Everywhere For 5 Minutes ( You HAVE Been There, Right?)
Obama’s speech on race made me think about the values and pitfalls of experience and the arrogance of empowerment that can come with it (my resumé includes Time, Life, Fortune, Look, Saturday Evening Post, (how’s that for dating myself) Newsweek, National Geographic, The Washington Post, etc., so I’ve done my share of traveling in 40 years).
“Arrogance of empowerment” is a term I first heard out of the mouth of…wait for it…George H. W. Bush! He was being interviewed for a Time Magazine piece (He was CIA director at the time and was asked about his WWII experiences as a Navy pilot). He said that being a fighter pilot was empowering, elitist almost, and his arrogance about it is what put him in harm’s way.
The memory of that honest self-assessment surfaced during Obama’s speech last Tuesday explaining his character and beliefs. I thought, what’s so unusual about understanding other cultures including the black culture?
Hasn’t everybody experienced a rousing sermon in a black church? Hasn’t everyone had the experience of having a meal at the kitchen table of a black family? Hasn’t everyone had the rowdy experience of getting a hair cut in a black barbershop? Well, no.
It came to me that having been everywhere for five minutes (a description of photojournalism that comes from David Burnett) there was a certain “arrogance of empowerment” of being an insider in the cultures of others.
And therein lies the arrogance. One tends to forget that millions of decent non-black Americans don’t understand the depth of anger displayed by Reverend Wright because they had not been exposed to the legitimate grievances of the black community. They hadn’t been to a black church or had a meal with a black family in their kitchen or spent time soaking up the atmosphere in a black barbershop.
To be sure, Reverend Wright’s more lurid accusations about AIDS and race and 9/11 were over the top. But in a larger context he emphasized the perceptions of a large part of the black community.
And that’s what Obama was trying to explain to us. Don’t take for granted that we are all one big happy family. To paraphrase Peppy, a favorite chef of mine, as in any family, dialogue becomes “the glue that binds us together”.
And if Obama’s “crazy uncle” goes off the reservation from time to time, well, so be it. To disown him would be more revealing of Obama that Rev. Wright. To listen to his message and start a dialogue would reveal how far we we’ve come and how far we have to go.