Lookingforhome's Blog tag:www.talkingpointsmemo.com,2008:/talk/blogs/lookingforhome//1623 2008-04-28T23:24:17Z Movable Type Pro 4.21-en Reverend Wright Please Explain tag:tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com,2008:/talk//17.191800 2008-04-28T23:24:17Z 2008-04-28T23:24:17Z It seems that (at least in the mind of Reverend Jeremiah Wright) Black Liberation Theology, the truth as he and his church see it, attempts to free African Americans from the historical chains of their oppressors.  Putting aside what that... Lookingforhome It seems that (at least in the mind of Reverend Jeremiah Wright) Black Liberation Theology, the truth as he and his church see it, attempts to free African Americans from the historical chains of their oppressors.  Putting aside what that mindset says about the victim-status of slave descendents (a huge sociological debate that is healthy and valuable) who does that theology define as the oppressors?  I grew up in the Midwest in a lower-middle class working family, but all my Grandparents immigrated in the 30's from Ireland and Germany.  No ancestor of mine -- that I'm aware of -- had any role in the slave trade.  I've been lucky to get a good education and in one brief generation seem to have escaped whatever limitations our lower-income upbringing put on me.  Perhaps that's a radically faster escape from limited means than an average black child of similar means could ever hope or expect...but does that make me an oppressor? My parents?  What do we all think that average, working-class white Americans who still live a day-to-day existence, struggling to keep their homes and feed their kids feel about their role in the black experience?  Are they the oppressors whom Reverend Wright is going to liberate African Americans from?  Right or wrong, might it be reasonable that they think that's what he's saying?


If I listen to his very eloquent and yet occasionally vitriolic sermons -- as one of many who seems not to have gotten his code book in the mail -- it's very difficult to decipher who the "damned" in America are.  Were the victims of 9/11 and their loved ones -- on average -- oppressors of the African American populace and therefore damned in the eyes of God?  If that's a common misinterpretation of his statements isn't it at least in part his responsibility to be more clear?  


Maybe I've seriously misunderstood the intent and the meaning of what Reverend Wright says.  I don't come from an evangelical religious tradition (lapse Catholic) and though I've read and studied the bible, I have nothing that compares to his academic/divinity school credentials.  But I don't know that this is a fair, realistic standard to apply to average people who are being asked -- by Reverend Wright -- to accept his statements as being totally benevolent and part of a universal reconciliation.  I think it is ultimately the Reverend's responsibility to square his rhetoric from the pulpit with the comments promoting reconciliation that we heard today at the National Press Club.  I've read his entire statement and I find it confusing and contradictory.  Is that because I wish to attack him, bear him or his church ill will or wish to score political points at his expense?  In my heart of hearts I don't think so, and I don't believe that many average white Americans approach his statements pre-disposed in any such way.


He closed his speech with the following comments and yet when I return to those he stated earlier in the same speech and in sermons past, I don't know how they can come from same person or perspective.  Is he trying to have it both ways -- fire up a frustrated and angry black coalition while then denying that he's generally blaming whites for their problems?  There's really no way to know, but in all his responses today I never heard the Reverend address that central question head on.  He really should, if in his heart of hearts he truly seeks to achieve the following high ideals:


Reconciliation means we embrace our individual rich histories, all of them. We retain who we are as persons of different cultures, while acknowledging that those of other cultures are not superior or inferior to us. They are just different from us.


We root out any teaching of superiority, inferiority, hatred, or prejudice.

And we recognize for the first time in modern history in the West that the other who stands before us with a different color of skin, a different texture of hair, different music, different preaching styles, and different dance moves, that other is one of God's children just as we are, no better, no worse, prone to error and in need of forgiveness, just as we are.


Only then will liberation, transformation, and reconciliation become realities and cease being ever elusive ideals.

~ Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.


(Apologies if the preceding comments are in any way taken out of context.)

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