Last night, my son and I attended what I understand was the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's first public appearance since the election.  The audience of approximately 1,200 consisted of students from Northwestern and neighboring colleges and various luminaries of the Chicago scene, including, William Ayers.  We didn't get to stay for the entire event because Reverend Wright arrived late (we were told he was caught in traffic!), and the program began almost an hour and a half after the scheduled start time.  The simple fact is that I flew out to Chicago to see my kids, and not to report on a speaking event.  Still, I  thought that at least some of you would be interested in my observations (particularly if this is going to rekindle another mini media frenzy).

Reverend Wright was invited to speak by a group called For Members Only, a Northwestern black student alliance, after the Reverend had been unceremoniously disinvited last spring to receive an honorary degree from the University in the midst of the media frenzy over some of the choice excerpts from his sermons.  I don't condone what the Reverend said in those snippets by any strech of the imagination, but Reverend Wright, principally through his church and his ministry, has been a pillar of the Chicago inner-city community for decades.  The honorary degree he was to receive was well-deserved and earned the hard way, and frankly I have to say that I am embarassed by the University's decision to deny him the honor that was to be bestowed on him.  It is a university for heaven's sake and it is where we are supposed to embrace diversity of opinion.  Instead, I surmise that the University deferred to angry and wealthy donors who, ironically but in reality, endow the university with much of the funding that is, inter alia, used to provide financial aid to students in need.  I understand the University's decision, but I disagree with it without reservation.

My guess is that if you survey some of the media reports about Reverend Wright's address today, you will read about his pointed jabs at the press and what he and his family and parishoners had been subjected to last spring, and you might also read about Reverend Wright's brief but unambiguous and unqualified praise for and support of Barack Obama.  But the election of Obama and the media frenzy surrounding Wright's bit part in the campaign were really side issues last night.  The focus was on the fact that, at Northwestern and other elite universities across the country, the systemic lack of equal opportunity between blacks and whites in American in 2008 is as plain as day.  Four and one-half percent of my son's freshman class is black, or put another way only 81 of the almost 2000 Northwestern freshman are black.  This represents a little more than a one percent decline from the freshman class of 2007. 

I didn't hear, or candidly maybe I didn't understand, the solutions being proposed by Reverend Wright, and the passionate students and other guests who spoke before him (again we were unable to stay for the entire program, including the question and answer session with Reverend Wright).  Reverend Wright spoke of the simple truth that there are many, many black students across the country who meet the academic qualifications required to attend Northwestern, but he also pointed out that most of those students come from families that could never afford the 50,000 dollar-plus annual cost of matriculating there.  I am by no means a rich man (honestly), I will owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in college loans after my kids graduate, but I have a good job and a wife who accepts the  financial responsibility I have to the kids from my first marriage, and somehow we will manage during the decade-plus that it will take to pay off the debts I have incurred.  The same cannot be said for too many African American families whose children are well-qualified but simply do not have the financial means to attend institutions like Northwestern. To be sure, as I have written here time and again, the nagging inequality of opportunity between black and white Americans will not disappear simply because we made history and elected our first African American president this week. 

Reverend Wright also spoke at length about the need to move away from teaching black kids about black history and culture through the prism of the standard European-American model of what constitutes "our" history and "our" culture.  His historical overview of black education in America was measured and riveting at the same time.  Reverend Wright spoke with a mix of eloquence and humor, with no hint of bitterness or anger, and his presenstation confirmed to me, and more importantly from my perspective, to my son, that he is a brilliant scholar who is nothing like the man caricatured by the media during the presidential campaign.

Finally, like most of you, I am a political junkie, and I could not help thinking about the actions President-Elect Obama took last spring to disassociate himself from Reverend Wright.  I believed back then when I was a loyal supporter of Senator Clinton and I am even more convinced now, that President-Elect Obama threw Reverend Wright under the bus because he had to, because for political reasons he had no other choice   It is just silly to pretend that Senator Obama "didn't know" after twenty years about the things Reverend Wright said from the pulpit.  I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now.  That said, I just don't blame Obama for what he did because the simple fact is that he had to abandon Reverend Wright if he was going to be elected president.  And that, I submit, is a real tragedy; the young senator from Illinois, the man who rekindled hope in millions of Americans around the country, was forced to conform with those "white" norms Reverend Wright spoke about last night, just as Jackie Robinson in another less critical arena and in another era had to endure the brutality of overt racism in order to play on the white folks' field of play.

I think Reverend Wright knew perfectly well what his parishoner had to do last spring if he was going to break one more previously inpenetrable racial barrier and become president.  And I think, in the end, that's why Reverend Wright did what he did before all those masters of the universe at the National Press Club.  Reverend Wright took one for the team and gave the pundits the red meat they craved, and  that is one measure of a man this humble blogger takes very seriously.  I probably couldn't sit through some of Reverend Wright's sermons and I particularly detest what he said about 9/11.  That's just not my thing and I really have no interest in debating the Reverend or anyone else about that way of thinking.  But, still, Reverend Wright has earned my respect, and he gave me a personal gift last night, and he did so by speaking to my son and the other students in the audience, and by causing them to think a little bit outside of the box and through the eyes of their less fortunate American brothers and sisters.  And isn't that, as distinguished from doing things like politicizing the honorary degree process, supposed to be what a university is all about? 

Bruce