Letters to the Editor
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Rev. Jeremiah Wright - Patriot!!
Gary, although I know this wasn’t really the focus of your article, I must take this opportunity to address a point you mention and one that so many right wing pundants have highlighted in their arguments against Rev. Wright, and that is the sermon that expressed Rev. Wright’s feelings that the AIDS virus could have been created by the government and unleashed on the Black Community purposefully. Everyone, even those of you who seem to present yourselves as more open minded regarding issues of race, like to point to this particular sermon as it sounds so outlandish as to be considered particularly extremist. Maybe I’d feel that way as well if I didn’t know this country’s history. I find it quite disturbing that the right wing pundants don’t know the history themselves, but maybe they do and it just doesn’t fit their particular means at this point. I’m more disturbed by the fact that the history rarely makes it into the discussion at all, even among more liberal pundants.
Please research the Tuskegee Experiment and learn how from 1932 to 1972 the U.S. Public Health Service sponsored a “scientific experiment” whereby 399 African-American men, infected with syphilis, were treated like laboratory animals, were not told they had the disease, were not treated, were left to infect their wives (40 wives were infected) and their children (19 children were born with the disease), all to determine how syphilis affected blacks in comparison to whites.
Learn the history - start with this link to the Tuskegee University website: http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/Story.asp?s=1207586
I believe that African-Americans of Rev. Wright generation are extremely patriotic. I don't know that I could be if I'd lived through what they did.