Now that Barack Obama has officially repudiated the comments of his former paster Jeremiah Wright, and dropped him from involvement in his campaign - followed by a very clear and inspiring statment that of what he does believe and how he intends to address the issues of America not with rancor and outrage, but with hope and positivity -
Might we take just a second to consider the fact that despite the high intensity, voltage and volume of his of rhetoric - even if many would fairly disagree with how he said it - most of what Rev Wright said was absolutely 100% True?
And might we also consider - that very fact may be why this issue is so upsetting to some people?
I know a lot of people would like this issue to simply go away, but I think that's like trying to sweep a hand-grenade under the rug and thinking it'll won't hurt when it goes off.It's not going away. Period.
It's going to keep going off - again and again.
Today we've had an attempt to help prove that Barack is not a bald-faced liar and really wasn't in the pews during any of these inflammatory sermons.
At the same time Bill Kristol has already shot off his big fat mouth, and hit himself in the dick on that same issue. No, Barack's wasn't in the pews at Trinity on July 22, 2007.
Problem is whether Barack was in the pews or not is missing the key point, and that's the content of what Rev. Wright was saying.
There have been a couple of really well written diaries on this - expressing the simply honest truth that when (most) white people listen to Rev Wright they hear something very different from what (most) Black people hear, and sometimes some translation is required.
In the 60's and 70's black power rhetoric was common, however in our age in which we are in full denial of our national culpability in some very violent and unsavory deeds, this sounds like the essence of treason. How dare anyone speak ill of America after 9/11. We live in era in which patriotism is uncontested. By patriotism I don't mean the simple love of ones country but the idiotic symbolic display of this adoration.
What is difficult for many white Americans to understand is that patriotism is intimately linked with white supremacy--see FoX News if you have any doubts. Black men and women, from the south side of Chicago who have enlisted and fought in every war this country waged returned home to segregation, racial violence and the grind of everyday bigotry. They don't wear flag lapel pins, they don't joyously sing "God Bless America" at every opportunity--why the hell would they. Wright is the pastor of THIS community. And their experience vis-a-vis patriotism is complicated, and completely untranslatable to white America--liberals and reactionaries alike.
So what did he say - and what is the translation?
Wright's "God Damn America" Statement:
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
One could and should quibble with details. The US Government did not give drugs to the Black Community - however, following the Crack Cocain that flooded American streets during the 80's it was discovered that some of these drugs did come from the Contras and the CIA failed to notify the DOJ of this for over two years.
By the CIA's own account, they stood by and let it happen. This is partly why former police officer and drug trafficker Ronald Lister claimed that he was "under the protection of the CIA" when he was eventually arrested in 1986. He wasn't, but there were reasons for him to make the allegation.
There is still today a 100 to 1 disparity between the level of punishment meted out for crack cocain as there is for powdered cocain.
Crack Cocain is cheaper and commonly used by people with less money than Powerdered Cocain - and by the way - far more of those poorer people are black than white - however most overal drug users are white.
According to the federal Household Survey, "most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998." And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%.
Right now the percentage on Americans under incarceration is higher than any other industrialized nation - including China. An extradinarily high percentage of of these people are black.
From the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
# In 2001, an estimated 2.7% of adults in the U.S. had served time in prison, up from 1.8% in 1991 and 1.3% in 1974.# Lifetime chances of a person going to prison are higher for
-- men (11.3%) than for women (1.8%)
-- blacks (18.6%) and Hispanics (10%) than for whites (3.4%)
The bottom line is this although Black's don't use more drugs than anyone else, because of the reality of profiling, three-strikes and disparate sentencing - they are almost three times more likely than Hispanics and five times more likely than whites to be in jail.
Why is this so important, besides the fact that it is causing a near genocide among the black population?
Well, many people tend to say that black people should be well "over" the Slavery issue - but as I often mention slavery isn't over according to the 13th Amendment.
Amendment 13 - Slavery Abolished. Ratified 12/6/1865.
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
We have justice system which is tilted toward the incarceration of black men, and as such has the constitutional option to put these people into Forced Labor inside a $multi-billion Prisons for Profit industry at any time, and there is no legal recourse for this. None.
Wright's point - with the weight of all these facts behind him - is that all the above is a crime against humanity, and - in his view - a crime against God. Taking away the value of man's labours - is Theft!
Thou Shalt Not Steal!
These policies have visited a Genocide onto Black's in America.
Thou Shalt Not Murder.
I would disagree with Wright's statement of "God Damn America" in general terms - but when you get into specifics, doesn't America bear a weight of responsibility for all the above?
Doesn't it need to serve penance?
Shouldn't America be asking for forgiveness for it's sins?
If you can look at all this and not have an epithet on the edge of your lips, as I've said before, I suspect your soul may be in need of defribbilation.
Wright's "9/11 was our own fault" Statement:
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost,"
It's obvious that the death toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki far outstrips those who lost their life in New York or Washington on 9/11/01.
We have supported actions by the Israelis - such as assasinations and bombings carried out by Mossad - which would certainly fit the definition of "Terrorism."
It would be fair to argue that all of these actions were taken as a last resort as an effort to prevent even further loss of life, but I think that distinction is generally lost on the hundreds of thousands of victims and survivors, don't you?
This is what Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Desk has written about why we were attacked in his book Imperial Hubris.
My thesis is like the one that shaped Through Our Enemies' Eyes, namely, that ideas are the main drivers of human history and, in the words of Perry Miller, the American historian of Puritanism, are "coherent and powerful imperatives to human behavior." In short, my thesis is that the threat Osama bin Laden poses lies in the coherence and consistency of his ideas, their precise articulation, and the acts of war he takes to implement them. That threat is sharpened by the fact that bin Laden's ideas are grounded in and powered by the tenets of Islam, divine guidelines that are completely familiar to most of the world's billion-plus Muslims and lived by them on a daily basis. The commonality of religious ideas and the lifestyle they shape, I would argue, equip bin Laden and his coreligionists with a shared mechanism for perceiving and reacting to world events. "Islam is not only a matter of faith and practice," Professor Bernard Lewis has explained, "it is also an identity and a loyalty -- for many an identity and loyalty that transcends all others." Most important, for this book, the way in which bin Laden perceives the intent of U.S. policies and actions appears to be shared by much of the Islamic world, whether or not the same percentage of Muslims support bin Laden's martial response to those perceived U.S. intentions. "Arabs may deplore this [bin Laden's] violence, but few will not feel some pull of emotions," British journalist Robert Fisk noted in late 2002. "Amid Israel's brutality toward Palestinians and America's threats toward Iraq, at least one Arab is prepared to hit back."
In the context of the ideas bin Laden shares with his brethren, the military actions of al Qaeda and its allies are acts of war, not terrorism; they are part of a defensive jihad sanctioned by the revealed word of God, as contained in the Koran, and the sayings and traditions of the Prophet Mohammed, the Sunnah. These attacks are meant to advance bin Laden's clear, focused, limited, and widely popular foreign policy goals: the end of U.S. aid to Israel and the ultimate elimination of that state; the removal of U.S. and Western forces from the Arabian Peninsula; the removal of U.S. and Western military forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim lands; the end of U.S. support for the oppression of Muslims by Russia, China, and India; the end of U.S. protection for repressive, apostate Muslim regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, et cetera; and the conservation of the Muslim world's energy resources and their sale at higher prices. To secure these goals, bin Laden will make stronger attacks in the United States -- complemented elsewhere by attacks by al Qaeda and other Islamist groups allied with or unconnected to it -- to try to destroy America's resolve to maintain the policies that maintain Israel, apostate Muslim rulers, infidel garrisons in the Prophet's birthplace, and low oil prices for U.S. consumers. Bin Laden is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world, not necessarily to destroy America, much less its freedoms and liberties.
The fact is that Bin Laden attacked us on 9/11 to Change U.S. Foreign Policy, not because he "Hated Freedom." Those really were our own "Chicken's coming home to roost", and denying that fact doesn't change the fact.
This isn't to say that Bin Laden is correct - he connects a series of dots in his arguments that simply don't flow together - only that he had reasons for what he did and what he is doing, and those reason have a strong resonance with the muslim world. He's not a "madman", he's a warrior and strategist.
It's true that Hillary Clinton has probably never been called the "N-Word" (Although we all know she has been called the "B-Word") She probably won't ever know what it's like to live the life of a black man, but I think she can get a pretty good idea. Even what he said here is "True", albiet somewhat irrelevant. You don't have to be black to care - the Freedom Riders cared, and died, to help black people.
The real question should be one of empathy, not skin tone.
Still the bottom line is this: America has grossly mistreated - and continues to fail - Black and Muslim people (as well as Native Americans, Latino, Women and many others), it should be fair to say it's high time that America looked itself in the mirror before it points fingers.
It's well past time America took some RESPONSIBILITY for itself, and finally changed course.
This isn't to say that every person in America is racist, or anti-Muslim - or a sexist - that isn't necessary. Most of America has never been racist, ever. Not even before the Civil War, however when bigoted policies were implemented then - most people did nothing.
After the Civil War and the promise of reconstruction turned to the bitter ash of Jim Crow - most people weren't wearing White Sheets - Most People Did Nothing.
When Black men were being regularly lynched in the early 20th Century - most people weren't holding the rope - Most people did nothing.
Today, when the Votes of African-Americans are Caged and Denied, when the Terrorism of Lynching Nooses are hung in Jena, LA, when the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is racially purged, when an entire American City DROWNED - Most people have Done Nothing.
We may be legitimately annoyed that Rev. Wright's language was over-the-top, we may legitimately condemn that language - but we should also recognize that unlike Jerry Falwell's blaming AIDs and the ACLU for 9/11, or John McCain supporter John Hagee blaming the "Sin of New Orleans" for Katrina...
A lot of what Jeremiah Wright said had a point, and that point should be listened too even as we disagree with HOW it was said.
As I said at the beginning, I suspect the intensity of "Outrage" at Rev Wright's comments may be directly related to people desperate desire to "distance themselves" from all the above. People figure they weren't alive during Slavery so they don't have any responsibility for it's after effects.
- "It's not my fault.
Leave me alone. Just Get OVER IT. My Family has had it tough too, quite whining. Just Stop Talking about it and things will get better..."
No, sorry it won't.
They say we (America - that is, WE are America) don't need to apologize for slavery because no one is left alive who suffered it or inflicted it.
Ok, but then when they "ended" slavery 150 years ago we also supposedly guaranteed blacks "equal" protections (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment) didn't they?
Gee, How'd that go?
Why did it take almost another 100 years for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts to be passed? Seems to me we were all supposed to be "over this" in 1868, yet we're still fighting and dying over it in 1968 and we're still fighting over it now.
Alright, Never mind the "Slavery card".
What's the excuse for not Apologizing for the Open Segregation that took place during that following 100 years after Slavery? What's the excuse for not apologizing for Jim Crow? For Lynchings? For Profiling and filling our Prisons with Black and Brown men, then turning them into Indentured Servant Factories?
Where's the Apology for Neglecting the Survivors of Katrina?
And btw an apology doesn't mean it's your fault, it may mean that you admit you give a crap. Apologizing is admitting that it was - and is - WRONG!
Why is that so hard?
Some people may not want to hear it, they may consider anytime anyone brings this up to be "carrying a racial grievance", but if America - as a nation and a people - seems to have such a problem admitting when it's done something wrong - particularly when it's so OBVIOUSLY WRONG - then it (we) clearly don't have what it takes to go a different course.
Before we can reasonably expect anyone to "Get Over" any of this - before we can "Get Past" it - we have to STOP DOING IT!
Then we have to fix it, and we can begin to heal it. So far we've done none of the above.
Good non-bigoted people have to be willing to stand up and say - No More, instead of "Go Away". "Stop bothering me, I've got texting to do..."
The fact that we haven't done any of the above is why people like Rev. Wright will continue be out there - screaming at the pews.
Want them to go away?
Start fixing it.
Don't just stand by - Stand UP!
Stop claiming that anyone who points out the truth is using emotional blackmail or "Playing the Race Card." (Sometimes they are, but sometimes they aren't!) Don't stand on the sidelines and claim "It's not my problem" - it's ALL of our problem, black and white Americans alike.
Doing so won't just benefit Black people, doing so won't hurt Whites - it will only benefit America.
Vyan
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