Rick Holmes: Bridging the black and white divide

Can it be? Will the candidacy fueled by the uplifting power of Barack Obama's words be derailed by words said by someone else when Obama wasn't even in the room?

Will the would-be president with the promise of transcending race be rejected by white voters because his pastor reminds people that some things about black people give them the creeps?

Obama didn't want to be the black candidate. He was happy to have others call his candidacy historic, but through months of campaigning, he carefully avoided talking about race. He wasn't running on a platform of affirmative action, social justice or ancient grievances. He was running on change and hope and leaving the polarized politics of the '60s behind.

It couldn't last, so it didn't.

Just as Obama closed in on the Democratic nomination, race caught up with him. His longtime pastor, very much a product of the '60s, had been kept safely offstage during the campaign, but 10-second video clips of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's most incendiary words had been waiting in the wings, and suddenly they were everywhere.

So Obama was forced to talk about race, this week he talked about it with a thoughtfulness that impressed serious listeners on all sides of the political divides. He distanced himself from Wright's comments, but not from Wright. Instead, he asked Americans to accept as part of our shared heritage the anger blacks like Wright feel and the resentment many whites feel over things like forced busing and affirmative action.

Obama talked to Americans like adults about a subject he's spent a lifetime thinking about. The question of his racial identity has been a constant companion, as it is for most mixed-race children. It followed him from his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia to Harvard and to Chicago's South Side. It brought him to Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, which has a church motto that dates back to the '70s: "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian."

In his Philadelphia speech, Obama noted that "the most segregated hour in American life happens on Sunday mornings," which is why the anger in Wright's sermons - not to mention the joy and compassion and inspiration that you won't see in the 10-second clips endlessly repeated on cable news shows - surprised so many people.

Like it or not, Wright is not an extremist flake, but a mainstream figure in the African American church. Rev. Joseph Lowery, who helped Martin Luther King Jr. found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, explained that Wright is part of the tradition of "prophetic preaching." Consider the original Jeremiah, he told CNN, the Old Testament prophet repeatedly jailed for criticizing the actions of Israel's kings.

Rejecting Wright is easy. Understanding all the angry voices - black and white, liberal and conservative - is hard. Learning to move beyond the unproductive anger and resentment is toughest of all.

Obama said that Wright's greatest wrong wasn't in criticizing America, but in refusing to recognize this country's ability to change for the better. Obama's struggle - the topic of his first book, "Dreams of My Father"- is to stitch together the pieces of his multi-racial identity. His mission is to forge a stronger, better nation by bridging the divide between black and white.

His problem is that a lot of white Americans may not be ready to walk a bridge if the likes of Jeremiah Wright are waiting on the other end. And the mission of Obama's opponents is to make sure voters can't think about Obama without also thinking of Wright.

Consider for a moment the timing of this controversy. The footage of Wright has been available for years. Obama knew he might have to distance himself from Wright, but chose to wait until after Wright's retirement. "Former pastor," in this case, sounds better than "current pastor."

But while lies about Obama being a secret Muslim have circulated for a year, and nasty attacks on his patriotism have been Internet fodder for as long, the conservative media machine started cranking up the volume as soon as John McCain clinched the Republican nomination.

It's not a conspiracy that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and their cable and talk-radio colleagues turned their fire on Barack - and Michelle - Obama around the same time, but it's not a coincidence either. For years, the right has beat up on Hillary Clinton and relished the prospect of her being the Democratic presidential nominee. Limbaugh and others even encouraged Republicans to hold their nose and vote for Hillary in the Texas and Ohio primaries on the theory that she'd be the easiest Democrat to beat.

For Republicans and their media cheering section, tying Obama to a militant black power preacher works two ways: It roughs up Obama should he win the nomination, or, better yet, knocks Obama out of the picture and gives the Republicans the opponent they've long wanted: Hillary Clinton.

This is the old politics with new technology, a game of linking your opponent to unpleasant images, especially involving race. Thursday, McCain suspended an aide caught promoting a video that blends images of Barack and Michelle Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Malcolm X and Olympic athletes giving the Black Power salute in 1968.

Expect to see more of that kind of thing. Jeremiah Wright is being systematically turned into Obama's Willie Horton.

Obama has responded by trying to elevate the conversation about race. He pleaded for those who cover politics to resist the urge to parse the words of candidates and supporters for racial undertones, to avoid competitive umbrage-taking, to stop blowing things out of proportion.

Fat chance. By Friday, the cable TV guys were reaching for the vapors because Obama described his grandmother as a "typical white woman."

The "one drop rule," a residue of slavery times, says that if you have one drop of black blood, you are black. By logic, Obama, with a white mother and an African father, is just as much a white man as a black man. But the one drop rule - and the political games of his opponents - have now succeeded in painting him all black.

That will cause Obama problems with some voters, and his earnest call for a new conversation on race won't necessarily help. Most people - at least most white people - aren't comfortable talking about race. They aren't excited about having a president who forces them to confront uncomfortable topics.

For Obama and the voters, there's no escaping race now. What happens next is a test - and not just for Obama.

Rick Holmes, opinion editor of the MetroWest Daily News, blogs at Holmes & Co. (http://blogs.townonline.com/holmesandco). He can be reached at rholmes@cnc.com.