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“Muslims” versus “Americans”?
Posted by: | CommentsI just ran across a book put out by the Gallup press last year, titled Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, by researchers John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed. Gallup did tens of thousands of interviews with people in 35 predominantly or significantly Muslim countries, asking them an array of questions about their views of the West and Islam. Here is a bit of the Gallup summary of their findings:
Muslims around the world do not see the West as monolithic. They criticize or celebrate countries based on their politics, not based on their culture or religion.
All their points in the Gallup summary are presented as “counterintuitive discoveries.” And rather uncritically too. The Western bias even in this “liberal” analysis is obvious. It does not take much familiarity with the non-Western media online to know this in advance. Mainly for Westerners would this “duh” conclusion be “counterintuitive.”
In addition, the U.S./Western bias leaps out at the reader in the major part of the summary that accents Western “concerns” about Islam:
When asked to describe their dreams for the future, Muslims don’t mention fighting in a jihad, but rather getting a better job. . . . Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustified. . . . Those who condone acts of terrorism are a minority and are no more likely to be religious than the rest of the population. . . .
Again, this is not really counterintuitive for people living in these countries, or indeed I suspect in most of the non-Western world. Featuring this Western obsession over “jihad” in a major survey tells us much more about Western stereotyping of non-Western Muslims than it does about the latter (billion) citizens of planet Earth.
The summary adds this:
What Muslims around the world say they most admire about the West is its technology and its democracy — the same two top responses given by Americans when asked the same question.. . . . What Muslims around the world say they least admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values — the same responses given by Americans when posed the same question.
The strong and ethnocentric dichotomy throughout the summary is very revealing. There is the odd phrasing the Gallup folks use a couple of times: “Muslims and Americans.” And they carry out this dichotomy in describing (unmodified) “Muslims” and “Americans” as having similar values and views, but again without making it clear that millions of Muslims are indeed Americans. Apparently it does not occur to them that one can be both Muslim and American, all across the U.S.
The ethnocentrism and ignorance about Muslims, including U.S. Muslims, in the U.S. is indeed staggering. Maybe the naïve survey does move in the direction of seeing Muslims everywhere as human beings? As the summary notes:
Muslims around the world say that the one thing the West can do to improve relations with their societies is to moderate their views toward Muslims and respect Islam.
Indeed. And do a little research and reading.
Religious Racism: A Milestone Overlooked
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During the November 2008 celebrations over Senator Obama’s election, another important event regarding the country’s racist past was generally overlooked. In that month the president and great-grandson of the founder of arch-conservative
Bob Jones University 
photo credit: japedi
apologized for its long hyper-racist tradition:
For almost two centuries American Christianity, including BJU in its early stages, was characterized by the segregationist ethos of American culture. Consequently, for far too long, we allowed institutional policies regarding race to be shaped more directly by that ethos than by the principles and precepts of the Scriptures. . . . For these failures we are profoundly sorry. Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful.
An odd apology, given that institutional racism never exists without personal discriminatory acts stemming from the old white racial frame. He apparently limits personal “racism” to just certain outrageous actions like cross-burnings, I suppose. Racist actions somehow do not include all the racial segregation barriers long implemented on campus by campus officials.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education continues with an interesting of this very segregated university. Its founder, Bob Jones, was a very fundamentalist and segregationist Christian evangelist. After several college moves and recurring financial troubles, it finally located in Greenville, S.C. (Interestingly, Billy Graham attended the college—at its earlier Tennessee location–in the 1930s but found it too conservative even for his tastes in reactionary religion.) Jones was extraordinarily hostile to Catholics and viewed the pope as the anti-Christ, as well as Blacks as naturally segregated and unfit for his college:
Jones Sr. was of the view that twentieth-century blacks should be grateful to whites for bringing their ancestors to this country as slaves. If this had not happened, Jones wrote in 1960, “they might still be over there in the jungles of Africa, unconverted.” Integrationists, according to Jones, were wrongfully trying to eradicate natural boundaries that God himself had established.
The son, Bob Jones Jr., was at least as extreme a segregationist and gave honorary degrees to leading segregationists like George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, and Lester Maddox. The next Bob Jones, the third, became president in 1971. The college, with lots of federal pressure, finally admitted unmarried black students, but strictly barred interracial dating. This led in 1976 to the IRS (belatedly) revoking its tax-exempt status and demanding back taxes. The resulting court case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which also (belatedly) voted 8 to 1 for the IRS decision. (Only former segregation supporter Chief Justice Rehnquist voted against.) Still the college continued it racist religious rant:
In 1998 Jonathan Pait, a public relations spokesman for the university, explained the school’s prohibition against interracial dating: “God has separated people for his own purposes. He has erected barriers between the nations, not only land and sea barriers, but also ethnic, cultural, and language barriers. God has made people different from one another and intends those differences to remain. Bob Jones University is opposed to intermarriage of the races because it breaks down the barriers God has established.”
Just two years later, the college backed off on this position on interracial dating, but it took eight more years for the president of the university to make the rather tepid apology noted above. I wonder if President Obama’s election played a role in that apology
Whites Reveal Obama Reactions
Posted by: | Comments[This reflective post was written by three college student researchers, Amanda, Dave, and Hannah]
Much like Jessie and Adia, this election has been a momentous event for young people, many voting for the first time. The three of us (Amanda, Dave, and Hannah) grew up in white, middle class neighborhoods and were taught a white-washed version of history. Since entering college and realizing the gaping holes in our education, we have taken deliberate steps to learn the complete history of America. This compounds the significance of Obama’s run for President for us.
At the daycare where Hannah works, one of the few black students said to her on the day after the election, “Barack Obama has a haircut like me.” This sentiment coming from a five-year-old boy marks the significance of the election for us. Obama and his family are constant reminders to all Americans that “Joe the Plumber” is not and never was the true face of America. We hope this is the beginning of a time in our country where whites never ignore the true faces of America. We are proud of this America, the one that has elected Barack Obama, and not the white-washed one of our past, that teachers taught to us by glazing over reality. We agree with Michelle Obama, this is the first time we have felt proud of our country.
We decided to talk with white students and community members to see how they viewed this historic election. We found many people were unsure of Obama’s religion and expressed fear at the possibility of electing a Muslim president. Some respondents wanted Obama to openly declare his religion and others were explicitly hostile towards Muslims. The prevailing excuse for this overt prejudice was the 9/11 attack and President Bush’s “War on Terror.” We found that both conservatives and liberals shared this sentiment.
People often hid their racist comments to distance themselves from appearing prejudiced. This is a front stage technique and is not surprising since we interviewed people in coffee houses and other public settings.
We also found people held contradictory views about Obama as both a radical Christian and a potential Islamic terrorist. When confronted with this inconsistency, they were unable to express both views clearly. Some were confused and ended their statement in uncertainty.
As Joe has stated, many felt that Obama’s victory spelled the end of racism in America. But we found the open prejudice towards Muslims contradicts this. In addition, Obama and his family were seen by many as “white” and therefore “an exception to the race.” This statement reveals the prevalence of racism because it implies that African Americans need an exception, and it also plays into the idea that whiteness equals goodness. It attempts to minimize the significance of electing a man of color as president.
As we move forward, we must not overlook the importance of Obama’s presidency. He is our first black president and a symbol of racial progress. The election of Obama is a strong foundation for addressing our racist history but this event does not signal the end of racism or the beginning of a “color-blind” American society.
Smearing Dr. Wright: White Fear and Republican Leaders, Again
Posted by: | CommentsReportedly Senator McCain has said he will not use the Dr. Jeremiah Wright “story” against Senator Obama, but some Republican Party operatives (listed as the Republican Federal Committee of Pennsylvania) in Pennsylvania have ignored that inclination and are now running anti-Obama attack ads highlighting Dr. Wright. CNN has had this weak story up today:
. . . a last-minute television ad that calls attention to Barack Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “If you think you could ever vote for Barack Obama, consider this: Obama chose as his spiritual leader this man,” the ad’s narrator says before clips of Wright’s controversial statements are shown. “Does that sound like someone who should be president?” the ad asks.
The CNN story meekly continues with this:
Sen. John McCain has repeatedly said he does not believe Obama’s relationship to Wright should be an issue — to the ire of some Republicans who feel it raises questions about the Illinois senator’s judgment.
McCain deserves some credit for this if it is true, and apparently it is, or was. Governor Palin has ignored it lately, and presumably McCain could stop her:
“[Obama] sat in the pews for 20 years and heard Rev. Wright say some things that most people would find a bit concerning. But again that is John McCain’s call,” Palin told reporters. The state GOP … defended airing it. “We feel that it is necessary that the American people remember that Obama sat in a church and listened to this man preach hate for many, many years,” said a statement on its Web site. “What does that say about his judgment? Do we want the next president of the United States to have spent years listening to hateful rhetoric without having the good judgment to walk out?”
I pointed out the misrepresentations in such nonsense here in early April. Let us look again briefly at Dr. (notice the media and white politicians rarely give him his correct title) Jeremiah Wright’s famous (and old) sermon with the famous statements that ABC News first spread like wildfire. Five years ago, Dr. Wright gave a 40-minute sermon discussing the racist history of our government and what we need to do about it. He ends the sermon thus:
And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to putting her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in interment prison camps. When it came to putting the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them scientific experiments. Put them in the lower paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That’s in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme. …. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent. Tell your neighbor he’s [going to] help us one last time. Turn back, and say forgive him for the “God Damn”–that’s in the Bible though. Blessings and curses is in the Bible. It’s in the Bible. Where government fails, God never fails. When God says it, it’s done. God never fails. When God wills it, you’d better get out the way, cause God never fails.
This sounds like many prophetic sermons I have heard from preachers over numerous decades now. Seen in context at the end of a long sermon, Wright’s prophet-type language of “God Damn America” (he means the American government) does not seem unpatriotic and un-American as widely claimed in the mainstream media. He is saying the U.S. government is not God, has a long history of racism, and must change its racially oppressive ways. He is candidly telling truths about white racism, something rare outside black homes and organizations (sermons like this take place 100s of times a week in African American churches). He is giving us some of the black counter-framing against the white racial frame, and many whites cannot handle that racial truth. Did anyone in the mass media even listen to or read the whole sermon?
Dr. Jeremiah Wright has been greatly slandered. He should sue the media. He is almost always framed by the white media folks as a “dangerous black man.” Yet he is actually an American prophet, indeed a prophetic hero who is not afraid to condemn this country’s racist government actions, past and present. He is not recognized in the mainstream media as a leading minister, yet he has been ranked in the top 15 African American ministers by the leading African American magazine. He is a much-honored minister in a predominantly white mainstream Protestant denomination originally founded by (are you ready for this?) that “radical” white group called the Pilgrims! He has seven honorary doctorates, has published four books, and has numerous articles. His savvy sermons are studied at major US divinity schools by white and black and other seminarians. Before he became a minister, he was a Navy corpsman who graduated at the top of his class and assisted President Johnson in a medical crisis. Why has this great American been slandered as unpatriotic and too radical? Only because he spoke out vigorously against white racism. And now the Republicans slander him once again. They should instead actually listen to his sermons. They might learn something they badly need to know about US racism.
The Most Segregated Hour of the Week — Still
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The ABC News website has an interesting article, “Two Nations Under God: Segregated Churches the Norm,” by Imaeyen Ibanga. The article cites a new study by the Pew Center that shows the huge racial divide in churches in the United States. The journalist summarizes thus:
Every Sunday parishioners head to their respective churches, the vast majority of which are filled with worshippers predominately of one race. Only 7 percent of American churches are racially integrated, according to the Pew Center.
These data show just how racially segregated the United States is now well into the third millennium–and also accent how unusual it is to have an African American with a serious chance to become president right now. One white churchgoer is quoted as explaining the church segregation this way:
You go into a society that’s all white, you’re gonna typically have an all-white church, and vice-versa with other ethnicities as well.
One Ohio minister, Cliff Biggers, is trying to break down the racial segregation by (photo: Obama site) 
taking his
black congregation out of its comfort zone to a white church every fifth Sunday. Often times Biggers and his congregants are given a warm welcome, inviting visitors to meals and fellowship. But sometimes the response can be less than enthusiastic. “I think people are a little put back, sure. You have people walking in that, number one, you don’t know them; number two, they look different than you.”
A little put back, indeed. As I was reading this article, I have also been thinking about a revealing new book by social scientist Korie Edwards that I have started reading. Called The Elusive Dream, it examines the impact of institutional racism (and thus white racial framing) in churches that are consciously interracial. The book description puts her findings this way, starting with one interracial church service:
A black pastor and white head elder stand before the sanctuary as lay leaders pass out the host. An African-American woman sings a gospel song as a woman of Asian descent plays the piano. Then a black woman in the congregation throws her hands up and yells, over and over, “Thank you [Lord]!” A few other African-Americans in the pews say “Amen,” while white parishioners sit stone-faced…..Even in this proudly interracial church, America’s racial divide is a constant presence. . . . . [I]nterracial churches … help perpetuate the very racial inequality they aim to abolish. . . . [M]ixed-race churches adhere strongly to white norms. African Americans in multiracial settings adapt their behavior to make white congregants comfortable.
The black members are thus forced to conform to white norms and racial framing of the church situations. The very long history of white-imposed segregation and white norms and framing helps to explain these disturbing findings. The ABC news article notes the centuries-old historical reality in regard to racial segregation in religion for African Americans:
The first black churches were built by freed slaves and many of them where open to whites on principle, but Jim Crow laws brought fresh division and wounds. “They had to sit in that last pew and if a white would come and families would come, even though they were in that pew they had to get up and give them their pew,” said Sister Eva Regina Martin, mother superior at Holy Family Sisters in New Orleans. . . . “It’ll take many years but I think as the years go by people will allow people just to be…,” said Martin, who is the head of just one of three black orders of nuns.
Many years, indeed.
Two-Faced Racism: Pfleger Does Not Equal Limbaugh
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Dr. Boyce Watkins on his blog and at blackprof.com offers an excellent commentary on the way in which the traditional white-controlled media distort racial debates and match opponents of racial oppression and their sometimes strong language with the white maintainers and creators of that racial oppression. When Dr. Jeremiah Wright or Father Michael Pfleger get angry and mock the racist system–and make a few inappropriate or debatable comments (in the context of hundreds of accurate comments backed by research)–everybody and his/ her dog in the traditional media jump on them, but when whites like Pat Buchanan or Rush Limbaugh make many statements preserving the 400 year old racist system, the media take them on as pundits and let them make millions off helping keep the old racist system in place.
One key to understanding here is that Wright and Pfleger are operating out of a liberty-and-justice counter frame to the white racial frame that is so dominant in this society that most people, especially most whites, see it as “normal” and appropriate (see here). I have yet to see any significant analysis by the media or political leaders of how the African American population (including a significant sample of church members’) views Wright or Pfleger and what they have said about racial oppression.
Dr. Watkins makes some important points point about the debates over Dr. Wright and Father Pfleger, one of very few white leaders, including clergy, willing to give their lives to end 400 years of white oppression of Americans of color:
Those who claim that Pfleger preaches hate don’t know a damn thing about what hate really is. If they want to see hate, they only need to look at what their parents, grandparents and great grandparents have done to African Americans since our country was founded. The idea that fighting historical oppression is equivalent to maintaining oppression (i.e. Sean Hannity is the same as Jeremiah Wright) is not only silly, but it is quite revealing of how little racial education an individual has. A daughter who files a lawsuit against the family of the man who raped her mother and stole her belongings is not a thief and rapist herself. As Father Pfleger points out clearly, this government has benefitted from stealing from our ancestors, that is why black people have nothing: we don’t own media, we don’t own corporations, we don’t own universities. That didn’t happen overnight. It happened because of racism, and we are forced to deal with these effects every single day.
Yet the parrots in the mass media all in one chorus chant that clergy like Wright and Pfleger are evil, wild, hateful, or irrational. Yet somehow they do not chant that chorus about the 400-year-old racist system that has destroyed, and is still destroying, tens of millions of African American lives with the ugly white-controlled racist barriers of slavery (246 years and still no apology or reparations), legal segregation (90 years and still no apology or reparations), and decades of informal racial discrimination (39 years and still no apology or reparations). Why do you suppose that is?
“Prosperity” Preachers Ignoring Racism: The Potter’s Patch
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Earlier this month, Bishop T.D. Jakes, leader of one of the largest congregations in America (“Potter’s House” in Dallas Texas), responded to CNN’s claim that he and other “prosperity” preachers are ignoring the largely egalitarian messages of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King(photo: directionstoorthodoxy). Prior to publishing his article, Jakes stated that “personal responsibility, motivating and equipping people to live the best lives that they can” are more pressing than the pursuit of social/racial equality.
In response to the attention given to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jakes defined the mission of Christian congregations and their function in larger struggles for racial justice and social equality. In an editorial Jakes wrote for CNN, he claims that a Christian congregation should not segregate itself on the basis of race or politics. Rather, “its relevance and vision must go beyond its community and reach the world for which Christ died.” This, for Jakes means that congregations (and presumably the congregants that fill them) should fill a “broader role in politics, business, media and impacting societal ills.”
In order to address societal ills, and more broadly, bring about social and racial equality in America, Jakes suggests the following: Americans dissolve their membership in monoracial churches and join multiracial congregations; and Americans unite across lines of race, class, and gender to provide resources to at risk groups.
Though sociologists such as Korie Edwards, Michael O. Emerson, and George Yancey continue to examine the role of multiracial churches in the quest for racial equality, the primacy Jakes gives to “social capital” is disturbing. Social capital refers to a community’s “trust, norms, and networks” (Robert Putnam). When used effectively, and by that I mean when communities form relationships with each other, resources can be distributed from the proverbial haves to the have-not’s. Sociologists Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Gianpaolo Baiocchi (2007) argue that this social capital approach involves a weak understanding of racism. This understanding ignores that: Social networks and norms of social behavior are often mobilized to defend racial exclusion in a racialized society; individuals in a racialized society do not have equal access to networks, and networks themselves are racialized. And the assumption that social capital leads to certain virtuous norms of behavior is both untenable and confusing of causes and effects. For Bonilla-Silva and Baiocchi (2007), proponents of this social capital perspective fail to acknowledge that America is a nation built and sustained on white domination of Blacks, Hispanics, and the white underclass.
Scholars such as Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Shayne Lee, and Jonathan Walton claim that the leader of the Potters House, one of the largest and most diverse congregations, possesses a thin framework for understanding contemporary problems of race, class, and gender. These scholars argue that Jakes provides weak solutions to social problems. Jakes’ editorial did little to address those critiques.
Instead, in this and other works, Jakes dismissed Wright as angry and irrational while claiming to advocate for the Black community–a community that as Michael Dawson shows, shares the same views regarding racism as Wright. Sadly, like Booker T. Washington before him, Jakes’s weaving together of (a) American individualism and with that, a weak understanding of racism, with (b) an alleged concern for the Black community, not only separates Jakes from the thoughts and opinions of most mainstream Blacks regarding racism, but more importantly, any realistic hope of changing the racialized social system that hinders the advancement of Blacks and the white poor.
~ Ryon Cobb
Ford Foundation Fellow
Doctoral Student, Florida State University
White Racism and Media Reactions to Dr. Wright
Posted by: | CommentsAssertions now count as data in the mainstream media and often among liberal bloggers, especially if they are white. For example, I see little attempt in any of the mainstream media to understand that Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s excerpted sermons and recent comments on them and other racial issues at recent press conferences are, with very few exceptions, grounded in a great deal of data about the nearly four centuries of extreme racial oppression in the United States, as well as centuries of U.S. oppression of people of color overseas.
Why is it that college-educated whites (some with progressive instincts) cannot understand the foundational reality and great weight of the extreme oppression visited on African Americans and other Americans of color, to the present day? Apparently, yelling that someone is wrong, as the media and many bloggers are now doing at Dr. Wright, now counts as intelligent argument and as data among the “educated” segments of this society.
Note the characterizations below of Dr. Wright, all presented in analyses with no serious examination of the data that might have led Dr. Wright to his mostly reasonable critiques of this demonstrably white racist society. Indeed, it appears that they have not actually read Dr. Wright’s critical sermons and have made no attempt whatsoever to understand why a Black ex-Marine, distinguished pastor, and minister in a leading predominantly white denomination (whose sermons are studied by white and other divinity school students for their quality) might be upset at the past and present realities of white-on-black oppression in the United States.
For example, Tristero on the Digby site speaks of “Wright’s wacky ideas.” On mydd.com Todd Beeton speaks of “Jeremiah Wright’s recent antics” And Marc Armbinder also makes similar comments. There is no attempt here to understand where a leading Black minister, and critical thinker, is coming from. Then there is this very loaded and unreflective New York Times editorial:
It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and he made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign. . . . Mr. Wright has not let that happen. In the last few days, in a series of shocking appearances, he embraced the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism. He said the government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill blacks. He suggested that America was guilty of “terrorism” and so had brought the 9/11 attacks on itself.
None of this is true just as stated here. The Times has decided that distorting and data-less journalism is good journalism. Wright is not “racist” or “paranoid.” Those are common charges that whites often make against African Americans when whites are charged with the systemic racism they have created and maintained now over several long centuries. Even in 2008 whites at the “top” of US journalism cannot face the contemporary significance of nearly four centuries of white oppression of African Americans, which is the focus of many of Wright’s reasonably critical comments. Wright also has not embraced anti-Semitism. He has been critical of the Israeli government, which is not anti-Semitism. Even Wright’s argument about AIDs is that, given the long history of the U.S. government’s extreme and destructive medical experiments on African Americans (and, by the way, where is the media outrage over that very long history?) that one cannot without evidence rule out some role of the U.S. government in spreading the AIDs virus. You can disagree with this latter point, but do get his view right before attacking it.
Clearly, the debates around Dr. Wright and Senator Obama are not mainly about these two distinguished, high-achieving black men. If they were, the media would seriously examine Dr. Wright’s conclusions about US racism. (And they would also quit intentionally disrespecting him, such as by calling him DR. Wright.) These media commentaries are actually, in the main, about fearful whites who are very offended that anyone should dare to argue that this is still a white-racist country where much work is needed to get the majority of whites to stop viewing people of color from a white-racist frame and acting in many discriminatory ways daily against those Americans of color.
Dr. Wright is Still Right on Racism: Check the Research Data
Posted by: | CommentsThere is an excellent interview of Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who is now speaking out about the stereotyped and hostile, and mostly white, attacks on him, including the many distortions of his ideas and sermons on racial matters. The interview was done last Friday, April 25, 2008, and I highly recommend it (and the full texts of Dr. Wright’s sermons too), if you want to understand just how white-racist most of the attacks on Dr. Wright have been.
In his interview Moyers asks this question (photo credit):
One of the most controversial sermons that you preach is the sermon you preach that ended up being that sound bite about Goddamn America.
And then provides the listerners with a significant segment from the end of Wright’s sermon:
Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I’m through now. But let me leave you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate – the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. 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. Not God bless America; God damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!
Moyers asks: “What did you mean when you said that?” Dr. Wright responds with this rather obvious comment, that is obvious to any open-minded person who listens to the whole prophetic sermon itself (which very few critics have, it seems):
When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government -a particular government and not to God, that you’re in serious trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments lie. And those three points of the sermon. And that is the context in which I was illustrating how the governments biblically and the governments since biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie. And when we start talking about my government right or wrong, I don’t think that goes. That is consistent with what the will of God says or the word of God says that governments don’t say right or wrong. That governments that wanna kill innocents are not consistent with the will of God. And that you are made in the image of God, you’re not made in the image of any particular government. We have the freedom here in this country to talk about that publicly, whereas some other places, you’re dead if say the wrong thing about your government.
Then they discuss some of these issues further:
BILL MOYERS: Well, you can be almost crucified for saying what you’ve said here in this country.
REVEREND WRIGHT: That’s true. That’s true. But you can be crucified, you can be crucified publicly, you can be crucified by corporate-owned media. But I mean, what I just meant was, you can be killed in other countries by the government for saying that. Dr. King, of course, was vilified. And most of us forget that after he was assassinated, but the year before he was assassinated, April 4th, 1967 at the Riverside Church, he talked about racism, militarism and capitalism. He became vilified. He got ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds. He was no longer talking about civil rights and being able to sit down at lunch counters that he should not talk about things like the war in Vietnam.
BILL MOYERS: Lyndon Johnson was furious at that. As you know-
REVEREND WRIGHT: I’m sure he was.
Wright then adds how angry people, many white and some black, got at King for telling the truth about racism and militarism in the Vietnam era (just like today):
And that’s where a lot of the African-American community broke with him, too. He was vilified by Roger Wilkins’ daddy, Roy Wilkins. Jackie Robinson. He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he’d overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war. And that part of King is not lifted up every year on January 15th. 1963, “I have a dream,” was lifted up, and passages from that – sound bites if you will – from that march on Washington speech. But the King who preached the end of- “I’ve been to the mountaintop, I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land, I might not get there with you,”- that part of the speech is talked about, not the fact that he was in Memphis siding with garbage collectors. Nothing about Resurrection City, nothing about the poor.
Wright continues by making the point that prophetic critiques of government wrongdoing are morally necessary, and common especially in the Black church. It is time for this country to listen, especially its nonblack citizens (Black Americans seem mostly in agreement with him), for the social science data show that Dr. Wright is right about racism in the United States and about government collusion in that systemic racism to the present day.
The UCC’s Response to White Media Attacks on Dr. Wright
Posted by: | CommentsHere is a savvy statement by Rev. John H. Thomas, the United Church of Christ general minister and president, on the distorted, elliptical, inflammatory, and overtly racist news coverage of Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., (pictured here, photo credit) and Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. 
It is titled “ What Kind of Prophet? Reflections on the Rhetoric of Preaching in Light of Recent News Coverage of Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. and Trinity United Church of Christ.”
Rev. Thomas, who is white, is quite specific about the white-washed media attacks:
Over the weekend members of our church and others have been subjected to the relentless airing of two or three brief video clips of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ for thirty-six years and, for over half of those years, pastor of Senator Barack Obama and his family. These video clips, and news stories about them, have been served up with frenzied and heated commentary by media personalities expressing shock that such language and sentiments could be uttered from the pulpit.
He then accents media illiteracy on US religion, and on Black America:
One is tempted to ask whether these commentators ever listen to the overcharged rhetoric of their own opinion shows. Even more to the point is to wonder whether they have a working knowledge of the history of preaching in the United States from the unrelentingly grim language of New England election day sermons to the fiery rhetoric of the Black church prophetic tradition. Maybe they prefer the false prophets with their happy homilies in Jeremiah who say to the people: “You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place.” To which God responds, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. . . . By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed,” (Jeremiah 14.14-15). The Biblical Jeremiah was coarse and provocative. Faithfulness, not respectability was the order of the day then. And now?
What’s really going on here? First, it may state the obvious to point out that these television and radio shows have very little interest in Trinity Church or Jeremiah Wright. Those who sifted through hours of sermons searching for a few lurid phrases and those who have aired them repeatedly have only one intention. It is to wound a presidential candidate. In the process a congregation that does exceptional ministry and a pastor who has given his life to shape those ministries is caricatured and demonized.
Indeed, only a few minutes out of hundreds of thousands of minutes were sorted out and repeated hundreds of times, out of context, by ABC News and others just to smear Dr. Wright, a leading Protestant minister in the United States. Thomas continues thus:
But what was his real crime? He is condemned for using a mild “obscenity” in reference to the United States. This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Nearly four thousand cherished Americans have been killed, countless more wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered. Where is the real obscenity here? True patriotism requires a degree of self-criticism, even self-judgment that may not always be easy or genteel. Pastor Wright’s judgment may be starker and more sweeping than many of us are prepared to accept. But is the soul of our nation served any better by the polite prayers and gentle admonitions that have gone without a real hearing for these five years while the dying and destruction continues?
And then Thomas moves to what is the real problem for a white-controlled mass media:
We might like to think that racism is a thing of the past, that Martin Luther King’s harmonious multi-racial vision, articulated in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and then struck down by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis in 1968, has somehow been resurrected and now reigns throughout the land. Significant progress has been made. A black man is a legitimate candidate for President of the United States. A black woman serves as Secretary of State. The accomplishments are profound. But on the gritty streets of Chicago’s south side where Trinity has planted itself, race continues to play favorites in failing urban school systems, unresponsive health care systems, crumbling infrastructure, and meager economic development. Are we to pretend all is well because much is, in fact, better than it used to be? Is it racist to name the racial divides that continue to afflict our nation, and to do so loudly? How ironic that a pastor and congregation which, for forty-five years, has cast its lot with a predominantly white denomination, participating fully in its wider church life and contributing generously to it, would be accused of racial exclusion and a failure to reach for racial reconciliation.
Thomas then concludes with a key point about honest religion critiquing immoral US politics–and thus about the racially biased media’s immorality and anti-Obama politics:
Is Pastor Wright to be ridiculed and condemned for refusing to play the court prophet, blessing land and sovereign while pledging allegiance to our preoccupation with wealth and our fascination with weapons? In the United Church of Christ we honor diversity. For nearly four centuries we have respected dissent and have struggled to maintain the freedom of the pulpit. . . . And, as we struggle with that ancient calling, I pray we will be shrewd enough to name the hypocrisy of those who decry the mixing of religion and politics in order to serve their own political ends.
