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Obama's A More Perfect Union Speech
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Anonymous
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Meanwhile, I can't believe Hillary is using this whole issue to say she's more electable, and has less baggage.
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jsteele
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For those interested in seeing more than just sensationalistic snippets of Wright's sermons, Trinity UCC has set up a YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TRINITYCHGO I just listened to the sermon that included the "chickens coming home to roost" statement. In full context, the meaning is much different than we have been led to believe. Wright was actually quoting a former US ambassador that he had watched on Fox News. |
Anonymous
| Regarding George Bush speaking at Bob Jones--he was skwered by the press and rightly so--he should have never been there and I was deeply offended by that. But..he didn't send any kids there and didn't have the head of the school as his religious leader. Also, in reference to Obama being at the church during racially charged sermons--come on--do you really believe that the talk was all about peace and love of the white man in the 20 years that he was going and that Wright didn't disclose his views to him?? That fact that he dances around the issue--i.e. he was there during some sermons that he didn't agree with..I think it's pointless to argue because you (JSteele) will take Obama at his word despite what the real and sad reality is..and I just can't suspend disbelief on this subject--my mom has a saying--if it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and is quaking..it's a duck. So if you attend a church that is known for a black separtest view, has videos that the church itself puts out that are horrible and then refuse to disassociate yourself from the head of that church...I can draw my own conclusions and again...judging from the polls, I am not the only one. Obama has only himself to blame because now Hillary is starting to look like a saint and I am sure she is lovin this. |
Anonymous
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pp, I posted the question about racism. I don't understand something. If an African American person is angry about REAL events from the past and expresses that anger in tone of voice and gesture, does that make him a racist?
We would love all people who have been abused to come out like Nelson Mandela, you know, love for all, forgive all. But that is not reality. Wright should have been more responsible, for a number of reasons, I admit. Why is anger racism? Please respond. |
Anonymous
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I was sitting in my American home on American land watching American TV when my American president said that going to war with Iraq was necessary and a good idea. I didn't agree with him, but I didn't move out of the country either. Does that mean I'm a crazy cowboy diplomacy supporter? No. Why didn't I move out of the country then if I didn't agree with him? Because i still agree with the general principles of the country and the community of Americans I belong to. I don't plan on forsaking that.
I still don't know why so much emphasis is still being placed on the reverend... Don't you realize this speech was about so much more than him?? |
Anonymous
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The poster who so vehemently defends McCain and Bush - you're ready excuse and explain everything these people did and attach Obama for what he didn't do - do you see a hypocrisy here? What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
In my opinion it is way easier to prove "is" then "isn't". First let's have them (press, McCain, Hilary, whoever) prove that Obama is what they claim he is and then demand that he prove he isn't. As simple as that! |
Anonymous
anger is not racism, racism is racism and that preacher is one racisit guy. Anyone that belongs to a church understands the problem with Obama and his preacher. It is not hard to leave a church and find one that is most like your beliefs and values. Apparently Obama thought enough about his preacher to stay. Says a lot. I think it wouuld be a very scary place to be with a man with thoughts like Wright running this country. If it were up to me, I would deport that s.o.b. as fast as I could, back to where ever he thinks he can from, I am so sure it is a better place than were he is now. I am sure he would have lots of ignorant people pouring $ into his racist bank account. For those afican americans that do not think what the preacher said was wrong, I would deport you too. |
jsteele
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So, just to be clear, the answer to my question as to whether you have any evidence that Obama was in church to hear racially-charged statements is "no". I am arguing facts. You are arguing the contents of your imagination. That puts me at a bit of a disadvantage. You talk about a "real and sad reality", yet base your entire view of Trinity on a handful of cherry-picked sensationalistic quotes. What is truly sad is your lack of interest in actually understanding reality. Of course, reality doesn't fit your political agenda, so I can understand why you prefer your fantasy world. Think back to this time five years ago. Just how sincerely did you believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction? Just how much did you sincerely believe that Saddam had ties to bin Ladin? Those beliefs were wrong, not because you were stupid or misguided, but simply because you had been fed a false picture that you refused to question. Guess what, its happening again. |
jsteele
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Okay then. I think we've hit rock bottom. So, you would take people whose ancestors were kidnapped and brought to this country in chains, and return them (again in chains I presume) to a place that nobody can really identify? And, that reflects American values how? The land of the free, unless you piss of a Republican, I guess. Your kind of thinking is no less appalling than anything Wright has had to say. |
Anonymous
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I'm the 16:13 poster. I want to add one thing to what I said then, which is that I wish Obama had been very specific in one respect to Wright: I wish he had said that the scientific evidence from all quarters does not support the charge that the U.S. government created HIV as a weapon of genocide against blacks. This canard, which studies suggest is widely believed among African Americans, is deeply destructive to the black community. (See the 2005 Washington Post study for specifics about this belief in the metro area.) Blacks have good reason to distrust the government in regard to health, particularly because of the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment. But as a psychologist who volunteers with people who have HIV, I see the damage of this false belief and as one black leader has said, hanging on to Tuskegee is killing us. So I wish Obama had singled out that false statement and spoken against it. That would have been a powerful thing for the community to hear.
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Anonymous
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OK, sticking my toes in the water.
9:23, THANK YOU for your post. While I found some of Wright's comments cringeworthy, I didn't find them racist, and I've been so disappointed in the way the MSM has covered the sermons without providing any historical context. And saddened by how much "'they' need to get over it and move on, it's in the past" reaction I've heard. Wright makes a link between the government and AIDS, and while it sounds outlandish and impossible... ever heard of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment? For 40! years (1932-1972), hundreds of African-American men were lied to, manipulated, denied treatment, and observed as they became sicker and sicker with a treatable illness. An apology to the remaining survivors came only in 1997. When I put Wright's claim in context, I understand how such mistrust can exist among the AA community. Do I think that, as a preacher and leader, he has a responsibility not to perpetuate this unsubstantiated link? Yes. Not one commentator (that I've heard, corrections welcomed, I would love to be wrong) reminded viewers of this history. Or brought up Reagan's inaction on HIV/AIDS in the first years of the epidemic, which I imagine could have exacerbated mistrust. Interestingly, Mike Huckabee (whose ideological stance could not be farther from my own) has offered, in my view, quite thoughtful comments about Wright's sermons. In an MSNBC interview, he said: "And one other thing I think we've got to remember: As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, "That's a terrible statement," I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me." Food for thought. As for my reaction to Obama's speech: I admire that he didn't denounce Wright in the name of political expediency. I was moved to tears by his thoughtful discussion of race in America. I was angered by his characterization of, "the conflicts in the Middle East ...emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" and believe this statement WAS made in the interest of political expediency. Thank you for initiating this discussion! |
Anonymous
| 10:53 here. My apologies for the bad formatting, not sure where I went wrong. |
jsteele
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Looks good to me -- both formatting and content. |
Anonymous
Do you see yourself as a racist? If not, how do you know? Is Bush a racists, if not, how do you know? |
Anonymous
A couple of bloggers, at least, have mentioned the history. It was Bill Clinton who actually apologized for the Tuskegee atrocity, of course. And Reagan's inaction was less due to the incidence of HIV in the black and IDU communities than in the gay community. While HIV appeared simultaneously in these communities, and there is overlap among them, AIDS first really came to light among gays because IDUs and even African Americans have so much lower rates of engagement with health care services. Because AIDS was widely perceived as a "gay disease," it was easy for Reagan to do nothing. (And the more likely conspiracy theory would be that the government manufactured HIV to kill off gays. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the virus was spreading rapidly not only among gays, but among IDUs, a disproportionate number of whom are black. Further compounding the problem is the fact that black and Latino men often don't identify as gay even though they have sex with men. This is the reason the CDC doesn't refer to gays, but to "men who have sex with men." I say all this to point out two things: One is that it would have an incredible impact on the black community if Barack Obama were to definitively state that the government did not develop AIDS to kill blacks. The scientific evidence is there now to make such a statement. The other thing is that while I am not a fan of Jeremiah Wright, he did lead his church to engage around the issue of HIV, and that has had a positive impact in his community. (I know this because my friends who attend TUCC are involved in HIV research in the black community.) A historical failing of the black church has been its failure to openly discuss HIV because of its links with homosexuality and IDU, which the church perceived as stigmatizing behaviors. This failure has been partially responsible for the insidious way in which HIV made its way into the black middle class, with no obvious links to injecting drug use. This has been a real tragedy, and has disproportionately affected black women. Had the church taken up this issue early in the epidemic, things would be very different. Now something similar is happening in the Latino community. So while I dislike many of Wright's statements, there is no doubting the good he did in leading his church into squeamish areas -- HIV, injecting drug use, gay sex -- that a lot of black churches didn't touch for a very long time.
Good catch, PP. That was an off-note in the speech. I regret that he compared Wright's public statements to the private angst of his white grandmother, too. That was another tin-eared moment. I think there's no doubt that Obama knew his pastor harbored a lot of these views, and that he heard controversial statements when he was in church. My own very left-wing church buzzes with controversy all the time, so I know Obama couldn't have avoided this. What I also see, though, is the classic double bind of the biracial person. It would have been really powerful if Obama had talked a little more about that, about the power of this particular church in establishing his bona fides as a black man, and about the struggle within himself around these issues. He hinted at it a little bit when he said he could not more disown Wright than he could his grandmother, or the black community. What he's really talking about, I think, is the psychological struggle we all experience with reconciling these parts of ourselves -- the loving and the prejudiced parts, the angry and the forgiving, the affirmative action beneficiary with the adult man who knows race-based preferences are not working in the way they were intended. He seems to have integrated those pretty well. (I think his wife has possibly been less successful.) This is where not having suffered the bonds of transatlantic slavery in his own family has perhaps helped him. I don't think Obama is racist. I feel sure he knows, though, that every single one of us has our own biases and prejudices. If we think otherwise, we're not very self-aware. |