The Audacity of Racism

I hope that Jeremiah Wright doesn’t mind that I borrowed from his sermon title, but it seemed very fitting. Oh, you don’t know who Jeremiah Wright is? He, until very recently retiring, was Barak Obama’s pastor of over 20 years. He married the Obabma’s, baptized their children and spiritually fed them for two decades. Despite retiring from the pulpit in January, Wright continues to be a driving force in Obama’s life as his campaigns spiritual adviser. The continued association with and dependence on Jeremiah Wright is what is so disturbing about Obama’s backpedaling in the last 24 hours concerning some of Wright’s more controversial sermons.

“We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college,” he began. “Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.”

“We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

Now, I am admittedly not a black woman, but I would think that black women who are lawyers, business owners, corporate executives or even Condi Rice for pete’s sake, should be offended by this idea. This is America — where everyone’s dream can come true if they work hard and reach for it, and they’ve proven it! And yet Wright has completely discounted their achievements in one swoop of a very large brush.

“We are a congregation which is Unashamedly White and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the White religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are a European people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of the crusades, the days of equality, and the long night of affirmative action. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a White worship service and ministries which address the White Community.”

If you have a pulse, your blood pressure probably went up 30 points. How crazy. How racist!! That church needs to be shut down!!! Call the IRS!!!! Oh, but I screwed up that copy and paste. Ooops my bad. See below for what Wright’s church really says about itself:

“We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.”

Is that any less racist? Seriously, go look for yourself. I didn’t make that up. This is Obama’s church of over 20 years. But it gets even crazier. Here is the church’s response to Wright’s retirement (it’s in this past Sunday’s bulletin):

“You will notice the pulpit is draped in African cloth, the lecterns, altar and the main pulpit lectern, long with the pastor’s chair. These areas are covered because the words and rituals of the sacred ere practiced behind, before and in these physical spaces.

During the Pastor’s Word, all of the pulpit chairs will be removed except the center chair. No one, including Pastor Moss, will sit in the pulpit! We honor this space where our Senior Pastor provided ministry, encouragement and prophetic speech to the people of God. Our pastors and deacons will only enter the pulpit to pray, read Scripture, preach or perform the Call to Worship. We honor this sacred space and, for the next three months, this space will be designated “honored ground.”

The ministers will wear robes and African attire at least three times a month to show our collective respect for the work of our Senior Pastor. Our deacons will wear their stoles, black suits and African attire to honor the work of our Senior Pastor and keep before us the sacred nature of our work. I ask you to join me as we honor our Senior Pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A Wright, Jr.”

They are honoring this racist buffoon as if he were their savior, all the while celebrating in the ceremonial garb of a continent that they may not even have come from. If you’re so hip on Africa and hate the United States of America so much, I’d be happy to take up a collection to buy you a plane ticket. Please hand in your passports as you board the plane. Where’s Jesus in all of this Africa-worship?

And what’s my evidence that they hate America? These classic lines, which again, were uttered from the pulpit on a few Sunday mornings:

“God damn America…”

“We created AIDS…”

“We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty.”

“America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers…”

I’ll remind you again. This was Obama’s pastor of 20 years. Obama is in this man’s flock, and now he wants to be the President of the United States. He can backpedal all he wants to about how sometimes he doesn’t agree with everything Wright says, but the fact is that this racist America-hating, Jew-bashing man is his campaigns “spiritual adviser” at this very moment!

This is no anomaly — I’m sure both Wright and Obama can show you where to find Luke 6:45 in the Bible (Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.) Obama gave this church, lead by this very angry racist man, over $23,000 last year alone. If you don’t agree with the pastoring, you don’t attend the church much less part with over $20k to further their ranting and raving. Go ahead and pedal that bike a little faster, Obama.

You really need to visit their website. It’s a real hoot. And since I’ve probably already tee’d off a good 50% of my audience (which amounts to about 2 people), I might as well toss in one more quote. This comes directly from their “Black Values System” to which all church members (black and those rare whites too, I suppose) must pledge to adhere to. Again, I say, where is Jesus in this?

“These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered. They consist of the following concepts:

Commitment to God. “The God of our weary years” will give us the strength to give up prayerful passivism and become Black Christian Activists, soldiers for Black freedom and the dignity of all humankind.

Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness.” Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Those so identified are separated from the rest of the people by:

1. Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.
2. Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.
3. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us.”
4. So, while it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method – the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness.” If we avoid this snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright: the leadership, resourcefulness and example of their own talented persons.

…

Personal Commitment to Embracement of the Black Value System. To measure the worth and validity of all activity in terms of positive contributions to the general welfare of the Black Community and the Advancement of Black People towards freedom.”

A leopard never changes it’s spots. Wake up, people; this is the change that you are voting for. It’s ok to judge him on his “religious associations” and the company he keeps, after all, Mormonism was enough for us to run Mitt Romney out of town on a rail, right?

God help us all.

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