I have no problem with Rev. Wright’s comments of the past three days or his answers to the Q & A at the National Press Club. Rev. Wright is a scholar, preparing to speak in scholar's language to a group of people who were attending a symposium on race and the black church when he made his latest "controversial" statements. As a fellow Christian who embraces liberation theology and as a teacher and graduate student in history, I agree with what Rev. Wright said and the nuances of his statements.
When he said Minister Farrakhan was one of the most important voices of the 20th/21st centuries he was talking about voices of black liberation theology (whether Christian or Muslim) he was not suggesting that Minister Farrakhan was an important voice in American political speech. If you watch the whole video rather than the corporate controlled media excerpts, this is very clear. When Rev. Wright said Minister Farrakhan was not his enemy, he is correct. Minister Farrakhan may have a different view of the world than I do, a different religion than I do; he may have a different way of expressing himself than I do, I certainly don’t agree with him about many things, but he is not my enemy. There is way too much talk about who is an "enemy" and who isn't. It shows how many people buy into the Bush/Cheney rhetoric that those who aren’t with us on absolutely every issue are against us.
I listened to Rev. Wright’s answers about AIDS. He does not say that he believes that the U.S. created the AIDS virus, he does however, give voice to the distrust that some people have toward their government when he says he understands their suspicion over who created the AIDS virus. He is right. Some African Americans do have suspicions about how the AIDS virus got started. Many Africans have similar suspicions. Rev. Wright said that it was not unreasonable for people to have suspicions about it. He then referred to the Tuskegee experiments and the fact that the biological weapons with which Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds were provided to him by the U.S. in the Iran-Iraq war. Ironically, the act of gassing the Kurds with American biological weapons was used by Bush/Cheney to support invading Iraq. Rev. Wright could also have mentioned the irony of the fact that Americans, under Reagan and Bush I, armed the Mujahadeen (the pre-Al Qaeda militias of which Osama bin Laden was a member) and the Taliban in Afghanistan—many of those weapons are being used against U.S. forces today. I agree with Rev. Wright that there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of our government, especially when a Republican is in office! That does not mean that I am a conspiracy theorist or that I think that America created the AIDS virus.
Rev. Wright correctly pointed out that his discourse about race occurs in a completely different context than Senator Obama's political discourse. I did not see that as being insulting to Senator Obama. I can agree with Rev. Wright when he speaks as a scholar or a theologian who gives voice to those who have historically been oppressed. I can also agree with Senator Obama’s vision of hope for our country in which regular people of all races, in every state can unite in hope for a better future. The voices of division, the Republicans, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and pundits in the corporate controlled media, want to overshadow that vision with fear and misdirection. They want us to see only a black preacher spouting hate because that stereotype is a powerful tool that they use to divide us so that they can retain their power.
Unfortunately, according to opinion polls, only a very few people in America seem to be capable of forming opinions about what Rev. Wright actually said rather than what the corporate controlled media said that he said. Unfortunately, only a very few people in America will form their own opinions about the significance of Rev. Wright’s statements rather than permitting a pundit to tell them what opinion they should adopt. Sadly, Senator Obama had to distance himself from Rev. Wright yet again because we are too intellectually and theologically lazy to think on our own.
I am not angry at either Senator Obama or Rev. Wright. They are speaking in different spheres. One is the political sphere, the other is the religious sphere. The First Amendment has something to say about keeping the political sphere and the religious sphere separate. The Republicans, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and the corporate controlled media want us to keep the two entwined because it serves their lust for power.
Here is an interesting thought: The only thing that the group of them can dredge up about Senator Obama is that his pastor made statements that they want us to find inflammatory and somehow he is responsible for that because he was a regular church attendee for twenty years. How refreshing is that? There are no sex scandals, no money scandals, no Keating five, no lies about sniper fire, no threats to obliterate Iran.
So let us stop being distracted over Rev. Wright. Those who are going to make him a litmus test would not have voted for Senator Obama anyway. There are some exciting things going on in North Carolina and Indiana right now. We are not starting from twenty points down as was the case in PA and Ohio. Let’s focus our energies there.
And just in case you don’t remember, I am an over fifty white woman.