Here are the comments that have made me fear for a race riot:
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people, God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." (From a 2003 sermon)
He seems to believe that government is dispensing drugs to black people and then locking them up as some elaborate scheme. It seems preposterous to me. I wonder why he would believe that. If it's true (and I'm certainly not saying it is) then indeed America deserves damnation.
All in all, it is irresponsible to insight a crowd based on an unsubstantiated theory. But if he has some proof that I am unaware of, then he is rightfully following the tradition of his namesake, Jeremiah.
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye... We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." (From Sept. 16, 2001, right after the World Trade Center attacks).
I don't think 9/11 is something we, the people, deserved. The people who were most hurt had little to nothing to do with our country's foreign policy. At the same time, we must examine to what degree our country's foreign policy motivates the murderous hatred we saw displayed. If we arrogantly demand that we did nothing wrong, aren't we just setting ourselves up for more attacks.
Then he had some tirade about how Hillary Clinton and John McCain do not know what it is to be black. This absolutely true. He used the "n" word, which I wish no one would use.
And this gets to a larger point about you and me. We do not understand enough about each other. We tend to send back at a distance judge the words attitudes and actions of others.
I read this article that says the while two thirds of whites believe that blacks have achieved or will soon achieve racial equality, nearly eighty percent of blacks believe that racial justice for blacks will not be achieved either in their lifetime or at all in the U.S.
Before you start trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong, we should all be struck by the disparity. Why do we see things so differently?
I don't like what Wright said. But I need to try to understand why he and so many Christian Americans do believe the sort of things he has said.
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I just read Huckabee's response to Rev. Wright's words.
"One other thing I think we've got to remember: As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, "That's a terrible statement," I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would, too. I probably would, too. In fact, I may have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me."
Thank you, Mr. Huckabee.
On the drug issues, I remember reading about it in The Source and Tupac talked about it back when I was in high school (obviously,) tupac hasn't been talking since then...) The claim was that the Reagan administration brought drugs into black neighborhoods to keep them from voting, among other reasons... Some people claimed this was unknown to Reagan himself, other people say the opposite.
Anyway, definitely not the best sources, and I have no clue how much truth is there at all, but it's a claim that has been made for years now.
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