Race-baiters across the fruited plain are in full damage control, penning multiple op/eds attempting to provide cover for their exposed comrade, Pastor Jeremiah Wright. Despite facing an uphill battle, Reverend Wright’s defenders just might pull it off considering the support lent by the mainstream media. To get this many column inches, William F. Buckley had to birth his own magazine.
Let’s get one thing straight right now. There is no excusing the hate-filled, racist, bigoted, anti-American, divisive theology at the core of the Reverend’s message. Black Liberation Theology, informing the very fabric of Barack Obama’s church, does not aim at racial reconciliation. Rather, it condemns the white race as it exalts blacks and excoriates Europe while ennobling Africa. The venom spewing from Pastor Wright has not been “taken out of context,” a ubiquitous apologia since Wright’s comments became widely disseminated. Rather, they express the core beliefs of Black Liberation Theology. Don’t take my word for it. The church website is www.tucc.org
Pastor Wright’s endorsement of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam was no accident. Both men preach essentially the same message, a concoction emphasizing unequal parts religion, politics, and race urging black unity and self-reliance so as to fight off white oppressors. The Nation of Islam has “chosen, as its main course of action, to fight White supremacy with the concept of Black supremacy,” writes Jason Glenn. This is what Wright championed when his church bestowed on Farrakhan its equivalent of Man of the Year recognition. “Last year,” writes Richard Cohen on Washingtonpost.com, ” [Wright's church] gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said ‘truly epitomized greatness.’ That man is Louis Farrakhan.”
Pastor Wright and those currently putting spin on his outrageous statements have preached white sin and black superiority for too long to change course now. They have built empires playing on racial fears, stoking fires of animosity that otherwise would have grown cold decades ago. A significant part of America’s black population has been immersed in Wright’s view of America and race relations, making a renunciation of Black Liberation Theology impossible, and producing the steady stream of racial apologists justifying racist preaching.
The venerable Los Angeles Times is leading the charge to transform Reverend Wright from demagogue to spokesperson for the downtrodden. “Mary C. Johns…edits a newspaper for public-housing residents. She says many of her readers found the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments about race reflective of their truth,” reported Times staff writer P.J. Huffstutter on March 20th. “That is why many people didn’t see Wright’s comments as particularly controversial, Johns said. To them…the Lord was simply helping Wright voice an interpretation of biblical Scriptures — and of their truth.” The barely concealed message is, if you walked a mile in their shackles, you would damn America too.
My local paper got into the act by printing Vorris Nunley’s revelatory piece subtitled “Respect hidden tradition of strident black rhetoric.” Nunley doesn’t confront the truthfulness of Wright’s bombasts. Instead, he establishes that ”most African-Americans speak differently in front of white audiences than in front of black ones.” Because “whites often frown upon black perspectives not geared toward mainstream comfort,” says Nunley, blacks developed the practice of venting their innermost thoughts in places deemed “hush-harbor spaces and places such as jook joints, black churches and…beauty shops and barbershops.” Ensconced in such retreats, we are to surmise, the rage pent up since the middle passage is unleashed. What makes Wright so popular in the African-American community “is his willingness to wade into the waters of hush-harbor rhetoric to say what black folks usually say to themselves and to speak in the manner he does without concern for white comfort of politically correct sensibilities.” What whites need to do, lectures Nunley, is get used to a lot more strident black hate-speech. “Indeed, there would be no African-American community in the restorative sense of the term without this rhetoric.” See, Pastor Wright really is working for reconciliation.
The Times was back at it this past Sunday, reprinting a Chicago Tribune opinion piece by Manya A. Brachear, who cuts through the veil of timidity and bluntly says what the mainstream media has been working up to since this dust-up began. “Putting a pastor’s words into context,” as the title reads, reveals Wright as a man speaking the words of God, and God is mad at America. Quoting the Rev. Bernard Richardson, Ms. Brachear assures us that “Shocking phrases like ‘God damn America’ lie at the core of prophetic preaching…The prophets in Scripture — their language wasn’t pleasing to hear…” Wallace Best, professor of religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, is in full agreement. ”There is not a nation on Earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States.” Hmmm, Princeton must be short on history courses. Is it just me, or is anyone else thinking of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union?
Central to Black Liberation Theology is the cherished belief that the evil perpetrated on black slaves has no historical equivalent. Of course, it isn’t true, but it sure does keep the hatred boiling.
As the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination approaches, clever racialist pundits have discovered another way to legitimize Wright – compare him with Dr. King. The Press-Enterprise went the extra mile for Reverend Wright just this morning, pairing identical op/eds under the banner “Don’t Sanitize King.” Cynthia Tucker, writing for the Universal Press Syndicate, and Mary Sanchez, composing for the Tribune Media Services, collaborated to convince us that “MLK’s courage was laced with anger and impatience” (Tucker) while enjoining us to “Skip the platitudes and teach the preacher’s full and fiery message” (Sanchez). The sainted Dr. King, so the received wisdom has it, was every bit as angry and capable of inflammatory statements as, well, Pastor Wright. Mary Sanchez concludes with, “He [King] had some hard truths to tell America, and four decades later we still aren’t listening.” If this sounds like it could be used as a justification of contemporary civil rights preachers, go to the head of the class.
No amount of fuller’s soap will wash away the ugliness of Reverend Wright’s message. Worse, undoing the damage he, Farrakhan, and others have inflicted on race relations will take decades. Filled with rage, belching great gouts of irrational acrimony, they have become the very thing they profess to hate – prejudiced, judgmental cranks. Incredibly, they insist on remaining chained to an awful past, deriving from it their reason for existence. To look forward would rob the Wrights of this world of their power and place. The nation must wait for another type of black leader to fulfill Dr. King’s dream.
One could almost be thankful if Dr. King is unaware of this debacle. Let us pray that Barack Obama will further distance himself from it.
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Postscript April 4, 2008:
The push to justify Reverend Wright’s hate speech continued today as the Los Angeles Times published an op/ed by Georgetown University professor of sociology Michael Dyson. On the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, Dr. Dyson provides covering fire for Barack Obama’s pastor, mentor, and friend by asserting, “King’s skepticism and anger were often muted when he spoke to white America, but they routinely resonated in black sanctuaries and meeting halls across the land.” Dyson goes on the quote King as saying, “I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously.” See, Pastor Wright and Pastor King had the same message, whitey, so smarten up.
Trashing the legacy of America’s greatest civil rights advocate is a steep price to pay to legitimize contemporary black racism.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Media, Race Relations