Anger and the Black Community

The thing that put off so many whites about Jeremiah Wright's sermons was the anger they expressed. Whites aren't used to hearing such things expressed, especially when they see the words addressed to them. They don't understand why things like slavery and Jim Crow keep getting brought up.

In an essay today in the LA Times, an African American woman named Erin Aubry Kaplan addresses these very questions and helps us understand, if we're willing to listen, why Blacks are angry and why they feel the need to express it. She confesses to being "black and mad" and that this anger is part of her heritage, passed down generation to generation.

Watching all this unfold, my blood started boiling. What I think Wright's critics really don't like is the fact that he is mad. Although I don't necessarily share all of his analyses or his stridency, I recognize his rage as a general anger about the conditions of black Americans, who he says still deal constantly with racism. This is exactly what most other black people I know believe. Unlike Wright in the pulpit, most of us don't come off nakedly angry -- we'd never survive that way, emotionally or otherwise.

But what for us is ever present nonetheless strikes white people as outrageous. Nothing makes them more skittish than realizing that there are angry black people in their midst -- and an angry black man is most alarming of all, especially one running for president.

Obama, she notes, was put in the position of distancing himself from that caricature. She also notes that in his day, Martin Luther King, a person everyone wants to set up as the "model" Black preacher, was considered angry and demanding and off-putting by many whites.

So, what Obama has done is bring out this issue of anger in the Black community and resentment of that anger in the White community. Kaplan concludes:

Obama addressed black anger head-on Tuesday: He said it was not always productive. But the anger is real, he continued. "It cannot be wished away."

It's that kind of risky honesty that Obama has skillfully channeled into a broader movement of discontent and hope in 2008. If we can keep our racial neuroses in check, it is that kind of honesty that just might transform us all.

I think that the Kaplan essay could prove helpful in our quest to understand the issues set before us. To read the entire piece, click here.