Shocking: Obama’s views have evolved since he was 22
Someone forwarded me this, the latest line of attack on Obama, suggesting his ruminations on black nationalism as a 22-year-old organizer (written later in life, when he was a lawyer and law professor) say more about his true intentions than his public record. It quotes from what I presume is “Dreams from My Father,” and quotes Obama’s thoughts on his conversation, as a young community organizer, with a member of the Nation of Islam:
In a sense, then, Rafiq was right when he insisted that, deep down, all blacks were potential Nationalists. The anger was there, bottled up and often turned inward. And . . . I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage towards white generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyally above all else, was a politics inadequate to the task.
The blogger concludes:
In other words, Barack was willing to sacrifice his mother and his grandparents on the alter [sic] of black nationalism. His sentiments were in lime [sic] with those of Rafiq, the Nation of Islam activist. That is the reason he chose a black nationalist church run by “Reverend Wright” who explained to him (p.284): “Life’s not safe for a black man in this country, Barack. Never has been. Probably never will be.”
The author seems to confuse intellectual autobiography with a policy statement. Having not read the book, I can only assume that Obama was explaining his thinking at the time, and the dilemmas it posed (a not uncommon dilemma in the black community, between let’s say the King model and the Malcolm X model). And what 22-year-old doesn’t find “desperate measures” attractive, or seek to rebel against the ideals of his parents?
And unless I am reading it wrong, it sounds like the quote on the blog is actually Obama’s explanation why he rejected the nationalist model. An important distinction between Rafiq and Obama is that instead of taking up arms or becoming a street radical a la Sharpton, Obama went to Harvard Law School, headed Law Review, ran for public office, and built a pretty much unradical agenda in his two decades of public service, working within the system to effect change as he saw it. (In fact, Obama has been criticized for some for doing too little as a legislator, skipping votes and avoiding tough decisions - hardly the mark of a radical or firebrand.)
Obama’s opponents prefer to see his public record as “window dressing” for his real inner thoughts and ultimate intentions. Is that a fair standard by which to judge a politician - not what he does, not what he says repeatedly and consistently in speeches and print over the years, but what we might suspect are his deepest motivations? And is that a test we’re willing to apply across the board?
The excerpt from Obama’s book reminds me of two biographies of ex-Jewish radicals, “Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist” by Yossi Klein Halevi and “You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right” by Rabbi Brad Hirschfield. Both of them, from the distance of early middle age, write about the attractions of Jewish radicalism when they were young - Halevi was a member of the Jewish Defense League, Hirshfield was a gun-toting settler in Hebron. They write honestly about their feelings as young men and make quite understandable the factors that lead some Jews to radical solutions: anti-Semitism, the legacy of the Holocaust, the slaughter of Jews by terrorists, a world that doesn’t seem to care. I think it is the rare Jew who doesn’t sometimes think violent thoughts about our enemies, although ultimately we put them aside and work within the mainstream. Ultimately, Halevi and Hirschfield wrrite about how they rejected extremist positions - Halevi is now a respected journalist who drifted first to the Left and now to a center Right position and works at the Shalem Center; Hirschfield is an Orthodox rabbi who heads CLAL and promotes pluralism.
I think they are both stronger and more credible thinkers and advocates for having traveled on the “dark side.”
JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 