Can atonement be accomplished on this historic night

On this historic night...

Everything surrounding Barack Obama's run for the presidency is historic. The significance cannot be overstated, however. On this historic night, Friday, September 26, 2008, Barack Obama, a Black man, participated in the first presidential debate of the 2008 general election at the University of Mississippi.

At this same institution a little more than 40 years ago, James Meredith became the first Black man to successfully matriculate at the University of Mississippi. Meredith was escorted into the university under guard for fear of the threat of violence waged against him by bigots and other zealous whites resentlful of his accomplishment. Ironically, Senator Barack Obama was escorted onto the University of Mississippi tonight under concern for similar precautions.

Of course--as a matter of course because he is a presidential candidate--Sen. Obama has a security detail assigned to him 24 hours a day. Not so much as a matter of course, Sen. Obama has had a security detail assigned for at least a year, since he began receiving credible threats to his life early in the run to the primary election.

Minutes before the debate between Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain began tonight, news media mentioned the historic aspect of Obama's appearnce at the University, given its part in the nation's ugly history of racial segregation, discrimination and intimidation. Some suggested this high profile event featuring Sen. Obama gave the University a chance to prove that it had changed its attitudes, its values, as it relates to race relations.

That thread of a notion--that the rising tide surrounding Mr. Obama's political career over the last few years somehow serves as an oppotunity for white American redemption--has been floated more frequently from various ports in recent months from the New York Times Sunday magazine to the political desks of cable news pundits.

The notion cannot be validated, however. An affirmation of Mr. Obama can never substitute or makes up for past abuses and injuries that white society inflicted on Black Americans. One primary reason is because those abuses do not appear to be a part of Mr. Obama' heritage. Without attempting to make too fine of a point, Mr. Obama's lineage does not suggest that his forebears were recipients of the abuses inflicted upon Black Americans during 400 hundreds years of enslavement. Unless his Kenyan born father or white American mother had relatives who were enslaved in America, Mr. Obama missed the boat so to speak on that terrible history of racial oppression.

I do not mean to suggest that Mr. Obama does not find genuine cultural kinship with other Black Americans or that he has not met racial prejudice or been shaped by it. Nor do I mean to cast doubt on the goodwill White Americans may have to "right the wrongs of society." It is just that in my forty plus years I have learned something about redemption, forgiveness and the requirement to forgive, about how hard it is to position oneself with humility in order to be the forgiver or the forgiven.

The problem is human nature. Human nature is an awfully complex composition; like the clay that the prophet Jeremiah observed in the potter's hands, our human nature does yield under the shaping of Divine guidance, but deep-set elements such as resentment, fear, anger and arrogance harden our nature. That means we sometimes have to be cracked open or broken before being formed into a humbler vessel willing to see itself in need of forgiveness or a figure of grace who forgives.

These are some of the discordant notes underlying the hopeful comments stated tonight about the significance of Mr. Obama debating in a presidential contest at the University of Mississippi. Black and white Americans, to borrow a phrase from a friend, are caught up in a "strange dance" in which we Do-Si-Do around racial injustice or electric slide past racial resentments. Then, our illusion of social tolerance--the substitute for social harmony--is dispelled by incidents like the reprisal of dangling hangmen's nooses to intimidate Blacks, the Jena Six case, the O.J. trial(s), affirmative action or the inequality in public school education. These incidents stop the pretense and make us face the real music.

White Americans who openly seek atonement show progress in this society. But they have to seek it from those who have borne the injuries in question. Mr. Obama has received every insult reserved for a Black man in America, I am certain. Some two thousand years ago one man, or Son of Man, accounted for the sins of many. Can atonement for the injuries to many be accomplished through one man--even on this historic night?