Letters to the Editor
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It is what happened after 9/11 that is the problem
Certainly nothing can justify the senseless murder of thousands, but the problem is not what the US did prior to 9/11 (notwithstanding the support for the state terrorism practiced by Israel and South Africa, as Rev. Wright said in one of his sermons). The problem is Bush's policies after 9/11. which squandered the world's sympathy for the US and gave terrorists more recruits and causes!
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as a gay man
it takes more than obama's pretty words to buy me off.
talk to me when he marches in gay pride like hillary did in nyc.
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@krisellyn
You wrote that since the US is a nation of immigrants, generational guilt-trips don't work. But to my understanding, when the oppressed speak out, all they are seeking is acknowledgment and understanding. Their intent is not to induce guilt. When people speak, it's only because they want to be heard. They're not really interested in making you feel guilty. They may want you to take responsibility, but responsibility has nothing to do with guilt.
What's responsibility? In my book, responsibility is acknowledging that the world is kind of a big mess (which isn't really anyone's fault because we're all messy human beings) and that if we want to clean it up, then we all have to do our part. Nobody is to blame, but everybody needs to help clean up. Taking responsibility is saying, "Ok, I'll help with the cleanup."
I'm African-American and descended from slaves, but I take responsibility for the genocide of Native Americans because I am American. I take responsibility for consuming a disproportionate part of the world's resources because I'm an American, even though I consume much less than the average American. I take responsibility for being on the wrong side of class struggle because, in subtle or not-so-subtle ways, I still hold the bourgeois values I grew up with, even though I'm my income is working-class. It's not my fault that a lot of people in my city are homeless, but it is my responsibility to do something about it because I live in the city, even if it's just challenging the way I see homeless people and doing my best not to send more rejection and negativity towards the homeless people I meet.
We are born into a hurting, messy world, so we are born into responsibility. Guilt stops us from taking responsibility because it goads us into defending ourselves. No one wants you to feel guilty, but they may ask you to take responsibility for being American-- being a part of a country that has done stunningly wonderful things and shockingly egregious things. Enjoy and bask in the wonderful; take responsibility for the egregious even though it is not your fault.
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You got that right
Maybe the hallmark of being powerful is not that you are able to do wrong to others, it's that you can insist they have no feelings about it.
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@ woodside
A resounding, enthusiastic hear, hear.
Perfectly articulated.
Thank you.
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Gary, People Must Know Clinton /McCain's Pastors Names and their Ideas
Gary, the time has come in America where the Media must divulge stances, words, and Ideas of each Candidate's Pastors Ideas.
It must be assumed as suggested by the Media, that this information is critical for Voters to choose a Candidate.
We've heard extensively the views of Pastor Wright, Barak Obama's former Pastor. Now, What is Hillary Clinton's Pastor's name and what is his or her Legacy? How about McCain's. What is his Pastor's name and what is his ideas and his legacy?
Integrity, Honor, and Ethics deserve these answers. The American People await these critical revelations.
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Other voices
www.jasmynecannick.com.
Wright may be retired now, but thank God for us that there are still pastors and ministers like him out there who aren't afraid to tell it like it is when it comes to the United States Government and the history that was so conveniently left out of the schoolbooks.
Well I guess on the bright side of things, there should be no more questions about whether or not Senator Barack Obama is a Christian.
If you recall, throughout his campaign for the presidency, he's been painted out to be an undercover Muslim who was sworn into office on the Koran. When that didn't work, they switched to rumors that he doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance and he was the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan's flunky. They said he's anti-Israel, friends with terrorists...who actually want him to win. And the most absurd rumor of all...he's the Anti-Christ.
Now the focus for Obama haters has turned to his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and what are being called "controversial" comments he's made from the pulpit regarding America's politics.
It's not enough that we've adopted their religion and most Blacks are worshiping to their white blue-eyed Jesus, but now they want to dictate the message that we receive as well. And in the process, they've backed Obama against a wall, forcing him to publicly distance himself from his pastor in order to prove that he's not an angry Black man in disguise.
Civil rights icon the Rev. Joseph Lowery once said, "The country's creating a 51st state--the state of denial.
I guess if the history books favored my race against all reality, I'd be pissed off at anyone who tried to say otherwise. Too bad.
The fact is that Rev. Wright isn't the first or the last preacher or Black to call out America for her racist history. A history that for some reason we are always being encouraged to forget because today Americans are transcending race. Is that why Black men and women are being imprisoned almost as fast their mothers can give birth to them? Is that the reason why a man who called a group of young Black women "nappy-headed ho's" is still on the air? And were we rising above race when it was joked that Tiger Woods should be lynched? Is the transcending of race to blame for the pimps and ho's parties on university and college campuses around the country?
The belief that America is somehow transcending race because whites voted for a Black man is dangerous thinking.
Another greatly feared Black man, Dr. Maulana Karenga, taught me that I am American by birth and African by choice and quite frankly that's the feeling of a lot of African-Americans who are fully aware of the United States' role in the history of not only the underdevelopment of Africa, but generations of Black Americans. One Black man running for president isn't enough to erase that history or the feelings that many Blacks harbor -- whether publicly or on the down low -- towards the United States government and white folks. We haven't touched on the issue of reparations, which our government continues to downplay.
But it's this constant state of denial that continues to have some white folks' sheets all up in a bunch to the point where they want to now go into our churches and dictate the message that the pastor delivers. And if they have their way, we'll be singing hallelujah and thanking Jesus for slavery, Jim Crow, and the end of affirmative action, because if you recall it was the Bible that justified whites' mistreatment of Blacks. But wait---we haven't forgotten Guyana.
The church, our church, white Jesus aside, is the one institution that carried Blacks through America's state-sanctioned slavery, lynching, racial discrimination, oppression, disenfranchisement, and exploitation. It is not our responsibility as Blacks to sugarcoat the truth to make it a easier pill for some whites to swallow.
Yes, it's that state of denial that begins to kick in right about now whenever the words lynching, racism, and slavery are mentioned in relationship to the Black experience and the role whites played in it that is hard for some to comprehend.
So here comes the mainstream, and at times divisive, media trying to take Wright's comments out of context and making it into a bigger issue than what it should be, perhaps to make up for a slow news day and/or Clinton's complaints of a media love affair with Obama. Either way, I thought race wasn't supposed to be a factor in this election? Maybe they're forgetting that Wright is but one Black pastor in this country and I am willing to bet that a peek into other Black churches around the country and the message is quite the same, maybe even more controversial. And that's just Black churches.
Let's not forget All Saints Church in Pasadena, California, which had been under investigation for a guest sermon its former rector had given just before the 2004 presidential election. In it, he strongly criticized the war in Iraq but said he believed that both President Bush and his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, were good Christians. This was taken as an endorsement of Kerry over Bush and in came the IRS.
It wasn't that long ago when we were dealing with the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow. Then came the mysterious arrival of crack cocaine in Black neighborhoods around the country and COINTELPRO. By the late 70s, the white sheets had been replaced with business suits and phony smiles. And even though the damage had been done that didn't stop them from giving us Reagan.
A.M.E. church founder Richard Allen said "the only place that Blacks felt they could maintain an element of self-expression was the church," and I'll add, but they still managed to burn down more than a few back in the day.