Firmage EdReverend Jeremiah Wright Detroit NAACP Speech
Here’s the Reverend Wright speech I referred to in my last two posts.
Reverend Wright, I HAVE NEED TO BE BAPTISED OF THEE & The Reverend Jeremiah Wright….Jeremiads are What the Bible Says
The sound bites being used to sell air time this week were clearly taken out of context. Wright said, ‘the black religious tradition, despite its long history, is in some ways “invisible to the dominant culture.”‘
In April, a week ago, Wright addressed an audience of 10,000 at a dinner sponsored by the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I worked for two years, on the staff of Hubert Humphrey, with Roy Wilkins, the legendary head of the NAACP. He without question was one of a very few people who, in fact, were my fathers. I’ve heard Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ve heard Roy Wilkins. I’ve heard and worked with Whitney Young, president of the Urban League. Hubert himself was one of the great stump speakers of all time. I’ve listened to FDR and saw and heard Harry Truman give ‘em hell. I’ve heard great talents in the Mormon world. Hugh B. Brown, a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, a dedicated FDR liberal Democrat and head of the state party in days gone by, was no slouch at speaking. He addressed a group of the faithful in southern Utah, mounting the only high ground, a manure pile, and began by saying, “excuse me for speaking on a Republican platform.” Quite frankly, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright equals the best and towers over any of his critics today. I was astounded at such erudition and sheer brilliance. I shouldn’t have been. Martin Marty, our most distinguished theologian and historian, from the University of Chicago, wrote strongly commending the Reverend Wright, in the New York Times, after the first firestorm. Wright is rightly named Jeremiah. He delivered truthful powerful jeremiads and all those people of power who do it for money winced. Some things never change.
Might it be, fellow countrymen, thay you erred? I pray you, reconsider. Did you really like Martin Luther King, Jr., while he was alive? Or when he was safely dead? Like we do with Francis Assisi, when he’s not bothering the rich, while he lived, but is now safely in his birdbath?
Check THIS!
I recommend the recent Bill Moyers interview.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:22 am
I think Wright has proven himself to be a self centered media hound. I also think people like him fear having an African-American President will jeopardize their place in the victim industry.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:51 am
Ken, You must admit you are less than shy when confronted with an audience.
But whatever do you mean by “jeopardize their place in the victim industry?”
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:13 am
Cliff, if I may. The victim industry is the media- industrial-military-corporation-complex as seen from the receiving end. Thier tendency to be of the brown (or darker) persuasion is the reason ‘people like’ Wright fear having a president of that hue particularity.
Now, if we absolutely must have a lighter tone in our Whitehouse, give me Rocky Anderson!
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:17 am
Cliff
I’m not saying there are no victims or people with legitimate grievances. There are many injustices in the world and sadly they happen here too, but there are people like Rev. Wright, Jessie Jackson, and Al Sharpton who have made a cottage industry of it that is very lucrative. They like to preach about the injustices of the world living in million dollar homes. They are not interested in solving problems regarding race and poverty but only speaking up against it and taking money which further victimizes the people they claim to be advocates for. That is what I mean.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:42 am
Thanks Ken,
Its all clear now. Some people have legitimate grievances, but there are three black men who can get the attention of the media and get paid sometimes to appear on TV which in turn “further victimizes the people they claim to be advocates for.”
Who lives in million dollar homes?
(Actually, I lied. I am more confused)
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
…and thanks Cav. I’ll take Rocky too over all the weak knee’d democratic candidates too if Obama is too dark.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Wright outs his candidate, can’t keep his wrath to himself and so sinks the ship.
It’s all over but the crying, Obama is done in by the elites of the dem party, Hillary gets the call, McCain gets to be president, or she does, not like there will be any measurable difference.
Why talk about Wright? As I expected, the dem party has committed suicide, again.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Cliff
Sorry, that was a bit of a drive by response. My wife and I both had graduations today. She got her bachelors degree in Physical Education and I got my Associates degree in Applied Science (Computer Science). She is finished now, and I have at least a year or two to get my bachelors degree but I’m trudging along. Now that my wife is the educated one she can keep me in the manner I would like to become accustomed to. (just kidding).
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Hi, friends all…..
Ken, I hear you regarding demanding days and graduations. I graduated almost aa century ago, in 1960, from BYU. Ernest Wilkinson held forth for about five hours at commencement and I never attended a commencement again. Four more degrees, but all by mail delivered! Pavlovian to the core.
About The Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Aren’t we all “media hounds?” Why would we ever write blogs that only our great-grand-aunt on our mother’s side of the family will ever read? If this isn’t original sin, maybe it’s Dantean ego. ed firmage
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Cav, right on!!! The media-industrial-military complex gets trillions of dollars in subsidies, guaranteed for the next 500 years, due directly to votes stolen in Florida; and the imbecility of our voting stupid again in as Commander-in-Chief of the military industrial media complex. Heavens but do I ever sound like my seventy-two-year-old pastor friend! I’ve had it! We won’t take it anymore!!!! ed firmage
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Ken, regarding your naming three American leaders whose common characteristic, along with fire in the belly, is that they are all people of color, is problematic. I fear the latent racism in my own soul, and that same racist inclination of us all, if the right, or more correctly, the wrong button is pushed. Next tuesday, in Indiana and South Carolina, this barely-below-the-surface issue: Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma’, that is, racism, in our history and in our soul, will be at issue. Of course, many issues with no relation to race will be spoken about in our great Democracy. But nevertheless, exorcism is no fun. (Both Gunnar Myrdal and Alva Myrdal won the Nobel Prize; Alva, with whom I worked as a young man at the United Nations, in Geneva, also won the Albert Einstein Peace Prize.) Much of the greatest case of the twentieth century, Brown v. The Board of Education, was based on Gunnar Myrddal’s An American Dilemma, and upon Kenneth Clark’s works on race.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Ed, old friend indeed, thanks for posting this.
Here is a link that may capture part of this very complex man:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/eboo_patel/2008/04/who_is_jeremiah_wright.html
Whatever we may think of Rev. Wright, the world does not like, and rarely accepts, voices crying in the wilderness. See, for example,
http://www.castelmeteo.it/arte/caravaggio/La_decollazione_del_Battista.jpg
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
The problem with Jeremiah Wright along with many other civil rights leaders is they do not speak in a way that achieves positive results. Yes they will get noticed and get plenty of screen time but any valid points they may offer is drowned out by hyperbole and theatrics. Contrast this with people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi. They didn’t just speak to their own constituency but to everyone. They did not fight racism with hatred and anger of their own and by doing so they achieved real results. They changed laws but more importantly they changed hearts and minds. This is something present day civil rights leaders have forgotten and everyone is lessened as a result.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Martin Luther King said he believed “our nation was born in genocide,” and claimed that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were meaningless for blacks because they were written by slave owners.
Rev. King claimed that America “had committed more war crimes than any nation in the world.”
Rev. King accused Barry Goldwater of “Hitlerism.” He said that Goldwater advocated a “narrow nationalism, a crippling isolationism, and a trigger-happy attitude.” On domestic issues he felt that “Mr. Goldwater represented an unrealistic conservatism that was totally out of touch with the realities of the twentieth century.” King said that Goldwater’s positions on civil rights were “morally indefensible and socially suicidal.”
Rev. King said of Reagan, “When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor, can become a leading war hawk candidate for the presidency, only the irrationalities induced by war psychosis can explain such a turn of events.”
Rev. King said that you can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry… Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism… There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism.
See this and more at http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/epstein9.html
Rev. King was considered so dangerous that the government wiretapped his phones.
But Martin Luther King is long dead, and everyone remembers him fondly as the polar opposite of Rev. Wright. Were Rev. King alive and saying now what he said above, he would get the treatment now given to Rev. Wright. Right wing radio would endlessly loop the phrases: genocide, Hitlerism, war psychosis, more war crimes than any nation, socialism, etc., and people would say he should speak in a way that gets positive results, avoiding hyperbole and words that might be considered angry or hateful. At the time, Dr. King was considered by many to be a very radical man, and if we have forgotten this, then everyone is lessened by our collective amnesia. I am not saying that I would defend everything Rev. Wright and Rev. King said. I am saying that we are kidding ourselves if we remember the past differently than it was.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:44 am
Ken,
I suppose it all depends on one’s perspective. I have to wonder if you might have been so approving of MLK in 1967 coming home from Viet Nam with a career in the military facing you.
It easy to say MLK was effective, until you consider he was shot dead in public in broad daylight in America and his children grew up with no father.
But the really big elephant busting up your comment is the harsh fact that you really don’t know any civil rights leaders other than the ones that have managed to barge their way onto the occasional Fox News highlight.
Further more, are you really so taken with yourself you automatically believe anything that pops into your head as long as it sounds intelligent?
Do you really mean to blame “many other civil rights leaders” for not achieving “positive results?”
And whose job is it anyway, to produce positive results…and what would they look like?
Is it the black man’s responsibility to get whitey to like him or his family? Which black man is responsible for getting whitey to like the men on death row in Louisiana for rape - 100% of whom are black.
Would it be, could it be that you prefer civil rights leaders to ask permission before they discuss racism with their African American communities?
Is it possible you think a black civil rights leader would “achieve” better results if he would just be more poor (referring to you last comment/ASSUMPTION that Sharpton and Jackson live in million dollar homes)?
Seriously Ken. I know you are trying to be judicious and thoughtful. What pray tell do you consider “positive results?” And how would YOU recommend African Americans go about getting Whitey to ease up a bit?
Perhaps the bastards should be more appreciative of the Church’s generous decision to receive revelation that black men can hold the priesthood?
I have an idea! Jeremy Wright could come to Utah and publicly apologize for the “lynch mob” that went after Chris Buttars just because he doesn’t know “how to talk about them”.
Or maybe some civil rights leader could clear up this whole mess by simply forgiving us for being white…and asking forgiveness for having skin color that freaks out our daughters at the Mall.
Darn those civil rights leaders! They just can’t seem to get it right.
May 4th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Jeremiah Wright is a media hound?? I am quite perplexed at that comment. So how would you label the people like O’Reilly and who say outrageous things everyday, EVERYDAY?
I am not here to justify anything that Rev. Wright said that offended anyone, but I will say that I admire the fact that he is not afraid of speaking out about his views.
It takes a strong person and admirable person to disagree with the norm, to make the oppressors fell uncomfortable by speaking on behalf of the oppressed. His speech to the NAACP, sure I disagreed with some aspects, but he also said things that needed to be said.
Ken, about this jeopordizing “our” place in the victim industry, I hope you do not think this is a constant fear among African-Americans. Who wants to be victim? Certainly not myself. Not at nineteen years old, not as a black female, attending a very prestigious university in D.C. Certainly not me, and certainly not the rest of Black America. We have been “victims” for too long, so long that people like you are beginning to think we actually like it. If only you could see me shaking my head at that ignorant comment. Black people want to move up the social/economic ladder but contrary to popular belief racism is a key factor in why more progress has not been made since the days of slavery. When you strip a people of their culture, language, families, to the extent of which was done in American slavery you have a torn people and mending that tear does not happen over night. And will not happen as long as you have inequalities in the educational system which is key.
The problem is, it is hard for people who are not African-American to understand the plight and the struggle of African- Americans. Period. Slavery and Jim Crow and Segregation were NOT that long ago. I have grandparents and great-aunts and uncles who still posses mindsets of the decades that they grew up in. Relatives who remember what it was like to not be allowed to shop in stores and honestly I can see their timidity in their interaction with white people (my family is from rural Georgia). They were socialized to believe themselves inferior to white people. How do you change mindsets even though times change? That is a challenge for the elderly. My point is that because segregation was not that long ago, the effects are still here. Still here. I just wish people would TRY to understand this.
May 4th, 2008 at 12:24 am
“theatrics” Ken, your choice of words causes me to question your thought process. Should I understand you to comprehend that black leaders are putting on a show for viewers? Why do people who simply do not understand black culture, try to understand black culture, but misunderstand black culture. Black leaders just express themselves in a different way. Simple as that. If you want to call it “theatrics” go ahead, but it makes my mind revert back to the history books, images of black people, to be happy go-lucky people who always want to sing and dance and make jokes and are the white man’s burden. Your word choice alone is a stereotype, you think black leaders just want to entertain?
- And could some PLEASEEEEEE explain to me, why Rev. Wright should even be a factor in whether Obama wins the election? He is a preacher, not a politician his views are not the same as Obama’s that is clear. This election is not going to be up to the American people, it is in the hands of people who would rather die than see a black woman or a white man as President. I knew this when this whole thing first started. It’s sad.