Americans, Democrats but not only Democrats, supporters of Clinton or Obama or none of the above....   ....we are facing a crossroads.  In one direction lies a battle we have been fighting for decades upon decades, of which many of us are weary, to which many of us cannot relate. In the other direction, there lies a new dynamic. And we have a choice to make.   I cannot remember ever encountering a Rorschach test as instantly inflamatory and deeply telling as the ten second clips, aired in continuous loops on cable tv and, apparently in some peoples minds, of Reverend Jeremiah Wright this past week. Their prominent display seems to have set an entire generation of people back on its heels and into the recesses of its collective brain, where it is fighting the last war still. I feel like I'm watching a loved one suffer through some kind of PTSD flashback. Its depressing and scary. Part of me wants to settle you down and make you comfortable; part of me wants to slap you silly until you open your eyes and see what's actually there.   Its a maddening time to be a young Democrat. All I can do right now is to tell it to you as I see it, and hope that you listen and try to understand.   This furor is about two things at its core: race and generational experience.   There are some who claim its really about religion and politics - by and large those claims seem disingenous to me. Yes, what Rev. Wright said was inflammatory, but the vast majority of it has been said on numerous occasions in other forms and in different formats. The idea that 9/11 was to some extent the result of decades of military involvement overseas, especially in muslim majority nations, has been expressed by "serious" intellectuals before and frankly seems likely. Growing up I heard preachers say that America would answer for her sins more times than I could count - though usually the sins listed were abortion and homosexuality, not the killing of innocent civilians. Anyone who has actually been to a church or knows anything about, especially, the religious right knows that churches these days often express political views, and they aren't always mainstream ones (and its important to note that African American churches have a very long history of political involvement and mobilization - none of this should come as a surprise to anyone who is even remotely familiar with the tradition).   In short, if John McCains white preacher was heard on tape speaking disdainfully about Islam or saying that America must change its leftist ways or face the judgement of the Divine, the sentiment would seem so common no one would even see fit to play the tapes on television, let alone manufacture a controversy over McCains connection to the man.   But this isn't a white evangelical preacher pushing the views of the religious right.   Its an "angry black man."   And lets face it, in America, thats different.   The first time I saw those tapes I was in the company of conservative baby boomers... their reaction was immediate disgust, physical even, setting in strongly before they could have possibly thought through what was being said. I suspect that they were not alone in having that kind of visceral reaction to Wright's anger, passion and choice of words. Most of the people that I have talked to who are "outraged" over this issue don't even seem to remember what the words were or meant at all; they say Wright is a racist without being able to explain why or how, they remember "God damn America" but haven't a clue about the context in which it was said. All they saw, all they remember, is that angry black face, dressed in foreign looking garb, bringing race to the forefront in a confrontational manner.   The fact of the matter is that nothing you saw in those tapes is particularly uncommon in the black community. Whether we whites wish to see it or not, there is a lot of fear and paranoia and anger in that community to this day - and to some extent its understandable. That doesn't excuse all of it, and that certainly doesn't make it healthy or productive. But its there. It must be dealt with. And getting all red in the face and proclaiming "outrage" and condemning anyone who associates with it isn't going to cut it.   Now for the claims of "guilt by association."   Barack Obama has been a servant of the public in an official capacity for more than 13 years. He has worked closely with our most prominent  politicians. He has written and voted on oodles of legislation. He has given speech after speech. He has written two lengthy and particularly honest books about himself and his life.   There has been no hint in any of this record or in any of these relationships that Obama himself agrees with any of his pastor's racially divisive rhetoric or shares any of his anger. In fact, Obama has made every effort publicly and privately to transcend these kinds of artificial and pointless divisions between people; his consistancy on this has been truly remarkable.   So what, exactly, are we afraid of?   I get the feeling that a lot of people, baby boomers especially, are overplaying the relationship between Obama and Wright because in their minds and hearts, whether they want to admit it or not, Obama's blackness associated him with that kind of anger immediately. People of a certain age seem to have very particular frames built up through which to view people and ideas; these frames were set in the 60's when divisiveness was at a maximum. This "identity politics" way of viewing things also explains Geraldine Ferarro's statements about racism and sexism and why she was so hellbent on defending them. Both Ferarro and Wright are children of an era in which identity was everything, in which each person was supposed to fit neatly into a little box and everyone had their supreme label: the hawk or the dove, the black or the white, the man or the woman.   Many of these people WANT on some level for Obama to fit into the "black" box. And everyone knows that the "black" box is full of angry radicals like Wright. So to conflate the two is natural.   But the problem is, Obama doesn't fit in that box. He refuses to fit in ANY box. He dares to reach out to people of all classifications - from angry black men to optimistic white youth to gay people to conservatives to anyone else who is willing - but he doesn't become them, he LISTENS to them, tries to understand them and learn from them what he can.   This inability to fit into and refusal to use the 60's era system of compartmentalization is a huge reason why Obama appeals to so many in our largest and, potentially, our new "greatest" generation, the millennials. We understand what Obama is trying to do because many of us juggle people in the same way in our daily lives. We are gloriously diverse and we love it: 40% of us are ethnic minorities, we were raised on hip hop and bilingualism, more than half of us have been in interracial relationships.   We haven't stopped supporting Obama, and we won't. We don't get what all this fuss is about. We have old racist uncles and sexist bosses and judgemental pastors and we know that being connected to them does not make us carbon copies of them. We genuinely don't understand why so many people seem to think that one could not seek spiritual advice from someone they disagreed with about something political. If we all vetted our friends and associates that way - distancing ourselves from anyone too different - we would be profoundly lonely.   Americans, we are at a crossroads. We are looking at a fine man and a fine candidate who is involved in a complicated relationship with someone who plays into an awful stereotype. We have two choices. We can view this man through the frames of the past, reduce him to a one-dimensional caricature of himself and place the two men together in a box labeled "black," whatever that entails, so that they both can be summarily dismissed. Or we can set the frames and boxes aside. We can judge this man on the content of his character, not on the color of his skin and the many generalizations that tend to flow from that. We can accept this relationship for what it is: a friendship in which there is some agreement and some disagreement, in which both parties are forever growing and changing, a friendship just like many that we all have. And then we can let Wright go back to representing Wright and take a good, hard look at our candidate, making this important decision based on what he and he alone brings to the American table.   I'm ready to take a step forward. I hope you are, too.