Mar 14 2008
Obama lies and swindles
What is the difference between Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, David Duke, and the KKK?
None - they are equally racist, radical, divisive, reactionary and myopic.
Unless you ask Barry the Bamboozler, who in the last 20 years, found enough of a difference, so he could identify himself, his family, and his community, with at least one (and partly two) of the named radicals.
20 years of loyalty to rabid ethnocentric rhetoric, and only a few days after the media take note, Obama is out there denouncing one or two out of the thousands of odd statements Jeremiah Wright made as his spiritual sugar-dady!?
Why only three years after Wright declared 911 a punishment of White America, the central idea of Obama’s 2008 campaign was named after one of Wright’s sermons, which Obama credits for inspiring his entire Presidential run!
Now Barry-0 is telling us that years ago his church was different, that he always disagreed with anything off-color, that there is a lot of good stuff Wright has done, and that he never heard an inflamatory statement like this one before?!
Isn’t that what David Duke said about being in the KKK, when he ran for President!?
Don’t believe a word that comes out of Phony Barry’s mouth!
Lies, damned lies, and dirty lies.
Was Obama there when Wright made inflammatory statements? Damned right he was there because Wright can’t go a sermon without being inflated, inflamed, and inflammatory!
The undeniable, unflinching truth about Obama and Wright, is that Obama shared a great deal of the thinking of Wright, who already in the early eighties earned a reputation for being extraordinarily radical! This is what attracted Obama to Wright in the first place, according to his very own autobiographies!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I welcome the new found media interest in pastor Wright, but I caution against the lies and spin we can be expecting from Obama on this matter. I caution against journalist complacency with such lies, and their eventual proliferation as “common knowledge” as we are forced to swallow these lies by a clueless, spineless, irresponsible media system.
Wright has made countless, almost weekly statements which pass for radical, ethnocentric, embittered, and angry. Obama’s denunciation of one or two such statements, amounts to whitewash. His campaign’s claim that these statements are rare, is a blatant lie!
No amount of appologies for the last 20 years of collaboration with this man, can suffice. We are talking mindset here, we are talking judgment here, we are talking the real Obama here.
What’s at stake in this recent furor, are the conclusions viewers and voters will make in a week’s time. Conclusions which Obama is desperately trying to shape in his favor, by contradicting 20 years of his life, contradicting his community, contradicting his own self!
The furor is about more than just a few words, it is about an entire mindset, a mentality, an attitude and outlook which Obama’s own Dreams of My Father, his choice of spouse, and his life’s focus prior to 2004, extol and reflect!
Were it not for Axelrod, the Obama his worshipers now behold, would have never been born. Were it not for the duplicity of the media apparatus, this Obama would never have entered our national consciousness.
What Trinity, Wright, and Obama are about, is bad judgment! 20 years of bad and offensive judgment on the part of of Barry-O grand theft Zero.
And don’t let anyone tell you that the Wrights, the Farrakhans, the Sharptons and Jackson’s Jr represent black America! Don’t let anyone bamboozle you into thinking we have to tow their line if we want to be “black” if we want to be a community, if we want to be true to ourselves!
Nothing has contributed more to the destruction, impotence, and inertia of Black America, than its parasitic leadership, be it from the pulpit, in front of the mike, or on any stage. The very leadership now lining up black votes behind Obama, praising him for being post-racial, while hackling us in the least of post-racial ways!
When people like Obama, who not only lived off the words and mindset and notions of his spiritual master and mentor Wright for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright whose message is not all that less bitter or different from Louis Farrakhan the Odious One, when people like Obama go on to finance Wright’s church, go on to grant Wright legitimacy through their status (not to mention people like Oprah - who did the same!) we are called upon to denounce their hypocrisy. To denounce the two-facedness of a “post-racial” phony like Hussein Borat Ossama!
We have a right to ridicule and belittle such self-styled “leadership” who are sucking the blood of our black community, as more than just clowns and bozos, but as usurpers, crooks and thieves!
It has now been years and literally thousand of insulting and racist statements Wright has made. And still, in December 2007 Obama had Wright appointed to lead his campaign’s outreach to the religious African-American community!
Ladies and Gentlemen, don’t be fooled by Hobama’s belated words or apologies, which he is making after Ferraro busted up the media paralysis on Obama, and only after Fox spearheaded the entire subject on Wright. (I mean since when is Fox our ally?)
Obama is a pathological liar, a man who was never more than a phony. Had he been left alone to be Bary the Bamboozler and play the victim, never, never would he have spoken up against Wright, because it would have been a felony to mention Trinity Christ Church. It would have been race-baiting.
And don’t you believe he was unaware of Wrights words!
Shame on the media, who are soon to cave in to the Obama message of denunciation, to the fake Obama renunciation. The media who we can expect to spin the next Hossama lie for truth, the media who will now say that Wright is just another case of Samantha Powers or Gerrardine Ferraro, of an outspoken zealous supporter gone awry.
No ladies and gentlemen, do not abandon your skepticism, which is the lifeblood of critical thought, hence the bedrock of progress and democracy. Do not abandon it and continue your to push for truth. To ask questions which lead us to the conclusion that Wright is not just a member of Hossama’s election campaign, that he is no Ferraro and Powers, who themselves are not equivalent, as one is a martyr for truth, the other a loose-tongued bitch.
No, Wright is like no ordinary Obama staffer, for he is the embodiment of Obama’s own spiritual life, and aspirations, of the Obama family mindset, apparent in every comment Michelle Obama makes, of which Obama’s campaign message is a mirror reflection. The only non-Wright Obama which exists, is that made and shaped by Mephistopheles, aka David Axelrod! It is Obama 2, a phony, a fake, a lie sold to college kids inexperienced with the frustrations of hard-nosed realities, kids going about their frivolous lives perfectly divorced from their parent’s daily struggles, and hence vulnerable to the demagoguery of the Me Generation’s new Il Duce.
Don’t be fooled dear readers, Obama has never, ever stood up to anything Wright has said in the past, while being privy to it, while being in the audience to it. Obama may not have sat there for one or two specific speeches, but he’s sat there for others, and he’s been paying to Trinity church for as long as he’ had money and as long as he’s known Wright!
Obama’s books ( read critically) dwell on Dreams and Hope, because of a profound personal alienation and disenchanted with America. The book’s message of Hope, of Audacity, implicitly presumes some great obstacle to Hope, some great obstacle to the American Dream.
But what Obstacles has Obama encountered in his preppy, bourgeois life!?
What obstacles has his wife, bitching and whining and dirty-talking America, encountered in her bourgeois life!?
Michelle talks of being born poor, being raised in a tenament flat. She waxes on about a broken American soul, and our broken country.
Yet she’s not ashamed of all this being lies and distortions!
Truth be told she was in no tenement house! She was born more middle class than most whites of the era, gone to better schools than 99.99999 percent of the world, and she is out there telling us about America being broken?!
Yes it is folks. America is broken, when the likes of the Obamas go around telling us its broken, and receive not the slightest rebuke, reproach, or opprobrium. When the ingratitudes and phoniness of the likes of Michelle and Barack go uncommented, unquestioned, and justified under the veil of Political Correctness and fainted victimhood.
No ladies and gentlemen, it ain’t that Wright fixed her, and Barry-0‘a mind. Its that Michelle’s and Barry’s mind was fixed to begin with. Fixed against appreciation, against reconciliation, against gratitude, and against all this country has given them and the world.
Their mind was fixed into an outdated mold of Black America, which perpetuates the lie that an African-American ain’t really American, and that the American Dream is only the White Dream.
Were these two clowns really from poor black, ghettos, I’d stand up and say “all right brother and sister!” But they are not. They were both born rich, wealthy, privileged, and now dare feed our Hopes and Dreams with falsehoods, pretense, and presumptuousness of entitlement!
Ain’t no doubt Obama shares Wright’s and Michelle’s dark take on America! His whole campaign presumes darkness. A vast conspiratorial darkness of evil, shrouding Obama’s lifelong ascent to the throne, and hence the ascent of a generation’s aspirations and Dreams. It is a presumption of darkness off of which Obama has grown so white, so light, and a college kid’s delight.
Why else does this Hussein yap about Hope being Audacious?! Why else does he always promise us paradise, if it isn’t because somehow his message succeeds by hoodwinking us into thinking that we are one step out of hell?
Just read the subtext of Obama’s antiwar speech, an infamous and pointless sing of his superior judgement!
The notion that the war was a conspiracy, that America was being manipulated by a few armchair bandits and Karl Rove, smacks of Wright’s mindset. While the Pastor was disparaging America in the wake of 911 as the Lords wrath against America (parroting Farrakhan’s words, precisely), Obama was disparaging America on the eve of the Iraq war. Not because he had any better information or better knowledge than Senators McCain or Clinton, but because his mindset, shaped in Trinity, was telling him there was evil about in the system, and now that evil was working in the minds of a few odious men bent on distracting our nation from its social and demographic ills.
I say no. I say no to the Obama lies, to the media lies, to the Wright and Michelle Obama lies, and to the black leadership lies. I say no to the lies that sold us Obama, and that put him where he is today. I say no to believing a denunciation which is preposterous, unconvincing, and 20 years too late!
20 years too late because 20 years of lies, are 20 years too late.
24 responses so far
Thanks for this brilliant essay!
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!!!!!!!! KEEP INVESTIGATING!!!!!
I LOVE THIS COUNTRY TOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!
Brilliant essay? Did we read the same thing? Come on…comparing Wright to the KKK? A very weak argument, Jamal. How can do you say that the KKK, an organization with a long history of violence, murder and terrorism, is the same as a preacher who has made some ridiculous comments about America. You can’t be serious. If you are, you need a much stronger argument than the one provided here.
Great, informative article. Thanks very much.
What are the paralles between KKK and Wright’s black value system, or Farrakhan?
Here is KKK
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/343.html
http://www.kkk.bz/program.htm
Here is the black value syste:
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:FKLy1zww6CEJ:www.tucc.org/scholarship_pdf/black%2520value%2520system.pdf+black+value+system&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
and the platform of the Nation of Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_Islam
Now tell me there is a great difference?
Both Black KKK and White KKK is equally destructive to whites and blacks.
Reasonable, you saying we aint got race wars here, where people died on all sides?
Forget the historic KKK, comparisons are evidently made between modern organisation.
You want accurate comparisons? Who did Mussolini kill? Edi Amin?
Kudos, Jamal. I sooo agree. I find it very hard to believe that Obama didn’t know of his pastor’s racist comments until the media brought them to his attention. That seems like an audaciously false statement on his part. And I too have noticed that over the past few days the mainstream media seems to be paying a teency bit of attention to these matters, so I hope BO doesn’t successfully spin the whole thing and make it go away crying: “Cease and desist these racist attacks! Boo-hoo! Didn’t I suffer enough in my upper class life?? Boo-hoo!” I’m really tired of Barry playing the victim card and demanding special treatment.
Oh, and thanks for the jab at Oprah. Personally, I think she may be the anti-Christ, so I appreciate it when someone has the nerve to be critical of her. Nowadays, it seems that speaking out against the big O will get your mouth taped shut w/duct tape, but I just keep ripping it off, lol, and hope others will do the same.
That’s the thing with the whole white imperalism argument, a)women, white or otherwise, have never been the purveyors of imperialism, but I think I see now the connection BO was trying to make about Bill and Hillary Clinton to George Bush and Dick Cheney(and I am personally offended he would do that), b) Oprah, who is a billionaire and has a show and magazine sponsored by companies like GE, is as much a contributor and recipient of any so-called imperialism as any other rich person. So does Obama really believe this stuff or has he just used it for political gain? Either way it’s certainly not “new” politics.
Oh, and I couldn’t agree more with your statement about the pressure for Blacks to “tow the line” and be in agreement w/the “leadership,” and embrace a certain way of thinking or else be labeled not Black enough, or just plain sellout. What crap! That’s not equality. Whites aren’t forced to embrace a certain political ideology or else risk being labeled “not White enough.” As a multiracial person of color, I have always rejected the idea that certain groups should conform to certain ways of thinking in order to be considered “authentic.” And when it comes to the election, voting or not voting for a particular candidate doesn’t make anyone more or less Black, and anyone who thinks it does is a moron.
Oprah - Old.Petulant.Rich.Anal.Ho.
I disagree quite strongly with your last two paragraphs. So hope this is not a dupe righty site. (There was no link between Hussien and Bin Laden, Bush drew the connection himself, and it was obviously a PR move to get the war going so he would appear to be doing something about terrorists. Remember, WMD? And the UN not finding them in Iraq? A lot of us didn’t buy the connection at the time. I am not blaming Senators and Congressmen who voted for it because they were lied to just as the American public was. But, yeah, Karl Rove might have been in on the lying, probably was, he is a master liar.)
However, since I don’t want Obama to win — the thing about Obama’s church/minister that strikes me the most strongly is, it’s old-fashioned.
Black is beautiful was a good concept. But, uh, Black Power was a seventies concept if I remember correctly. It had a lot going for it, but times have moved on. Here in California we have more and more mixed race/mixed ethnic people. A whole melting pot of diversity. And most of the time it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Gangs are still a problem, more in SoCAL than in NoCAL.
But it won’t be too long in the future that clear racial/ethnic identities for a lot of people are not possible. And, frankly, I think that is just fine. Although having a sense of your own roots is good too.
So I was a bit blown away over a month ago went I went to Obama’s church web site and started looking at it and Wright. I thought that sort of thing would have gone out, oh, late eighties, early nineties, at the very most by the early mid-nineties.
I also couldn’t understand how Obama couldn’t have figured out it was going to be a major political liability. And why was he being so old-fashioned? Even the women’s movement has evolved over the years.
Excellent piece! I applaud your honesty.
I myself was pondering the comment by radio host Taylor Marsh, who cautioned against holding Barack responsible for what his pastor says because, after all, we have cafeteria Catholics (I was one) and most people don’t agree with everything their pastor or spiritual leader says.
The comment is gracious and fair, and yet it doesn’t sit right with me. For what it may be worth, and based on my own experience, here’s why: There’s nothing that my pastor, Rev. Doug, says that I disagree with. I can assure you I’m neither sheep nor lemming, and never have been either. I’ve been attending my church since Sept. 2007, and not once have I heard Rev. Doug talk about politics–except to encourage us to vote–or address socio-cultural concerns, except to remind us that the church tithes 12 percent of our offerings to a different community group each month. Other than that, we just go about doing things that are civic minded and help the community.
What our Rev. talks about is the core principles of Science of Mind/Religious Science. Everything he says is constructive, positive, and uplifting. He shows us the tools we can use to connect to spirit and grow. He empowers with love, not hate. There’s nothing he or any of the practitioners say that the old, young, middle-aged, white, black, Asian, Native American, East Indian, Mexican, GLBT, straight, mentally and physically disabled, Jews, Catholics, Hindu, Muslim, Protestant, etc., congregants can disagree with.
How can we disagree with teachings that are completely accepting and compassionate and inspiring and encourage us to see not only our own divinity (as a part of God) but to recognize it in others without exception? What a revelation it’s been for me: I can go to a spiritual center that I’m completely in tune with, and it’s safe to be so because there’s absolutely nothing about its teachings that are detrimental to anyone. The Sunday service sets a positive tone for the week. And since I’m a person whose faith informs her, it’s good to know that there’s nothing about my religion that will hurt you.
That’s the new standard for me.
On the other hand, Rev. Wright spews and instills hatred and bitterness. Just look at the two women congregants who were interviewed. Smile much? Obama says Rev. Wright inspires and motivates him. What does being moved and directed by a hate-filled “spiritual” leader say about Obama? That Obama dismisses him as an uncle who speaks inappropriately at times is even more troubling–unless, of course, Rev. Wright is Obama’s uncle.
Now don’t think I don’t feel compassion for a man and a congregation who feel as hateful as they do at Obama’s church. I don’t hate back. But I do think it’s fair to say that Obama’s membership in such a church, with a pastor that preaches politics from the pulpit (unlawful for a tax-exempt org.) and spews ugly invective and loathing of this country, shows very bad judgment, indeed, and is a dealbreaker for the presidency.
I’d feel the same way about any candidate associated with a “church” like this one. Especially if that candidate presented him- or herself as a uniter and an agent of change but did not leave the church immediately after hearing this kind of hate speak. Therefore, no amount of denouncing on Obama’s part could ever erase his church’s effect on him.
And after last night’s interview with Anderson Cooper, we know he lied. (”…I never had occasion to hear him speak these things”–uh-huh…) I’m sure he’ll be spotted in the church on more than one of those taped sermons, and we’ll find that it was the black liberation theology that drew him to the church in the first place.
Fine for a private citizen. Not okay for a would-be president of all the people.
Fox says they have proof that Obama was at one of the sermons with the controversial statements. (Obama denies hearing any o f the comments directly.) Fox says it will air their proof by Monday or sooner.
FoxNewVideo: I hope something like that airs soon. People need to see proof of Obama’s lies.
JuilB55: Those are all good points. Common sense should tell us there’s no way Obama didn’t hear Wright make these types of comments before.
Marnie: As a mixed race person, I have to tell you that I disagree w/your assessment that in the future race will no longer exist. Many people are still very self-segregated, and have an us vs. them mentality all throughout this country. Many mixed people (the majority) choose to identify w/only one aspect of their background b/c of this mentality. I can tell you w/a good degree of certainty that overall, nationwide, people like me who identify as multiracial are in the minority. This is one of the many reasons Obama ticks me off. He’s biracial, but identifies as Black, dissed his mother’s parents b/c they were White, and has generally pimped his skin color and pandered to the Black vote. He probably has identity issues going way back which were probably part of his reason for joining a racist Black segregationist church in the first place. As a mixed person, I feel no sympathy for him. Let him go work out his issues on a therapist’s couch, not in the Oval Office.
Oh, and as far as this being a “dupe rightie sight,” I don’t think it is. Actually, some of the authors say things that may be considered “far left.” Personally, I don’t concern myself too much w/the whole Democrat vs. Republican thing. I’m not married to either political party. If I had to classify myself I’d probably say that I’m a Democrat-leaning Independant. However, if it comes down to Obama vs. McCain, I will have no qualms whatsoever voting for McCain. Sorry if that makes me a “rightie” in your book, Marnie, lol.
Clarification on last two paragraphs:
I am in no way suggesting Iraq and Bin Laden were connected. Nor that I have any support for the war. In fact, I was against any support America gave to Bin Laden when he was fighting the Soviets in the eighties, or the diplomatic support this country gave to the Taleban.
But I also don’t think the Iraq war in 2003 was orchestrated to distract anyone from any kind of social ills, as Obama would have it. It wasn’t just a bunch of armchair bandits, or Karl Rove. Where did Obama get this?
There was a great deal of misinformation at the time, and people like myself, had no way of knowing if Hussein did or did not posses WMDs, or presented a threat. Same goes for most Senators. No one knew. The media fooled us all. Where are the armchair bandits? Sitting in MSNBC and CNN, and Fox?
The media, claimed Saddam was a threat, and had WMDS. Powell got up in the UN, and sais so. Blair claimed London could be bombed in 45 minutes
How is it Obama knew otherwise? How?
Answer. He didn’t know jack shit. All he had was Wrigth on his mind, and his Muslim relatives, and Tony Rezko taking money from Auchi on Saddam’s part!
In other words, Obama did not stand up to the Iraq war on any noble grounds worthy of mention. He did so out of a conspiratorial, resentful mindset, honed at Trinity church.
Appologies if I did not make this clear.
Rest assured, we are no fake or right wing site. Rest assured. I’ve read my Black Power along with my Marx, and I made the conscious decision in favor of the latter. That explains my entire worldview. That said, I am a Marxian, not Marxist.
This was posted at ABCNews
“…The worst forces of division in America are the Afro-centrists radicals who refuse to assimilate as Americans and who raise their children to hate white people. Most white parents, such as myself, grew up in an integrated society, and our children at school have a very integrated world and friends of different races. Two of my kids are so integrated they mixed race themselves. The only forces of division are those who continually try to bash whites, demand reparations, and spout hate rhetoric such as Jeremiah Wright does. The fact that Obama could attend that church for 20 years and only denounces this foul stuff now smells to high heaven. He doesn’t have my vote, period. He scares me, frankly.”
[…] wanted Unity Hossama, should have done it 20 years ago. You wanted Unity, shouldn’t have been race-baiting. You wanted Unity, why’d you […]
Rosanna: Didn’t mean it would disappear. Just become unclearer over time for many. Our roots are sometimes, depending, some people lose them, a great part of our identity.
However, I have decided this is a faux leftie site. Because of the Karl Rove statements above. Anyone who has been around for a while knows what a liar he is and how he Swiftboated Kerry. Also the premise that we SHOULD have gone to war is false.
You can’t google or wikipedia any of the editorial panel here to see what their political stance is. But I have decided savagepolitics.com (or .org, forget) is also a faux left site, and I am truly sorry I posted the link here. You can wikipedia the author of that site and it turns out he hates lefties. Not that some of this expose of Obama isn’t great and I’d never vote for him, but this site, stop-obama, is also definitely not leftie stte. Be warned.
But I fully expect this post to be deleted.
Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia:
Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the Audacity of Truth
By Tim Wise
March 18, 2008
For most white folks, indignation just doesn’t wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.
Indignation doesn’t work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country–the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples–we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.
But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago–occasionally Barack Obama’s pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity–for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go–these last words being the first ones uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an “angry black man” like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.
But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.
Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn’t he say that America “got what it deserved” on 9/11? And didn’t he say that black people should be singing “God Damn America” because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?
Well actually, no he didn’t.
Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around–a notion with longstanding theological grounding–and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack on ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.
He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and “never batted an eye.” That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and “save American lives.”
But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman’s own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we’re the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would “never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.”
And Wright didn’t say blacks should be singing “God Damn America.” He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn’t happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although one can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don’t believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn on America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.
Click here to read the rest of Tim’s column.