The Democratic Party has a race problem for one overwhelming reason. Years ago liberals substituted political power for morality in regard to race. They abandoned color-blindness, the moral high ground and only legitimate position. Rather than reject any reference to skin color as a basis for power, they embraced racialism, hoping to capitalize both demographically and politically. They did. But recent events prove that what they abandoned eclipses what they have gained. They abandoned early Martin Luther King Jr. for late Martin Luther King Jr. (More on this in a moment.) This race-based political power is rooted in victimology, the belief that one group of people, by reason of their victim status alone, can do no wrong. According to the victim worldview, statements uttered by victims, no matter how crude, racist and divisive must be both accepted and justified. After all, it is argued, "look what they have endured as a people." (Even though contemporary 'victims" may not have endured it.) Victimology tells us that normal standards of criticism should not apply. Liberals told us ad nauseum that blacks "could not possibly be racist because of the power differential between them and white America." This is the background that created The Reverend Jeremiah Wright and others. It is the ethos that contributed to the blindness of Barack Obama.

   I refer to the early Martin Luther King Jr. because any objective analysis of King must understand that by 1968, King was a different man. His moral message of the "I Have A Dream Speech" and the Montgomery bus boycott had led to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. His colorblind message of non-violent justice had struck a chord. But what was Moses to do now that he had come down from the mountain? Furthermore King was being attacked by Stokely Carmichael, Eldredge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown and the so-called "black power" movement. They called King an "Uncle Tom" for his non-violent approach. They challenged King to move away from the morality of racial equality into areas of controversy like Vietnam, union issues and employment. However, these were not clear moral issues but murky political movements. The issues were grey, not black and white. Empowerment and preference, not justice, became the watchwords of liberalism. Soon King was gone and the politicizing of victimology was on a roll. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharton made careers out of it. Columnist E.J. Dionne recently defended Jeremiah Wright as part of the MLK Jr. oratorical tradition. That would depend on whether or not you believed King's later causes and statements were a poor substitute for his earlier work. I believe they were.

   But victimology has some huge drawbacks. It treats people as members of groups, devaluing their individuality. To be a victim is to have your words praised or feared, not evaluated like everyone else's. To make excuses for a man can come close to dissing him. We excuse children and the very old, not men in the prime of life. Are Wright's words true or false? We are not supposed to ask such questions. Thus when Barack Obama defended Jeremiah Wright's words in light of "the black experience," he denigrated their seriousness. Obama failed to take Wright seriously as a 21st century man and leader, which is what he is. What liberals have told blacks is that they can use victimology as a source of power to vent their anger. What they have not told them is that when they do, the speaker will be judged by 'black standards" not universal ones. Separate and unequal rears its ugly head again. Separate but unequal means blacks remain "children" in the eyes of mainstream society. Wasn't being called "boy" supposed to be a slur?

   Obama has said that he cannot dismiss Wright because he is like a family member, an uncle. If family is the place where "they have to take you in," then Obama says he did the right thing. But this too is way off. Jeremiah Wright is not Billy Carter or Roger Clinton. He is not a family member bound by blood, a subject of curiosity and head-shaking who cannot and should not go away. Obama chose to attend Trinity UCC Church because, according to columnist Naomi Schaefer Riley, it would "help your (community organizing) if you had a church home..." Another Democrat for whom politics come before beliefs. But people choose their ministers and churches. They choose to leave them as well. It is only a matter of time before Obama's public schedule and Wright's sermon DVD's place Obama in the congregation on numerous occasions hearing anti-American and racist rhetoric. Obama previously said he did never heard Wright's questionable rhetoric in church, but he retracted that statement in his recent speech on race. So far, there is no record of him objecting to or questioning any of it at the time.

   Why did Obama stay at Trinity? I suspect because victimology trumped theology. Victimology blinded him to the truth and made him excuse what he was hearing. But if a Republican candidate had attended and given money to a racist anti-American church, he would be gone from the presidential race pronto. The media would make sure of it. If he had asked the minister of such a church to marry him, he would be dead in the water politically. The mainstream media missed the point in praising Obama's recent speech on race as the greatest speech since "I Have A Dream." The issue is not about America or Reverend Wright or anyone else. The issue is Barack Obama himself. He simply did not address the questions that needed to be answered. What did he hear and when? Why did he stay? Is he hiding his beliefs about America behind lofty rhetoric? What are those beliefs? How can he defend Wright and run a post-partisan campaign? Whatever happens, the truth is that both Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright have been blinded by victimology, the poisoned legacy of liberalism and The Democratic Party.

   The time has long since come when the same standards of decency should apply to all Americans, all the time.

John Pendleton