The revelations of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks have unleashed a reactionary backlash that has many (virtually entirely white) people scornfully denouncing Rev. Wright as a racist, even though he is African American. This reaction has been used to reframe our understanding of race and racism in America, essentially contextualizing race as a question of personal attitudes, or comments by individuals that reflect negatively on white people.

By this reasoning, the centuries of national oppression against African Americans and against indigenous people, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Asians and immigrants are dismissed, and we must assume that everything is equal. In other words (according to this logic), oppressed people of color who have suffered in a society built on slave labor, genocide, land expropriation and discrimination can be equally racist. What convenient logic!

Senator Obama was forced to denounce Rev. Wright's remarks and disassociate himself from Rev. Wright or be denounced as a racist himself. Ultimately, Obama carefully walked a tightrope, working to disassociate himself from Rev. Wright's remarks, while tactfully trying to appease his white critics. For his role, Obama is being hailed by the white-controlled, mainstream media as having given the most significant speech on race since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Obama is being praised not for what he said, because he said all the right things, but rather for what he did not say. His speech was less about ending the race problem and more about pandering to the resentment of white people who are offended whenever there is acknowledgment that racism is alive and well in America.

The question we have to ask is, what did Rev. Wright say that was racist? He denounced America's racist treatment of African Americans from the pulpit, and shortly after the 9/11 attack he was quoted as saying, "We have supported state terrorism against Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost..." (1) In a 2003 sermon where Rev. Wright addressed America's treatment of African Americans he said, "The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people..." (2) Rev. Wright's remarks ring true with anyone who has experienced, first-hand, the effects of racism and injustice in America, and he clearly articulated how the US empire's actions have created its enemies internationally.

The controversy over Rev. Wright's statements reveals the state of ethnic and racial relations in America. By contextualizing the debate on race in this way, one could reason that any mention of race, no matter what the context, could be construed as racism. Rev. Wright's comments have been used to illogically negate history by pointing in the other direction and arguing that oppressed people of color are racists because they oppose racism and national oppression. We must support Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Clearly, we cannot accept the myth that we live in a melting pot, where all people are treated equally. The reality of prisons that are overflowing with disproportionate numbers of African Americans, Latinas/os and Native Americans; the high failure rates of African Americans, Latinas/os and Native Americans in public schools and colleges; and the poor health care of people of color, continued job discrimination, and the other myriad expressions of inequality, demonstrate that racial and ethnic inequality and white privilege continue to be integral aspects of America's legacy.

In one sense, Barack Obama represents African Americans' aspirations to gain political representation at the White House. This election represents an important juncture in US history. The idea of an African American winning the presidency against the backdrop of a legacy of racism and national oppression, rooted in the days of slavery and perpetuated by a history of Jim Crow laws, would have seemed impossible not too long ago.

The irony of an African-American Presidential candidate withstanding America's racist legacy, while being pressured to downplay the question of race, is astounding. This irony illustrates the depth of resistance to America's attitude towards race.

We must ask why there was such a passionate backlash to Rev. Wright's remarks and why Obama was pressured to denounce the words of his pastor and friend in a way that demanded that race be analyzed out of context, looking only at the comments themselves, without assessing the historic conditions that created racial inequality in the first place. First, and foremost, white people in America ignore these conditions and turn a blind eye to their own social position in society, which was molded over centuries and has evolved into a social phenomenon we refer to as white privilege. In his book The Cost of Privilege: Taking On the System of White Privilege and Racism (2007), Chip Smith argues that America's foundation and subsequent legacy were steeped in and forged through a process of multiple oppressions that have subjugated, enslaved and exploited people of color. The US was built on the blood, sweat and tears of oppressed nationalities.

Smith also reasons that the only way to eliminate national oppression is to recognize that it exists; to support the right to self-determination of African Americans, Chicanas/os, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans and other oppressed people; and to recognize and support the intersectionality of different oppressed people's movements in a common struggle against oppression.

FRSO/OSCL believes that racism and national oppression will not be eliminated by selective amnesia, but through a conscious, organized fight for the right of self-determination of all oppressed people. This we believe can only be achieved through an alliance of the oppressed and working peoples in a common struggle for justice and equality.

(1) ABC News story by Brian Ross and Rehab El-Buri, March 13, 2008
(2) ibid.

Joe Navarro is a Chicano poet, creative writer, community activist and teacher.  He is an author of 7 chapbooks and contributor to The Cost of Privilege: Taking On the System of White Supremacy and Racism (Camino Press 2007).