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Obama and Wright—the discussion continues
Here are VFR readers’ comments on various angles of the ever more amazing Wright-Obama matter that have come in since yesterday. (See also the further comments replying to African Lady’s explanation of why Wright is sabotaging Obama.)
Ben W. writes:
You might be interested in Jeremiah Wright’s take on the intelligence difference between black and white students.
“Dr. Hale’s research led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered that the two different worlds have two different ways of learning. European and European-American children have a left brained cognitive object oriented learning style and the entire educational learning system in the United States of America. Back in the early ’70s, when Dr. Hale did her research was based on left brained cognitive object oriented learning style.
Left brain is logical and analytical.”
Notice the irony—white education is based on a LOGICAL, ANALYTIC style. Really, does anyone want an illogical and non-analytic style of education? How stupid would that be and how dumb does that make one? Why here’s my degree—bears no signs of analysis and logic…
LA replies:
This of course is a standard teaching of multiculturalism. See my 2004 article at FrontPage Magazine, “How Multiculturalism Took Over America,” (see second page of the article, “example five”), where I discuss the multicultural idea of divergent thinking styles among racial ethnic groups. Quoting from that passage:
Observe how Nichols portrays the Western orientation in negative terms (“Member-Object,” “acquisition”) that suggest cold selfishness and materialism, while he describes the non-Western cultures in positive terms (“inter-personal relationship,” “group cohesiveness,” “oneness with the Great Spirit”) that suggest warmth and humanity. Yet Nichols’ very attempt to debunk the West and praise the non-West has the opposite effect from what he intends, since the unpleasant-sounding phrase “Member-Object” is really a way of describing the Western belief in objective truth—the very basis of Western religion, science, philosophy, law, and government. Since the non-Western orientations that Nichols promotes are all antithetical to Western objectivity, how could they possibly be “included” with it on “equal” terms?… Nor is it an accident that the wonderful African freedom from “either/or” dichotomies, touted by Nichols, explicitly excludes something indispensable to Western civilization—the rational faculty by which we attempt to distinguish between what is objectively true and what is only a feeling or opinion.
Jack W. writes:
An example of the left brain right brain difference referenced by Reverend Wright.
This is the mentality that we are up against when it come to reasoning with the reverend and his followers.
PENIS THEFT PANIC HITS AFRICAN CITY
13 SUSPECTED SORCERERS ARRESTED
Reuters
April 23, 2008—
KINSHASA—Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.
Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.
“You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We’ve had a number of attempted lynchings. … You see them covered in marks after being beaten,” Kinshasa’s police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.
“I’m tempted to say it’s one huge joke,” Oleko said.
“But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” he said.
Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.
“It’s real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny,” said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.
LA replies:
So that’s why, about 20 years ago, you’d see young underclass black men repeatedly touching their genital area in a kind of possessive, demonstrative, gesture as they walked along the street. They were making sure their penis had not been stolen.
Adela G. writes:
Re your post “Wright America vs. White America,” the anti-Americanism of the black community is not just the province of left-wing, grandstanding loonies like Jeremiah Wright.
I read this article in the Atlantic about Bill Cosby’s conservatism recently and found it very perturbing.
He was quoted here, as he has been elsewhere, saying constructive things about the black community helping itself, about blacks taking responsibility for their own lives, etc. yet something seemed to be missing.
Later I realized that not once did he (or the article’s black author) mention any responsibility that black citizens have toward America. Instead, both Cosby and the author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, addressed issues concerning a black nation separate from the rest of America (though one naturally benefiting from existing within the larger white nation).
Indeed, the author writes he wants his son to get the message that: “…the ultimate fate of black people lies in their own hands, not in the hands of their antagonists. That as an African American, he has a duty to his family, his community, and his ancestors.” Nowhere is there any mention of black Americans’ responsibilities toward America, though, not surprisingly, he does mention their rights when he writes, “But Cosby often pits the rhetoric of personal responsibility against the legitimate claims of American citizens for their rights.” Yes, black Americas are “citizens” when it comes to their rights.
Evidently, black people generally feel that the “original sin” or “birth defect” of whites enslaving blacks generations ago in America has not been and cannot be ameliorated by the facts of whites having ending slavery through civil war, of whites fighting legislatively to end the Jim Crow era, of whites declaring the War on Poverty, of whites instituting the Fair Housing laws, comprehensive welfare and affirmative action (some of which benefited some whites but a disproportionate number of blacks). All these benefits given to blacks by a white majority nation in an effort to make blacks fully part of American life and the American dream are as nothing to blacks compared to what their ancestors suffered at the hands of whites generations ago (after being sold into slavery by Arab slave traders, not “stolen” from Africa as Bush and other liberals claim).
(There’s no doubt that left-wing whites have influenced blacks to maintain and even expand on this sense of grievance and to feel no true loyalty to America while on the other hand, instilling in whites ancestral guilt for the crime of slavery. Off-hand, I can think of no other liberal project that has been so resoundingly successful.)
I don’t foresee any circumstances that would conduce to or provoke an end to black anti-Americanism. I agree that your idea of the white majority reclaiming its authority is the only sane and constructive response to the anti-Americanism so prevalent among black Americans.
Richard W. writes:
One amazing aspect of the Reverend Wright fiasco is the utter silence of his denomination. I find this interesting. I was raised Catholic, but as a result of education came to believe that the Protestant Reformation was essentially correct.
However the counter argument, that once you overthrow the given order, every man is his own church, and beliefs will multiply like flies, is perhaps demonstrated in this episode.
I am not that familiar with the United Church of Christ, but it is described in Wikipedia as a “mainline Protestant denomination” with 1.2 million members.
I find it shocking that any large organization representing millions of Americans would condone Rev. Wright’s 20 years of heresy and invective. Are their no checks and balances, no effective control, anywhere in the organization?
Or is it the case that the entire denomination has become completely corrupted by leftist activists, and that they actually enjoy and approve the racist rantings of Wright?
Religion is taken so lightly by the dominant media in this country that apparently no one has even thought to ask the leaders of the denomination if THEY agree with Rev. Wright’s statements.
His convenient retirement does nothing to answer these basic questions. Here are the people an authentic press would put questions to.
The complete breakdown of accountability in many of our large organizations; from the government agencies, to many corporations, to our major denominations, is one of the signature ‘accomplishments’ of the leftist hegemony we suffer under.
Here we see demonstrated the interlocking failures, first of the denomination and now of the press to hold them accountable.
Jeremy G. writes:
You can read the transcript of Obama’s response to the Wright controversy in this New York Times article.
Obama tries to distance himself further from Wright, but I find it all rather unconvincing. Obama restates that he never heard these racially offensive comments when he was in the pews and further that Wright is a changed person from the man Obama met 20 years ago. Obama distances himself from Farrakhan and AIDS conspiracies and denounces the comments again without condemning the Reverend for praising Farrakhan or for holding these offensive views on AIDS.
I would find Obama’s repudiation to be more convincing if he clearly stated that the Reverend is a racist hatemonger and that people who share his views (whether blacks or liberal whites) are also racist hatemongers.
Roland D. writes:
The only scenario I can think of in which this makes sense is that the whole thing was orchestrated in order to give Obama the chance to denounce him without taking a significant hit from his base. Hence Wright’s over-the-top rhetoric and self-caricaturing antics, bizarre body language, etc.—the idea was to ‘push’ Obama into ‘regretfully’ distancing himself from his erstwhile mentor.
Hence these quotes:
‘They stressed that they had no warning about a media blitz that included an appearance with Bill Moyers on PBS on Friday night, a nationally televised speech to the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday evening and yesterday’s appearance at the National Press Club.’
“I think, certainly, what the last three days indicate is that we’re not coordinating with him.”
“He’s obviously free to speak his mind.”
And the transcript of Obama’s remarks.
Perhaps I’m giving them too much credit, but I believe this whole thing was stage-managed in order to give Obama a pretext to denounce Wright.
Roland D. writes:
Obama gets a three-fer.
1. He didn’t have to disavow Wright spontaneously, he was ‘forced’ into it by circumstances, wink wink, nudge nudge.
2. He shows his ‘strength’ and willingness to insist on ‘change’.
3. By criticizing a nominally Christian pastor, he wins points from secular leftists made uneasy by his cosmetic embrace of something purporting to be Christianity, thus demonstrating his ‘independence’ from the religious fascists such people just *know* are working to throw the country into a benighted darkness.
Ben W. writes:
There is this continual drumbeat of criticism against people using snippets of Jeremiah’s sermons. We are using “sound bites” and this is somehow bad.
Yet we use sound bytes all the time in our speech, our discourses and our conversations. We quote Jesus in sound bites, e.g. “Render unto Caesar what is his and to God what is his.” “All the world’s a stage.” “Nature works through random selection.” “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”
There is nothing demeaning in using a sound bite—frequently that sound bite is the concluding exclamation point for a speaker. It is meant to be used in an exclamatory and concluding fashion. “God damn America” was and is Jeremiah’s conclusive exclamation point. Those three simple words and their tone convey perfectly his intent. They summarize and conclude his whole context.
David B. writes:
Barack Hussein Obama KNEW that Rev. Wright was a problem for him from the start of his campaign. When Obama announced in early 2007, he decided at the last moment not to have Wright do the benediction. Obama was aware even then that he had to distance himself from Wright. This means that Obama knew just what the Reverend had been saying in his sermons, which means that Obama had been listening to them all along. This includes the “controversial parts” which Obama claimed he “did not hear.” Obama has been lying. He heard what Wright said, and continued attending with his family. We have to conclude that Obama (and his wife) approved of Wright’s message.
Jeremy G. writes:
Jared Taylor has an interesting article on Obama and Wright
An interesting question that the MSM is not asking is why the NAACP restarted the controversy by inviting Wright for a high profile speech that served to refocus media attention on Wright? According to Taylor, blacks didn’t think this would harm Obama’s campaign because they don’t think Wright’s comments are controversial. Wright is correct when he says he is mainstream among blacks and that an attack on him is an attack on the black church. This is the missing story from the MSM. I don’t know how many blacks believe that whites invented AIDS to destroy them, but I suspect the number is very high. These are the types of stories that need to reach the public.
LA replies:
Jared Taylor’s article concludes with this observation:
Jeremiah Wright lives in a world in which everything is colored by white wickedness and black resentment. Most whites think he is a deluded oddball. It’s about time they realized he is a typical black preacher with a powerful appeal to the typical black.
Jeremy G. writes:
A reporter asked Obama about Black Liberation Theology and he was highly evasive:
Q: Reverend Wright said that it was not an attack on him but an attack on the black church. First of all, do you agree with that? And second of all, the strain of theology that he preached, black liberation theology, you explained something about the anger, that feeds some of the sentiments in the church, in Philadelphia. How important a strain is liberation theology in the black church? And why did you choose to attend a church that preached that?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, first of all, in terms of liberation theology, I’m not a theologian. So I think to some theologians, there might be some well-worked-out theory of what constitutes liberation theology versus non-liberation-theology. I went to church and listened to sermons. And in the sermons that I heard, and this is true, I do think, across the board in many black churches, there is an emphasis on the importance of social struggle, the importance of striving for equality and justice and fairness—a social gospel. So I think a lot of people would rather, rather than using a fancy word like that, simply talk about preaching the social gospel. And that—there’s nothing particularly odd about that. Dr. King obviously was the most prominent example of that kind of preaching. But you know, what I do think can happen, and I didn’t see this as a member of the church but I saw it yesterday, is when you start focusing so much on the plight of the historically oppressed, that you lose sight of what we have in common; that it overrides everything else; that we’re not concerned about the struggles of others because we’re looking at things only through a particular lens. Then it doesn’t describe properly what I believe, in the power of faith, to overcome but also to bring people together.”
Paul K. writes:
Richard W. writes,”One amazing aspect of the Reverend Wright fiasco is the utter silence of his denomination.”
Maybe not too amazing.
During Bill Moyers’s interview with Wright, Moyers mentioned that he too belongs to the United Church of Christ, and attends Riverside Church, which is on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, on the edge of Harlem. What a surprise, that Moyers would attend Riverside Church, one of the great bastions of American leftism.
Many years ago I rented an apartment attached to the home of a retired Yale professor. He was was a close friend of William Sloane Coffin, the radical Yale chaplain, and I saw him socially on a number of occasions. When Coffin got the position of pastor of Riverside Church, he crowed about how he would harness the power of the “po’ black folks” (his words) for social activism. (I should add that Riverside Church now considers itself interdenominational, though its emblem identifies it with the U.C.C.)
Jeremy G. writes, “I would find Obama’s repudiation to be more convincing if he clearly stated that the Reverend is a racist hatemonger.”
Apparently, Obama can’t bring himself to do that. He said Wright’s comments “end up giving comfort to those that prey on hate.” In other words, Wright, being black, can’t be a racist, but by being “divisive” he can be criticized for encouraging that pervasive white racism that is the source of all racial problems in America.
LA replies:
Excellent observation. No matter how badly blacks behave, the real problem is always whites and conservatives. Thus almost every time a liberal journalist mentions the Wright fiasco, it’s in terms of, “This will give the Republican attack machine material for the fall.” These liberals do not condemn Wright and Obama for their objectively wrong behavior, they only criticize them for giving fuel to nasty Republicans.
Same here. Obama doesn’t criticize Wright’s objectively wrong black racism, but says Wright’s statements are bad because they give fuel to white racists, who ARE objectively bad.
Any right-winger who keeps making excuses for Obama at this point, because Obama seems like a nice person, or because McCain is so unacceptable that the “goodness” of Obama as an alternative to McCain must be maintained, is fooling him or herself and should snap out of it. Get real. They’re all terrible. And Hillary is the least terrible.
Felicie C. writes:
Let’s see now. Since non-Western style of learning emphasizes “group cohesiveness,” and since everything non-Western is a good thing, is it OK if Westerners imitate this warm learning style and superior value system by privileging “group cohesiveness” in their own interpersonal interactions?
Jeremy G. writes:
You say, “These liberals do not condemn Wright and Obama for their objectively wrong behavior”
I think this is a critical issue. If the races were reversed and McCain was a 20 year member of a racist church, white liberals would be condemning not just McCain but anyone who said anything in public that was supportive of McCain. The point needs to be made clear to liberals that their “moral authority” hangs in the balance. Those liberals who do not condemn Wright and Obama (for bringing himself and his family to a racist church for 20 years) have exposed themselves in a highly public way as hypocrites and can no longer continue talking with any degree of authority about racial tolerance, racial integration, etc. This is a message that should be getting mainstream attention. The message is simple: Wright is clearly a racist. Anyone who does not condemn his racism is an immoral person. Why haven’t Obama, the NAACP, and other liberals condemned Wright as a racist? It seems that morality and racism are issues that liberals should well understand.
LA replies:
Yes, this event could possibly be to racial left-liberalism what the feminists’ support for President Clinton was to feminism: its death knell—except as a movement of people nakedly seeking power.
But the comparison is not exact, since I think at least some liberals are condemning Wright; unlike in the ’90s when the feminists formed a phalanx around Clinton.
Adela G. writes:
Richard W. writes:
“I am not that familiar with the United Church of Christ, but it is described in Wikipedia as a “mainline Protestant denomination” with 1.2 million members.
“I find it shocking that any large organization representing millions of Americans would condone Rev. Wright’s 20 years of heresy and invective. Are their no checks and balances, no effective control, anywhere in the organization?
“Or is it the case that the entire denomination has become completely corrupted by leftist activists, and that they actually enjoy and approve the racist rantings of Wright?”
Richard’s second guess is right on the money. (Pun intended.) I was confirmed in the UCC and though I left it permanently nearly 30 years ago, I can assure you that it was then and is now a (largely white) leftist Protestant denomination (e.g., I remember back in the ’70s that church members bragged how ours was the first denomination to declare itself pro-choice).
Just to confirm my recollections, I checked out the UCC’s official website and found this article on Wright. Note its approving tone and its glossing over of his more outrageous remarks. It is not dissimilar to articles one finds in the NYT or even The Nation.
Adela G. writes:
Jack W. writes about the penis theft panic in Congo. It’s worth pointing out that this mentality is and has been prevalent among Africans. Years ago, I read an article by Theodore Dalrymple, “After Empire,” that mentions this same mind-set:
The naive supposition on which the argument for education[of Africans] rests is that training counteracts and overpowers a cultural worldview. A trained man is but a clone of his trainer, on this theory, sharing his every attitude and worldview. But in fact what results is a curious hybrid, whose fundamental beliefs may be impervious to the education he has received.
I had a striking example of this phenomenon recently, when I had a Congolese patient who had taken refuge in this country[England] from the terrible war in Central Africa that has so far claimed up to 3 million lives. He was an intelligent man and had that easy charm that I remember well from the days when I traversed—not without difficulty or discomfort—the Zaire of Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko. He had two degrees in agronomy and had trained in Toulouse in the interpretation of satellite pictures for agronomic purposes. He recognized the power of modern science, therefore, and had worked for the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, and was used to dealing with Western aid donors and investors, as well as academics.
The examination over, we chatted about the Congo: he was delighted to meet someone who knew his country, by no means easily found in England. I asked him about Mobutu, whom he had known personally.
“He was very powerful,” he said. “He collected the best witch doctors from every part of Zaire. Of course, he could make himself invisible; that was how he knew everything about us. And he could turn himself into a leopard when he wanted.”
This was said with perfect seriousness. For him the magical powers of Mobutu were more impressive and important than the photographic power of satellites. Magic trumped science. In this he was not at all abnormal, it being as difficult or impossible for a sub-Saharan African to deny the power of magic as for an inhabitant of the Arabian peninsula to deny the power of Allah.
LA replies:
We see in this VFR thread confirmation of Victor Hanson’s sad comment that Wright-Obama have set back racial relations by a generation. To which I reply: Would that it were so.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 30, 2008 12:38 PM | Send
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