Prometheus 6

Jeremiah Wright's Wider Toll
By Gary MacDougal
Saturday, May 3, 2008; A15

It is easy to be outraged by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's abhorrent remarks, whether accusing our country of willfully spreading AIDS or being deserving of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And, yes, Sen. Barack Obama should have spoken out forcefully much sooner than this week. But Wright has done more, and worse, than tarnish Obama's presidential campaign.

Consider the corrosive effect Wright and others like him have on their communities as they rob thousands of listeners of the American dream: hope that through their hard work they can have better lives.

Imagine getting up each morning to go to work in a society that doesn't want you, doesn't respect you and seeks to hold you back. Your spiritual leader has told you this, after all. With powerful rhetoric, Wright has asserted, for instance, that white America sees black women as useful only for their bodies. If this is the message you got from your mentor, would you expect that you could succeed? Would you try very hard, if at all?

Of course we would.

Maybe that would break white folks but it precisely describes the conditions Black folks have been dealing with since forever. I'm not just talking about folks wearing their bed linen on the street. I'm talking about the way your leaders declare every step of progress toward equity for Black folks is declared to be enough (if not too much). I'm talking about your Republican Party and your "progressives" that wince at every mention of race.

In the face of all that, still we advance.

So don't go assigning your lack of intestinal fortitude to me and mine. You punk.