Reconciling black anger and frustration with white fear and resentment:

About: Bill Moyer's interview of Jeremiah Wright

I know we are all sick and tired of listening to sound bytes from Jeremiah; but this interview gives us a chance to hear those bytes in context. Whether you are just sick of the guilt by association smear, or think that Wright is some hate monger, you need to listen to this.

This morning Wright was at the National Press Club... CNN carried all of it, but has yet to publish the video at their website. There is no doubt that your will hear chopped out sound bytes from it ... especially the "your momma" and him wanting the VP slot (hehe). The curly headed girl (pictured below) did her best to embarrass the preacher ... and he did his best to say his piece with humor and style ... it held us rivited listening in the morning. Even Denise is warming to the preacher. I'll do my best to find the video, but so far nothing has surfaced. This controversy has catapulted this man and his preaching into the foreground of American consciousness. Let us hope that the experience will be transforming. It really has almost nothing to do with Obama ... rather it has to do with an awareness that white America apparently would rather not experience. Even if Obama looses because of it, this consciousness is rearing its head ... let us deal with it honestly.

I titeled this item "reconciling black anger and frustration with white fear and resentment" from an artlce about this in the Huffington Post which is well worth a read ... that is unless your mind has already clotted.

Finally sombody publishes the video of Wright at the Press Club. All the MSM could do was to publish the transcript. If you want to cherry pick ... pick some sound bytes from the question and answers with the curly headed girl ... they are funny from both perspectives.

If Barack takes a steep nose dive in the polls now, then, me thinks, that will tell more about the press and the lingering intolerance of white America, than it will tell us anything about Jerimia or Obama. I have a feeling that these events as recorded in distant American History might look quite different than they look to you today.

Update: 4/29/2008

Forget about another debate with Hillary, Barack needs to debate Jeremiah Wright one on one. Obama is supposed to be a great reconciler. Well he needs to reconcile the black community. Jeremiah Wright represents an old attitude. It projects the bitterness that the black community feels towards whites. But Barack has burned through that ... read it in his book about race. Now he needs to stand on the same stage with Jeremiah and debate him -- old attitude vs new attitude. Show the differences, look it square in the face. After that American black and white men should be able to look each other square in the eye with no fear and resentment ... only understanding of each other's predicaments.

Update 4/29/2008 afternoon

Well apparently Barack is taking a more direct rout. Listen to his press conference.

Comments

Seth says

choy 2008-04-28 15:59:25 9944

seth 2008-04-28 14:59:49 9944

M 2008-04-28 12:23:05 9944

There is no white fear here is there white fear over there with you ? The racism & fear mongering is in the eye of the beholders.

You know, Mark, i will welcome any informed dignified and non-polarizing discussion on this item that you may have. However, sans that kind of dialogue, please do not graffiti this item any more of your cartoons or redneck attitudes.

Well, you failed again to answer the question I posed. Where is the white fear? There is nothing dignified in propagating the lies of a racist. Wright is the polarizing figure, what you would request is to accept his racist propaganda on face value - which I can't. It is often the case that Democrats & progressives want no opposition & would prefer to have the stage all to themselves. The end result of that kind of world can be seen in China & Russia & North Korea. I will remove the cartoon & separate it from your attempt at one-sidedness.

Mark it's not a serious question whether you know it or not. Nore can we have a discussion about this untill you watch some of the original material and show some small comprehension of the actual subject matter. You have yet to make any contribution to understanding these events. You can alway pretty much assume that if i do not respond to one of your questions or comments that i did not find any substance in your remarks that hit the point. In which case the only response possible would be just a "zen" rwg ... but to me those are just a waste of time. For me the zen of rwg is no response at all.

Mark de LA says

seth 2008-04-29 08:34:53 9944

Btw, please don't put me in a position of defending and speaking for Wright. His attitudes are not my attitudes. In fact that is just what Obama must say. The reverend is speaking for himself and from a old context of racial resentment. Barack's whole candidacy is all about trancending that old resentment and reconciling it within and without the balck community. So there are two things going on in this item. First, there is the understanding of what Jeremiah is actually saying and a comprehension of the context within which the black community believes it is the truth. After that we might move to some comprehension of why some people in the white community cannot tolerate looking that straight in the face for what it actuallyt is instead of twisting and distorting it into something that it is not.

I have heard the words straight out his mouth. If the black community believes the lies of a charismatic speaker & believes them to be true I shudder at the thought of what the black community is becoming. Luckily, most of the black community churches are not the way that Obama's church is (or maybe former church). I suggest that the black community cannot tolerate looking straight in the face of what is actually said due to the deafening silence from all except Wright's followers. Sorry, dude I find no context for lies becoming truth beyond that provided by the apotheosis of every ultimate particle of the Universe.

My apology for having to use distinctions of race to tap dance around your own use in view of 714. That is indeed the problem with this item in it's entirety & racism in general. Nobody, & probably Obama as well, wants to lay down the mantle of race to see the human race without first gaining the upper political hand & political $$ - not even you! You might send this to the reverend Wright: (Luke VI,41)

Source : And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.

BTW, you should probably read the entire Bible in order to make sure you understand the context for this quote.

Seth says
Btw, please don't put me in a position of defending and speaking for Wright. His attitudes are not my attitudes. In fact that is just what Obama must say. The reverend is speaking for himself and from a old context of racial resentment. Barack's whole candidacy is all about trancending that old resentment and reconciling it within and without the balck community. So there are two things going on in this item. First, there is the understanding of what Jeremiah is actually saying and a comprehension of the context within which the black community believes it is the truth. After that we might move to some comprehension of why some people in the white community cannot tolerate looking that straight in the face for what it actuallyt is instead of twisting and distorting it into something that it is not.

Seth says

M 2008-04-29 08:02:28 9944

seth 2008-04-29 07:48:32 9944

M 2008-04-28 21:38:52 9944

Wright lied several times during the interviews & again today. Why should I want to watch someone who is a nut-job getting his 15 minutes of fame?

... because otherwise you are at the mercy of other people's distortions of what he said. Those other people have their own ax to grind. I don't believe that i need to explain that to you.

Just to test you then, did the U.S. Government invent AIDS to kill blacks? yes or no?

If you said "yes" in what context is your "truth"?

I don't think the US Government invented AIDS. Nore did the reverend assert that they did. But he said that he wouldn't put it past them. Before the Bush administration i would not have believed that the vice president and secretary of defense would have formulated policies for tortuing prisoners and disobeying the Geneva conventions ... but now i find that was the case. At what point do you loose faith in your government and end up suspecting them of anything? (Don't answer that, it's retorical ... it is here for context only; but not to be debated here.)

Seth says

source: M above talking about what Wright said about AIDS and the US government
"I have heard the words straight out his mouth. "

Oh really? Then maybe you can give me the exact transcript and/or a link to the entire sermon. But this is what Jeremiah actually said in the press club on Monday:

source: transcript via theAtlantic.com(video also available there) emphasis mine
MODERATOR: In your sermon, you said the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. So I ask you: Do you honestly believe your statement and those words?

WRIGHT: Have you read Horowitz's book, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola," whoever wrote that question? Have you read "Medical Apartheid"? You've read it?

(UNKNOWN): Do you honestly believe that (OFF-MIKE)

WRIGHT: Oh, are you -- is that one of the reporters?

MODERATOR: No questions...

(CROSSTALK)

WRIGHT: No questions from the floor. I read different things. As I said to my members, if you haven't read things, then you can't -- based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.

... which is consistant with how i characterized it. Denise was astonished by his paranoid statement abut aids. I don't think that many in the balck community believe it. I doubt that vary many people even in his church believe it. I think to understand it you must interpret him as meaning that he has lost faith with the US government and now would suspect it of any manner of henious crimes. I have the same feeling. That is why we need a change in administration.

Mark de LA says

I wonder why Obama had to mention the AIDS thingy? Anyway, he threw Wright under the bus this afternoon. Now all he has to do before the election is explain why he waited so long when he could have had his sister Souljah moment which I mentioned in 9526 over a month and a half ago. Obama is not a messiah - he's just another liberal politician; get used to it!

Seth says

M 2008-04-29 11:08:09 9944

It's in the recordings that the church sells of his sermons that started this out - did you have them or listen to them in their entirety ?

Go listen to the Moyer interview, that is all that should be necessary.

Seth says

source: M above
I suggest that the black community cannot tolerate looking straight in the face of what is actually said due to the deafening silence from all except Wright's followers ...

This silence must be in your ears only, i hear lots of black people diverging from Wright's attitudes. But in a way me thinks that now it is for Barack to confront Wright one on one, on the same stage, without a moderator. Lay it all out in painful clarity ... eliminate the middle man spin. This is a clash of attitudes in the black community. He has already rejected and repudiated that attitude. Unfortunately some Americans still do not accept that. It is time for him to dramatize it so that even a redneck can comprehend. Lol, well maybe not quite that clear.

If you want to spin senarios ... here is a doozie: Barack and his pastor have indended to elucidate this divide in public for a long time. Short of believeing that i can think of no other explanation that does not paint Jeremiah as one of the biggest assholes in the history of Christianity.

Seth says

M 2008-04-29 11:12:16 9944

YouTube is pretty close.

Come on ... give me a break Mark. That is just a selection fox new's sound bytes. That is what i have been trying to get through to you on. You can't understand what the pastor meant by listening to a sound byte selected by somone who is trying to denegrade him. Try doing that with Rudolph Steiner. Clip out a sentence or two and see how rediculous it sounds.

To listen to the at least the whole passage, follow the about link ... Moyer actually played the passages in context ... though not the whole sermons.

Seth says

M 2008-04-29 12:52:48 9944

Obama is not a messiah - he's just another liberal politician; get used to it!

Nobody here ever said anything remotely resembeling "Obama is a messiah". So your little snotty "get used to it" at the end was based upon a lie.

Obama probably took the wise move here and unequivocally separated himself from Wright's attitudes. Of course it will never be enough for those poeple who's job it is to tear him down. My way would have been more dramatic. I would have loved to see these two debate in a form where they could press each other directly. These attitudes exist. But, as Barack says: "I have spend my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That's in my DNA." What would be a crying shame is that, regardless of what you think of his liberal politics, that he would be brought down by the very forces that he has conquered in himself.

Mark de LA says

Are you begging for a clarification couplet for the dude->snotty pair ? I use dude in the sense that a long haired, maggot infested, dope-smoking hippie might use it to a person who isn't such. The google search is for your edification or rejection, whatever. That it is a meme out there for those bewitched by Obama who go into fainting spells & are afraid to ask the real questions about what he is plans to do if he were elected.

Seth says

M 2008-04-29 13:54:19 9944

seth 2008-04-29 13:29:31 9944

M 2008-04-29 12:52:48 9944

Obama is not a messiah - he's just another liberal politician; get used to it!

Nobody here ever said anything remotely resembeling "Obama is a messiah". So your little snotty "get used to it" at the end was based upon a lie.

Well when I google "Obama messiah" I get 262,000 articles on the phenomena. Obviously somebody thinks so. His ascension is mostly a creation of the M$M. I had always presumed that you would have more sense than to believe such a notion; your passion for O notwithstanding. FYI, your ad hominem use of the word "snotty" almost got you another couplet on 4413 !

You might want to track some of thos 262 thousand articles down and see how many of them are people from the other side sticking the "Obama messia" meme in people's mouths who had no such conceptions. In fact i would be interested if you can find a single one where a person honestly expressess that sentiment.

Btw, your twist on the end almost earned it's own redaction. Those kinds of comments ... like calling me dude etc ... just set a rwg tone that gets in the way of communication. Perhaps some day we can grow out of them. The tricky thing to know is when somone is trying to say something to increase awareness and get at a better truth and when one is trying to have fun woffing the opposition. Maybe you didnt know ... i switch back and forth ... but you really shouldn't have any problem is telling the difference.

Reconciling black anger and frustration with white fear and resentment:

About: Bill Moyer's interview of Jeremiah Wright

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