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Agent of moral courage: Barack Obama

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Mar 19, 2008

In planning for this blog entry, I had a different Agent of Moral Courage picked out. Wrote my post, polished the points, checked the links and timed the draft to go live shortly.

Then Barack Obama opened his big mouth. And moral courage poured out.

Responding to the media frenzy over his former pastor’s racially charged rage about the United States, Senator Obama did better than “denounce and reject” (the standard demand made of any candidate whose supporters offend others).

Instead, he spoke truth to power within his community — first his Black community and then his wider American community — for the sake of a greater good. My favorite excerpt from yesterday’s speech:

“For the African-American community, that path [to a more perfect union] means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.

But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans: the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who’s been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.

And it means taking full responsibility for own lives by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American — and yes, conservative — notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

What we know, what we have seen, is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation.”

‘Nuff said.

Why did I pre-empt a lesser-known Agent of Moral Courage for someone who’s being blogged about everywhere? Because to catch on, moral courage needs high-profile practitioners. Their example permits more of us to defy dogma.

If a faithful Christian can dare to challenge his religious mentor, risk alienating the congregation to which he belongs, push “his people” to accept responsibility for their ills, empathize with the anger of all sides, and throw in a respectful nod to the ideological Other - in this case, conservatives - all the while chasing votes from proud liberals, then we’re left with one question:

Now that a politician is exercising moral courage, what excuse do the rest of have not to?

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