| 3/21/2008 6:59:14 PM | As a liberal and a progressive, I could not agree more.... | | 
pamela0324
Pasadena, MD
age: 54
| Washingtonpost.com
Another Angry Black Preacher
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, March 21, 2008; A17
Let's ask the hard question about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Is he as far outside the African American mainstream as many of us would like to think?
Because Barack Obama's speech on race in America was so candid about both the legitimacy of black and white grievances -- and the flaws in those grievances -- it carried the risk of offending almost everyone.
A man who, by parentage, is half black and half white took it upon himself to explain each side's story to the other. Obama resembled no one so much as the conciliatory sibling in a large and boisterous family, shouting: "Please, please, will you listen to each other for a sec?"
One of the least remarked upon passages in Obama's speech is also one of the most important -- and the part most relevant to the Wright controversy. There is, Obama said, a powerful anger in the black community rooted in "memories of humiliation and doubt" that "may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends" but "does find voice in the barbershop or the beauty shop or around the kitchen table. . . . And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews."
Yes, black people say things about our country and its injustices to each other that they don't say to those of us who are white. Whites also say things about blacks privately that they don't say in front of their black friends and associates.
One black leader who was capable of getting very angry indeed is the one now being invoked against Wright. His name was Martin Luther King Jr.
An important book on King's rhetoric by Barnard College professor Jonathan Rieder, due out next month, offers a more complex view of King than the sanitized version that is so popular, especially among conservative commentators. In "The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me," Rieder -- an admirer of King -- notes that the civil rights icon was "not just a crossover artist but a code switcher who switched in and out of idioms as he moved between black and white audiences."
Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King then predicted this response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."
If today's technology had existed then, I would imagine the media playing quotations of that sort over and over. Right-wing commentators would use the material to argue that King was anti-American and to discredit his call for racial and class justice. King certainly angered a lot of people at the time.
I cite King not to justify Wright's damnation of America or his lunatic and pernicious theories but to suggest that Obama's pastor and his church are not as far outside the African American mainstream as many would suggest. I would also ask my conservative friends who praise King so lavishly to search their consciences and wonder if they would have stood up for him in 1968.
These are realities that Obama has forced us to confront, and they are painful. Wright was operating within a long tradition of African American outrage, which is one reason Obama could not walk away from his old pastor in the name of political survival. Obama's personal closeness to Wright would have made such a move craven in any event.
I'm a liberal, and I loathe the anti-American things Wright said precisely because I believe that the genius of our country is its capacity for self-correction. Progressivism and, yes, hope itself depend on a belief that personal conversion and social change are possible, that flawed human beings are capable of transcending their pasts and their failings.
Obama understands the anger of whites as well as the anger of blacks, but he's placed a bet on the other side of King's legacy that converted rage into the search for a beloved community. This does not prove that Obama deserves to be president. It does mean that he deserves to be judged on his own terms and not by the ravings of an angry preacher.
postchat@[blocked]
Peace, Pam
| | 3/21/2008 10:09:29 PM | As a liberal and a progressive, I could not agree more.... | | 
soulcitywalker
Lexington, KY
age: 49
| From our local paper on Thursday, March 20:
Posted on Thu, Mar. 20, 2008
Lexington minister says Obama's ex-pastor is being misunderstood
By Merlene Davis
HERALD-LEADER COLUMNIST
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, left, has denounced remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, seen with Obama in 2005. Photo courtesy of Trinity United Church of Christ
I was pleased to hear Sen. Barack Obama say Tuesday that even though he might not have been in the pew when his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, spoke of damning America for its racist history, he was definitely aware of Wright's leanings.
No one doubted that Obama knew.
Now, does that mean we should assume Obama totally agrees with Wright's criticism of America? Of course not.
That's no more believable than thinking that U.S. Sen. John McCain agrees with some of the radical ministers in his camp, including the Rev. John Hagee, who hasn't seen anything likeable about the Catholic Church. Or that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton agrees with her husband's statements or Geraldine Ferraro's statements about how Barack Obama's success is based on his race.
All three candidates have distanced themselves from the negative statements issued by those who endorse them. Including Obama.
But the Rev. Bishop Carter III of Bethsaida Baptist Church in Lexington, who studied under Wright for his doctorate, said we are taking Wright's words out of context.
”That church is one of the biggest mission-minded churches in the nation,“ Carter said. ”They are huge in prison ministries and they have a major inner-city ministry for the indigent and poor and HIV/AIDS.
”He also specializes in ministries for gays. He says, "I don't support the act, but I am responsible for your soul.'
”He's telling America that you are not what you think you are,“ Carter said. ”You have to stop being a chameleon and wearing this façade. You know racism still exists, and that you are throwing money away.“
Carter said one of Wright's recent messages criticized the Internal Revenue Service's decision to spend $42 million to mail letters telling Americans that rebate checks are in the mail.
Wright, who, according to The New York Times, fulfilled longstanding plans last month to retire, was the keynote speaker in Lexington two years ago for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. At the time, Wright said King's legacy stopped at his 1963 ”I Have a Dream“ speech, and nobody listened to King's views on the Vietnam War.
”He exposed it as a war based on lies, like a war some of us are familiar with, and nobody heard him,“ Wright said in Lexington.
”After 2,200 American boys and girls are dead in a war they do not understand,“ Wright said then, ”can you hear King now?
”I hope to God you can hear him so we can begin to live together as brothers and sisters before we all die together as fanatical fools.“
A lot of people agree.
Some, however, seem to be having a hard time with Obama's unwillingness to leave Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago before Wright retired for another center of worship. After all, if you don't agree with your pastor, why not just leave the church?
I don't propose to be an expert on that topic. I left a church because I disagreed with a pastor's decision to divorce his wife. I had attended the church for about five years, so my roots weren't deep when I pulled them up.
Obama understood last year that his minister's views are controversial. But, he recently wrote in a statement to the Huffington Post, ”because Reverend Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.“
I haven't attended any church for 20 years straight. That's a long time. A lot of friendships. Very deep roots.
That, and not a sense of loyalty to a pastor, might make me think twice about leaving after hearing words I disagreed with coming from the pulpit.
Should some of Wright's words be repudiated? Yes. Strongly. And they have been.
Should Obama continue to befriend the minister who has done so much for inner-city Chicago? He should.
And I would assume Ferraro is still a close friend of Clinton and that Clinton will remain married to husband Bill.
To intimate that Obama, who is biracial, was reared by a white mother and white grandparents, and whose sister is white and Indonesian, is racist is ridiculous. The man has more diversity in his family than most of us have in our neighborhoods.
Still, Obama has gone from being labeled a Muslim because of his father's religion to being a hatemonger because of his pastor's words.
Fine. That's the nature of politics.
This campaign was inspiring in the beginning. Now, it is simply politics as usual.
| | 3/23/2008 5:39:37 PM | As a liberal and a progressive, I could not agree more.... | | 
curiousone2
Springfield, IL
age: 42
| I can't imagine what in the world possesses all of these people to be made complete fools of Over and Over?
Bill Maher said it great.
he said something to the effect that the white view of History, is that we went through slavery and we went through Jim crowe, and Whew, we got out of all of that Ok, so whats the problem??
I don't think these same people are going to be so happy when they are being blamed because their employers has Invested their 401 ks in the dow and it crashed.
and when the establishment blames them, and they will, then they will all of the sudden demand justice and healthcare. People are Busy and selfish, and it is high time they stop thinking they are any more special than anyone else.
MY friend Got so offended because I said to him, that My nephew was just as viable a target as anyone else.
yeah because it isn't a pretty thought we ignore it on principle?? give me a break, we have created the world we have. and It isn't working for us anymore
| | 3/23/2008 6:48:44 PM | As a liberal and a progressive, I could not agree more.... | | 
bama1234
Smyrna, TN
age: 37
| I know you liberals will try to bash me for this. If I were running for president and the pastor of my church endorsed David Duke I would be a non factor. What is the difference in a pastor who endorses the racist anti semite Louis Farrakhan.
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