SubscribeWright: US Is Too Racist For A Black President
From the March 13, 2007 edition of Germany’s Spiegel:
[AFP caption:] After nearly two decades serving as a mentor and moral guide to presidential hopeful Barack Obama (L), Reverend Jeremiah Wright may become his biggest liability as he closes in on the Democratic nomination.
Is America Too Racist for a Black President?
March 13, 2007
Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has been attracting a lot of early attention. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., says while the Democrats are ready for more faith, America may not be ready for a black president.
SPIEGEL: Barack Obama seems to be developing a compassionate liberal answer to the so-called “compassionate conservative” platform US President George W. Bush ran on in 2000. Is the Democratic Party looking to take more care of the religious voter?
Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.: I wouldn’t say “more care.” The United Church of Christ has a 350 year history of being on the side of social justice. Our denomination was against slavery. We were a part of the Underground Railroad; part of the abolitionist movement. So it’s nothing new for us. What is new is that Barack says we need to stop being afraid to talk about our faith and how our faith and values influence public policy and the decisions we make. We’ve been biting our tongues because we don’t want to offend our Jewish friends and our Muslim friends. The new movement is toward not being afraid to talk about your faith. But you should also stop thinking you have absolute truth — that your faith is the only one.
SPIEGEL: Isn’t that the nature of faith, though? Believing strongly in your faith to the exclusion of others?
Wright: We’re not on this planet alone. Right now, the average American or the average German or the average Brit couldn’t tell you the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. I mean, you got Christians who lynch people in the name of Jesus, and you got Muslims who fly planes into buildings. But you got some Muslims who don’t do that. You got some Christians who ain’t got time to lynch people. We need to stop lumping folks together and start living together. Otherwise, we’re going to kill each other off because you don’t believe what I believe. That’s crazy. Before Democrats were quiet because they didn’t want people to think they were fanatics. Barack has broken that ice.
SPIEGEL: But how far can you go? As Barack Obama points out in his book, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream,” religion is more about convictions and truth, whereas politics is about compromise. Where are the limits to introducing faith into the political arena?
Wright: Let’s take a simple issue. Far right radical conservative Christians want to put prayer back in the school. Now my family may start off the day in prayer, and I’m going to teach my daughters and my sons how to pray. But I’m not going to force your kids to pray like my kids. In public, I have to understand that I’m still going to pray tonight and tomorrow morning, and my girls and my son better pray too. But I’m not going to force my Jewish friends, my Muslim friends, my Hindu friends, my Sikh friends to hear a Christian prayer in a public forum like school. We understand that private faith does not force public decisions. That’s how you work at compromise. I haven’t given up what I believe, but I live in community with — in a city, state, nation, and world with — people who don’t believe what I believe. That doesn’t make them defective or inferior.
SPIEGEL: That sounds different from what Obama wrote in his book. He wrote that faith should return to the center of both private and public life. Should he ever become president, what would that mean.
Wright: From what I know of Barack — from what he has written, from his speeches and from the life I know he has lived — faith in public life does not mean that God tells you to bomb another country or to go get Saddam Hussein. Faith in public life means that every child, regardless of their religious belief, should have health care. That every child should be able to go to school based on the intelligence they have not only the ability of their parents to pay. Because my faith saying I can bomb Iraq is the same as your faith saying you can take over a passenger plane and fly it into the World Trade Center.
SPIEGEL: Can you be a good Christian and be pro-choice?
Wright: Both. You can be a good Christian and be pro-life. You can be a good Christian and be pro-choice.
SPIEGEL: You mean it’s a purely political question and faith has nothing to say about it?
Wright: First of all, we shouldn’t even be having this discussion. Neither one of us can get pregnant. But what a woman decides about her body and her God is her business. Women who are pro-life can be just a good a Christian as a woman who is pro-choice and vice versa. It gets to be a problem when I decide one position should be the law for everybody. In public life, we have to find a way to live together even though we disagree — and some things we will never agree on. But we’ve got to leave this I’m-going-to-kill-you-because-you-don’t-believe-what-I-believe attitude behind.
SPIEGEL: So why bring faith into the public arena at all, if it’s so divisive?
Wright: Faith should be pulled into the public arena when it affects how we live. If it doesn’t — if it’s so heavenly focused — it does no earthly good. What does my faith say about 44 million people with no health care? What does my faith say about the fact that my girl can’t be a nuclear physicist because she’s black and from the inner city and because her schooling options are not what they are for George W. Bush’s girls or for Bill and Hillary’s daughter Chelsea? My faith says, no, that’s not what God intended. It pulls it back into the public arena the idea that there’s got to be something fair for all of us.
SPIEGEL: Do you think Obama would be able to win Christian voters back from the Republicans were he to become the Democratic nominee for the White House?
Wright: That’s hard to tell. If the pattern of what we saw in the November elections — where evangelical Christians, whether Republicans or Democrats, abandoned the stay-the-course doctrine, abandoned the years of lies — if that pattern continues, I think politicians like Barack are going to win people back. We’re making more enemies than winning friends at the moment. We’re making enemies because (what the Bush administration is doing) is not Christ.
SPIEGEL: Thousands of people listen to your sermons. Can you as a pastor help move voters from the right side of the political spectrum back to the left?
Wright: First of all, not that many people are church goers. But that’s America in general. That said, historically, the black church it has been the political force. It caused blacks to fight to get out of slavery, for example. African-Americans used their faith to not lose hope and to keep on fighting. A clergy person needs to be aware of that and needs to keep in mind the clergy’s role in changing the public life for the betterment of all. Not just those who believe like I believe, look like I look, think like I think, live where I live. But for all. How do we treat the most vulnerable in this society? What are we doing for our old people? What are we doing for our kids? What are we doing for our poor? The clergy need to put those questions on voters’ minds.
SPIEGEL: Barack Obama has been criticized as a so-called “post-racial politician” who shies away from those interests traditionally important to black voters in the United States…
Wright: I think that criticism is unjustified. It’s a cute term, but he shouldn’t be criticized for who he is — a person who doesn’t “play the race card,” but who instead talks about the issues. Look at it this way. Nobody wants their wives to live in fear of getting from the house to the grocery store or to her job. Whether they’re black wives or white wives isn’t the issue. I don’t care what color they are. The bullets don’t discriminate. We’ve got to do something to make sure they have a safe environment. Now to call that post-racial is unfair. We’ve got some common needs that we need to address. How do we put policies in place that will ensure their safety in the future? That’s the kind of politician Barack is.
SPIEGEL: Do you think he will be President in two years?
Wright: No. Unless Barak pulls off nationally what he was able to pull off locally, and wins the hearts and minds of people who have been perennially anti-black. Racism is so deeply engrained in this country that he could be flawless in terms of his policies. But he’s still a black man in this country, which has a sorry history in terms of how it sees African-American males. That’s my 65-year-old, jaded perception of where this country is. I was pleasantly surprised in the Senate election. I would like to be as pleasantly surprised in the presidential election.
SPIEGEL: Rev. Wright, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us.
But Mr. Wright is not crazy. Or a racist.
Not much.
19 Responses to “Wright: US Is Too Racist For A Black President”
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March 15th, 2008 at 7:42 am
A quick google search finds.:
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/ma.....ellT3.html
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/ma.....muele.html
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/ma.....borah.html
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/ma.....rleya.html
Also….
Aziza Baccouche
Njema J. Frazier
Windy Hinton
Alicia Uzzle
Are you SURE a black person can’t be a nuclear phycisist? I would venture a guess that Wright’s daughter can’t, because she’s spent her life learning to blame people of another race for her problems instead of solving them. That’s not in the slightest restricted to black people–you find racists everywhere.
March 15th, 2008 at 8:27 am
20 years with this ignorant thug and we are supposed to believe that Obama had no idea he was such a pathetic racist? Obama is either lying or is such a bad judge of character that , well, let’s just say he shouldn’t be president of anything, especially these United States! By the way, many thanks, Redneck, for the wonderful research!
March 15th, 2008 at 9:08 am
This quote from scripture came immediately to mind…
If one interprets darkness as light how dark must their darkness be?
March 15th, 2008 at 11:11 am
“Is America Too Racist for a Black President?”
I think the question should be.
Is this wanna be Black President Too Racist for America ?
March 15th, 2008 at 11:11 am
“You can be a good Christian and be pro-choice.”
I disagree.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Some one needs to pay attention, Obamamessia is only half black, his mother was white and he was raised by his white grandparents.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Man, this clown makes it really hard to admit to being a democrat.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Then don’t be a democrat. *wink*
March 15th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Redneck: Nice post. One of my personal heroes is Thomas Sowell. I read quite a bit of his work and it wasn’t until later I learned he was African American…he race had absolutely no bearing on my opinion of the man and his genius.
If you happened to watch The O’Reilly Factor last night, you can see where this is going. The United States is a pretty tolerant nation, but black America is stuck in the 1850s.
As a nation we’ve had our share of injustices, but as far as I’m concerned the slate was wiped clean after 40 years of affirmative actions, civil rights legislation, racial quotas, government set-asides, the take over of the US Postal Service, and the “Great Society”, which transferred wealth equal to the value of the entire S&P 500 and three-quarters of all US farmland.
Dez nailed it. The African American “community”, which votes over 90% Democratic, is racist, vindictive, contemptuous and spiteful toward the American mainstream.
Rather than set himself apart from this self-destructive mind-set, Obama embraced it. His wife was not proud of this country until recently; his pastor is a bigot, an anti-Semite, and anti-American. This is his spiritual leader and his life-partner: This is a view into this man’s soul and conscience. This is the community to which he belongs.
March 15th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
ptat;
……”are supposed to believe that Obama had no idea he was such a pathetic racist?….”
He’s suffering from Obamnesia!
March 15th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Where *did* Pastor Wright’s daughter go to school?
March 15th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Dave2882; ….”Where *did* Pastor Wright’s daughter go to school?…..”
Indoctrinate U. I think.
March 15th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Expounding on Redneck’s 7:42 AM post above;
This from Wikipedia;
Obviously, Wright is a learned man, a Doctorate and two Masters along with seven honorary Doctorates. Tell me again why his daughter didn’t have the opportunity to become a nuclear physicist? Or maybe the apple just fell and rolled out of the orchard.
Note the bold item above;
We have this BHO quote concerning Wright from a thread here at S&L;
So which is it, did Wright serve in the USN or the USMC? Both?
According to the bio linked at Wiki, (footnote 3), Wright served in the USMC 2nd Mar Div from 61′ to 63′ and it appears he was a USN Corpsman from 63′ to 67′.
A minor oversight or miss-statement perhaps, but as close as BHO and Wright appear to be, shouldn’t the Obamessiah have the details down pat by now?
March 15th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Begging forgivness in advance from all my swabbie friends, I pray his service was indeed in the Navy and not the Marines. (I know, I know, the Marines are a department of the Navy too…….the MEN’S department! :o}) And the “served this nation with honor” part shouldn’t be too difficult to verify through a records check. And, yes, he is intelligent, which makes him more of a danger–he’s extremely persuasive by means of his verbal gymnastics.
……..”Wright served in the USMC 2nd Mar Div from 61′ to 63′ and it appears he was a USN Corpsman from 63′ to 67′…….”
If this is true then he was active during the VietNam era. He could have been assigned to “Fleet” or…………..? Does anyone know?
March 15th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
“U.S. too racist for black president?” What does he think, he’s going to guilt voters & delegates into putting BHO in? It’s OK for J. wright to say things that are a micrometer away from treason, but we are still supposed to have the “white guilt”? BS. How can they keep digging the hole when supposedly we have the shovel?
March 15th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
This is how dishonest marxists frame arguments. If Obama loses, or doesn’t even get his party’s nomination, it’s because people are racists and couldn’t support a black man. It couldn’t possibly be because people want a little more from their presidents than appearance alone could it?
Black people in this country have every opportunity to succeed in anything they have the desire to pursue, as do whites, asians, and hispanics. It’s American, that’s what we do here: succeed.
Which political party is against school vouchers which would allow black (or any other race) children to go from a failing government school that prepares them for nothing, to a private school that relies on their student’s success to stay open? Of course this man is lying about his daughter not being able to go to attend any college she wants. She and any other girl can do whatever they want in this great country. But when someone like this–who is supposed to be an inspiring figure–tells you constantly that you can’t, maybe you start to believe. When this man, and Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton are your role models, but Bill Cosby, Michael Steele, and Condaleeza Rice are chided, your race is on a dangerous path.
I don’t know why this man is so hateful of whites and vindictive toward America as a whole, all I know is that he is doing what marxists do to gain power: cultivate a class of victims which needs you in order to survive. Where would the democratic party be without victims? If people can do for themselves they don’t need politicians much at all, and they damn sure don’t need politicians that want to take from them.
Which political party is it that has promised blacks for decades that they could get ahead and be successful, only to encourage them to seek assistance for every facet of their lives? And just like all of the promises that schools will improve, and their lives will improve, and the immigration problem would fix ittself, and that Social Security would be fine, it’s all turned out to be lies.
If black people supported the Republican party, there would be no class or race warfare in this country now. This is the party of equality, and sadly many blacks don’t want that. But the ones that want a race war may be happy come November.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
AmericanIPA—I am pretty sure the answer to your question about “why this man is so hateful” is simple economics. Racism has been greasing his path to “success” and riches from the start. Racism, not to mention hatred, can be very profitable—manufacturing controversy sets him apart and makes him far more marketable than a mere preacher concerned about spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ.
March 15th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
From the TUCC website Bio, “Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed his elementary education in that city and then went to Virginia Union University. After three and a half years at Virginia Union, Pastor Wright left school and entered the United States Marine Corps. He transferred from the USMC into the United States Navy where he served as a cardiopulmonary technician.”
From answers.com ”Military/Wartime Service: U.S. Marine Corps, private first class, 1961-63; U.S. Navy, hospital corpsman third class, 1964-67.
Nowhere did I find Vietnam mentioned.
March 16th, 2008 at 5:21 am
US too racist for a black President? Well, Wright better hope so or he’s going to have to find a REAL job! ROFLMAO