Obama, Wright and the Jewish Experience with Hate
Lionel Chetwynd has published an open letter to Obama over at Pajamas Media in response to Obama's challenge to "contextualize" Jeremiah Wright's remarks. In it, he discusses grappling with his own hatred of Germans. He describes the Jewish relatives - only twelve remaining of a family of three-hundred - "The others – their loved ones, their sons, their daughters, their hopes and dreams – were gone, their lives consumed by zyklon-b gas, their mortal remains wisps of smoke from a Büchenwald chimney." He confesses, embarassedly, hating the Germans, "Had I, in that moment, the power to end the life of every German on earth, I might have well done so."
The turning point came when he was a panelist at a talk about stereotypes in Hollywood. A German filmmaker was on the panel with him. "She spoke of how growing up as a German she felt ashamed and humiliated whenever it was necessary to admit her lineage and how her life was about working to ease her shame. It was pure self-hatred." Chetwynd found himself "explaining to her the mantle of guilt did not fall upon the shoulders of her generation... describing Germany’s honest attempt to come to terms with the horrors committed in its name... They had sought atonement."
"And in that instant I realized my hatred was unjustified. The “context” was false. I was nursing the anger for my own psychic advantage and not because the current state of humanity or my own experience gave it justice."
Chetwynd concludes:
Obama, wright, jews, Holocaust, Germany, Hate"That is the teaching opportunity I hoped you would evoke: not explaining Wright’s outrage to me, but explaining his outrageousness to him. That’s how we’ll reach the postracial era: by no longer justifying ourselves with what was, instead speaking to what now exists. Not deny the past, but recognize that’s what it is: past.
"You say you are devoted to Reverend Wright because he brought you to Christ. I can only imagine how powerful a relationship that forges. But, my imperfect understanding of the Christian Faith tells me you can do him an equally magnificent service: You can help bring him back to Christ. Show him redemption and salvation lie not in the satisfaction of doing little dances in a pulpit while you slander good and decent people. Teach him that great leadership and Christian love abjures the very filth – and I pick that word deliberately – that he spews on an apparently regular basis..."
