Rants about Wright overlook the pain of slavery

When presidential candidate Barack Obama invoked the “original sin of slavery” as a way of explaining the succession of “angry rants” by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, conservatives exploded with indignation.

White commentators were particularly critical, denouncing Obama as weak, a “pansy” and sympathizer for what they called Rev. Wright’s America-hating racism. It’s time for blacks to stop being so angry, they contended, and stop blaming slavery and discrimination for everything bad in their lives. In other words: Get over it.

The contentious debate between conservative and liberal-black and white-took me back to a conversation with my grandmother.

I was visiting my 80-year-old paternal grandmother in Philadelphia-the land of Liberty-my birthplace. I would always make a point of quizzing her about our family history and was the family historian who archived photos, birth certificates and marriage licenses.

I was surprised this time when she handed me her bible. Not the bible which sat on her nightstand and found its way to Sunday church service tucked in the engraved leather bible cover, but the tattered bible hidden in the dark far corner of the clothes closet. The contents shocked me because, for the first time, it traced my lineage directly and unmistakably back to the original sin.

The bible details the family lineage going back five generations to slavery in the antebellum south. The shock came with the revelation of my great-great-grandfather John McElmurray, a descendant of the original Irish-Scottish settlers to Aiken, South Carolina.

Every document I’ve read on the man suggests he enjoyed the life of a wealthy plantation owner and owned several businesses and property. The property he owned included my great-great-grandmother Sarah. She is not documented nearly as well as my white ancestors. I do not know her native origin. In those days, slaves were given the surname of their slave owners. They were merely considered property.

My grandmother Ethel shared with me an early 1870s photograph she cherished of her grandmother Sarah. She was a striking woman with a deep, dark complexion and long black hair, braided waist length. She may have been native Indian, given that Silver Bluff, S.C., established an Indian trading block in the 1700s, or she may have been from the British West Indies.

Sarah gave birth to my great-grandfather in the late 1870s, shortly after Abolition. Joe McElmurray was born out of the slave-master relationship between her and John McElmurray. The specifics of their relationship are unknown. However, oral history tells the story that the elder John was present at the birth of his son. One can speculate by John’s presence at his son’s birth there was affection between him and Sarah. At the same time, one must question the authenticity of a slaves’ affection toward the one who keeps him/her in bondage. Is it an affection born of free will or an affection born of bondage and circumstance?

I am not sure what if any relationship my mixed race great-grandfather had with his white father. I know he inherited some acres of land from the McElmurray estate, built a house by hand and cultivated farm land to provide for his family, including my dad, Frank, who grew up there and tended the farm.

The Confederate side of the McElmurrays enjoyed special advantages from slavery; wealth, prestige, education and free trade. I can’t quite get the image out of my head of a slave forbidden to read and write and subject to bear the children of her oppressor while he elevates himself and his public family in society.

Today the descendants of the Confederate McElmurrays enjoy the full benefits and inheritance of their forefathers. One of those descendants, John’s brother, Thomas McElmurray, born 1841, fought as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War and is described in by the Beech Island, S.C., Historical Society as having “fine intellectual and moral attributes, loyal and public-spirited as a citizen and successful in his business affairs.” Like his brother, he was educated at Mercer University and served in politics as a legislator. Thomas’ white descendants donated the land and building that is now the Beech Island Historical Society. In the county of Aiken and Silver Bluff there is a lake named McElmurray Pond, a reservoir named Upper Lake McElmurray and a McElmurray private cemetery and road.

I can’t help but wonder at times that the intellectual and affluent lifestyle enjoyed by my Confederate ancestors and their descendants was gained at the expense of my ancestors and me.

I ask myself how did Sarah’s mixed-race son Joe’s life compare with that of his father’s white offspring? The answer: He struggled in menial work and labored through decades of hardship, fueled by the racism and discrimination that tarnished the black experience.

Meanwhile, the white descendants of Mr. McElmurray no doubt enjoyed the fruits of his wealth for generations to come. I need look no further than the little shack with the outhouse my great grandfather built with his hands and still exists today to get a glimpse of the “success” a descendant of a slave could expect and pass on as an inheritance to his children’s children.

I’m dumbfounded when commentators argue that people like my great-grandfather and his descendants had and have every opportunity to make money and improve their own lives but simply squandered it. The implication is that we lack moral fiber, were lazy or simply lacked the drive to succeed, when the fact is we were deprived of education, ownership, and basic human rights and liberties.

A more plausible explanation is that white slave-owners like my great-great-grandfather John enjoyed the advantage of sitting back, thinking and focusing on ways to succeed rather than worrying about their next meal while their slaves toiled in vain. They gained a level of confidence and insight that helped open the doors to advancement, while the environment surrounding their slaves was one of subservience, low self-esteem and constant pressure to abide by one’s station in life. Successive generations of whites have grown up with the inheritance of confidence and self-assurance afforded by their nurturing, stable home life.

After Abolition, successive generations of blacks grew up in a lingering atmosphere of subservience, injustice and inequality.

It has taken generations for black folk to overcome their anger and acquire an Obama-like sense of calm self-confidence. Not everyone is there yet. It’s a pretty tall order to think that blacks should just “get over it” and stop making excuses.

Amid all the white outrage over Dr. Wright, a lot of Americans missed the important message that America still hasn’t healed the wounds created by slavery.

“There is a paradox for this country and a contradiction of this country, and we still haven’t resolved it,” Condoleezza Rice told the Washington Times shortly after Mr. Obama’s speech in Philadelphia. “But what I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn’t love and have faith in them, and that’s our legacy.”

Rice spoke of the “terrible humiliations” endured by her father, grandmother and great-grandmother, then contrasted it to the can-do, by-the-bootstraps mentality instilled in those whose ancestors voluntarily immigrated to America. The descendants of slaves, she said, “don’t mimic the immigrant story” because they didn’t come here as immigrants. They were forced to come here as cargo-a distinction some white folk seem quick to forget.

In no way do I condone Dr. Wright’s anti-American sentiment. I found his speech divisive and his actions narcissistic. But at the core of the controversy, when blacks lash out at America the way Dr. Wright did, it’s not that we don’t love this country. If anything our love for this country and its ideals uproot the suppressed pain-the deep wounds have not healed-because only a handful of whites understand and acknowledge why things aren’t right.  

Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: “America has given the Negro people a bad check-a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check-a check that will give us, upon demand, the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

A business owner and publisher, four generations removed from slavery, I see the fruit of my ancestor’s blood sweat equity at every turn. I experience the lingering racism and empathize with the frustration of Dr. Wright who, on a regular basis, confronts and prays for the plight of disproportionately disenfranchised blacks whose check bounced.

Whites can’t expect to heal the wounds their ancestors opened without first acknowledging that they, too, enjoy compounded interest and advantages from the original sin.

To be forgiven, one must first seek forgiveness.