Obama Speaks On Grace, Race In Pinckney Eulogy

At last, black foke got the speech that they've been waiting for.

In reality, it was always unrealistic for blacks to expect Barack Obama to survive two terms in office being the head Nigga in Charge, given the level of opposition that faced him from day one.  He's done his best to add a little Al Green and a significant ebonic drawl to his eloquent speaking, but his policies have left most left leaning blacks wondering if any politician is much different in the long run.

In reality, Obama has done so many good things for America that it is hard to accept them in the face of the things he didn't do that you were hoping for, whoever you might be. So he might not complete immigration during his 2 terms, and he hasn't championed the cause of racial equality, yet most rational thinking people realize that any good leader is probably pissing off everyone on an equal level.  So far, Obama has done this too well for his own good or for his own public opinion polls.

President Obama's greatest strength is in line with a quote of Rev. Clementa Pinckney that the president himself used during his eulogy of Pinckney.  The quote went as follows: "Around the south, we have a good understanding of history.  Unfortunately we don't often have a good understanding of each other's history".

Barack Obama not only recognizes the power of history, it seems to be a guiding force in each of his decisions and his speeches.  Because of a keen sense of history, Obama's done a great job at limiting the big errors that would have impeded his ability to accomplish so many big things. At the same time, he's seen as way to cautious by those who felt he was purposed to create a new history while blazing new trails. You will never be able to deliver your song if you can't find a way to get and stay on stage. That's what I took from MSNBC host Al Sharpton, who was able to recall a story in which the great James Brown told him that,(paraphrased) no matter what you do in life, fight like crazy to get on that stage.  But once you're there, you gotta sing.

Today Obama sang.  Well technically, he sang again, but this time it was different.

He sang amazing grace, but he hoped to remind the world of the power of grace.  Knock on wood, because it was probably grace that allowed Sasha and Malia to avoid the front row of a funeral as someone else eulogized their father while residing as president.  Had Obama assumed a posture of black power and retribution for the years of mistreatment, he might have shortened his tenure in Washington and on earth.  Until today, Barack Obama stayed far away from the raw truth of race in America, fearing no one wanted to really deal with it in the first place, so why make his wife a widower?

Today, he said it the way blacks have been trying to say it for so long that we started to sound like that proverbial wolf crying little boy.  It took one too many recorded killings of black people- including the recent loss of the Emmanuel 9- to free this president to point out the obvious.  Confederate flags don't cause deaths, but they might cause hiring managers to "give a call back to John instead of Jamal" as the president reminded us in his eulogy.

We've come a long way, but moments like these are divine blessings- grace if you will- to press further into the struggle of decency, or return to the status quo.  In this address, president Obama urged America to seize this opportunity to advance our conversations, but most importantly advance the cause of decency towards one to another.  Mother Emmanuel is a shining example of  what it means to give undeserved decency, or grace if you will, much like the kind that Mother Emmanuel extended to the same man that terrorized their church.

Through the death of these 9 people, the confederate flag will come down and president Obama was finally given the reason to be black without excuse.  No one could question the vulnerability that this act of terror caused, even to those who don't stay in church a little longer than normal.  If the black church is the spine of black people, it could very well be the spine of America given the role blacks have played in advancing the cause of freedom's flag. Today was another chance for black people to advance the cause of freedom in America
, and our president stood up.

Freedom has a flag already, and it isn't the one that sought to maintain slavery.  However courageous the effort of any soldier, some of them are enlisted in the wrong army and for the wrong cause.  The only guilt and shame any person should feel towards the error of their ancestors should come from the persistence in that error.  Confederate flags are the height of a persistent error masquerading as family pride, and any state that sponsors the confederate flag is trying to mask the insecurity of shame and guilt with immense pride, yet, at the expense of those who have been oppressed by this symbol, and at the expense of our actual flag which stands for freedom and unity and decency as a birthright for all.

Does The Flag Stand For Grace?

Today our president gave a passionate address about the importance of being unified and decent towards all American's after the Supreme Court invoked federal right's allowing same-sex couples to marry.  And then he flew to South Carolina to eulogize a young black community leader, slain as a political act of terror.  The grace to be free and honest about race and grace was given to Barack Hussein Obama today, and he did not waste the moments.

Clementa Pinckney Might Be Eulogized Beneath Same Confederate Flag That Killed Him

Great men evidence themselves by the reverberation of their life and the lives they move when suddenly they're gone.

South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney was the pastor of the church that Dylan Roof terrorized, killing Pinckney and 8 others. No terrorist deserves to be memorialized or even remembered outside of the information WE can gain about ourselves in their confessions. The 8 people who died with their pastor deserved to be remembered. They, alongside their pastor, are the lives that shook the ground beneath the South Carolina legislature who are moving like the wind to make sense of the loss of a loved one. If they fail and some special accommodation  is not made, pastor Pinckney will be buried beneath the flag that killed him.

Never before, in the face of so many previous tragedies, have we seen solidarity behind change like we are seeing with the Confederate flag conversation. Pastor Pinckney shows US that God's messengers will be called to unusual places to break stubborn chains, occasionally to the state Senate, but sometimes even home.

This conversation is making me feel like I need to make sense of the conservative soul that under girds my proactive socialism platform. I love God and country just like the next red-blooded American. Apple pie is not my favorite because some people don't know how to properly cook the apples, but that's nothing that vanilla ice cream can't fix, regardless of the apple texture.  I also can't wait to replace my old Chevy pickup that I inherited when my dad died. Eventually it died too, but don't blame that truck for my former lack of automotive prowess. Like any real conservative American man, I've learned to fix a lot of stuff on my Made In America Jeep, mostly because I know dad would be proud, even though my American truck is not a Chevy anymore.

The bust of the Klan's founder is in the state house of Virginia
and on the 1-65 Highway entrance into Tennessee along with
several confederate flags

I wish America would have boldly conserved God as a confessed, guiding part of our daily lives including school and government, and not just the mystic, androgynous small print on our money that we curse or call to during times of tragedy. Mother Emmanuel is a shining example of what you can overcome when keeping God first. I'm also conservative enough still to hate the necessity for abortion, but not for any religious guilt reasons as some of my fellow conservatives. I just dislike what the necessity of abortion says about the degradation of the family, which is scary enough to encourage more abortion's than ever before. That being said, young people protect themselves better when they have sex these days. I'm not conservative enough to equally hate abortions as much as those liberal condom distribution programs that some conservatives protest just like abortions, but I understand the chastity argument too.

Virginia is banning confederate flags on license plates,
but this Klan statue will welcome you to Virginia instead.

I  admit however, that I might have given in on insuring that heterosexuals are the only people miserably married, but I'm  still strongly in support of the free market.  I just don't know how to make sense of the imbalance between profit and wages any better than the next conservative.

I struggle reconciling my conservative leanings during these pivotal moments in history that demand change instead of  conserving a tired way of thinking. Maybe black, God loving conservatives like me need to  take some blame for letting the crazy crackers keep the Confederate flag alive for so long. Quietly, it sort of made sense to quietly allow flag rebellion masquerading as pride because it helped to quiet my own retributive hate.  For me, continuing to say, "you hated first" is an immature response to being hated, so I tacitly accepted the hate and the flag as justification for my own sour heart. 

And then one day I lost my twisted white hatred and found a way to be polite or rude to people of all colors equally. Polite people of opposing color have been quietly hating while smiling in each other's face for a long time because freedom allows for things we know exist, but never know in who.  From all reports, pastor Pinckney was  more than just a polite person, he was someone everybody knew as a man of deep integrity and conviction. Just the kind of man who could lead an historic church and a battalion of its soldiers into the army of the lord to do what the Union army couldn't complete after the Civil War.

Mississippi State Flag

If you don't believe that God is still in the miracle business, look at these weaponless soldiers from Mother Emmanuel AME church of South Carolina, lead by General Pinckney, who are posthumously storming the stairs of state capitol building's nationwide to finish the war against General Robert E. Lee, that the Union had previously won, but with an asterisk. In Mississippi, republicans are hoping to invoke a ballot initiative to shield their campaigning conservatives from having to do the right thing with their confederate flag, which is a part of the state flag. Soon, more states will follow.

The founder of the Klu Klux Klan is revered in Tennessee. 

Until recently, I had no clue like most people who actually honor this flag, that this was the flag of Lee's N. Virginia army, not of the entire Confederate army. The modern use of the image was created and adopted in memory of the confederacy by people who celebrated and honored this image with cross burning and lynching and defiance of America.  Those folks who made it a rallying image that inspired the killing of black people, did this under popular support that existed not so long ago if you check the history or the memorials that continue to be inspired by the confederate movement.

The terrorist themselves and the people terrorized by these Confederate flaggers are not all dead and gone, nor is the memory of the flag's connection to terrorism.  Moreover, the fight to get rid of the flag never died either, but it started to feel like one of those fights that take so long you start to forget what you're fighting for.

That was the fate of the debate before a black president made hate emerge from the shadow's and rise up to kill a friend that he must now eulogize.  Should America continue to allow states to wave the flag that emboldens the racist cause right along side our red, white and blue, which one murderous confederate chose to burn in private?

Waving an enemy flag should be a  personal and private act protected by America's respect for free speech, not one supported by the government of the people, by and for ALL people.  As obvious as that seems,  it took pastor Pinckney to deliver one more reverberating message- that's still rumbling throughout the entire congregation and beyond.

Lay your burden down pastor. This message is being written for you.