Obama outraged by Wright's comments

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

You'd say that about Pat Robertson, Fallwell, Hagee, Parsley right?

I don't know who Hagee or Parsley are. Robertson and Fallwell fall close to the Wright category. The difference between them and Wright is that they have apologized after saying stupid and inflammatory stuff and Wright justifies himself.

[Kountzer]

I am not shocked by some of the things Pastor Wright says because I've heard a lot of it before on the streets. There is this sort of shock rhetoric that floats around. It can be heard from the local muslim selling papers at the intersection. It can be heard from the local know it all who talks too much about things he or she do not really know or understand. Sort of reminds me of some msg board members. A lot of this shock talk reverberates in certain pulpits. No telling what is being said in mosques and other areas. The thing of it is that it is out there. So I am not all that surprised. I don't agree with most of it. Maybe I don't agree with any of it. I get wearied fast trying to decypher all the conspiracy theories. and shock talk. I don't think the whole truth will be known until we get to the other side of things, during the 1,000 years in heaven.

Which brings me to another issue. Far as I know, everyone here is sda. This means you have access to the most advanced and complete end times information around. We have the Holy Spirit, and the testimony of Jesus, the spirit of prophecy telling us that all sorts of crazy doctrinal wnds would be blowing.

So when someone like Wright surfaces, or when the pastor in the hispanic community who claims to be Christ is exposed, I am not all that surprised, neither should anyone else here be.

DB

[lazarus]

Laz, do you know what he ment by this? Is he thinking the 3 strikes law was specifically aimed at African-American males?

yeah, I know what it means. Set against the backdrop of the disparity in drug sentencing as regards cocaine I can see how someone might think the 3 strikes law was aimed at black men. My guess it has disproportionally affected black men.

[Dr. Shane]

This may be politically incorrect to ask but here goes...

Could it be that more black males are in prison because there is something about their culture (like fatherless children or drug addiction) that makes them more prone to crime? Or does it have to be that the judicial system is racist, convicting more blacks than whites?

[Neil D]

This may be politically incorrect to ask but here goes...

Could it be that more black males are in prison because there is something about their culture (like fatherless children or drug addiction) that makes them more prone to crime? Or does it have to be that the judicial system is racist, convicting more blacks than whites?

And tagging on, here....

Perhaps the oppertunities available to blacks in general are not as available to them, thus allowing the time that was invested to be redirected into crime.... [you forgot to factor into the equation "economic oppertunities" as opposed to genetics, and prejudice.]

[John317]

I think one reason that many blacks go to prison is that there is little stigma in the black community on going to prison or in having been to prison. In much of the black community, even thugs & pimps very often receive a kind of hero worship, instead of being viewed as someone who is doing evil.

Much of the rap is about them, and not in a negative way, either, but rather in a way that makes heroes (or, more accurately, "antiheroes") out of such people. It ought to be just the opposite.

They ought to be making heroes out of teachers, doctors, statesmen, and people who have made a positive contribution to both the black and white communities, and they ought to be showing that it's terribly wrong to be a thug or a pimp or a convict. Being an ex-con should definitely be something a kid should be trying at all costs to avoid and not be making plans on having it on his resume.

I have never heard a white kid say, "I'm a pimp," as if it is something to brag about, but I have heard quite a few black kids say this. Black kids being photographed very often strike a pose that shows they want to look like a thug and a gang member. If you tell them, "You will go to prison if you keep that up," you will probably hear something like, "I don't give a s---. My dad or uncle or homeys are there already."

If blacks were commonly taught to place high values on studiousness, books and education, there would be far fewer going to prison. This is what the rappers would be rapping about if they really wanted to help the black community. Not about cop killing and drugs, drug-pushing, pimping and "hos" and "b----", crackers, etc.

The counties and state governments already spend many millions of dollars every year-- LA spends that much every month-- trying to keep minority kids from going to prison.

Being poor and having a lack of opportunity does not make it right to get involved in crime. I worked with boys who weren't interested in working hard for money, because they resented the fact that they couldn't make as much money in any legal job as they could selling drugs and doing different crimes. That's the kind of thinking that only means more young blacks will be going to prison.

When they hear preachers and others saying that blacks are oppressed and can't get good jobs, they are encouraging the very kind of attitude that helps tear down the black community. They need to hear more talk of how they should work hard, be honest, study, show love for their families and their community. No one is really doing them a favor to tell them that they can't be anything but a prisoner because they lack opportunities. The opportunities are there but they are not given on a silver platter. People have to work hard for success. You have to play by the rules of the society and culture in which you live. If you don't, you can't complain that there are no opportunities.

If anyone thinks blacks have no opportunities, or fewer opportunties, to be successful in this society, how do they explain all the millions of successful blacks, such as Dr. Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condeleezza Rice, Senator Obama, and tens of thousands of black doctors, businessmen, writers, artists, scientists and lawyers, etc. ?

[olger]

Wright casts his critique in such an extreme way that the possibility of redemption, the evidence that America can and has and will change for the better, is never considered. Wright preaches a deadly kind of "blame America" politics that many on the left have tried to move away from progress toward promise and opportunity and optimism -- but his pastor is a guy who says "God --- America"? Who seems to feel vindicated by "the chickens coming home to roost" after 9/11?

It's all too strange..

oG

[John317]

Strange is right, especially coming from a pastor who professes to believe in the redemption of the very worst sinners.

I don't hear or see any love of country there, nor any hope for the future of America.

Is it possible that Wright is afraid of what it will mean to his reputation and his ministry if Obama is elected president? Is that why he seems to be doing everything he can to hurt Obama? What other possible reasons could he have to say what he's been saying against him, a man he baptized and who sat at his feet for the last 20 years?

[lazarus]

BILL MOYERS: You preached that sermon on the Sunday after 9-11 -- almost 7 years ago. When people saw the sound bites from it this year, they were upset because you seemed to be blaming America. Did you somehow fail to communicate?

REVEREND WRIGHT: The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly. What is not the failure to communicate is when something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That's not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they wanna do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from the New York Times called me, a "wack-a-doodle." It's to paint me as something. Something's wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with this country. There's -its policies. We're perfect. We-our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them. That's not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think they wanted to communicate?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think they wanted to communicate that I am- unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ. And, by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint? That's what they wanted to communicate. They know nothing about the church. They know nothing about our prison ministry. They know nothing about our food share ministry. They know nothing about our senior citizens home. They know nothing about all we try to do as a church and have tried to do, and still continue to do as a church that believes what Martin Marty said, that the two worlds have to be together-the world before church and the world after postlude. And that the gospel of Jesus Christ has to speak to those worlds, not only in terms of the preached message on a Sunday morning but in terms of the lived-out ministry throughout the week.

BILL MOYERS: What did you think when you began to see those very brief sound bites circulating as they did?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very devious reasons.

BILL MOYERS: Such as?

REVEREND WRIGHT: To put an element of fear and hatred and to stir up the anxiety of American who still don't know the African-American church, know nothing about the prophetic theology of the African-American experience, who know nothing about the black church, who don't even know how we got a black church.

[lazarus]

Quote:

Wright preaches a deadly kind of "blame America" politics that many on the left have tried to move away from progress toward promise and opportunity and optimism

I seem to remember a lady who wrote some books who was not very optimistic about opportunity and freedom in these United States.

She had some not so polite things to say bout the past too!

"Our Government has been very proud and independent. The people of this nation have exalted themselves to heaven, and have looked down upon monarchical governments, and triumphed in their boasted liberty, while the institution of slavery, that was a thousand times worse than the tyranny exercised by monarchial governments, was suffered to exist and was cherished."

—Testimonies, Vol. 1 p. 258,259

[Dr. Shane]

Slavery was only permitted in the South. If the North would not have allowed the South to join in the beginning, slavery may still be practiced there today.

It was the North that came up with the 3/5th compromise as a way to decrease the influence of the South on the federal level. The number of representatives in Congress and electoral votes is based on population. The South wanted to count each slave as a person (but not give them any rights) in order to boost their influence on the federal level. The anti-slave states in the North wanted to deny slave states more influence since they were hoping to end slavery at some time in the future. So the North offered the 3/5th compromise in order to undermine the slave states' influence on the national level. Thus we see from the founding of America an attempt by the North to end slavery.

It is intellectually dishonest to try and label the entire nation as supporting slavery from its conception. There was always a conflict between the states on this issue from the beginning. Ellen White's statement makes sense when placed in the context of the southern states. It makes no sense at all if applied to the North which went to war to end the practice of slavery. I don't know what the context was but I know that not every word she penned was inspired. Some things she wrote were her own opinion. She also penned that masturbation causes cancer and today we know it helps prevent cancer.

[Amelia]

Quote:

REVEREND WRIGHT: The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly.

Sorry, I disagree with this statement. A whole congregation will hear one statement with a zillion different understandings. But I agree that according to him, the sound bites do give a slant to what he was saying that wasn't there.

[Dr. Shane]

Glenn Beck played the entire sermon on his radio show and I think it makes the comments look worse, not better.

[Kountzer]

Black Culture Beyond Hip-Hop

By Thomas Chatterton Williams

Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A17

Over the past three decades black culture has grown so conflated with hip-hop culture that for most Americans under the age of 45, hip-hop culture is black culture. Except that it's not.

During the controversy over Don Imus's comments this spring, the radio host was pilloried for using the same sexist language that is condoned, if not celebrated, in hip-hop music and culture. As the scandal evolved, some critics, including the Rev. Al Sharpton and the NAACP, shifted their attention to the rap industry. Indeed, every couple of years, it seems, we ask ourselves: Is hip-hop poisonous? Is it misogynistic, violent and nihilistic? What kind of message is it sending?

But what critics consistently fail to emphasize in these sporadic storms of opprobrium, as most did during the Imus affair, is that the stakes transcend hip-hop: Black culture itself is in trouble.

Born in the projects of the South Bronx, tweaked to its gangsta form in the 'hoods of South Central Los Angeles and dumbed down unconscionably in the ghettos of the "Dirty South" (the original Confederate states, minus Missouri and Kentucky), there are no two ways about it -- hip-hop culture is not black culture, it's black street culture. Despite 40 years of progress since the civil rights movement, in the hip-hop era -- from the late 1970s onward -- black America, uniquely, began receiving its values, aesthetic sensibility and self-image almost entirely from the street up.

This is a major departure for blacks, who traditionally saw cultivation as a key to equality. Think of the days when W.E.B. Du Bois "[sat] with Shakespeare" and moved "arm in arm with Balzac"; or when Ralph Ellison waxed universal and spoke of the need "to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life."

The historian Paul Fussell notes that for most Americans, it is difficult to "class sink." Try to imagine the Chinese American son of oncologists -- living in, say, a New York suburb such as Westchester, attending private school -- who feels subconsciously compelled to model his life, even if only superficially, on that of a Chinese mafioso dealing heroin on the Lower East Side. The cultural pressure for a middle-class Chinese American to walk, talk and act like a lower-class thug from Chinatown is nil. The same can be said of Jews, or of any other ethnic group.

But in black America the folly is so commonplace it fails to attract serious attention. Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with "keeping it real" are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior.

Sociologists have a term for this pathological facet of black life. It's called "cool-pose culture." Whatever the nomenclature, "cool pose" or keeping it real or something else entirely, this peculiar aspect of the contemporary black experience -- the inverted-pyramid hierarchy of values stemming from the glorification of lower-class reality in the hip-hop era -- has quietly taken the place of white racism as the most formidable obstacle to success and equality in the black middle classes.

As John H. McWhorter emphasizes in his book "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America," "forty years after the Civil Rights Act, African-American students on the average are the weakest in the United States, at all ages, in all subjects, and regardless of class level." Reading and math proficiency test results consistently show this. Clearly, this nostalgie de la boue, this longing for the mud, exacts a hefty price.

A 2005 study by Roland G. Fryer of Harvard University crystallizes the point: While there is scarce dissimilarity in popularity levels among low-achieving students, black or white, Fryer finds that "when a student achieves a 2.5 GPA, clear differences start to emerge." At 3.5 and above, black students "tend to have fewer and fewer friends," even as their high-achieving white peers "are at the top of the popularity pyramid." With such pressure to be real, to not "act white," is it any wonder that the African American high school graduation rate has stagnated at 70 percent for the past three decades?

Until black culture as a whole is effectively disentangled from the python-grip of hip-hop, and by extension the street, we are not going to see any real progress.

The writer is a graduate student in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University. He also works for n+1 magazine, a semiannual journal of literature.

[John317]

Quote:

Wright preaches a deadly kind of "blame America" politics that many on the left have tried to move away from progress toward promise and opportunity and optimism

I seem to remember a lady who wrote some books who was not very optimistic about opportunity and freedom in these United States.

She had some not so polite things to say bout the past too!

"Our Government has been very proud and independent. The people of this nation have exalted themselves to heaven, and have looked down upon monarchical governments, and triumphed in their boasted liberty, while the institution of slavery, that was a thousand times worse than the tyranny exercised by monarchial governments, was suffered to exist and was cherished."

—Testimonies, Vol. 1 p. 258,259

That is our past, true, but at the time Ellen White wrote that statement, it was the present, because it was written at the beginning of the Civil War when slavery still existed. And she was right, slavery in our country was a great curse, and we are still feeling its effects today, 143 years and many generations later. Our beloved nation and people seem to be permanently scarred.

But there is a difference between saying that about a country you love, with love in your voice, and saying it with hatred in one's tone of voice. One can say these things about the United States and make it obvious that one is terribly saddened by the events and by the problems, but when I hear Wright talking about the problems in our nation, I don't hear tears of sadness and a sense of great disappointment and love for the country. I hear anger and hatred of America, even while he enjoys its fruits. (After all, he drives around in cars that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and lives in a house that costs millions of dollars to build, and enjoys freedom of expression. He doesn't live with the poor blacks but lives with the rich white folk whom he has often attacked. Don't you see something wrong with this picture?)

Compare all the things that Ellen White said about the United States with what Jeremiah Wright says about the United States, and you will see an entirely different tone. Ellen White talks about "our country," and there is no sense of exultation over the terrible developments, nor is there any tone of hatred for our nation or for our fellow-countrymen. She talks about the U.S. being a "nation of light," "a land of freedom," "protestant America," etc.

In the chapter, "The Pilgrim Fathers," in The Great Controversy, p. 291, 292, Ellen White makes it clear that God was leading in the coming of the pilgrims to our shores and in laying the foundation of "a mighty nation." Mrs. White's appeals are for Americans to pray that the nation and its leaders will do right, and even in the midst of the curse of slavery, she never called on SDAs to pray that God will "d--- America." And unlike Jeremiah Wright, Mrs. White never never said things that were racially divisive but always encouraged people to say and do things that will bring people and races together.

These are some of the major differences I see between Mrs. White and Jeremiah Wright.

[John317]

Black Culture Beyond Hip-Hop

By Thomas Chatterton Williams

Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A17

Over the past three decades black culture has grown so conflated with hip-hop culture that for most Americans under the age of 45, hip-hop culture is black culture. Except that it's not... But what critics consistently fail to emphasize in these sporadic storms of opprobrium, as most did during the Imus affair, is that the stakes transcend hip-hop: Black culture itself is in trouble.

Born in the projects of the South Bronx, tweaked to its gangsta form in the 'hoods of South Central Los Angeles and dumbed down unconscionably in the ghettos of the "Dirty South" (the original Confederate states, minus Missouri and Kentucky), there are no two ways about it -- hip-hop culture is not black culture, it's black street culture. Despite 40 years of progress since the civil rights movement, in the hip-hop era -- from the late 1970s onward -- black America, uniquely, began receiving its values, aesthetic sensibility and self-image almost entirely from the street up.

This is a major departure for blacks, who traditionally saw cultivation as a key to equality. Think of the days when W.E.B. Du Bois "[sat] with Shakespeare" and moved "arm in arm with Balzac"; or when Ralph Ellison waxed universal and spoke of the need "to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life."

The historian Paul Fussell notes that for most Americans, it is difficult to "class sink." Try to imagine the Chinese American son of oncologists -- living in, say, a New York suburb such as Westchester, attending private school -- who feels subconsciously compelled to model his life, even if only superficially, on that of a Chinese mafioso dealing heroin on the Lower East Side. The cultural pressure for a middle-class Chinese American to walk, talk and act like a lower-class thug from Chinatown is nil. The same can be said of Jews, or of any other ethnic group.

But in black America the folly is so commonplace it fails to attract serious attention. Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with "keeping it real" are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior.

Sociologists have a term for this pathological facet of black life. It's called "cool-pose culture." Whatever the nomenclature, "cool pose" or keeping it real or something else entirely, this peculiar aspect of the contemporary black experience -- the inverted-pyramid hierarchy of values stemming from the glorification of lower-class reality in the hip-hop era -- has quietly taken the place of white racism as the most formidable obstacle to success and equality in the black middle classes.

As John H. McWhorter emphasizes in his book "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America," "forty years after the Civil Rights Act, African-American students on the average are the weakest in the United States, at all ages, in all subjects, and regardless of class level." Reading and math proficiency test results consistently show this. Clearly, this nostalgie de la boue, this longing for the mud, exacts a hefty price.

A 2005 study by Roland G. Fryer of Harvard University crystallizes the point: While there is scarce dissimilarity in popularity levels among low-achieving students, black or white, Fryer finds that "when a student achieves a 2.5 GPA, clear differences start to emerge." At 3.5 and above, black students "tend to have fewer and fewer friends," even as their high-achieving white peers "are at the top of the popularity pyramid." With such pressure to be real, to not "act white," is it any wonder that the African American high school graduation rate has stagnated at 70 percent for the past three decades?

Until black culture as a whole is effectively disentangled from the python-grip of hip-hop, and by extension the street, we are not going to see any real progress.

The writer is a graduate student in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University. He also works for n+1 magazine, a semiannual journal of literature.

Thanks for posting. Good article. Agree completely.

[olger]

Glenn Beck played the entire sermon on his radio show and I think it makes the comments look worse, not better.

I heard that in our shop Friday (parts of it). Very impelling.

[Kountzer]

http://forums.starnewsonline.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1661088265/m/7451004817/r/3241024817

[lazarus]

Quote:

and saying it with hatred in one's tone of voice. One can say these things about the United States and make it obvious that one is terribly saddened by the events and by the problems, but when I hear Wright talking about the problems in our nation, I don't hear tears of sadness and a sense of great disappointment and love for the country. I hear anger and hatred of America, even while he enjoys its fruits.

If I may be so bold as to quote myself.

Quote:

This whole fuss is as as much about how he said it, i.e. the loud angry black man thing, as much as about what he actually said. White preachers have said, do say equally controversial things but white people won't make as much fuss because the tone is more palatable.

[Kountzer]

Wright is just one voice in a sea of many that are saying basically the same thing. I was first shocked by such racorous rhetoric back when the ayatollah came on the scene in Iran back in the early to mid 70s. That was 30 + years ago. There may have been others before that, like Malcolm X, but I didn't pay that much attention. I don't pay attention now.

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

White preachers have said, do say equally controversial things but white people won't make as much fuss because the tone is more palatable.

This simply is not true. When white preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have said stupid and outrageous things they have been called on it and apologized.

[Neil D]

Quote:

This simply is not true. When white preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have said stupid and outrageous things they have been called on it and apologized.

This is because the black culture doesn't feel the need to appologize for the results of the oppression whites have caused upon the blacks. Robertson and Falwell have no historys as this.....

[lazarus]

Quote:

White preachers have said, do say equally controversial things but white people won't make as much fuss because the tone is more palatable.

This simply is not true. When white preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have said stupid and outrageous things they have been called on it and apologized.

Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson_controversies

[Dr. Shane]

Well, I put no stock in Robertson's and Falwell's apologies anyway. I can't read their hearts but they seemed only like token apologies. The point I was making is that color is not the issue. When white preachers say outlandish things they are called on it too.

[Kountzer]

Who knows what is being said by black preachers. There are lots of preachers and lots of churches. Wright just happened to find publicity, or it found him.