jasonrh

I was a lot more sick of the coverage of those sermons in a 24/7 loop.

An entire career of fighting for social justice and leading the most powerful black church in the country summed up by Sean Hannity in 45 seconds of clips.

I still fail to see what the fuss was about some of the comments. The eight that are harped upon by the Self-Righteous-Pompous-Middle-Class-White Brigade only actually contain one falsehood that is arguably truly offensive, and even it needs to be placed in context.

1) "He did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky...he was ridin' dirty" - true. The Clintons have long tried to encourage racial division for the sake of their own political aims while having no desire whatsoever to actually help the black community. Bill's sole reason for the claim to being the first black president was his being a serial adulterer who wasn't very well liked by David Duke.

2) Supporting the Black Work Ethic - and? The black community needs special support from black organisations because it isn't like anyone else is going to do it. Like, say, Geraldine Ferrarro or Hillary Clinton.

3) "God Damn America!" - much ado about nothing. In the context of his speech about social inequities it makes total and perfect sense. It is a condemnation of ignored disparities between the average American of colour and the average white American rather than an active call for God to set his wrath down on the nation.

4) "The US of KKK-A" - again, so what? He's making the point that America still has had huge racial problems, and he comes from an era that actually had an active KKK.

We had a former Grand Dragon of the KKK (basically the leading sheet-wearer/cross-burner/lyncher of a whole state) Democratic Senate Majority Leader who was a Grand Dragon of the KKK as recently as 1989, and he's now the venerated Dean of the US Senate. He spoke of "niggers" on TV as recently as in 2001. Until 2003 the Republican Dean of the Senate was a man who ran as a 'Dixiecrat' for president with a segregationist platform - he then became a Democrat again and later of Republican. These two led the active fillibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A 2005 retiree from the Senate was Ernest Hollings, who as Governor of South Carolina restored the Confederate flag to the state capital building as a part of his segregationist policies. The vast majority of Democrats voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And the Democrats are supposed to be the pro-black party.

Hell, John Kennedy, the standard against which all young Democrats are still judged, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 - the only such act he had a chance to vote for in his short Congressional career - and after promising to get a new one passed did fuck all in his three years in office.

5) "Hillary ain't ever been called nigger" - true. And again, the Dean of Democrats in the Senate spoke of "niggers" in a tv interview as recently as in 2001.

6) The US sponsors state terrorism against the Palestinians...9/11 is...our chickens coming home to roost" - many on the left believe this and expressed these sentiments. If anything this should help him amongst the anti-war crowd on a day Hillary gave a speech claiming Obama was lying about taking the truth out.

7) The Tuskegee Experiment - absolutely true. The US of KKK-A did conduct experiments on injecting blacks with syphillis. The so-called "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male" lasted from 1932-1972, which is just unbelievablely horrible and something the vast majority of Hannity-types or the blue-collar white Democrats who are leaning Hillary have never heard of. God damn us for that, I'll totally agree with him there.

8) AIDS was designed as an instrument of Genocide on blacks - hogwash, obviously. But grounded in fears that are based on the above incidents, and something which has been expressed by black social justice crusaders of the Civil Rights era a lot more than the average white (who couldn't give a damn) knows.

Wright comes from an era of angry (rightfully so) and active opposition to much of the white community as a part of the Civil Rights struggle. To ignore that is to completely disown America's shady past.

Obama IS a post-racial candidate from a post-racial generation. If he gets thrown under the bus because he had to kiss the rings of powerful elders in the black community who have different views than he does, and come from a different era, then we have learned nothing as a racially divided society scuppers the bid of the first post-racial candidate.