Friday, March 21, 2008

Where Was Wright Wrong?

update: cnn finds text to another sermon, which gives us more insight. it is a must read.
perhaps wright is right. it's the way he said it that scared the wits out of some white folks. and come on, we have to see that the media played a big role in pushing this for more than what it is. see the truth about trinity.
from the houston chronicle:

And there it is. ... The 800-pound gorilla that is racial strife finally slings its poo against the political wall. Let me just say this: To me, the comments made by Sen. Barack Obama's spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are pretty innocuous. I say that knowing that they are offensive to white people, but the question has to be raised — why?

Wright said that Sen. Hillary Clinton does not know what it is like to be a black man in an America run by rich white people. She doesn't. If the bone of contention is that America is not run by rich white people, I will have to humbly but unequivocally disagree and ask you to see the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. Omit the entertainers and athletes. Just how many people of color are left?

According to Forbes, all you have is Oprah Winfrey at No. 165 and, based on the earlier caveat, she is disqualified because she is an entertainer. So of the 399 richest people in America, 98 percent are white. So where was Rev. Wright wrong?

Wright also offered some conspiracy theories about how the U.S. government has wronged people of color in the past. I do not believe that the government engineered AIDS, but it did engineer the Tuskegee experiments in which young African-American men infected with syphilis were denied treatment for study. This was conducted from 1932 to 1972, well-documented and acknowledged by the U.S. government. I am sure Wright remembers this and many other racial injustices in his lifetime.

In fact, let's go over the past 100 years of the United States' "stellar" race/citizen relations: Japanese interment camps, American Indian reservations, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, late women's suffrage, the immigration debate, the proposed anti-gay marriage amendment, voter irregularities of the 2000 election, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans ...

I hate to break it to Americans, but women and people of color can be a bit paranoid when it comes to actions of the U.S. government. As are, at times, white Americans. White conservatives, especially, get angry. Commentators Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have jobs — and huge audiences — for a reason.

Let's face facts. Put the proverbial cards on the table. read more