The Miracle of Renewal and Rev. Wright

I have watched in silence and some anger, as the media and far too many Americans denigrated Rev. Wright. I don't know the man... but I do know that of which he speaks.

The poet, Lucile Clifton once wrote...

Love rejected
hurts so much more
than love rejecting

They act like they don't love their country
no...
what it is
they found out
their country don't love them

Rev. Wright stood up and denounced what he saw as wrong... he found out his country didn't love his children, his parishioners, his flock.

Love rejected hurts so much more...

My country, America, spent over two centuries telling people of color (and women) why it didn't love them. Two centuries demanding submission and inflicting humiliation. Two centuries filled with torture and murder and blood and poverty. Yet... for those centuries, Americans we longed to be. We worked, we served, we wore the uniform, we fought our nations enemies and died to be part of the American fabric. We eventually marched, demonstrated and yes, we even rioted to force entry.

Now America HAS moved on. My country has embraced the dream of its constitution - not all of the time, but most of it nowadays. But there are still prisons filled with our sons and daughters, crumbling schools and unaccessible healthcare. The burdens of race have not disappeared but they have turned into, at least in large part, the burdens of poverty.

If anger surfaces and boils over, perhaps... just perhaps... addressing the root of the anger, rather than it's expression might be a better way to go.

None of this is to deny the truth of Sen. Obama's observation on the root and expression and truth of some white anger. It too comes from the sense of love rejected...

The way forward is to be about the building of an America which rejects none of those who love it...

Peace...

•  tips...

  by plainbrown1 on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 07:59:58 AM PDT

•  Wright's Comments About the Dead

  Let me start by saying that this isn't intended as a criticism of Obama, only of Reverend Wright.

  Wright has demonstrated a disrespectful, hateful attitude time and time again.  Here are some of his remarks about Natalie Holloway, the American teenager who was murdered in Aruba.

  Reverend Wright, from August 2005 Trumpet magazine:

  Black women are being raped daily in Darfur, Sudan, in the Congo and in Sub-Saharan Africa. That doesn't make news.  One 18-year-old white girl from Alabama gets drunk on a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and 'gives it up' while in a foreign country, and that stays in the news for months! Maybe I am missing something!

  If Reverend Wright can't even respect the dead, he doesn't qualify as a "miracle" in my book.

  by nhc1978 on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:02:33 AM PDT

  •  We have said it many times here

    White women in trouble get the press.  The black women who are missing get nary a word, not a nod, nothing.  No press to help find them or what happened.  Would you be angry and slighting if your daughter went missing and everybody ignored your pleas?  Please don't equate white experience with black, the comparisons are like apples and horses,  conclusions cannot be drawn.  It comes off as racist.

    by tobendaro on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:06:52 AM PDT

    •  And?

      Are you calling me "racist" for complaining about Reverend Wright mocking a dead white girl?

      That's so off-base I'm not even going to get offended.

      This sort of rhetoric will turn off the vast majority of white voters in the fall.  The best thing that can happen for Obama is for America to forget about Reverend Wright, not for diaries to keep being post here celebrating Reverend Wright.

      by nhc1978 on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:10:15 AM PDT

      •  Is it racist

        to look into every young white girls disappearance and ignore every black girl's?  Why do you think this is the way it should be?  If you think that the screaming about it is off base then I might say you are racist.  Why wouldn't you be?

        by tobendaro on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 02:38:08 PM PDT

    •  Anger is no excuse for vile insult.

      Wright's grievances are legit, his expression (there) most decidedly not.

      by burrow owl on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:56:49 AM PDT

      •  Anger talks.

        Are you saying that whites would not express themselves this way if the tables were turned?  I am astounded that people look at this situation and excoriate a black person for being angry and expressing it.  If he had been more polite where would that get him?  Where have they gotten so far in this instance?  Absolutly nowhere.

        by tobendaro on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 02:41:51 PM PDT

        •  If a white person expressed a similar

          sentiment, it would be no less vile.

          by burrow owl on Mon Mar 24, 2008 at 05:00:07 AM PDT

  •  Look at the cause... not the expression...

    I am not here to interpret or explain the many comments of Rev. Wright - as I said, I do not know the man. My comment was simply that condemnation without examination is wrong.

    The substance of the comment you quote was one that was frequently heard at the time of Ms. Holloway's disappearance, and not only by black commentators.  It was a comment on the media and not on the victim. The question was why the disproportionate (and never ending) coverage of that one tragic circumstance, when similar things happened to women who were poor, or who were non-white and passed without notice in the media and press. The anger and frustration came out in many ways, some of them intemperate.

    When it comes to talking race, we far too often find ourselves arguing about comparative pain... whose pain hurts more!

    In a series of articles on the subject of talking race I wrote, some time ago...

    ...For what we too often fail to appreciate and acknowledge is that, distilled to its essence, discussions of race are really attempts to talk about pain. Who caused it? Who has it? How to alleviate it? And perhaps most importantly, the ranking of our pain relative to the pain of others.

    All of us have felt and know about pain. But it is, when you think about it, a complex subject.

    It is not directly observable or quantifiable; it’s measured by its effects. It is experienced on multiple levels -- physical, emotional, psychological. It is wholly internal, subjectively perceived, and varies individually in intensity and persistence. Sometimes it’s inflicted intentionally, sometimes not. It’s magnified if we suffer it without the comfort or support of those around us. Yet pain when shared can bind us to one another, building a sense of identity and cohesion.

    Psychic and emotional pain, especially, are often unrecognized or discounted. Without the outward signal of a Band-Aid, splint or open wound, such pain can go unacknowledged and unsupported, even denigrated. Sometimes the best advice we can give our friends in such cases is to "get over it", or "leave it behind and get on with life" -- comments we wouldn’t think of making to someone in a cast.

    Yet pain brings a predictable reaction: expressions of hurt or outrage; guarding against additional hurt; withdrawal. And, perhaps most damaging to our attempts to communicate, our pain can lead to a myopic, inward focus that excludes consideration of almost everything else.

    But pain is a universal human experience. And it is the divergence between what pain we’ve gone through personally and society’s reactions to it that controls and defines our race dialogue. For we identify with pain that resembles our own; we have difficulty coping with the kind we’re not familiar with.

    Have you ever watched someone who has never lost a loved one trying to show empathy with someone recently bereaved? That someone may recognize the signals of pain, its depth or intensity, but he or she cannot truly feel it. On the other hand, those who have suffered the same loss not only pick up the signals but will often re-experience the pain they themselves felt at the time of their own loss.

    What has this got to do with race? Everything.

    Pain is often the medium of exchange when races relate. It is certainly true that racism, bigotry and discrimination inflict pain. Psychic pain. Emotional pain. And, far too often, physical pain. And these attitudes and actions hurt not only their targets but also the very social fabric of the community. The pain that results from racial misunderstanding or racism itself is experienced no differently than the kind that comes from a slap in the face or a car crash.

    It hurts like hell. And it provokes a similar reaction.

    All pain hurts! Your pain and my pain. Arguing about who hurts more does not resolve the pain, it just adds anger...

    by plainbrown1 on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:25:45 AM PDT

    •  I'm hearing you

      thank you for your heartfelt words, plainbrown. I hear them and appreciate their wisdom.

      I accept the love you have for our country and allow it to inspire me.

      by copithorne on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 09:04:59 AM PDT

    •  beautifully said. Pain hurts EVERYONE like hell

      Have been so upset that MSM seem to have forgotten that overt racism is alive and thriving today in America, never mind the institutional and buried racism that each of us are trying to root out.  Just recall the Jena six and an African American woman professor finding a noose outside her door  THIS YEAR.  To say nothing of the fact that Arab civilians are as expendable as Native Americans wehen our ancestors decided they should conquer this continent...because they could.

      If I, a white grandmother, child of the sixties, say that racism is alive and it HURTS people, and KILLS people, no one minds.

      But if a strong black man says, with passion, that racism and arrogant assumption of superiority and dominion is alive and it HURTS people and KILLS people (around the world), beware...

      uppity...
      fearsome...
      racist....

      BASTA! enough.  I am thrilled progressives are supporting Wright, who was not Wrong.

      by revgerry on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 09:21:35 AM PDT

  •  Oh... please.

    :eyeroll:

    It's a COMMON commentary around here.

    Wright's whole point is, it depends on WHO the dead whether this country cares or respects them.

    You just proved it.

    by second gen on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:52:00 AM PDT

    •  The media bias critique is common;

      saying the girl was drunk and looking to get laid sure as hell ain't.  And if were, it sure as hell shouldn't be common.

      by burrow owl on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 09:28:36 AM PDT

  •  Disrespectful and foul mouthed

    It is doubtful the missing 18 year old from AMERICA was ever mentioned in Darfur, Sudan, the Congo or Sub-Saharan Africa either. What Wright is missing is the fact that he is placing more importance on the people of Africa than he is on the people of his own country. Wright saying "she gives it up" is down right disgusting coming from anyone, that certainly is not what most decent people expect to hear from their preacher.

    by nova2 on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 09:00:29 AM PDT

  •  I respect the dead

    But I too am sick of the whole "missing white woman" story that the MSM seems to hold so dear. These stories are only interesting to the families and communities involved. Their pain should not be paraded across national news pages for months. And it's true, it's never a person of color that gets this pseudo-celebrity treatment.

    Of course the MSM uses these stories as filler, since they stopped reporting on things like BushCo's latest atrocities, or the collapse of our economy due to corporate greed, or whatever. But that's another issue.

    I respect the dead, but I have no respect at all for the Clintonites who keep harping on Wright. Your candidate lost. Get over it. Now be good Democrats and get behind the winner, and use your energy to fight McCain.

    by Dagoril on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 12:13:20 PM PDT

•  From DREAMS FROM MY FATHER

  I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless; how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair, I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder – alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware – is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.

  Barack Obama, Dreams of My Father, pp. x-xi

  Are we doomed?

  by gabbardd on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:04:33 AM PDT

  •  Doomed?

    Only if we allow the traditional response to desperate conditions to persist.

    The hope is in the very fact that so many are now rejecting what is, in a search for a new path...

    by plainbrown1 on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:28:52 AM PDT

•  Well...when the MSM decided to go after

  pastors and Churches, they may be opening a can of worms they didn't anticipate.  They have just put many pastors under scrutiny and there maybe a backlash.

  Check out this white pastor at Trinty Unity Church..the same church of Rev. White.

  by jalenth on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:10:10 AM PDT