Is Barack Obama a bitter black man? It is quite obvious that he has considerable intellectual ability and that he is a quite articulate speaker. But these gifts can be easily enough felled if he is a bitter black person. If Barack Obama is a bitter person, then his becoming president of the United States could easily be one of the worse things that could happen to America. A bitter person is one who holds a grudge over a perceived wrong experienced, even though he has done well by all conceivable accounts; hence, the wrong did not in any way hold the person back.
It can in fact be perfectly reasonable or at least understandable that a person is bitter. Suppose, for instance, that someone wronged an individual by causing that person to go blind or to lose all of her or his limbs.
There can be no question that American Slavery was wrong and that the racism of Jim Crow that followed it was equally wrong. But is Barack Obama so bitter over these things that he is failing to give proper weight to the truth that he has done better than most people, of whatever ethnicity, could have hope to do. Never mind that he was born in 1961, and was not around for the most brutal aspects of American racism.
Now, supposing that Obama has mightily suffered from racism, the thought might be as follows: “Just imagine how much more successful he would have been had it not been forb America’s racist past”. Alas, this line reasoning simply does not follow. For instance, there is absolutely no way to say that even if Elie Wiesel had not been through the Holocaust, he would still have gone on to win a Nobel Prize. The very gifts and traits that made him extraordinary in the face of evil might not have served him in the same remarkable way in the absence of evil.
Again, it is very unlikely that the people of Le Chambon would ever have received the fame bestowed upon them were it not for the Holocaust, and the town’s people standing up to the might of Hitler. Had there not been a Holocaust or something like it, the folks of Le Chambon would surely have gone on being the decent people they were. Alas, it is just that it is they may not have done anything extraordinary.
Finally, in his vein, it is anything but obvious that there would have been a Martin Luther King, as we now remember him, had there not been the struggle for civil rights in America.
It is one of the paradoxes of evil, if you will, that it gives rise to greatness in ways that ordinary life does not. Strengths in the face of adversity need not play themselves out in an equally potent way in the absence of adversity.
It is Obama’s continued 20-year membership, ending only a few days ago, in the Trinity United Church of Christ that raises the question of whether or not he a bitter person. Let me explain.
If it turned out that all of my white friends were known by me to be members of the KKK, though we never talked about it, there is a very straightforward sense in which my maintaining the friendship with them would count as tacit acceptance of their KKK membership. Likewise, if all of my white friends belonged to “whites only” social clubs. This point is sealed in every conceivable way if their KKK or their membership in “whites only” clubs had been going on for 20 years and I knew about it all that time.
Now, there is every reason to believe that Rev. Jeremiah Wright has always been an angry preacher who delighted in drawing attention to the wrongs of whites. And in this regard, there is no difference between Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger, except that Father Pfleger is white. These individuals have both highly praised Louis Farrakhan, who has indisputably said some of the most inflammatory and vile things about Jews ever uttered. Yet, neither Rev. Wright nor Father Pfleger thinks that Farrakhan is antisemitic—though the only thing that distinguishes Farrakhan from Hitler in terms of antisemitism is that Farrakhan, in contrast to Hitler, has not been responsible for Jews being either interned or killed.
Well, is it even remotely possible that Obama sat in the Trinity United Church of Christ (nearly) week after week for 20 years and not be a bitter person? It is rightly held that what we freely choose over time is a very deep indication of what we value. Barack Obama freely chose to attend a church whose mission would seem to be none other than inciting bitterness in the name of sustaining self-respect. Is it possible that Barack Obama did not find that line of thought immensely satisfying? The painful answer is: absolutely not. But let me concede for just a moment the utterly implausible idea that Obama, himself, is not a bitter person. What inescapably follows nonetheless is that he condoned the cultivation of bitterness by Rev. Wright. The condoning may have been tacit, but tacit condoning is condoning none the less. This is made abundantly clear by examples above where I have friends who are members of the KKK or who belong to “whites only” social clubs. I need not send them a letter telling them that what they do does not bother me. It suffices that I remain in the friendship.
For 20 years, Barack Obama maintained his membership in Trinity United Church of Christ—a church that most unabashedly and most enthusiastically valorizes bitterness in the name of having self-respect. If he had found this most inappropriate, it is simply out of the question that he would have maintained his membership there. Indeed, the best evidence would seem to suggest that the only reason why he resigned from Trinity is that having his membership there became a liability in terms of his bid for the United States presidency—not because he found woefully uncomfortable the sustained message of hostility towards whites. The simple truth is that one does not choose to affiliate with a church that offers such a venomous message unless that message resonates with her or him. And it is this truth that occasions the question with which I began this essay.
Of course, some will insist that Obama has a right to be bitter, contrary to my remarks at the outset. Alas, conceding that point, if only for the sake of argument, does not require casting aside the truth that a person who harbors deep and abiding bitterness is unfit to be president. Bitterness is one of the most corrosive sentiments to which human beings are susceptible. And one reason for this is that people who are bitter are more interested in sustaining their bitterness than getting over it even when it is ever so obvious that they would be better off, on every conceivable account, if they moved on. And a bitter person who is a most mesmerizing speaker can have a crowd doing the unthinkable. Hitler is proof par excellence of this point. Hitler was a most bitter individual as well as a tremendously mesmerizing speaker.
The suggestion here is not at all that Barack Obama is a Hitler-in-the-waiting. I have no such thought. But here is what I know: John F. Kennedy was a mesmerizing speaker who was not bitter. Likewise for Bill Clinton. Richard M. Nixon was a bitter person who was not a mesmerizing speaker. Jimmy Carter was neither a bitter person nor a mesmerizing speaker. Bitter people who are also mesmerizing speakers are extremely rare; and it is even more rare is that they go on to do something marvelously wonderful.
Sheer commonsense suggests that Obama ought to have departed from Trinity Church much, much earlier. Perhaps when Oprah Winfry left. For all the world, it looks as if what got in the way of commonsense was Obama’s appetite for bitterness. So I ask: Is Barack Obama a bitter black man?