re: Rob Adcox, July 14 at 8:32 pm #

Unfortunately, he will get the most votes and is head and shoulders above McCain.

Ron Paul who make the most effective president.

How soon we forget when it one of our own.
Robert Carlyle Byrd (born November 20, 1917) is the senior United States Senator from West Virginia and a member of the Democratic Party. Byrd has held the office since January 3, 1959; he is the longest-serving member in the history of the Senate. He is also the longest-serving—and oldest—current member of the United States Congress.

Byrd is President pro tempore of the United States Senate of the 110th United States Congress, a position that puts him third in line of presidential succession, behind Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He also held this post previously from 1989–1995, briefly in January 2001, and from June 2001 – January 2003.

He also previously held many leadership positions: Senate Conference Secretary, Majority Whip and twice Majority Leader. He is the only former majority leader currently in the Senate.

Participation in the Ku Klux Klan
In 1942, 24-year-old Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), whose parades in Matoaka, West Virginia, he had witnessed in his childhood. He was unanimously elected Exalted Cyclops, or leader, of his local chapter.[4]

Byrd, in his autobiography, attributed the beginnings of his political career to this incident, although he lamented that they involved the Klan. According to Byrd’s recollection, KKK official Joel L. Baskin told him “You have a talent for leadership, Bob ... The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation.” Byrd recalls that “suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities. I was only 23 or 24, and the thought of a political career had never struck me. But strike me that night, it did."[4] He participated in the KKK during World War II, holding the titles Kleagle (recruiter) and Exalted Cyclops. He did not serve in the military during the war, working instead as a welder in a Baltimore, Maryland shipyard, where he helped build warships.[citation needed]

Byrd commented on the 1945 controversy about racially integrating the military. Byrd, when he was 28 years old, wrote to segregationist Senator Theodore Bilbo, of Mississippi, vowing never to serve in such a military:

Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.[5]
He had earlier written Bilbo “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side”.
From Wikipedia

Oh Conservative Yankee,

This made my day!!

“...Even Magic Johnson can’t fuck that many women worldwide and he has a plane!”

I can’t stop laughing.

Now, what about Bill Clinton? Do you think HE could do this?

Of course, Rev. J. Wright was right about racism all the way. Meanwhile, all the white bigots and racists were wrong all the way.

Rev. Wright was ahead of his time in seeing the truth and talking about it, whereas the racists were far beyond the times in discovering their disease and accepting to be treated. The distance between Rev. Wright and the racists is like the distance between one seeing the present and future through the past and ones still living in the medieval mentality of the distant past without recognizing the progression of times.

In light of this, the racists are the ones that should be under attack, not the warrior fighting racism.

Sorry CY. It is Spencer Wells. (His full name is listed a few posts down and I did include it and book title in first post.)

But I am happy to provide again. If you get any of these I would be interested in what you think.

Both are probably availabe at the library too.

I have included links to both the book and the DVD.

Happy reading and/or viewing.

BOOK:

http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Man-Genetic-Odyssey/dp/0 812971469

DVD

http://www.shoppbs.org/sm-pbs-journey-of-man-dvd--pi-1 402989.html

<<<<<< It is physically impossible for “ALL humans” to be “… >>>>>>>

Well get the book or watch the video and see for yourself. He actually traces, with DNA evidence, how humans left this one tribe and migrated all over the earth. And it did not take that long. It happened faster than nost people believed possible. But he shows how it did.

And being a scientist he knows there is always more to learn and that models keep changing as we get more evidence.

BIO OF WELLS FROM WIKIPEDIA

“Wells did his Ph.D. work under Richard Lewontin, and later did postdoctoral research with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Sir Walter Bodmer. His work, which has helped to establish the critical role played by Central Asia in the peopling of the world, has been published in journals such as Science, American Journal of Human Genetics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

He wrote the book The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (2002), which explains how genetic data has been used to trace human migrations over the past 50,000 years, when modern humans first migrated outside of Africa. According to Wells, one group took a southern route and populated southern India and southeast Asia, then Australia. The other group, accounting for 90% of the world’s non-African population (some 5 billion people as of late 2006), took a northern route, eventually peopling most of Eurasia (largely displacing the aboriginals in southern India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia in the process), North Africa and the Americas. Wells also wrote and presented the PBS/National Geographic documentary of the same name. By analyzing DNA from people in all regions of the world, Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 - 90,000 years ago, a man also known as Y-chromosomal Adam.[1]

Since 2005, Wells has headed The Genographic Project, undertaken by the National Geographic Society, IBM and the Waitt Family Foundation, which will add to our knowledge of human history by analyzing DNA samples from around the world, thereby creating a picture of how our ancestors populated the planet.”

It keeps evolving.

Out of context sound bites selected to make the comments contentious and unpatriotic, dost not matter to the bigots for it was spoken by a black man.

Jeffersom us one of my favorite Presidents. I have read numerous bios and have been to Monticello three times.

As for children:

“Members of Hemings’ family have passed down the paternity claim through the generations. Last year, a DNA study concluded that Jefferson was likely the father of at least one of Hemings six children, Eston Hemings, the slave’s youngest son (JET, Nov. 16, 1998). “

You can read the entire article here:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-54851954.html

This is not the definitive piece on the issue. But there is no doubt Hemmings was his mistress.

The Monticelleo organization says that more study needs to be done. NOT. DNA is pretty compelling proof.

The school system must be worsr than I think. Can’t you even read a simple sentence and understand it?

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE

Spencer Wells who wrote the book The Journey of Man (also an excellent PBS special and video) who has proven that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.

Wells does not say this ‘single man’ is the FIRST man (or woman), just that everyone else on earth today is descended from this man.

The book is sometimes a hard read becasue of all the DNA background. The video is much easier to understand. Better to see it than to rely on Wikipedia. Plys Wells’s research is far more recent than Peking Man, and actually fills in some of the holes.

Not to worry JimBob,

I figured it out, and probably the rest of us did as well.

I was fortunate enough to FINALLY learn the real history of the US, and I’m embarrassed to say that it was only in the past decade.

As a person of color born in the 50’s, the true history of the US (which had slavery and racism at it’s foundation at the onset) was NEVER taught in my first 12 years of education. Rather, we just got the standard Thanksgiving stories about the Natives sharing turkey dinner with the Pilgrims, like everybody was all happy and stuff.

Not quite. Those times were outright VIOLENT!!

And now, in my further and more detailed studies of Constitutional Law, the truth reveals itself.

And, I do believe in the adage that “The truth shall set us free.” ALL of us. That does mean that we have to find it out though. History is the best place to begin. It’s been hidden under the rug for far too long. Just sweeping it there DOESN’T make it go away.

This is beautiful, Lee. You are so right. Despite her faults there is still much to be proud of and love.

Like you my maternal grandparents were from, ‘the old country.’ And they had similar expereinces as yours.

And I am glad you spoke out to those who only have bad things to say about the US.

When I was in ccollge in the 60’s and marched against Vietnam and for civil rights and women’s rights Some printed up some bumper stickers that a lot of us slapped on our b cars that read, “America - Fix it or Forget it.”

So some local truck drivers came up with a bumper sticker that saud, “Anerica - Love it or Leave it.”

Today with a few more years and a lot more expereince I realize both groups were wrong. The bumper sticker should have said “America - Love it and Fix it.”

If you are not in the trenches teaching in an inner city, working in a political party, walking in the marches or on the picket lines, lobbying and testifying before city, county, state and federal legislative bodies, working a food kitchen for the poor, enlisting in the military then you really don’t get it.

Again Lee, great post and thanks for telling it like it is.

<<<<<< I am very surprised you were unaware of sexual exploitation of female slaves. NAIVE!! >>>>>>

Quote me jack. Cite from one of my posts where I say or I deny this. I have never even duscussed this topic on this or any other blog. (until now)

I was referring only to your wildly insane and historically inaccurate assertion that Strom Thurmond was a founding father. And the woman in question was not a slave.  “At the time of Washington’s birth, her mother worked for Edgefield’s segregated school system, and Thurmond taught and coached white students. “ [Ken Cummins 12/02, The Black Comment]

In the first post you never mentioned Jefferson. You mention his name in your 2nd post or response to me.(And yes, I know about Sally Hemmings. And she was his long term lover.)

The only example you cited for founding fathers in that first post was Thurmon. I hate to tell you {well, not really} he was NOT a founding father.

And here is your actual quote:  “Our founding fathers raped slave women, were racist and white supremacists but we do not think any less of them (i.e. Strom Thurmon)” Posted By jack, March 31 at 8:39 am #145660(Unregistered commenter)

i.e. means ‘for example.’ So you said/wrote that Strom Thurmon was a founding father. He couldn’t have been. He was not even born yet. He was born after the Civil War. Different age in American history.

And here is part of my reply back - “I never knew Strom Thurman was a Founding Father.” I was needling you about your apparent lack of knowledge about U.S. History.I take it you don’t get sarcasm very well either.

And no it neither shocks or surprises me that we are all of mixed blood. I have know that all my life. And I have already dealt with this on a different thread when I talked about geneticist Spencer Wells who wrote the book The Journey of Man (also an excellent PBS special and video) who has proven that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago. The book and the video document his discovery.

So get off your high horse jack and learn your history and learn how to write.

Compared with other sites Truth Digs is a bit ‘off’ with regard to Main Poat and replys. It probably was not your fault JimBob.

We know who the racist is, anti American Church?  So anyone who calls our government on it’s lies and deceptions is anti American.  Great logic, small minds think alike, yes we do know who the racist is.

Never question authority, it hurts.

Backers of Barack Obama say he has the best opportunity to create a new sense of national unity and to transcend divisions within this country ...You mean the same Barak Obama who attended an anti-American, racist church for 20 years? ... You mean the same Barak Obama who swore allegiance to the divisive ‘black value system’ for 20 years? ... You mean the same Barak Obama whose chosen mentor/advisor for 20 years is an anti-American, racist, who gave a disgusting, racist like Louis Farrakan a life time achievement award? This is the best person to bring unity to America? WHAT, ARE YOU KIDDING?

Have not seen anyone comment on the truths that are U.S. yet, but could have missed them.  Our country has abused many over the years, the Back people may be at the forfront, but I suspect we are forgetting the Native Americans and of course what we did to our own Japanese citizens. 

Bigotry has to do with differences any little differences, now we have the Mexicans to abuse, everyone gets a turn in the barrel. 

Bigots need something to make them selves feel good about their disfunction, why not pick on someone different, there are many easy targets to choose from. Hell, make one up.

The above was meant to be a response to cyrena’s reply to my post below, but I mis-posted it.

You’re quite right.  At the same time, many other populations came to America in poverty and subjugation if not slavery yet their whiteness allowed them to assimilate rapidly.  In fact, why was it possible to enslave Africans if not because of the marked extent of their Otherness?  There were other primitive and defenseless white populations on the planet which could have been dragged here in chains, but the lack of an inherent sense of their Otherness would not have allowed Americans of European descent to accept them as slaves. 
My point is that the maintenance of the institutional, habitual, ingrained racism to which you refer is at least partially fueled by something that is built into human DNA.  It is not so much secondary as it is fundamental, with many layers of socialized behavior overlaid upon it. It is never discussed, never admitted to; I propose that if it were, a healthier discussion of the evils that were allowed to happen because of it could take place.

You write:  “Our founding fathers raped slave women, were racist and white supremacists but we do not think any less of them (i.e. Strom Thurmon)”

Where did you learn history?  What history book did you read? Your teachers must be really proud of you. I never knew Strom Thurman was a Founding Father.

Also, go read what black liberation theology is all about.

You write “I think Clinton’s tactic to publicize and emphasize Obama’s relationship with Wright is underhanded,..”

For the 100th time, Clinton had NOTHING at all to do with the Wright controversy. The information has been out there for over a year, especially on right wing conservative blogs and newspapers.

In fact on Jan. 9, 2008 Joe Conoson posted right here on Truth Dig about what Obama could expect if he was the nominee, and Wright was on his list. That was several months before he became a household name. Link below.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20080109_the_comi ng_attack_on_barack/

Why do you always blame Hillary? This controversy is of Obama’s own making. Obama made it an issue by not breaking his association with him, and t making him his mentor, and staying in the church for 20 years.

And for the record, Brian Ross of ABC News broke the story and no Clinton did not leak it. There were rumblings from several sources, all Ross did was go to the church web site, biught the tapes, then watched them. The rest they say is history.

Lee! Whites are of two types: one type is noble and conscientious,like Tim Wise; and the other type is called white trash, so which type are you?!

This is part of it JimBob, but only part of it. Other cultures don’t have these same issues.

We have to also accept all the rest that comes with it, which is that our nation was founded on slavery.

Even now, you’ll find people that are perfectly accepting of black folks and others of color, UNTIL they (the people of color) manage to acquire something that the member of the dominant culture doesn’t have, and it doesn’t matter what it is. It could be an assumed better job, a bigger house, a better education, fame, power, whatever it is.

That’s just the way the socio-psychological structure of our society, which has been based on capitalism from the beginning.

So yes, these other standard human reactions do come into play, but they are secondary to MAINTAINING the the racism that is institutional. You’re talking about racism on the micro-level, (generally a result of ignorance or lack of exposure) and people get over that the same way they get over a fear of flying at 40,000.

Racism in America exists on the MACRO level, and it’s endemic. It’s part of the structure of the society. It always has been. That’s why we need to know our American history, for it to really correct.

We’re in denial about the basis for racism which, if perhaps we can own it and face up to the truth of it, will allow all humans, of every color and race, to live together more peacefully.  That truth is that we, like other “pack animals,” are most comfortable when surrounded by those who look, sound and act like us.  We can overcome that basic instinct, just as we can learn not to freak out at 40,000 feet in an airplane or while maneuvering down a crowded freeway with death or serious injury hovering mere inches away from our bumper.  But first we have to acknowledge that, just as we’re more relaxed on the ground or strolling through a park, we are in fact conditioned to want to see ourselves in those around us.  Too many millennia of human development, in which small differences in physiognomy signaled danger from groups with threatening agendas, have passed for us to simply wave away our gut reaction to “the Other” because we’ve arrived at the intellectual conclusion that “all men are created equal.” Obviously, this doesn’t mean we should all clan up into homogeneous groups and build walls to keep out “exotics.” But if we’re going to derive the benefits that accrue to heterogeneity we need to admit that on a reptilian level, it goes against the grain.  Once we do that, we can develop the means to accommodate and mitigate natural reflexes.  But as long as we are in denial about our fundamental nature, as long as we tell ourselves that it’s just plain morally wrong to feel as we do, we won’t find a true and lasting solution to the question of how we can all live together in acceptance and peace.

I swear some people are thick as a brick arent they?

Thanks Fadel Abdallah for posting Tim Wise’s article.

While I agree with some of the points pastor Wright brings to the forefront I also believe that many of his comments and actions perpetuate the same kind of racism he is so vehmently preaching against. Furthermore, I think Clinton’s tactic to publicize and emphasize Obama’s relationship with Wright is underhanded, but then again that’s politics.

EVEN WHEN THE ‘ENDS’ HAVEN’T PROVEN TO BE A GENUINE ‘WIN’.

Let me try and understand what you are saying. Is this statement a kin with Donald Rumsfeld’s , know unknowns and unknown knows? Kinda sounds like it.

“....but would a true Christian espouse hatred of an entire race of people from a pulpit?...”

Well, indeed I HAVE heard alleged Christians DO this..espouse hatred of an ENTIRE RACE from a pulpit, (and other locations).

However...WRIGHT HAS DONE NO SUCH THING!!

So, it’s all in your imagination cracker.

(and those twisted out of context sound bytes).

Your over contumelious denial of Racism and bigotry is exactly the problem.  But only in part, their are many other problems in our country that need address, seems for some and you denial is a river in Egypt.

Your assumptions are without merit, the flaw in your craw is you assume way to much.

Tim Wise article address a problem of how people perceive things, compassion would go a long way in helping your assertions.

You know, there are still a lot of Americans who are patriotic, and proud to be Americans. Although there are some things wrong with this country, there are a lot more things right with this country. I guess that’s why in spite of the continual America bashing from people like you and Cyrena and Leefeller, you choose to live here, instead of the Islamic countries you constantly defend. What have you three ever done to positively contribute to America? Have you been in the military, or public service of any kind? I have ... as did my father, cousins, uncles, etc.. Please let us not forget that thousands of Americans of all races have either risked their lives, or given their lives for the freedoms you ingrates now enjoy.  My Grandparents came here from an oppressive foreign country in order to start a ‘free’ new life. They ran into bigotry and racism, but they respected and embraced the American culture, instead of bashing it. They worked in sweat mills, along with people representing other countries and races to help make this country they were so proud of a better place. Like many others who came here, they assimilated into the American melting pot. People like you, Wright, etc. enjoy all the benefits of living here, while constantly complaining, accusing, etc..  This whole country is composed of various minorities with difficult histories, but you seem to think this country owes you entitlements over and above the rest of us.  if you think it’s so bad here, why don’t you move to an Islamic country, and see how many rights, freedoms, and harsh punishments you would endure. Talk is cheap! You malcontents wouldn’t even have the freedom to shoot off your mouth in the Islamic countries you defend. One of the great acts of wisdom that was established in America was to separate church and state. The thought of living under a 12th century theocracy with brutal restrictions and punishments is pretty scary. If you America bashers prefer to live under that kind of tyranny, fine ... but, don’t try to shove it down our throats.

Rob Adcox:

“… would a true Christian espouse hatred of an entire race of people from a pulpit?”

***

Well duh ... watch them go after those “Islamo” fascists on the boob tube! Complete with backdrop portraying typical “Arab” tooting gun, dressed in red robes and sporting small horns on forehead!

***

“I know he’s arrogant (another unchristian trait), but come on.”

Right ... come on already!

Definition of arrogant:
- Exaggerating or disposed to exaggerate one’s own worth or importance often by an overbearing manner.
- Having excessive pride in ones self.
- Making claims or pretensions to superior importance or rights; overbearingly assuming; insolently proud:

Now if that doesn’t describe most well known Christian Preachifyers, I don’t know what does!

That humility thing can often be found among their “followers” but rarely in the “leader.” Which pretty well insures the guy taking the name of God in vain will continue receiving un-earned respect, un-earned income and un-earned power.

And, in spite of the fact that the “piously” outraged Wright attackers claim to be offended by his alleged racism. The reality is, they are delighted. Kinda takes the spotlight off their own racism, while still allowing them to lustily pursue said racism!

A win-win for the lose-losers.

Ok We should never disturb the Disneyland with reality. People should never hear the Blunt Truth, they cannot handle it and of heaven forbid, they may agree with it, we cannot have any of that.

Live a lie or keep ones head in the sand. Apathy or ignore, well it has worked before.

It is so nice to hear a real Christian, condemn an other alleged unreal Christian. Me the right Christian, anyone that does not agree with me is not a true Christan. 

“Wright has zero credibility”.  Blunt truth should never be brought to the pulpit, only the comfort of the pew allowed.

Great piece. Sadly the bigots and racists will not read it or want to comprehend the real truths. 

It remains to be seen if Obama is hurt from the bigoted numbers.  Hopefully they are lower in numbers than in the past.  Part of Obamas Hope.

Like Obama, a refreshing piece of reality.

Bert,

I think you pointed out the ideological gulf in your suggestion (again) of what a ‘winner’ is, or even in what a ‘winning’ mentality is, and Leefeller made that clear enough in his own response.

These ARE in fact all opinions, (from all of us) and have everything to do with our individual ideologies, most often framed by our individual life experiences, our social experiences, and our own genetic (primarily our psychological) make-up.

But the real ‘difference’ here, (one of them) is in how one defines ‘winner’. You have (as many people represented here, and even more that I’ve known in my own life time) a ME/I conception of ‘win’ and what it means to ‘win’ rather than a ‘we/us’ conception of what a win actually means, conceptually/theoretically.

As a result, you are very much into the ‘ends justify the means’ mentality, EVEN WHEN THE ‘ENDS’ HAVEN’T PROVEN TO BE A GENUINE ‘WIN’. So, for you, (as with the large ‘other’ that represents the current far right radical movement of the Cheney regime,) it becomes a ‘whatever it takes’ to ‘win’. But even as you promote the movement, (and the means) you don’t have a correlated or otherwise integrated conception of what that ‘win’ actually is. At the very least, it’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and at worst, it leads to the destruction of the whole.

So, you rant and rave at me, call me a Social Elitist, (which is a joke that anyone who knows me would find overwhelmingly amusing in a sardonic sort of a way, since my own ideology is the very antithesis of anything that smells of ‘elitist’). And yet, you have no conception or comprehension of what a ‘winning’ mentality is in my own ideology.

That’s why you weren’t able to comprehend my comment of appreciation for the intelligence displayed by my fellow citizens, in being able to utilize their intellects for the greater good. In other words, our growing COLLECTIVE ability to see through the bullshit, and to exercise good sense for…the greater good.

This is, and I would say unarguably, a huge improvement over a collective society that at least ostensibly, elected a gangster regime that has high-jacked our nation, and taken us all hostage. (or maybe just 99% of us). And, we’ve been held hostage for damn year 8 years now, with none of the standard rescue tools (always available from the beginning of this experiment) having been put to use. (IMPEACHMENT).

So, even while we can (and should) accept and acknowledge that these gangsters were never actually ‘elected’ or appointed –by the people- we also have to accept and acknowledge that ENOUGH of us DID succumb to what can only be considered a lack of knowledge or other information in respect to what is best for our individual and collective interests.

MY comment was to say (though I wouldn’t have expected you to ‘get’ that perspective) that I’m hopefully encouraged and PROUD of the fact that more and more of us ARE ‘getting’ it. And that a ‘winning attitude’ in my opinion, means a unified and appropriately INFORMED populace. I see that developing, and I’m smart enough myself, to know that my OWN prosperity and ‘salvation’ along with that of my loved ones/friends/family/neighbors/etc, is 100% dependant on the welfare of every single other citizen. It does NOT help any one or few of us to ‘be smart’ or to ‘be educated’ or to have health care, or to have housing, or any of the rest of it, if we don’t ALL have it, at least to the measure that allows us to all thrive.

So for me, THAT’S the winning attitude.

End of rant.

Thanks Jack, for this mention of the PBS special. I’d missed it. Sounds very helpful to some of my own on-going research.

As for what you’ve posted here..yep..it’s all true.

If we can eventually divorce ourselves from the emotional rhetoric of the hate (and ignorance) that creates the problem, and just approach the HOW and WHY from an established collection of FACTS, then it would be a start.

I don’t know if that’s possible.

Dear Fadel,

Thanks so much for posting this article/piece from Tim Wise. Indeed, it is superb, and extraordinarily appropriate for this thread.

It probably goes without saying that it is an extremely helpful addition to my own on-going work, since the theme is consistent with my own endeavors. Basically, the US has a history of racism dating back to its very conception, and the bottom line is that as a collection of 300+ million citizens, far too few of us KNOW it, (this history) or are able to connect the conceptual dots to understand its effects on the collective social psychology of our nation.

It probably also goes without saying that there are MANY ways to study this development, (of racism in America) and that just one of them is the study of the Constitution. Most of us miss the reality of the language –BUILT INTO THAT DOCUMENT along the way- that has actually sanctioned and provided the foundation for what could only have resulted in the racism that we live with today.

That is of course only one element of it, but the history is foundational, and that’s the bottom line. We ignore it at our own peril, as we have for over two Centuries.

Meantime, I followed the piece to the link that published it, (counterpunch) though it was apparently originally published at LIP. (I was unfamiliar with that site). That made it easier for me to just zap the entire piece with my nifty little ‘adobe acrobat’ tool. (I do so love that little helper). So, for anyone else who would like to access it in its entirety, (one piece) I’ve put the link below.

Thanks again.

http://www.counterpunch.org/wise03182008.html

Here’s Part 6 of Tim Wise’s Article!
====================================
So what can we say about a nation that values lies more than it loves truth? A place where adherence to sincerely believed and internalized fictions allows one to rise to the highest offices in the land, and to earn the respect of millions, while a willingness to challenge those fictions and offer a more accurate counter-narrative earns one nothing but contempt, derision, indeed outright hatred? What we can say is that such a place is signing its own death warrant. What we can say is that such a place is missing the only and last opportunity it may ever have to make things right, to live up to its professed ideals. What we can say is that such a place can never move forward, because we have yet to fully address and come to terms with that which lay behind.
What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell one after another essential truth are demonized, not only for the stridency of their tone--which needless to say scares white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma--but for merely calling bullshit on those whose lies are swallowed whole?
And oh yes, I said it: white preachers lie. In fact, they lie with a skill, fluidity, and precision unparalleled in the history of either preaching or lying, both of which histories stretch back a ways and have often overlapped. They lie every Sunday, as they talk about a Savior they have chosen to represent dishonestly as a white man, in every picture to be found of him in their tabernacles, every children’s story book in their Sunday Schools, every Christmas card they’ll send to relatives and friends this December. But to lie about Jesus, about the one they consider God--to bear false witness as to who this man was and what he looked like--is no cause for concern.
Nor is it a problem for these preachers to teach and preach that those who don’t believe as they believe are going to hell. Despite the fact that such a belief casts aspersions upon God that are so profound as to defy belief--after all, they imply that God is so fundamentally evil that he would burn non-believers in a lake of eternal fire--many of the white folks who now condemn Jeremiah Wright welcome that theology of hate. Indeed, back when President Bush was the Governor of Texas, he endorsed this kind of thinking, responding to a question about whether Jews were going to go to hell, by saying that unless one accepted Jesus as one’s personal savior, the Bible made it pretty clear that indeed, hell was where you’d be heading.
So you can curse God in this way--and to imply such hate on God’s part is surely to curse him--and in effect, curse those who aren’t Christians, and no one says anything. That isn’t considered bigoted. That isn’t considered beyond the pale of polite society. One is not disqualified from becoming President in the minds of millions because they go to a church that says that shit every single week, or because they believe it themselves. And millions do believe it, and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
So white folks are mad at Jeremiah Wright because he challenges their views about their country. Meanwhile, those same white folks, and their ministers and priests, every week put forth a false image of the God Jeremiah Wright serves, and yet it is whites who feel we have the right to be offended.
Pardon me, but something is wrong here, and whatever it is, is not to be found at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise at msn dot com
This essay originally appeared in Lip.

Here’s Part 5 of Tim Wise’s Article!
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Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not only extraordinarily incomplete, in that it so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. In that sense, and what few if any white Americans appear capable of grasping at present, is that “Leave it Beaver” and “Father Knows Best,” portray an America so divorced from the reality of the times in which they were produced, as to raise serious questions about the sanity of those who found them so moving, so accurate, so real. These iconographic representations of life in the U.S. are worse than selective, worse than false, they are assaults to the humanity and memory of black people, who were being savagely oppressed even as June Cleaver did housework in heels and laughed about the hilarious hijinks of Beaver and Larry Mondello.
These portraits of America are certifiable evidence of how disconnected white folks were--and to the extent we still love them and view them as representations of the “good old days” to which we wish we could return, still are--from those men and women of color with whom we have long shared a nation. Just two months before “Leave it to Beaver” debuted, proposed civil rights legislation was killed thanks to Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour filibuster speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. One month prior, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to block black students from entering Little Rock Central High; and nine days before America was introduced to the Cleavers, and the comforting image of national life they represented, those black students were finally allowed to enter, amid the screams of enraged, unhinged, viciously bigoted white people, who saw nothing wrong with calling children niggers in front of cameras. That was America of the 1950s: not the sanitized version into which so many escape thanks to the miracle of syndication, which merely allows white people to relive a lie, year after year after year.
No, it is not the pastor who distorts history; Nick at Nite and your teenager’s textbooks do that. It is not he who casts aspersions upon “this great country” as Barack Obama put it in his public denunciations of him; it is the historic leadership of the nation that has cast aspersions upon it; it is they who have cheapened it, who have made gaudy and vile the promise of American democracy by defiling it with lies. They engage in a patriotism that is pathological in its implications, that asks of those who adhere to it not merely a love of country but the turning of one’s nation into an idol to be worshipped, it not literally, then at least in terms of consequence.
It is they--the flag-lapel-pin wearing leaders of this land--who bring shame to the country with their nonsensical suggestions that we are always noble in warfare, always well-intended, and although we occasionally make mistakes, we are never the ones to blame for anything. Nothing that happens to us has anything to do with us at all. It is always about them. They are evil, crazy, fanatical, hate our freedoms, and are jealous of our prosperity. When individuals prattle on in this manner we diagnose them as narcissistic, as deluded. When nations do it--when our nation does--we celebrate it as though it were the very model of rational and informed citizenship.

Here’s Part 4 of Tim Wise’s Article!
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And so we were shocked in 1987, when Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, because, as he noted, most of that history had been one of overt racism and injustice, and to his way of thinking, the only history worth celebrating had been that of the past three or four decades.
We were shocked to learn that black people actually believed that a white cop who was a documented racist might frame a black man; and we’re shocked to learn that lots of black folks still perceive the U.S. as a racist nation--we’re literally stunned that people who say they experience discrimination regularly (and who have the social science research to back them up) actually think that those experiences and that data might actually say something about the nation in which they reside. Imagine.
Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the “shining city on a hill,” for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do--and this is true even for millions of black veterans--for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like “God Bless America,” for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.
Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I’ve seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country--when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as “Negro Barbecues,” involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to onlookers. They are stunned to learn that postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.
Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade--an excising of truth and an assault on memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.

Here’s part 3 of Tim Wise’s Article!
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So that’s the truth of the matter: Wright made one comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America’s favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been one of those “prosperity ministers” who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Falwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.
What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock--though make no mistake, they already knew it--is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism on American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, one in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not on that day that “everything changed.” To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.
But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.
This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:
“White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded--about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac.”

Here’s part 2 of Tim Wise article!
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He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and “never batted an eye.” That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and “save American lives.”
But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman’s own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we’re the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would “never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.”
And Wright didn’t say blacks should be singing “God Damn America.” He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn’t happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although one can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don’t believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn on America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.
Finally, although one can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks--and I do, for instance--it is worth pointing out that Wright isn’t the only one who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the one white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in the very same thing back in the early ‘90s in an interview on CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed “undesirable” including gays and racial minorities.

This long piece, by Tim Wise, belongs squarely under this thread. Only people with strong minds and a strong attachment to truth will be able to