The use and abuse of black anger

The use and abuse of black anger BY BRIAN DICKERSON • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • March 21, 2008 Barack Obama's abiding talent is for deflecting criticism, not dishing it out. But this week, halfway through his remarkable magnum opus on race, Obama hurled a dart straight at Kwame Kilpatrick's Adam's apple. The Democratic presidential front-runner was talking candidly about the anger that festers in this nation's African-American kitchens and barbershops, a bitterness he said had fueled the most incendiary sermons penned by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "That anger is not always productive," Obama noted. "It keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. "At times," he added, the same anger "had been exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings." ZzzzzzzzzzzUNNNK! What? Oh, a thousand pardons, Mayor Kilpatrick! Sen. Obama hardly noticed you standing there between him and the bull's-eye! Thank goodness your necktie knot absorbed most of the point! Birds of a feather It's possible, of course, that Obama had some other major American city's legally challenged African-American CEO in mind when he condemned racial demagoguery in all its forms. Wright's sins were his primary preoccupation, the pastor's backward-looking bitterness that Obama was most anxious to renounce. But the closing minutes of last week's State of the City address, in which Kilpatrick lashed out at media critics and suggested that their "lynch-mob mentality" had placed his children at risk, was of a piece with Wright's often-broadcast jeremiads. And whether Detroit's mayor was a handpicked target or merely a collateral victim of Obama's critique, there's no doubt Kilpatrick's desperate tactics imperil the historic reconciliation Obama hopes to broker. The irony, of course, is that Kilpatrick began his own political career in much the same way Obama has forged his candidacy -- offering pride in place of paranoia, productive cooperation in place of pointless confrontation, and youthful energy in place of stale cynicism. His first mayoral campaign, like Obama's current presidential bid, was fueled by a new generation of voters less interested in channeling their parents' rage than in advancing their own dreams. The antithesis of hope Kilpatrick ought to be in the thick of Michigan's presidential scrum. As things stand, though, either candidate would likely seek a restraining order if Detroit's mayor offered his public support. Now, even as Obama tries to build new alliances, Kilpatrick is abrading old wounds. He talks of black empowerment but spends his days fanning flames of division that threaten to consume his party's first viable African-American candidate for president. If Obama's audacious campaign of hope succeeds, it will be despite men like Wright and Kilpatrick, not because of them.