[News] Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04282008.html
April 28, 2008


But Will It Topple Obama?


Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch

By MIKE WHITNEY

Reverend Jeremiah Wright appeared on PBS Bill 
Moyers Journal on Friday night and delivered a 
knockout punch to the bully-boys in the corporate 
media. Wright showed that he is neither a fanatic 
nor an “America hater”; just an extremely 
well-read and principled man with an unshakable 
commitment to justice. Wright has also paid his 
dues; he's an ex-Marine who served as a medic in 
Vietnam when most of his critics were either 
hiding behind their student deferments or 
languishing in the "Champagne Unit" of the Texas National Guard.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

"And the United States of America government, 
when it came to treating her citizens of Indian 
descent fairly, she failed. She put them on 
reservations. When it came to treating her 
citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. 
She put them in internment prison camps. When it 
came to treating citizens of African descent 
fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. 
The government put them on slave quarters, put 
them on auction blocks, put them in cotton 
fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in 
substandard housing, put them in scientific 
experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, 
put them outside the equal protection of the law, 
kept them out of their racist bastions of higher 
education and locked them into position of 
hopelessness and helplessness. The government 
gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, 
passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to 
sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America!”

No one disputes Wright's summary of US history. 
His comments have simply been lifted, just  to 
beat up on Barak Obama; everyone knows that. Just 
like everyone knows that the corporate media 
destroy political enemies, which means anyone who 
poses a challenge to America's unelected 
corporate oligarchy. That's why it is so 
frustrating to hear people say, "The media is not doing its job."

That's just plain wrong; the media IS doing its 
job. It's cheerleading the country to war, it is 
diverting attention from the main political and 
economic issues of the day, and it is destroying 
the system’s political enemies, actual or potential.

What the media is try to do by singling out 
Wright is pretty straightforward. They're trying 
to create the impression that blacks conceal a 
deep sense of grievance which expresses itself in 
rage. This generates feelings of fear among 
whites which, of course, is all part of the 
strategy.  The message is simple; "blacks are 
angry, blacks are dangerous" and, oh by the way, Obama is black.
The attack on Wright is that it was set up in a 
way to make it look like the Reverend ­ a man 
whose entire career has been devoted to social 
justice ­ is a racist. That took a bit of 
maneuvering. In fact, the media, and their 
friends at the right-wing think tanks, had to dig 
through 15 years of Wright's sermons to find just 
the right snippets they needed to destroy Obama. Now that's determination!

Race has become one of the dominant issues on the 
campaign-trail. Obama is no longer just a man 
running for office; now he's a black man. That's 
how swift-boating works. Like they say in the 
Godfather; “It's not personal; it's just 
business”. The business of personal destruction.

Fortunately, Bill Moyers decided to give 
Wright  a chance to acquit himself before the 
public. Wright took the opportunity and made the most of it.

Rev. Wright: “God is the giver of life. Let me 
tell you what that means. That means we have no 
right to take a life whether as a gang-banger 
living the thug life, or as a President lying 
about leading a nation into war. We have no right 
to take a life! Whether through the immorality of 
a slave trade, or the immorality of refusing 
HIV/AIDS money to countries or agencies who do 
not tow your political line! We have no right to take a life!”

Wright showed that the doctrine he preaches, 
Black Liberation Theology, is neither 
discriminatory nor racist as the media has 
suggested. Rather, it integrates the teachings of 
Jesus Christ with the real-time struggle for 
social justice and equality. Compassion is not 
possible if one does not have a grasp of one's 
own culture and identity. That's why Wright tries 
to reconnect his congregation to their roots, so 
they can be proud of who they are and have more productive lives.

Rev. Wright:

"You know, you come into the average church on a 
Sunday morning and you think you've stepped from 
the real world into a fantasy world. And what do 
I mean by that? Pick up the church bulletin. You 
leave a world, Vietnam, or today you leave a 
world, Iraq, over 4,000 dead, American boys and 
girls, 100,000, 200,000 depending on which count, 
Iraqi dead. Afghanistan, Darfur, rapes in the 
Congo, Katrina, Lower Ninth Ward, that's the 
world you leave. And you come in; you pick up 
your church bulletin. It says, there is a ladies 
tea on second Sunday. How come the faith preached 
in our churches does not relate to the world in 
which our church members leave at the benediction?”

This is the essence of Black Liberation Theology; 
how to make sense of the world we live in so the 
word of Christ can be applied in practice. Wright 
thinks that faith should be a transforming 
experience that changes behavior and shapes 
lives, not just a few hours of prayer every week at Sunday services.

Does that make it “a race-based theology? (as Moyers asks)

Rev. Wright: “No, it is not. It is embracing 
Christianity without giving up Africanity. 
...We're not givin' up who we are as black people 
to become somebody else...No mas. Nada mas. We're 
gonna be ourselves. We're gonna be our culture. 
We're gonna be our history. And we're gonna 
embrace it and not say one is superior to the 
other. Because we are different. And different 
does not mean deficient. We talk about God of 
diversity? God has diverse culture and we're 
proud of who we are and that's not a race-based theology.”

Wright has also been skewered in the media for 
suggesting there may be a connection between 
American foreign policy and the attacks of 9-11. 
The media considers any analysis that doesn't 
square with Bush's crackpot "they hate our 
freedoms” theory to be either anti-American or 
outright heresy. In his most famous sermon, 
Wright elaborates on the "blowback" theme as well 
as the so-called war on terror:

"We took this country by terror away from the 
Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the 
Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans 
from their country to build our way of ease and 
kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! 
We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, 
babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the 
black civilian community of Panama with stealth 
bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and 
toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working 
fathers. We bombed Gadafi's home and killed his 
child. "Blessed are they who bash your children's 
head against a rock!" We bombed Iraq. We killed 
unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We 
bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack 
on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working 
people; mothers and fathers who left home to go 
that day, not knowing that they would never get 
back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed 
Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the 
thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we 
never batted an eye! Kids playing in the 
playground, mothers picking up children after 
school, civilians - not soldiers - people just 
trying to make it day by day. We have supported 
state terrorism against the Palestinians and 
Black South Africans, and now we are indignant? 
Because the stuff we have done overseas has now 
been brought back into our own front yards! 
America's chickens are coming home to roost! 
Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred 
and terrorism begets terrorism."

America has blood on its hands. America, as 
Martin Luther King said, "is the greatest 
perpetrator of violence in the world today." So what else is new?

The media use every soapbox in the country to 
preach uber-nationalism and vilify America's 
critics as unpatriotic. That's why the wrath of 
the media has descended on Obama like a Texas 
hailstorm; they're afraid he doesn't understand 
who really runs things in America.

Wright means nothing to the media or to the men 
behind the curtain. If he didn't provide an 
avenue for denigrating Obama, he'd be treated 
with the same indifference as the thousands of 
other blacks who were herded at gunpoint into the 
Superdome during Hurricane Katrina. Better buckle 
up. Obama has entered the crosshairs of America's 
criminal oligarchy and things are bound to get nasty.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at




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