I don't have time to wright this diary--I've got to prepare for a conference and I am running late, but haremoor's diary My Dad and Dr. Wright moved me to do so.
Because one of the things that has been bugging me about the whole Reverend Wright firestorm is that it appears it isn't just Obama getting swiftboated here. It seems that a good man is being painted as the worst kind of racist.
There have been some great diaries that have deconstructed different parts of this attack on the reverend, with laderrick's Lies of Omission taking on the "Chickens" and "God Damn America!"
But one point of received wisdom that I hear people constantly stating is that Reverend Wright thinks whites invented AIDS to kill black people. Even people on this site.
This, desipite the fact that I have never seen a quote that supports this statement. So I decided to go looking.
One of the first places to look seemed to be YouTube, since that is where the "God Damn America" and "Chickens Coming Home to Roost" sermons can be found, and seeing those quotes in context really changes the sense of their meaning. So when I searched for "Jeremiah Wright AIDS" I hit what I thought was a jackpot:
and, from FOX News labeled "Reverend Wright on Aids"
But on watching them, I was quickly disappointed: The first is an exhortation to his congregation to get tested for AIDS, and is as measured and sedate a clip of the pastor as you are likely to find. Not the sort of clip you'd expect from someone who thinks AIDS was created by the white man to kill his people.
The second, despite the promise of being from FOX actually doesn't deal with AIDS at all, but is a criticism of the US for dropping out of a conference on racism because one of the topics was going to be Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. I suppose some people could think that was controversial, but racist or crazy? Not really.
So I decided I had to just go to Google and search the web at large. This is difficult, because there are so many people out there who have simply processed the meme Reverend Wright thinks AIDS was created by Whitey that you get hundreds of hits of people just parroting this without any backup. I did find what I thought was a slightly more reliable source from a reference by Juan Williams on Fox News:
WILLIAMS: Barack Obama's campaign has been in crisis over the statements made by Reverend Wright, damning America, suggesting that the government spreads AIDS among black people, really outrageous statements.
Despite the network, I have enough faith in Juan that he wouldn't just make something up, so I assumed this was based on some report somewhere--But notice the change of the sense of the accusation: Wright suggests that the government spreads AIDS among black people. That's a little different, and a little less crazy sounding than before. And it sounds like it is based on an inference from what Dr. Wright has said, not a direct quote.
So I dug further, and I think I found the original source for this quote--an article in the Wall Street Journal. The article reports comments of Dr. Wright from a sermon at Howard University's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006. Dr. Wrights words are portrayed as being:
"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began. "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."
Mr. Wright thundered on: "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."
His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . ."
Concluding, Mr. Wright said: "We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. ..."
Aha! The "Whitey created AIDS to kill the black man" quote. But to say this 'quotation' seems a little odd is to state the obvious. There is the loaded introductory phrases "Mr. Wright thundered on," "His voice rising," etc. And I am always suspicious when the sense of the quote cannot be conveyed by quoting entire sentences from the speaker:
"We started the AIDS virus . . .
We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty.
That's a pretty big ellipsis there. How does what was deleted relate to the second line about the third world?
What if the original quote went something like: "We started the AIDS virus on its way to an epidemic in Africa by ignoring it as a disease of blacks and gays in our country."?
This would certainly tie the second line into the first, and would approximate the sense of what Juan Williams was saying. And would also explain the curious use of the word "started" instead of "created".
But to support such a corruption of the original meaning of Dr. Wrights words at the hand of the reporter, you'd have to have reason to believe the reporter was intentionally perverting the reverend's words. And even the WSJ wouldn't do that, right? Well, reading further, it turns out the article was written by a former WSJ reporter, now working for someone else:
Mr. Kessler, a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter, is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com and the author of "The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack" (Crown Forum, 2007).
Newsmax is a avowedly partisan 'news' source. To say my suspicions are only heightened is to say very little here.
But that's it. That is all I can find that supports the "Reverend Wright thinks Whites created AIDS to kill blacks". I would very much like to get a clip or a full transcript of that sermon at Howard U to examine the reverend's words in full context, and in complete sentences. But I can't seem to Google it up.
Anyone have the original source?
Update: title changed to reflect the contents better
Update 2: A comment by figgylu leads to another thread--A purported quote that says:
"The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."
Doing a quick search of this brings up a lot of hits, all of which seem to stem from a Fox News article that claims this is in an unspecified sermon available for sale from TUCC.
It doesn't appear anyone has loaded that up on youtube, nor have I seen a transcript or an actual clip from that sermon. However, it does seem to at least be a full sentence quote. Context would be interesting as well as seeing the clip to make sure it was accurately quoted.