was hatched, crafted and developed a year ago when you were sleeping," Brown told churchgoers. "This kind of nonsense does not just happen."

The sermon was met with roaring applause. Women in their best Sunday hats and pastel Easter suits stood in the isles and cheered. Men waived their hands in praise and shouted, "Amen."

"White people do not understand the experience we've had in this country," said Doris Ward, a former San Francisco supervisor who attends Third Baptist.

Part of the reason people might have been surprised to hear Wright's comments about race in the United States, she said, boils down to the fact that in many ways, blacks and whites in America still live segregated lives.

"White people don't live in our neighborhoods," Ward said. "They don't worship with us."

Fellow churchgoer Maggie Bullocks said she was not surprised that people who are unfamiliar with such fiery-tongued preaching might misinterpret Wright's sermons.

"But the United States is supposed to be a country where people can voice their opinions," she said. "You don't always have to agree."

19/03/2008

Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage



March 19, 2008
Editorial

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.

Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.

Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism is Christian enough for them.

It was not a moment to which Mr. Obama came easily. He hesitated uncomfortably long in dealing with the controversial remarks of his spiritual mentor and former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who denounced the United States as endemically racist, murderous and corrupt.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama drew a bright line between his religious connection with Mr. Wright, which should be none of the voters’ business, and having a political connection, which would be very much their business. The distinction seems especially urgent after seven years of a president who has worked to blur the line between church and state.

Mr. Obama acknowledged his strong ties to Mr. Wright. He embraced him as the man “who helped introduce me to my Christian faith,” and said that “as imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.”

Wisely, he did not claim to be unaware of Mr. Wright’s radicalism or bitterness, disarming the speculation about whether he personally heard the longtime pastor of his church speak the words being played and replayed on YouTube. Mr. Obama said Mr. Wright’s comments were not just potentially offensive, as politicians are apt to do, but “rightly offend white and black alike” and are wrong in their analysis of America. But, he said, many Americans “have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagree.”

Mr. Obama’s eloquent speech should end the debate over his ties to Mr. Wright since there is nothing to suggest that he would carry religion into government. But he did not stop there. He put Mr. Wright, his beliefs and the reaction to them into the larger context of race relations with an honesty seldom heard in public life.

Mr. Obama spoke of the nation’s ugly racial history, which started with slavery and Jim Crow, and continues today in racial segregation, the school achievement gap and discrimination in everything from banking services to law enforcement.

He did not hide from the often-unspoken reality that people on both sides of the color line are angry. “For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation,” he said, “the memories of humiliation and fear have not gone away, nor the anger and the bitterness of those years.”

At the same time, many white Americans, Mr. Obama noted, do not feel privileged by their race. “In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game,” he said, adding that both sides must acknowledge that the other’s grievances are not imaginary.

He made the powerful point that while these feelings are not always voiced publicly, they are used in politics. “Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition,” he said.

Against this backdrop, he said, he could not repudiate his pastor. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” he said. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” That woman whom he loves deeply, he said, “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street” and more than once “uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

There have been times when we wondered what Mr. Obama meant when he talked about rising above traditional divides. This was not such a moment.

We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

Read the full text of Barack Obama's speech here (PDF file)