okay, let me be a bit more calm about it:

he speaks of a racist society.

very few individuals are racists, individually

but the society is still quite racist as a whole.

same thing with sexism. most people aren't sexist. the society as a whole still is.

it's strange to me then that when Hillary keeps talking about how women still get treated worse, and pushing the 77c to the dollar statistic, she's not called on for hating men.

women are oppressed, it's true, but there's less of a double standard. women can speak up, and feminism is highly regarded in this society.

but speaking up for oppressed black people is apparently still "controversial".

pro-black is not anti-white, just as pro-women is not anti-men.

i don't see why this is so hard.

When the Rev speaks of Liberation Theology he is speaking about a way we look at God. He is saying that we look at God through different lenses. As a well off white man you may look at God through the lense of a person who has never had his people considered as non humans or his people put in bondage, so you tend to look at God to bless you and your family. African-Americans looked and continue to look at God as a being that can liberate then from oppression, mistreatment, discrimination and bondage. Through the sorrow, fear and anger of their situation God becomes the only thing that can liberate (save) them in a world full of so much hate. They look at God through anguish and pain and when they reach for God is not so they can only be blessed it is so they can be set free (Liberated). So Liberation Theology can apply to the Jews, illegal immigrants, or even whites who feel oppressed.

I'd like to think that God damns the murderous policies of the Bush/Cheney Administration. I'd sure damn them to Hell if I could.

Wright/ Obama

If you listen, you will note that he always answers a ? with a ?, ie. did you hear the entire sermon, have you read a certain book, and then changes the subject.

He has apparently never had an original thought, as he says, someone said or wrote that before I did. Maybe the one where he thinks we are all stupid, could be his.

With the Wright audience, he could be a fair stand up comedian. His gestures and facial/body expressions are very comic.

He says until we teach our kids the truth about history, we will never resolve anything. Of course, that would have to be the truth according to Jeremiah W.

He blames all of the African-Americans' problems on some (European-American) white dudes.

The white majority Chicago Govt must have put something in the south side water system, to cause a number of gang-banger homicides recently.

Now, he says the "Black Church is under attack"

He is not just different, he is definately "deficient".

It appears that he has been educated beyond his brain's capacity to comprehend reality. Does "peter principle" apply here?

Obama says, The Rev Wright is from a different time and experience, those which I have never experienced myself, (think we could add that the Rev probably never has either?)

And if you watch Obama, you will see he has learned well at the knee of his mentor.

? with a ?, change the subject, blame the other dude. My "typical white person, Grandmother", Wright/Hagee, Ayers/Senator from NE, uh and, and uh, and so on ad-nauseam.

The original thought idea, applies here as well.

Wright brain, left brain, 1-3, 2-4, 8-9-10, and the other drivel, he sounds like a nut case on steriods.

By the way, the person whose concepts he was quoting, may have known something of what they were talking about, (the rev has no clue). This is another case of someone said it before he did.

Sorta like, monkey see, do ,hear, or however it goes.

stravu9,

Yes, I too was struck by this last night. This sets back all concepts of equality and desegregation by 50 years. It says we must treat Blacks separately, with separate standards. I too wait to hear some discussion of this BS. It harkens back to the professor last summer/fall suggesting Blacks were inferior and needed to be treated differently. Though Wright stressed different, not deficient. A distinction lost in the stupidity of Wright's comments and world view.

And today's speech and questions digs an even deeper hole. I am surprised tonight to even see Roland Martin on CNN criticize Wright as failing and hurting Obama.

Obama and all of his supporters, including the Dear Leader's supporters here on TPM need to be clear on either supporting/endorsing Wright/Obama or denouncing them. Obama has 20 years with Wright and can't walk away, especially without an explicit apology and expression of what and why he now wants to distance himself (and without blaming this on everyone else.) Short of this, Obama only confirms Wright's observation that Obama is lying for political purposes.

Matthew
TheProblemWithObama.com

"HE'S SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER!"

If you don't have power, you can speak anything,
if you do have power, you can't speak or even think anything. Kinda the inverse of Nazism.

According to the rev, all learning and culture oozed out of Africa. Better let the Arabs in on that secret.

We "have never apologized for slavery", think we maybe should hear a thank you for bringing them out of that hell- hole called Africa.

The rev was "deficient" failed to give the whole bit,

"Right-Brained" ------- imaginative, unrealistic, fanciful, make-believe

Left-Brained ------ logical and analytical

hey memoryaid, needa, you keep changing your statement, not unlike a Wright/Obama ploy

Sorry memory, went back to Trinity web site, no change, and by the way, The Rev Wright is still listed as Senior Pastor, un like the X-Pastor Obama keeps talking about.

They cleaned up their web site about the same as Obama has cleared up how he came about, before or after Selma.

Went to several dictionaries, and could not find

"Black Liberation Church" there either.

Someone is definately not a scholar.

As for you stravu9, you are a perfect example of a person who either a) has no critical thinking skills or b) refuses to admit a flaw in their reasoning via diverting atttention away from the debate itself. Discourse has a pattern and it goes like this: person A lays down a contention, person B attacks that contention, person A responds to the criticism, etc.

So, when memoryaid makes an argument like this:

"expounding on arguments like that is just ridiculous though.

you can't carry somebody's argument to the extreme and then call theme extreme.

all arguments become extreme when you push them off the edge.

he was pushing understanding, not segregation.

you sound like the people that say: "if you carry the African Heritage thing to the extreme, then they'll found a separatist faction and split the South Side of Chicago from America".

It's preposterous."

And you respond with this:

"I was recalling last fall too.
That man was a Nobel Prize winner and the statement, so like what the good Rev. just said was condemned far and wide, and rightly so!"

you're purposefully and consciously redirecting attention away from memoryaid's contention by reasserting an argument that had been made before. By intentionally not being responsive you effectively conceal the flaw in your own argument. How about you show more intellectually honesty and admit that your argument was stupid.

First of all Joseph, your post is too long. As a result your arguments and feelings become muddled. As such, what you need to do is lay bare all of the bones that you want to pick with Wright, as it were. If you truly want to start a genuine discourse give us food for thought, not your internal musings, which appear to be quite confusing, at best.

Moreover, you say that Wright wants to have it both ways. Have what both ways? If by this you mean that he wants to 'blame' whites for the problems of blacks while saying he wants reconciliation, I would have to contend that you're mistaken. Indeed, Wright acknowledges that blacks have to be more accountable for their actions (see his work on prison ministries as well as his committment to black values).

It is completely consistent to claim that the government as well as white people are partially responsible for the plight of black people AND claim that the biggest obstacle to black advancement is black irresponsibility.

In this sense, the precondition for racial reconciliation is the admission, by whites (and especially the government), of their responsibility in creating these problems.

Since neither are forthcoming (as evidenced by the oft repeated phrase, "well I never owned slaves" and the governments unwillingness to apologize for slavery) then racial reconciliation cannot advance.

Listen cr1992 for a more thorough account of why Wright uses "committment to the black value system" read Zora Neale Hurston's letter, in response to the Brown vs Board of Education decision. Her major fear was that integration would simply mean black assimilation into the dominant white culture. Therefore, Wright's arguments need a lot more context and are a lot more nuanced than you are willing to admit.

In this sense, it may be unfair, but if a white person says "committment to white values," which historically imply cultural hegemony, then I would probably consider them white supremacists (unless they explained something to the contrary); but if a black person talks about "black values," I would probably not see them as inherently anti-white.

For more on cultural nationalism read some Harold Cruse "Crisis of the Negro Intellectual" as well as Du Bois in "On the Conservation of Races".

Reading always does the mind some good!