Inspired by this post by Martin Hyde, particularly this passage:
This makes even less sense than calling Hillary Clinton a “socialist.” But, silly as it is, it appears to be an emergent meme that will be around until November (longer, if Obama wins the WH), so we’d better gear up to fight it now.
The Trinity United Church of Christ is not a racist organization. It is a distinctly African-American church, but 11:00 Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour in America, as we all know, and to which few seriously object.
Reverend Wright has made some foolish public statements, to be sure, reflecting a certain level of black collective persecution-mania that is entirely understandable in historical context; but nothing he’s been quoted as saying since this flap broke out can be construed as implying that white people as such are inferior, or evil, or undesirable, or anything else a racist might say. (Bashing the white American power structure as evil is a very different matter, and much more defensible; it is a fact that America has a definite overclass and only whites are allowed full membership – even Justice Clarence Thomas is an honorary member only, and Obama will never be a member at all, not even if he serves the two most successful presidential terms in American history.)
Insofar as the “black man with a sense of entitlement” mindset really exists at all in the African-American community, Obama would have to have been raised in that community to internalize it, and he wasn’t; he merely married into it. He never even had a black stepdad.
There is absolutely nothing in Obama’s background, career or rhetoric to suggest he would put through any program of “wealth redistribution.” More’s the pity. (And why would such a redistribution be “from white to black,” anyway? Most poor Americans are white.)
Agreed. I’m currently arguing this very subject with someone on another message board. It’s hopeless, as near as I can tell- the ones who believe this particular idea can’t be swayed by any logical arguments… they don’t even want to hear the arguments. It’s very frustrating.
And even IF Wright could be considered to be racist, that shouldn’t affect Obama in the slightest. I grew up in a fairly religious family, and I’m now an atheist.
The lengths that some people will go to in order to link anything bad to Obama is kind of sad- first it was that his father was a Muslim, then it was that his wife “hates America”, and now it’s that his pastor is racist. It’s all innuendo.
As for Obama, himself, being racist… he’s half-white, for cryin’ out loud.
Cosign. The refrain from white conservatives that Jeremiah Wright said anything racist is tiresome and false. Any suggestion that Obama himself is racist is absurd.
I would not want to attend a church that excluded people, and especially since I converted to Catholicism I have attended churches and masses that for the most part are models of integration. My parish in Arlington was once predominantly black, my current one holds masses in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
What makes this a fact, and not just your opinion? How is Clarence Thomas an “honorary member of the white overclass” and Barack Obama will never be? Why are only whites allowed full membership? Is it somewhere in the bylaws?
The Trinity Church does not exclude anyone. The “segregation” spoken of in these instances is de facto, not deliberate (and is a relic of an era when blacks were not permitted to worship with whites, so it’s kind of specious to then turn around accuse them of being exclusionary). Obama’s particular congregation happens to be majority black, but white people can and do attend. They aren’t “excluded.” Obama’s denomination is 99% white, by the way. If it’s that important to you to see diversity in every particular congregation, I guess you could agitate for forced busing of white worshipers into black neighborhoods or something.
The white overclass described. Its racial character is not immutable – it has Jews in it now, which would have been unthinkable in 1960 – but since its existence as a class depends in part on intraclass intermarriage there are some obvious obstacles there. There are also separate black and Latino overclasses, which are merely dependent auxiliaries of the white overclass. That’s Lind’s thesis, anyway, and he’s got plenty of good arguments to back it up.
Well, the Mormons didn’t really exclude black people prior to 1978 either - they just made it clear that certain levels of membership, so to speak, weren’t open to them. Faced with such, it isn’t surprising that few blacks joined, or that few do today.
How welcome would a white person feel at a church where their country was compared with the Klan? Or where some blacks were explicitly called Toms for cooperating with a white power structure?
I’ve been to plenty of black churches where I was made to feel quite welcome - my leading petty officer at one of my commands was an ordained minister and led his own gospel services. I never had a problem joining him - but from what I’ve seen, I would have lots of issues joining Reverend Wright.
I’m just putting the OP on notice (since he cited comments of mine from another thread as the impetus for this one) that I won’t be participating in this particular thread. No one should confuse that for fear of open debate. I feel the current Pit thread is the entirely appropriate venue for this discussion, and I do not want to over-commit myself to arguing identical things in roughly identical threads.
It’s also a relic of an era when the church was the only social institution in which blacks were allowed to participate, and the only social institution of their own that blacks were allowed to have.
Reverend Jane Fisler-Hoffman, white member of Trinity United, talks about the history of Trinity United and her participation and membership. Partial transcript:
Just to amplify on what Diogenes noted, there is a good video at YouTube by a white woman who is also a minister in that denomination I believe explaining why she chose to go to the particular church that Obama goes to and how welcoming she found it to be. Unfortunately, my attempt to find this video again was unsuccessful…Maybe someone with better YouTube-Fu would have more luck.
No it is not. That pit thread is about John McCain. And if you DO continue this hijack in it, I WILL have it shut down so you won’t have it as a vehicle.
If you claim, though, that there’s an organized conspiracy by the government, though, to kill off black people, and when you start condemning America as evil and a nation deserving of eternal damnation, that’s not a racist attitude, exactly, but it is a remarkably troubling one, especially for someone who wants to be president of the US and head of that very government. And when you see that the Rev. Wright has those opinions, and that Obama is so close to him, it raises the question, to what extent does Obama share his friend and mentor’s opinions.
Now, Obama has said he doesn’t share those opinions, and personally I believe him, but I don’think there’s anything wrong with asking the question. It’s the old saying, “You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”
You have to keep a couple of things in mind. First, the people labeling Rev. Wright a racist come from the school of thought that says that calling a white man a cracker is the same as calling a black man a nigger. They don’t subscribe the importance of historical context or a definition of racism that goes deeper than the simple use of a racial slur or a stereotype based on race. So when Rev. Wright calls Italians “garlic noses,” that language makes Wright a racist, regardless of any context, any power behind the phrase “garlic nose,” etc.
Second, people like simple answers. The obvious double standard with regard to Hagee and the like makes it clear that this isn’t about rationality. It’s about something else. So reasoning with these people is pretty futile.
But that’s simply winning by definition. Obviously Obama can never be part of the white overclass, since he isn’t white. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a part of a putative “overclass”.
Can any putative overclass that doesn’t include Senators, congressmen, governors, fortune 500 CEOs, presidents, cabinet members, supreme court justices and so forth really be called an “overclass”? If black Senators and governors aren’t part of the overclass, then there is no such thing as an overclass.
I’m very impressed that you have no problem worshiping with black people, but since no one accused you of having otherwise senim,ents, it’s not particularly relevant. Your insinuation is that Trinity would exclude YOU, and you have provided no evidence to support such a conclusion. The fact is that some white people DO attend that church and there is no evidence that they have been made to feel unwelcome or that Wright himself has ever behaved discourteously towards white people in general (or said anything racist).
Just because no one has came up with such a term doesn’t mean there isn’t still time.
Do you subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Why can non-whites not harbor attitudes that are just as racist as whites simply because they haven’t come up with terms for them yet?
