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Wright’s Jeremiads

Posted by ROBERT STEIN in Media, Politics, Religion.
Apr 26th, 2008 | Comments

Bill Moyers did his best last night on PBS to put Barack Obama’s controversial pastor into perspective. He succeeded in showing the man’s brilliance but created unease in an observer who, by taste and temperament, is not attracted to apocalyptic preaching about the human condition.

From the interview, it’s easy to see what Obama found in Jeremiah Wright and his church that gave a new dimension to his secular desire to help the poor and dispossessed during his early days in Chicago.

Wright’s church apparently did and does good work in uplifting its community, but the social benefits come with a moral price–the preacher’s selective view of good and evil in the political world.

Consider Wright’s use of Martin Luther King to justify his own history. “Dr. King, of course, was vilified,” he told Moyers, asserting that, after King talked about racism, militarism and capitalism, he was “ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds…He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he’d overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war.”

Martin Luther King’s opposition to the war made him unpopular with Lyndon Johnson but not the rest of America, least of all African-Americans and, unlike Wright, he did not use it to condemn all of American history, from the mistreatment of Native Americans to plotting drug addiction in black communities.

The Rev. Wright’s need to “damn” America leads him to a peculiar view of history. He goes back centuries to mine our national past for evil but, when asked about Louis Farrakhan’s racist and anti-Semitic speech, dismisses it with “That was twenty years ago” and praises him for getting African-Americans off drugs and giving them self-respect.

Perhaps most troubling of all is his smiling intimation that Barack Obama is only distancing himself from his views for political expedience: “(W)hat happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I’m a pastor.”

Cross-posted from my blog.

  • Having not been alive back then, I did wonder if it was true that black Americans were unhappy with King's opposition to the Vietnam war. Is there any documentary evidence of this one way or the other?

    And for the part about Farrakhan, this is the entire quote:
    BILL MOYERS: And he, you know, he's expressed racist and anti-Semitic remarks. And, yet, last year-

    REVEREND WRIGHT: Twenty years ago.

    BILL MOYERS: Twenty years ago, but that's indefensible.

    REVEREND WRIGHT: The Nation of Islam and Mr. Farrakhan have more African-American men off of drugs. More African-American men respecting themselves. More African-American men working for a living. Not gang banging. Not trying to get by. That's not indefensible in terms of how you make a difference in the prisons? Turning people's lives around. Giving people hope. Getting people off drugs. That we don't believe the same things in terms of our specific faiths. He's Muslim, I'm Christian. We don't believe the same things he said years ago. But that has nothing to do with what he has done in terms of helping people change their lives for the better. I said direct quote was what? "Louis Farrakhan is like E.F. Hutton. When Lewis Farrakhan speaks, black America listens. They may not agree with him, but they're listening.

    That sounds like Wright's praising him for some of his actions and not his rhetoric. Is it not possible to do disapprove of one part of a man and admire another part?

    And this is what he said about "damning":
    REVEREND WRIGHT: Right. They were saying that God was-- in fact, if you look at the damning, condemning, if you look at Deuteronomy, it talks about blessings and curses, how God doesn't bless everything. God does not bless gang-bangers. God does not bless dope dealers. God does not bless young thugs that hit old women upside the head and snatch their purse. God does not bless that. God does not bless the killing of babies. God does not bless the killing of enemies. And when you look at blessings and curses out of that Hebrew tradition from the book of Deuteronomy, that's what the prophets were saying, that God is not blessing this. God does not bless it- bless us. And when we're calling them, the prophets call them to repentance and to come back to God. If my people who are called by my name, God says to Solomon, will humble themselves and pray, seek my faith and turn from their wicked ways. God says that wicked ways, not Jeremiah Wright, then will I hear from heaven.

    Wright is not damning America. He is saying that God does not bless the treatment of the Native Americans, or of the interned Japanese, the slavery of African Americans, etc.

    And you say: "Perhaps most troubling of all is his smiling intimation that Barack Obama is only distancing himself from his views for political expedience."

    Do you think Obama is lying about disagreeing with him about those particular controversial statements?

    I took him to mean that it seems like Obama is disowning him, which he isn't, but that appearance is necessary for political reasons.
  • runasim
    What Wright said about how ML King was treated was absolutely true. The majority of white America did villify him. Civil rights workers and sympathizers represented a small percentage, while the rest looked on him with fear and hatred. America does not take kindly to minoritiees getting uppity.

    When King's strict adherence to Gandhi's philosophy of peaceful protest failed to get results ,some blacks became disillusioned with him. Unarmed people being humiliated, threatened and attacked with bullets and police dogs does make it hard to sell a philosophy of peace. Many blacks defected to form more militant groups, like the gun carrying Black Panthers. King was heavily criticised for his failure to get results from within the black community and some of the rhetoric could most asuredly be called villification.
    Even up to the time of his death, ML King had a great deal of trouble keeping his movement together, precisely because its peaceful nature required more patience than many could maintain.

    Among whites, the comparison to the new militant voices had the effect of making King seem more palatable. He remained controversial to the end of his life, however. Making MLK day a nationall holiday created an unroar that, in some circles, still continues.

    Contrary to the assertion in this post, the villification of MLK by both blacks and
    and whites was not sparked by the Viet Nam war. The animosities over the war were merely subsumed into the broader confrontation over civil rights and injustice.

    Let's not rewrite history just to massage preconceptions.


    I don't see any point in addressing all the inaccuracies in this post, since the author made his positition clear in a criticism posted even before the interview aired.

    As I predicted, the chickens of preconceptions have come home to roost.
    They roost even in the highly creative interpretation of what it signifies when a distinction is made between speaking in a political context and speaking from the pultpit to a particular congregation.
    Some foks will find evil even in the pauses Wright took between sentences. I'm not going there.
  • myrtlebeach
    Dr. King was a very good friend of my uncle Billy Fleming of Manning SC. Sometimes when Dr. King would visit him Uncle Bill would call my father because the family is very protective and the fact that Uncle Bill was close enough to MLK for occasionally visit his house put the lives of Billy Fleming and his immediate family in grave danger. I never met Dr. King but I can still here his voice in the background over the phone . I have powerful memories of those turbulent days and the men who tried to make America live up to it's promises of freedom of speech and expression,freedom of religion,freedom from want and freedom from fear. I remember how Dr. King was vilified, rejected and despised after he took a stance against Vietnam by many of the black so-called elite mainly because they feared that the money and positions that they had gained through the struggles of Dr. King and other real freedom fighters would be cut off. After He was murdered these same hypocrites readily took advantage of the social, economic, and political doors that his death opened. Rev. Wright was right and correct. No people's history is without defect . As far as the comments that Farrakhan made 20 years ago in comparison with the negative side of our national past, there is a great difference in degree between the hateful anti-semitic words that we heard looped over and over from a Farrakhan speech and the wicked actions that often led to death and cultural destruction of people of color in our beloved nation. No people's history is without defect.
  • Rudi
    Look at what happened to Muhammad Ali when he resisted the draft and the Vietnam War. The white power structure was upset about MLK's Vietnam stance. The Right still blames "smelly hippies" for our loss in Vietnam, not a failed policy and military strategy.
  • myrtlebeach
    Dear Cris WWW
    Many so-called Black leaders were dependent on the government and the white owned businesses that although sympathetic towards the civil rights movement felt that MLK's stance against the Vietnam war was unpatriotic and very near treason. The atmosphere was worse than during the final weeks before the start of the Iraq War. The so-called leadership was afraid of losing a paycheck or position. I'm very proud of your generation in the respect that you don't turn you back on those whose work paved the way for your chance at success. The wind can blow a weed in any direction.
  • DLS
    "Bill Moyers did his best last night on PBS to put Barack Obama’s controversial pastor into perspective."

    "Sanitize Obama" is shorter and more accurate.
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