Reverend Wright voiced another cry in front of a room of ten thousand at an annual NAACP conference today. The tension right now in this country between black and white Americans most often subsists behind the curtains; it's in the silence of our gestures, in our misunderstandings, and our hands covering our mouths after a slightly politically incorrect statement about the other race, and particularly black Americans. I am not as concerned right now with the issues confronted or the controversial and racial words potentially spoken by Rev. Wright, but what I can not ignore are my sympathies for this man and the pain I sense in the one voice he represents.
The white man's ear in this country is not quite attuned to the rhythm of the black man's songs, and I believe this ufamiliarity with African American culture is and has damaged a much needed conversation between blacks and whites. Wright's statements may have been offensive, and as much as he defends them as "descriptive" rather than "divisive", I am not entirely sold. But that is beside the point. Two scores and a century is not a long time for a culture to heal from a heritage marked by suffering through dehumanization. And the black poets of the early 20th century had it right when they identified the African-American culture with a mask it was forced to wear in order to hide its tears, being excluded from the fellowship of the rest of mankind. And two scores and a century wasn't a definitive point; African Americans have struggled for social recognition for a much longer time after their emancipation. There voice has been stifled, and their status as human beings has gradually been bought at the expense of their own tears and blood.
The media's obsession with Wright right now might open the door for more dialogue between blacks and whites. In order for the dialogue to continue, however, a posture to listen, as much as it is often tongue-in-cheek, has to be adopted by white Americans. Our responsibility is not to point to African American failures in voicing themselves ethically and soberly. Dialogue always demands an identification of the origin and end, and to arrive at an understanding of why the African American fist was raised and why it is still up in the air demands a sensitivity to be willing to understand, however much it fails in articulation.
The forms of expression are often offensive, loud, and obtrusive, but the form can not obviate our attention to the substantive issues at hand. Human identity survives through its cultural and social recognition, and it is one of our greatest duties to ensure the recognition of this identity. Whether or not we believe this "suffering" is self inflicted or a way of placing the responsibility on white Americans, it does not detract from the fact that black Americans are and have been hurting, regardless of where they place the blame. Even if their words are presently offensive, their words can not be divorced or castrated from where those words find their origin, the human tongue. And that is where our sympathy must begin, a respect for the dignity of human beings and human expression, and a willingness to see that dignity preserved. You can't separate the "drum from the drummer", and the drumming will not always be perfect. If we want a better tune, we have to attend the suffering human voice.
