I Still Like Jeremiah Wright

Politics as usual. Obama himself is backing away. But he has to. I don't. I am not running for president.

I can't believe the press is acting like Jeremiah Wright has somehow created a race problem that otherwise wouldn't have existed here in post-race (ha) U.S. America.

Daniel Schorr, who I usually applaud heartily when I hear him on NPR, said that he knew young Black men who had never heard of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments which ended in 1972, but (said Schorr in a chastening tone) Wright talks about it as if they happened yesterday. Well, 1972 wasn't exactly ancient history, now was it? That would be 8 years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It would be 4 years after the assasination of Martin Luther King Jr. If young Black men of Daniel Shore's acquaintance haven't ever heard of it, that's a travesty of miseducation. Gee, that sounds like something Jeremiah Wright would say...

The claim that without Wright's corrupting influence, Obama could have somehow "transcended race" (as Shore put it) or that "we" as U.S. citizens have "gotten past" ugly racism just rings absolutely insincere to me. How could anyone with eyes and ears--let alone professional journalists--fail to notice that race hasn't gone away in this country?

I implore you, if you have not already done so, to go and watch, listen or read that Moyers interview I posted about last week. Don't just take the word of public radio on this one. They are wrong. Wright is correct. Racism is alive and well in the United States and it affects people's lives every single day.

An Obama presidency will doubtlessly do very little to change that. But Obama's candidacy should not be sunk by hysteria over someone preaching the Gospel even if it is hard to hear.

Comments

[Lisa]

God! This whole thing is driving me insane. The thing is, what Wright is saying is not really radical if you read any blogs, books or have any communication with many, many black people. It only goes to show how bad things are in this country racially when whites are acting like what he is saying is so way out there when a lot of it is what the community has been saying for years on end. It is a case of the truth we don't want to have to hear, and if Obama gets to be president, does that mean whites will have to actually hear this and talk about it!

But Obama is screwed here no matter what he does. If he supports Wright, the whites are up in arms, if he distances himself from Wright (which it looks like the case) he looks hypocritical and may lose some of the black vote. The very definition of racial oppression, to be caught between a rock and a hard place because your color doesn't allow you to be seen either way as an individual.

(I mean, look at Hagee in regards to McCain. No one is going off on all the hateful shit Hagee says and attributing it to McCain. Hell, I don't even know who McCain's minister is or who baptized Chelsea Clinton.)

The media is DRIVING ME BATSHIT CRAZY with this.

[hingly]

Thank you thank you! On your instruction I went to watch the Bill Moyers interview, and was inspired. Jeremiah Wright is a smart, thoughtful, intellectual pastor, and what he has to say about the experience of black people is *true*. I also watched his speech at the National Press Club, which was amazing. Most of the sound bites come out of his responses to the attacking and often inappropriate questions he was asked after the talk.

Every time I read another commentator I admire saying that what he said was outrageous, I want to know why the liberal consensus is that it is more important that Obama get elected than that people be allowed to speak the truth as they see it; that speaking the truth about oppression of black people is equivalent to hatred of white people; that black people should just get over slavery already - look, Obama has.

This whole brouhaha seems to me to be profoundly racist. How can anyone with a sense of history and of empathy be surprised or outraged by the things Rev Wright has said? It is amazing to me how much of the liberal community is fundamentally uninterested in the needs and struggles of the poor, the exploited and the oppressed.

You are my source of sanity on this issue!

[frog]

I'm so disappointed that he's "disowned" Wright. Intellectually, I get it, but my heart is unhappy.

[Daisy]

Racism is, unfortunately, alive and well in the U.S. of A.

[Nicole]

It's Schorr, and I usually love him, but he's mighty wrong on this one. 1972 was in my lifetime, and I ain't that old. And while the Tuskegee experiment was a horror, more horrible because it revealed so much about how racism has been made an institution, it's also worth mentioning that young men were lynched in 1981 and 1991. Michael Donald and Harold Mansfield. Shouldn't 1991 be recent enough for anyone? It is for me.