Truth Time: Rev. Wright Is Right

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Truth Time: Wright Is Right
by DF

Okay, folks. It’s truth time.

Barack Obama has now weighed in on the Jeremiah Wright nontroversy in exactly the manner that I expected him to, I’ve got something to say about about the whole thing: Jeremiah Wright is right.

This country was founded by landowning (read: affluent) men of European descent for landowning men of European descent. I love Thomas Jefferson. He was a brilliant political philosopher. But when he wrote “All men are created equal” he didn’t mean it the way I take it. He wasn’t talking about the rights of all men. He certainly wasn’t talking about the rights of women. The man owned slaves.

This country was built on the backs of African slaves on land that was robbed in the slaughter of Native Americans. I’m sorry if this offends your bourgeois sensibilities as it isn’t the totally awesome, God-fearing, flag-waving, USA #1!!!1 narrative that we teach to school kids, but it is historical fact.

America is a work in progress. It took people like Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas to read deeper into the philosophies that birthed this nation. They realized that the rich, white men so many of us proudly call our Founding Fathers had only scratched the surface. And so they joined what would become a larger tradition: the fine American tradition of dissent. One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation this country was still segregated. Restaurants, buses, schools, drinking fountains and bathrooms. Again, it took leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. to see that “separate, but equal” was a ruse and that it represented a reading of these ideas that sold them short entirely. And some of these people were told they were too bombastic, too loud and too angry. It took leaders like Bobby Kennedy to see that their anger was well justified and long overdue.

...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/15/7702/

[againes654]

1. Wow, very well said....K&R

Too bad many here can't see it.

[malaise]

2. David Gergen was excellent on Anderson Cooper last night

He also cited Frederick Douglass' Fourth of July speech. CNN has the transcript.

Nice read.

[stillcool]

3. the thing that I don't get...

is that we are all victims of our government. Uncle Sam is no longer just after the black man, he is after all of us. If someone is interested in Politics, and the Policies that are destroying our country, how can they not recognize themselves in what Reverend Wright says?

[IndependentDem]

5. i agree

it is classism now, the government is not just trying to keep women and minorities down anymore, they are trying to keep the rich rich and the poor poor and poverty is color blind. but dont think that racism is dead, just spend a couple years in the south. it sure opened my eyes.

[stillcool]

11. I know racism is not dead...

just from being around here lately. I had no idea. It seems like there are many people who have never traveled outside of their comfort zone. They are truly products of their environment and can not see what they don't know.

[IndependentDem]

13. very true, maybe there will be some good out of all this after all. n/t

[izzie]

4. Just one thing you have forgotten to add to your thinking.

You can not judge the times of TJ with what is going on now. ONe has to put things in to their place in history. What he said in his time was really a shot heard around the world. Since those days a man ruling him self has grown and moved all over our world. I am sure the powerful will still use the weaker but one can not say it is anything like it was and it sure is not where it should be today but it is better. I am in my 70's and a women and believe me today is better than when I was a kid for a women. Plus it is better for any race that is not white also. Do not get me wrong I do not like what I see but it sure is better. Just do not forget how far we have all come.

[goodgd_yall]

9. I appreciate your thread

It's sometimes has been my tendency to see what's wrong and not the progress that's been made. The older I've gotten though, the more I see the progress, and I guess that just has to do with more of life experience---you become your own living history. I see a lot less discrimination all around. I see so much more diversity in places that used to be all white---my old neighborhood for one, which the original sales agent made sure was "white only" back when my parents first bought in.

I'm only in my 50s and I've seen big improvements in opportunities for women and changing attitudes toward them, although there's still a lot of work to be done in that area, IMO.

What I'm most disturbed about is that we seemed to be making progress in liberal democratic legislation and then it ground to a halt with Reagan; conservatism has seemed to dug its heels in.

[izzie]

17. It does seem to be two steps ahead and one back all the time

The thing is one can not go back and put the thoughts out of peoples minds. The people just keep pushing the old rock along even if it rolls backs some what every so often. I do a lot of family history as a hobby and with my other hobby of reading history it gives one a real look at what things were like for the people who came before us. You will even find slaves in NE you know and women who were dunked and so many things that just are so hard to think about but for the times it was sort of normal. Serf, slave or owning any one always seems to be a wrong thing to me but I was done world wide once. War? Well their is a thing one has to think about and wonder if it is forever going to be with us. It would be nice if we could just go to the ones we had to go to and not make them up so we have a war every few years.

[aquart]

6. Name me one inch of land on the planet that is not drenched in blood.

Some old, some new, but my that hemoglobin is rich and fertile.

We took this land? Yeah. From the guys who took it from the guys before them who took it from the guys before them. Or aren't you aware there were at least four waves of immigration before Columbus? Skulls with arrowheads in them at the abandoned pueblos. Fortified ancient towns along the Mississippi. You don't put up walls when friends are coming to dinner.

There are at least SEVEN races of dark-skinned peoples in Africa (I know, they all look alike to you). You think they were all pals? The blacks who came in chains to this nation (to its eternal enrichment) were captured and sold by friends, enemies, and Arab middlemen until they reached those enterprising Europeans and Americans you despise.

I find this white guilt crap utterly superior and condescending. Have you ever felt the smallest guilt about land taken from the Spanish, the Dutch, the French? None, right? Because they are your equals in your mind. White, right? A little flap here the other day about the Irish slaves shipped to the Americas by Cromwell and James II. Not indentured servants. Slaves. No pity for their plight. White, right?

I say this mealy mouthed whining is smug and racist and I say to hell with it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

14. White guilt crap? Mealy-mouthed whining is racist? What happened to responsibility for your actions?

How can it be racist if you reject collective punishment? If you reject collective guilt then you reject the bloodshed that created this "exceptional nation" and assert that we, as citizens, are above all that -- and reject the racism and violence of YOUR ancestors. Don't lecture me about African history -- I know all too well that folks like you exist in every nastion throughout history, demanding that justice NOT be done, that land NEVER be returned to the weaker rival / race. Your "kind" believe in survival of the fittest -- social darwinism. Take away the veil of legal sanction and intensive police surveillance that barely restrains this country and your relatives (and some of mine) would be chaining people up in no time. That is how "practicality" works when combined with a disdain for cultural differences.

[I work for workers]

7. Uh, that is pretty much exactly what they teach in schools these days.

It's just as much a gross over simplification as teaching that the pilgrims and Indians were best friends.

By the way, Native American is considered a racial slur by the hard core tribal rights Indians.

[Voice for Peace]

8. I'm glad he's got an outspoken truthtelling social activist spiritual adviser.

I think it's a hopeful sign for the country.

[DireStrike]

10. Of course he is

Don't say it in public in an election year though.

[OwnedByFerrets]

12. K & R

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. Why are they SPECIFICALLY asking us to condemn Wright's statement about Hillary?

A rival black pastor LITERALLY used McCarthyite words on air directed at Obama.

"Obama, you must now come out and say that you reject any religious
teaching that does not CONFORM WITH the NATIONAL INTEREST of the US."

"This will remain an issue for Obama. WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN DID
HE KNOW IT? Obama, ARE YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN in church when
Wright uttered these words?"

[Delphinus]

16. What?!

"Obama, you must now come out and say that you reject any religious
teaching that does not CONFORM WITH the NATIONAL INTEREST of the US."

I don't want ANY candidate basing their decisions for the US on ANY religious teachings!

[trof]

18. BLASPHEMER!

The truth hurts sometimes.