My bad on the Tuskegee. I agree with you about Wright's wealth. I am astonished by how these people go to these churches and give their ministers outrageous salaries and homes and cars, when most of them cannot even dream of having such wealth. It is absurd.

I never said Wright was King. He does not have the same national platform and he wraps what might have been an effective message in an offensive package. My point was that Dr. King is not the unifying figure that he is made out to be. He is a unifier in the narrowest sense of the word. Unifying is not putting together a message we can all get together around. And, Dr. King was a minister before he was anything. His was not a vocation meant to feed people the same old message. Indeed, Dr. King was provocative because he and others refused to accept the back of the bus. Boldly and forcefully saying that blacks should not sacrifice their safety for at the expense of their liberties, was quite radical. He was a leader of a movement that walked into the buzz saw and flipped the bird at Bull Conner. Not every black person liked it. Putting one's head down was generally the safest course of action lest one risk winding up like Emmett Till for "reckless eyeballing." Dr. King was not a saint either. He was a womanizer in a way that made Bill Clinton look chaste. He was a plagiarizer.

I would suggest you take a listen to his speeches beyond "I Have A Dream." His speeches on Viet Nam and poverty and the divine retribution that would be rained down on America as a result caused quite a scandal They generated the same response from President Johnson and the media as did Rev. Wright's sermon. They said Dr. King had lost his moral authority, he was a traitor, he was hateful. He is a much more complex man than than the infantile, one dimensional, sanitized, ignorant, smarmy version we get now. He was much more than that. Rev. Wright is a minister in that prophetic style that is part and parcel of the black church. The black church was founded on the belief that there would be something better and that God had a design that was different from the oppression they faced. The first American black Christians founded their church, slave churches, on that. It was that in which they took comfort and helped them to believe that they would not be slaves forever.

I know there are many Obama groupies who hate Rev. Wright because he mussed a hair on your guy's political head. That man is more than Barack Obama's pastor. He was much more than that even back when Barack was still Barry and he is much more than that to the people his ministers. This search and destroy mission for anyone who dares get in the way of your beloved Obama's way is unseemly.

And if you think Jesus was a nice guy who loved everyone, you should read your Bible a little closer. He had harsh words for many types of people.

I have made a lot of enemies today because I dared assert my anger, as a black woman, over a man trying to hijack the American black experience. The difference between me and Obama comes down to something subtle that many white people might not grasp. Sure Obama looks black and it is true that someone who is racist would clutch her purse when he walked by or follow him in a store. That could happen to me or to a black man. What he does not share with me is a cynicism and weariness to the notion that all we need is love and hope to attain the American dream (whatever that is). He can attain a level of hope and carefree attitude that is not processed through the filter of having a network of mother, father, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other relatives who have had their dreams crushed generation by generation. I lived a life where most of the people I encountered where white. Nonetheless, I look at them skeptically at first, not because I hate white people, but because I think any black child comes up with a residual knowledge from his/her family experience that Senator Obama has not.

I never hear any white person acknowledge that while Barack Obama has the distinct privilege of carrying his father's name, most black people in America carry a slave name. If you think that having to sign the name of a family that enslaved your family whenever you write a check, sign a contract, complete an application, as opposed to having your own name, well you are just ignorant. Senator Obama can go directly back to where his father came from. All I know is my ancestors came here on a ship from somewhere in West Africa. Not all of Africa is the same, to those of you out there who might think it so.

There is a startling lack of understanding on this board. I am not a bigot just because I am unwilling to adopt Obama as my black brother (a term I hate, by the way). Again, I ask, why should I have to have him shoved down my throat as a black man when white people do not have to have him shoved down their throats as a white man? The double standard is racist.