Remarks of Marcus Ingram from Worship of February 22
March 4th, 2009 by Racial Justice JBRev. Marcus R. Ingram
February 22, 2009
Sojourners United Church of Christ
Does the election of Barack Obama usher in a new era of race relations, and how is it related to our faith?
The headlines around the world have been stunning - “Change Has Come,” “A New Dawn,” “Obama cambio la historia,” “A Dream Fulfilled,” and “Danke, Mr. President.” Without doubt, the candidacy and election of President Barack Obama has elevated American political consciousness in ways that most of us have never seen in our lifetimes. Our President’s international heritage and Kenyan ancestry invites a larger community into conversation unlike any other leader of the United States.
While history will likely tell the story of a little-known community activist who transferred his organizing skill onto a national political stage, the narrative will be incomplete if it does not chronicle the ways in which our racial consciousness has been unmasked, unnerved, and unsettled. From critiques in the African American community that inquire, “Is this Ivy-League educated, multi-racial politician ‘Black enough’?” to the fear-inducing “You know his pastor is a radical, anti-American Liberation Theologian,” President Barack Obama has at least kindled a discourse on race that has enlightened some, enraged others, and, I believe, enthralled us all.
Never once has our new President referred to himself as the “Black candidate,” yet even the most “progressive” of us have seen him as such. In the same breath that many of us want to celebrate the election of the first African American President of the United States of America, we also want to make this historic election an example of how race has been transcended. While I am not resistant to a “both-and” perspective, this seeming contradiction potentially points to a tendency in American (and Western) culture to be both reductionist and revisionist. It is remarkable to imagine what generations after us will think when they scroll through the photos of our country’s presidents and arrive at the early twenty first century. Astute historians will certainly speak about the powerful intersection of technology with grassroots activism that transitioned from being mocked, to a, if not, the defining factor in the victory of President Obama. But, many more will posture about what it meant for America to elect its first non-white president.
Theologians and scholars have suggested that the evening of November 4, 2008 around eleven o’clock was indeed the “new birth of freedom” President Lincoln spoke of in the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. Though inflammatory, it may be accurate to say that the Civil War that contextualized Lincoln’s words carries on, just in different, perhaps more subversive ways. News outlets and law enforcement agencies reported “unusually high” racial incidents in the wake of last November’s election ranging from a Georgia middle school student being suspended for wearing an Obama shirt on November 5 that defied the principal’s directive not to wear political paraphernalia, to crosses being burned in yards that had Obama signs, and nooses being hung from trees. Of course, these may not be the general sentiments of most people in America, but the Electoral College landslide victory (365 to 173) fails to tell the story of 22
states and almost 60 million people who did not support President Barack Obama with their votes in the fall.
Complicating these already complex issues is the burden and legacy of racism in America. A concrete principle herein to consider is the individuality afforded to people of privilege in our country, juxtaposed with the group identification of minorities. While we don’t see all white businessmen as well-dressed thieves, the recent New York Post cartoon suggests that we eventually arrive at comparing our present President to a chimpanzee. Maybe this is an outlier in a new constellation of images that we have in our minds, but we cannot simply forget that America’s First Family so colorfully arrayed and celebrated last month at Inauguration were also satirized on the cover of the New Yorker as militant terrorists, he with a turban and she with an AK-47 and an afro, who burn American flags in their fireplace and bump fists.
Conceivably, no white male presidential candidate of the future will be burdened to overcome an ineptitude
associated with whiteness precipitated by a previous white president’s challenges, but suffice it to say that even a mediocre administration by President Barack Obama likely has implications for African American and other minority candidates to come. W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) calls it double-consciousness - “a peculiar sensation…of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that [yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him
see himself through the revelation of the other world]1.” This clouded ability to embrace one’s individuality and express agency demonstrates the need for the Gospel and the message of redemption in God.
While the headlines might suggest divinity, Barack Obama is not our savior. He has been said to “appeal to our better angels” and embody who and what we long to be as a nation, but save us, he cannot. Redeem us, he is incapable. And repair the breach between us and our Creator is beyond his portfolio of responsibility as President of the United States of America. Unquestionably, the historic election of our nation’s 44th chief executive moves the conversation forward on race in America, but the systemic issue of racism is not merely political or sociological…it is spiritual.
The collective soul of America has been stained and stymied by this blight of oppression that divides instead of unites, but faith says that we all may be one. Galatians informs “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” A superficial reading of this text might speculate that we become community or koinonia by absolving our distinctives. There is, however, at least another reading. The context of this passage focuses on how faith confronts the socially constructed reality of the law. In other words, society has assigned labels with which we are familiar, but God contends that we are more than that…not exclusive of, necessarily, but in addition to. DuBois agrees; speaking specifically about the Negro in America, he says in 1903: “…this longing to attain self-conscious manhood [is the quest] to merge his double self into a better truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.” 2 Perhaps President Barack Obama gets us closer to that reality, but it is our faith in God and God God’s Self that will lead us home!
1 Retrieved from http://www.bartleby.com/114/1.html.
2 Retrieved from http://www.bartleby.com/114/1.html.