Monday, April 28, 2008

That depends on what your definition of "divisive" is...

Rev. Wright continues to backpedal, while simultaneously spewing new gaffes. I like this part:

In Wright's lengthy, colorful address, he delineated what he felt the differences were between African-Americans and white Americans, including those in music, linguistics and education.

"Different does not mean deficient," he emphasized.

Is anybody else reminded of Reggie White's widely-publicized goofy remarks? When you find yourself in a hole, Reverend, the first thing to do is to stop digging...

26 comments:

staghounds said...

n't you mean Digro-American?

Brad K. said...

I find the Rev. Wright to be promoting his own powerbase in an artificial culture. From the outside, it seems to me that the biggest barrier today is not race, but the culture people choose to live in. People willing to adapt culturally find a lot more doors open. Ask the Irish, the Hungarians, and many other groups that passed through the stage of assimilation that Rev. Wright uses so vocally to make a living - and trapping so many African Americans.

The constitution only promises to protect against discrimination by race - not by chosen culture.

Anonymous said...

Rev. Wright speaks the truth. Facts are not divisive. J. Edgar Hoover once said the Black nationalist movement was the biggest threat to America's security. The Tuskegee experiment really happened. Im 31 years old and my mother was alive when African Americans were received civil rights. Rev. Wright speaks words that I feel in my soul.

Anonymous said...

I disagree, Tam: I want to see Wright keep digging. As fast as he can, as deep as he can. The more often and the more completely he shows off his stupidity, his supercilious snobbery, and his bigotry, the faster his position (liberalism) will be discredited along with all its adherents.

Anonymous said...

Brad K.. You mention "culture". You talked about "the Irish, the Hungarians, and many other groups that passed through the stage of assimilation that Rev. Wright uses so vocally to make a living - and trapping so many African Americans."

Sorry to tell you Brad K. that those people you mentioned came to America on there own free will. They choose to come and assimilate. Did you forget my forefathers didn't choose to come here. Brad K. our original culture was stolen and ripped from our arms hundreds of years ago. So the culture you are referring to when it comes to today's blacks can directly be attributed to our stay in America the last 400 years. Most of them years as slaves, over 100 years of Jim Crow and countless years of oppression and injustice. This is the problem that Rev. Wright addressees. WHY? I ask WHY? is the black America in the shape its in now. Obama touched on the subject in his major speech on race. You should see it!

Anonymous said...

If this man does not stay off the air he going to hurt Obama. He just doesn't seem to get it. He is so full of himself that it is terrible. Just the sound of his voice makes my back crawl.
Obama has enough problems without his mouth going off all the time.
If he loves Obama as he says just stay off of the air and that is a fact.!!!

Anonymous said...

Brad K. you recognize that you call the minister's culture an artificial one, and that if African American would assimilate into the majority culture that more doors would open. I would argue that the AA culture is not artificial, but one with a deep history that starts back in Africa, then into slavery, then into Jim Crowe, and now in affirmative action. I think to forget your history, heritage, and tradition for any race or culture is wrong. No one should have to assimilate in order to be accepted. Rev. Wright's message does not trap, but rather liberates. The Irish and Hunganrians you refer to came to America on there own, not in slave ships. Finally, the constitution does promise to protect against discrimination by race, but in practice that is not the case..ie slavery and jim crowe.

Anonymous said...

I watched his appearance this morning at the National Press Club.

If I were Obama, I'd be ardently wishing that the creep would fall down a well.

Tam said...

I'm half expecting Barack to explain what he really meant when he said "I can't disown him..."

Something like "I can't disown him... 'til next week," or "I can't disown him... fast enough."

PBS watcher said...

A lot of you all have no idea about the things in which Jeremiah Wright speaks about. If you are not a Christian, no use trying to get your head around it. If you really want to understand him and not make brash judgements based on 15 second sound bites, I DARE YOU to go to this website
"http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04252008/
profile.html" and learn the full context of those soundbites and who he is as a person by watching the VIDEO. I am sorry to say but Americans are like sheep who are easily swayed by the things that they see on TV. If we were a little bit more knowledgeable of the corporate media agenda, a lot of us wouldn't have half of the views that we have today. Again, I dare you to go to the website above. Most ignorant people choose to be ignorant because they don't want to feel embarassed for having opinions on things that they were misinformed about.
PEACE

Tam said...

"I am sorry to say but Americans are like sheep who are easily swayed by the things that they see on TV."

Since you're not a regular reader of this blog, I'll forgive you for not realizing that I don't even own a goddam TV.

Go watch some more "unbiased" PBS, twit.

Anonymous said...

Rev. Wright is a publicity junkie.
I found his smug speech rude and
insulting. Why was it necessary for
him to mock slain President Kennedy's way of speaking? He mocked the english, he mocked how other religions embrace their faith. How does his attitude help to build any bridges between the races? The man is lost in the past.
If he truly wanted to build bridges he would be embrassing the progress made between the races.
Not instilling hate and bitterness
from the past.
Shame of Ted Kennedy for backing
Obama , when Obama's spiratual leader saw fit to mock his slain
brother.
You can be sure if Obama is elected
Wright will be there by his side
when he is sworn in and be nominated to one of his committees.

NotClauswitz said...

I'll happliy go down to Ace Hardware and buy the Reverend a couple more shovels. My dad was a reverend too, but not nearly as wealthy or as culturally insensitive.
When you choose the "profession" (really, a CALLING - not a "profession" because one must hear The Call) of the Christian Ministry, it's really akin to taking a vow of poverty (not a license to print money from a cultural base), especially if you bundle-up your children and take them overseas to a poverty stricken-country of desperate foreigners - which Wright has not apparently chosen to do, his "mission" appears to exists among the comfortably afflicted.

Anonymous said...

Answer to Thruth hurts (but not can not spell)

Until blacks understand that the only way to get ahead is to assimilate, like every other minority group in this country (even the Amerindians!), they will always be poor and stepped on.

And the first step to assimilation is stop claiming the label of victim, and decide to be responsible for yourself.

Anonymous said...

If a white had given the speech Wright gave at the NAACP he would be lunching with Geraldine Fararo today. I can't believe he gave that speech in DETROIT! 25% of seniors graduated there last year. The government is black and according to Wright they are using the wrong method to teach those children. Where were the guests in that room educated? Or were they? How could they sit there and applaud him? He has all the answers and he allows Black children to suffer? What kind of man is this?

Roberta X said...

For those who point out their ancestors were drug to the States by main force: You're right, they were. And some of mine were pushed off their lands by main force, too. Come to think about it, at least one of my paleface forebears was a pre-Revolutionary political transportee. There is not a thing we can do about it, either; those people and their oppressors are all long dead. --How does that excuse anything your or I might do here and now? More to the point, who is better off right now, you and I, or our distant relations who were left where they were?

As for the person who writes,"my mother was alive when African Americans were received civil rights," you're actually wrong; the recognition of the inherent rights of all law-aiding citizens was a slow process that took -- and is taking -- more than just some Act of Congress. We can be damn' sure the people making it happen are not standin' on the sidelines makin' wisecracks. Nope, they're out there workin' right alongside all those scary-bad different people for far-off places and different cultures. It's the whiners on all sides we hear from because the productive folks are too darned busy! PS: No person or agency grants rights; they're pretty darned good at preventin' the free exercise therof, is all.

The Reverend Wright is a hater. His stock in trade is exactly the same as that of any other racist: fear, loathing and an utter refusal to recognize the common humanity everyone shares. He's the best friend the haters on the other side ever had. --$DEITY help the vast majority of us stuck in the middle when small-minded bigots spar.

Anonymous said...

"If you are not a Christian, no use trying to get your head around it."

I'm sorry. Rev Wright said- several times, I heard it, and in context, the term "Black church". If it's a "Black church" it is by definition not a Christian Church, because a Christian church would not differentiate by race. Wright is not a Christian, but he certainly is a racist. And racism from anyone is ugly, stupid, and uncalled-for. And he can pound sand. Wonder what would happen if McCain's pastor said something stupid, and then said it was because it was a "White church" that blacks didn't understand? Good riddance to bad garbage.

"I don't even own a goddam TV.
"

How ever do you watch "Roll Call"?

I don't blame you, though. I watch about five tv shows, and "Axe men" is the only one that isn't about cooking. I also like old movies, there were about 20 Duke movies on this weekend.

Drang said...

Seems to me that Rev. Wright's "explanation" boils down to "It's a Black thing, you wouldn't understand."
OK, well here's one middle-aged white man's view of that: It is divisive, it is racist, I don't want a President who goes to a church where it is a tenet of faith that God wants it that way.
What is this "Black Church", anyway? Which denomination is that? Do all clergy members of the Black Church go to the same seminary? Is a Black Lutheran Pastor or a Black Catholic priest a heretic?

Anonymous said...

"Who's culture are you refering to Brad K. white people?"

Seemed pretty clear to me he meant "American"

Anonymous said...

countrygal,
I think you are misreading the comments. As I read them no one is actually arguing that whites are the superior race. In fact, most whites have been conditioned to believe that they are an inferior race. Oddly enough, the places in the world where women and people who are different have the greatest value are in white dominated cultures. Tell me just how are women treated in most of Africa, both Saharan and sub-Sahran? How about people of caucasian or asian extraction? What about Asia, India, and the Middle East?

So why would you not want to assimilate into the most tolerant culture? Yes, white people created it, but they have thrown the doors open to all and sundry.

As far as the yahoo talking about the Irish choosing to come here. Some did, some didn't. Many came over on "coffin ships" after they were forced out of their native land. My ancestors happen to be included in their numbers. However, that was over 160 years ago. I don't call for destruction of the English. It happened more than a century ago.

Admittedly, I get a little ticked at blacks who bad mouth the Irish. Since a whole lot of Irish died fighting to free the blacks and not one black fought to help free the Irish.

Tam said...

countrygal,

"Who's[sic] culture are you refering[sic] to Brad K.[sic] white people?"

I'm sorry, I was coughing up my Guinness when I got some paprika and curry up my nose and couldn't hear you over the local smooth jazz station. You were asking something about a particular culture?

Anonymous said...

"I was coughing up my Guinness when I got some paprika and curry up my nose "
Hey, you know, that might just be the thing for that schnot problem you got... (duck & run)

staghounds said...

You people are just all mad because you are objective learners, in solitude in a carell stuffed off somewhere in a corner in absolute quietness absorbing from the object.

Except for Jaxon and Thruth, who are climbing up all on somebody.

Jayson said...

Hate to tell you, but some cultures ARE better than others.

Let's look at Africa:
Tribal warfare and hacking off of limbs. Islamic murder and pillaging. Petty dictators running off white farmers and the new owners (sic) failing to grow anything. And that's before all the people dying of AIDS because they think showers are enough to wash the virus off.

African American culture in the US: 70% out of wedlock birthrate. 12% of the population managing to commit 45+% of the crime. So-called leaders perpetuating victimhood. A culture in which it is not unusual for people getting ahead in school to be denigrated as "acting white".

Those cultures sound like they are made of FAIL.

staghounds said...

Of course cultures change, too.

Europe's slaughtering fifty million of its own people over a thirty year period isn't so great either.

Feanaro said...

"those people you mentioned came to America on there own free will."

Sorry to tell you thruth, most of the Irish would still be in Ireland if it was a simple matter of free will.

The Flight of the Earls. The Great Hunger, more popularly known as the Potato Famine. Flight of the Wild Geese. Those are just a few of the events created by an oppressive government that forced the Irish from Ireland. The English systematically attempted to root out and destroy Gaelic culture. They succeeded in many ways. Black Americans don't have a monopoly on oppression and suffering. You could certainly argue that it sucked worse than the persecution the Irish or the Jews faced.

So what? Shit happens. The time spent dwelling on past pain could be used to make things better right now.