President Barack Obama’s former spiritual advisor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was in Washington, D.C. on Sunday to deliver a sermon marking the 100th anniversary of the historic Florida Avenue Baptist Church.
In a way, Wright didn’t disappoint anyone. The toxic waste of a sermon no doubt pleased his African American audience who were already immersed in his kind of Black Liberation Theology. And for critics of the president, who regularly point out that Barack Obama attended this man’s church for 20 years and hired him as an advisor to his campaign in 2008, there was plenty of racist fodder to highlight and comment on.
Speaking at Washington’s Florida Avenue Baptist Church, which marks its 100th anniversary this week, Wright urged parishioners to teach their children true African-American history and not to cede their educations to “our enemies” who teach “his story,” one that “distorts our story, disses our story.”
Children may “only know Oprah and Obama,” he said, so it’s up to elders to teach about Nat Turner, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, Paul Robeson, Zora Neale Hurston and other black voices.
“We need to tell our children … how we got from a black congressman named Adam Clayton Powell to a black president named Barack Hussein Obama,” he said to applause. “But we also need to tell them how we have black politicians who steal money.”
Wright also blasted people who he described as “biscuits” and “sheep dogs” — African Americans raised in the white world.
“Take that baby, him or her away, from the African mother, away from the African community, away from the African experience … and put them Africans over at the breasts of Yale, Harvard, University of Chicago … UCLA or UC-Berkeley,” he said. “Turn them into biscuits. Let them get that alien DNA all up inside their brain and they will turn on their own people in defense of the ones who are keeping their own people under oppression. Sheep dogs.”
“There’s white racist DNA running through the synapses of his or her brain tissue. They will kill their own kind, defend the enemies of their kind or anyone who is perceived to be the enemy of the milky white way of life.”
Though the Obamas severed their ties to Wright and his church in 2008, the preacher has remained an emblem for some conservatives of the extreme views they believe the president has.
Gee…why would anyone think that?
Wright has already been declared off limits by Democrats, the mainstream press, and Mitt Romney for 2012. This means that the kind of lunatic ranting for black separatism Wright spews on a regular basis cannot be discussed in any meaningful way as it relates to Barack Obama’s political beliefs and cultural outlook.
It seems incredible when you consider if Mitt Romney attended a church that promoted white separatism for 20 years and then hired the pastor of that church as a spiritual advisor for his campaign, that a similar disinterest (or desperate avoidance as is the case with the Obama campaign), would be evident in the media and Romney’s political opposition. Romney would have — and should have — been mercilessly grilled about his ties to such a nauseatingly racist church if the shoe were on the other foot and it was the GOP candidate who’s associations were being questioned.
But we are used to racial double standards, largely because the media fears a backlash from the likes of Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. The press fears being accused of ringing the Pavlovian bell for white racists who have their own agenda for highlighting the radical preacher. So the media simply refuses to acknowledge the toxicity of people like Wright, while dancing away from his connection to the president. For much of the media, the Wright story was put to rest in 2008 when candidate Obama gave his Philadelphia speech where he acknowledged that Wright’s point of view was not his own, but that it was a legitimate voice in the black community.
For Obama, it is not so much whether he agrees with Wright. Taking him at his word that he doesn’t is not the point. For the voter, it is a question of judgment, which is directly to the point of any candidate’s fitness for office.
Obama has never addressed his decision to spend 20 years in the pews of this noxious preacher’s church, only to throw him under the bus when he became a political liability. It is some of the unfinished business left over from 2008 that will probably remain so again.
Does Wright believe in separate but equal?
Because it sounds like he wants segregated schools.
So, Rev. Wrong is offlimits for the upcoming campaign? Does that mean uber-libs will never mention Mitt Romney’s Mormonism? Hmmmmmmmm?
“The press fears being accused of ringing the Pavlovian bell for white racists who have their own agenda for highlighting the radical preacher.”
Utter BS. Those klowns would be nodding along with “Reverend” Wright, as the bile that drips from his lips is identical to their views.
The Mormon-baiters have made a great deal of hay from the fact that Mitt Romney attended a church that until 1978 believed in segregation in the World to Come, but never practiced it in this world. For some reason, I find a church that preaches the reversal of this to be more destructive.
Wow, I learned two new racists words today, biscuit and sheep dog. It is amazing, I never learn racist words from conservatives, it always seems to come from liberals, especially black liberals.
As an aside, Romney or his campaign staff is incompetent. For every attack on his Mormonism there should be two attacks on Obama’s so called Christianity (and Black Liberation Theology and his love for Islam. Have Romney or a surrogate ask why Obama has not condemned the attacks on Christians that occur with frequency in every muslim-dominated country?)
Your mom was right: People judge you by the company you keep.
Today, as in 2008, Barry’s choice of mentors and companions tells us all we need to know about the kind of man he is.
We will hear a lot more about Romney’s Mormonism and what that “means” during the coming campaign, but little to nothing about Obama’s ties to Wright or the fact that Obama was raised as a Muslim and, apparently, converted to Christianity as an adult.
Someone was prattling on this morning on the Chris Plante show about Romney being a “bishop” in the Mormon Church. So what? That is about the same as a black man being a deacon in the Baptist church. Means the guy is qualified to teach children about the church.
Most of you don’t remember the hue and cry raised about John F. Kennedy being a Catholic during the 1960 campaign. You know, the stuff about whether he would be “ordered” to do things, or not, by the Pope.
The entire purpose of this theme is to divert attention from the cratering economy and the damage 0′s policies are doing to the entire nation.
The entire problem with the trembling, quaking, timid and spineless Party…is that the truth is on their side and the are still to terrified and incompetent to win with it.
Wright doesn’t hold any view that isn’t shared by Bill Ayers. That isn’t shared by the New Party. That isn’t shared by the Midwest Academy. That wasn’t shared by Frank Marshall Davis.
It is not merely that Obama sat in the pew and applauded the racism, everywhere he spent time, not just for an hour or two on Sundays, but all his waking moments, all his work life, all his extra-curricular time at college, he bathed in it.
But, the Republicans won’t tell that truth. They won’t tell the truth about the radicalism, they won’t tell the truth about the hard core racism, they won’t tell the truth about the small c communism, they won’t tell the truth about the goals and objectives of Fabian Socialists and their gradualism, the overthrow or small c communism.
They will nibble around the edges like little trembling mice.
They won’t expose the corruption and conspiratorial nature of the Propaganda and Lies Ministry.
They will speak in broad platitudes, stiff bromides, tepid generalities. Republicans run, but they run scared.
And we, who depend upon them, suffer for it.
I read this and I keep thinking about Chris Rock’s standup routine about which community is the most racist; blacks or whites. His answer is that blacks are more racist “because we hate black people too. Everything white people don’t like about black people is what black people REALLY don’t like about black people!” I am sure Chris had “leaders” like Jerry Wright in mind when he made that comment.
I doubt racist demagogues had anything to do with where Chris Rock has his house. People vote with their feet.
“iI am sick and tired of negros who are not down with the struggle” Rev. Wright. Keep talking we’re listening, and we don,t want our whitness to rub off on you. So maby you could leade your tribe back to Africa. Because we are sick and tired with those ,who are ,down with the struggle.Enough bellyaching, just saddle up and ride out. We won,t miss you ,and the rest of us ,black and white ,can just get back to work.