ABSTRACT
Senator Barack Obama’s personal relationship with his longtime pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, surfaced as a potentially problematic issue early in the Democratic primary season and continued to shadow Senator Obama throughout the general election. This issue proved one of the most controversial of Obama’s campaign, gaining significant traction early and adding fuel to opponents’ claims that Obama was unpatriotic and associated with the “dangerous black men” of the old white frame. Additionally, the controversy about Obama’s relationship with Wright was significant in that it prompted Obama to make his most detailed statements about racism and racial inequality in the United States. In this chapter, we discuss the contexts of Obama’s relationship with his now former minister, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, as well as how this issue reflected tensions between a hard white racial framing and the strong counterframe against racism often used by African Americans to survive and thrive in this still-racist society.
