The object of preaching is to constantly remind mankind of what they keep forgetting; not to supply the intellect, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.
-- Sidney Smith

Rev. Wright was right – a cab probably never “whizzed past” Hillary because of her race; rich white people don’t walk around thinking about poor black people; and Guilliani nor Hillary have ever been called niggars.

On Sunday mornings, in black churches across this nation, our discourse has much to do with our current corporate situations. It’s a fact that black people in this country suffer profusely in comparison to white people. At church we talk about the fact that black people often lack of access to quality health care. Pastors talk about police brutality and corruption against Africans Americans and the racial profiling and societal stereotyping that run rampant in our community. Preachers preach on how many black communities are in poor repair and have been subjected to subprime mortgages that have stripped us of our homes – the only asset many of us had. Ministers talk about the more than one million African American men currently in jail or prison which leads America to the perception that young, black men are prone to thievery, violence, and other criminal behavior, and how, in comparison to whites, blacks are more likely to receive substandard legal representation and harsher sentences. That’s what we talk about.

Black churches, the place where you can communally receive the balm of Jesus, have always been the bastion for vital community discussion. Black free-thinking pastors, brave enough to speak their minds and hearts, have always been the purveyors of Jesus’ healing and restoration, and we generally hold them in high esteem for their courage and audacity to speak aloud our position. Who is America to chastise the messengers of our relief?

Not long ago, someone said that the beauty of an Obama campaign and subsequent presidency was that America would get to view another perspective, a perspective that has long been denied, ignored, or diminished. Last week all of America got a perspective they had not been willing to see – that black folk have an opinion about our treatment and we take it to Jesus in the way it feels to us.

Who among us has not sat in church and heard the pastor profess something disparaging about American philosophy, practices, and leadership? Who among us has not heard the preacher “whoop” out a thing or two about social injustices and attached names to the offenders? Suffice it to say, given America’s beleaguered history, how many African American preachers have not talked about the “chickens coming home to roost?” Whether you agree with the message or not, you understand the sentiment and viewpoint with which these statements are delivered.

Talking about what hurts, shames, and demeans us in a safe place like church has been the tradition since we came to this country. When we go to meetin’, we hear about God’s grace through the tribulations of our life. We hear about how Jesus walks with us as we walk into our glass-ceilinged work places. God steers our wheels, bridles our tongue, and soothes our angry soul when we get pulled over because we were driving while black on the wrong side of town. Jesus eases our dismay and organizes our fight when greedy developers infringe on our 40-year old established-for-black-people communities with new, yet substandard or priced out of our range homes. And Jesus pushes us through to the next level when all stops are pulled to dirty our work and discount our accomplishments. Black churches and their pastors, in no uncertain terms, remind us, with tongues as sharp and versed as poets, that our struggles are real, the personal is political, and that we’ve got much work to do so stay alert and keep focused on God. All that is is the truth.

Possibly, Rev. Wright’s sermons reminded America that it cannot tolerate the truth, that truth points fingers and requires that one be conscious of and accountable for change, that perhaps paying attention to the pained emotion beneath words requires one to act and think differently which ultimately means one has to do the hard emotional work of uprooting, repudiating, and redefining how he or she thinks and behaves. Perhaps Obama, by association, is now thrown on the trash heap with the likes of other truth tellers like Al Sharpton and Dick Gregory and cannot recover from this slam. Perhaps America just does not want to think and be reminded, but instead wants to be alarmed that anyone would believe America is not the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Sadiqqa © 2008