Thursday, March 20, 2008

Don’t Scream “Race” to Me!

From the start of the Democratic Primary season until today,
both sides have "decried" the use of race in their campaigns.
This is a fallacy of the first magnitude. Every statement from
both campaigns has been full of innuendo about the "forbidden"
subject.

Neither wants to take credit for bringing the subject out into the
open, but there it is and there it will stay. You cannot avoid
"race" when it is used as an "excuse" or "defense" by either side.
The Clinton campaign uses it as a yardstick for measuring
acceptance, under the guise of "race or gender", which is the
only way for Hillary to explain her difficulty in rising to the top.
The Obama campaign, while claiming to be "above" the use of
race to propel him to "stardom", has indeed used every subtle
hint, and some not so subtle, to achieve that end.

With virtually no credentials, other than his color, Obama has
claimed to be a "uniting force" for the country...... while at the
same time holding the record as the Senate’s most liberal
Congressman. He enjoys the backing of almost every celebrity and politician of color............. and though achieving some success in
the white community........... got to where he is by garnering some
90% of the black vote, in the nationwide caucuses.

That small and inconvenient fact is what angered some, when
Geraldine Ferraro brought that to the country’s attention, and what
got her labeled as a bigot................... along with me, I might add.
I did and still agree 100% with Ferraro’s statement, and recent events
are proving both of us right.

When news of Obama’s then Pastor’s rants broke, cracks in the
Obama campaign began to become apparent. The Rev.Wright does
not appear to be the "holy" man that he had been represented as, by
Barack. This man represents the lowest form of hate-mongering and
racism that I have every seen. How anyone, including the Senator
can justify his despicable statements is beyond all reason. Yet, with
the full backing of the black community, Barack Obama did just that.

He said that Rev.Wright has been his "spiritual advisor" of some
twenty years, and that he had never heard any of the statements that
the "Reverend" made. He claimed that Reverend Wright had brought
him to Jesus, had married him and his wife and had baptized both his
children.

When questioned as to why he had never heard those statements
in church, Obama said that he had never been in the church personally,
when any of the objectionable and poisonous remarks had been made.
I said at that time, in a previous post here, that he avoided eye contact
with the camera, and that his body language told me that he was lying
through his teeth. Common sense dictated that in a twenty year
relationship, supposedly that close, it was virtually impossible not to
be familiar with the Reverend and his racist and anti-American rhetoric.

As the situation heated up, Senator Obama saw the necessity of making
yet another television appearance to clear the air. This time, in front of
a wall of American flags, his statement about Reverend Wright was completely different. He said that he had indeed been in the church and heard those statements personally, but that he could not disown the Reverend because he was like family to him.

That alone was an admission to me, that he is not qualified to represent
us as President or in any other public office. He not only admitted that
he had lied, but he refused to disassociate himself from the pastor. Actually, he had the gall to explain away the black church, and the deep feelings or resentment and bitterness of the congregations. That was an insulting exercise in explaining a mind-set, which if one looks at the congregation in the videos, was totally unnecessary. Just viewing it was enough...... seeing just about every attendee at the service in total agreement with Rev.Wright,as witnessed by their hooting and hollering
and jumping up and down. If this is representative of the black church, I think that it is appalling Hopefully, there are churches with a less vitriolic congregation, and pastor.

Obama would have us believe the excuses, that the black community harbors great frustration and bitterness for having been suppressed
by the white community for so many centuries. Well, even assuming
thatis so, why take it out on the country or us........ who have bent over backwards in attempts to level the playing field? Affirmative action has given countless opportunities to blacks, at the direct expense of whites
who were more qualified and equally deserving. I don’t see any black church celebrating that!

If Obama and the black community really want to integrate society,
let’s get rid of the "Congressional Black Caucus", The Miss Black
America Contest", "The United Negro College Fund", and all those
organizations that demand that you be black in order to participate.
I would venture to say that if we had a "Miss White America" contest,
"The United White College Fund" or the "Congressional White
Caucus", the Reverend Jesse Jackson would be picketing the front
doors of all those organizations.

Let’s remember something here. The black community can blame
Europe and America for slavery, which was indeed a blemish on
all of humanity. But when they do,.......they had better remember
that it would not have been possible without the full cooperation of
the black African ruling classes, and the African tribal leaders who sold
their own into slavery.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:37 PM

    Brooklyn:

    Hou could you say what you said and possibly mean it?

    Here from The Revernd Jereiah Williams own website at http://www.tucc.org/talking_points.htm are what his church is about:

    Dr. Wright’s talking points (3.1.7) for Trinity United Church of Christ its Web site and the Black Value System (in response to Erik Rush’s comments (2.28.07) on the Hannity and Colmes show):

    • One of the biggest gaps in knowledge that causes the kind of ignorance that you hear spouted by this man [Erik Rush] and those like him, has to do with the fact that these persons are completely ignorant when it comes to the Black religious tradition. The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book, Black Power and Black Theology.

    • Black theology is one of the many theologies in the Americas that became popular during the liberation theology movement. They include Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.

    • I use the word “systematized” because Black liberation theology was in existence long before Dr. Cone’s book. It originates in the days of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was systematized and published by theologians, Old Testament scholars, New Testament scholars, ethicists, church historians, and historians of religion such as Dr. James Cone, Dr. Cain Hope Felder, Dr. Gayraud Wilmore, Dr. Jacqueline Grant, Dr. Kelley Brown Douglas, Dr. Renita Weems, Dr. Katie Cannon, Dr. Dwight Hopkins, Dr. Linda Thomas, and Dr. Randall Bailey.

    • These scholars, who write in various disciplines, also include seminary presidents like Dr. John Kinney and professors of Hebrew Bible, like Dr. Jerome Ross. Black liberation theology defines Africans and African Americans as subjects – not the objects which colonizers and oppressors have consistently defined “others” as.

    • We [African Americans] were always seen as objects. When we started defining ourselves, it scared those who try to control others by naming them and defining them for them; Oppressors do not like “others” defining themselves.

    • To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center, is not to say that African or African American people are superior to any one else.

    • African-centered thought, unlike Eurocentrism, does not assume superiority and look at everyone else as being inferior.

    • There is more than one center from which to view the world. In the words of Dr. Janice Hale, “Difference does not mean deficience.” It is from this vantage point that Black liberation theology speaks.

    • Systematized Black liberation theology is 40 years old. Scholars of African and African American religious history show that Black liberation theology, however, has been in existence for 400 years. It is found in the songs, the sermons, the testimonies and the oral literature of Africans throughout the Diaspora.

    Now how could you treat this as anything less than Christianity in its purest form? How could anyone possibly call The Right Reverend Wright, or for that matter, Barack Obama, a Race Panderer?

    Shame! Shame! Shame!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous......

    Shame on you, for having bought into the "black liberation" excuse.

    Trace the problem back to it's true roots.... the greed of the African tribal chiefs!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11:33 AM

    Brookie:

    Just messing with you. Having some fun with the Obama bangarang. Someone here has her baggys in a bunch because she thinks I’m a bag-o-wire for calling Wright a banton. She is bexed because I called a shepherd a blackheart man, and that I suggested that it was bad to step during his sermons. The sista from a certain British Caribbean Island wanted to hackle this baldhead.

    Ciao!

    ReplyDelete