On Jeremiah Wright

From my colleague, Larry Yates, a long-time activist (and reparations advocate). Perhaps the coolest white guy I know.

"The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another...America's original sin [is] the legacy of white racism."

A quote from Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Nope. Rev. Jim Wallis, best-selling author and certified white guy, wrote those words.

How about "we lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest, and we recognize that the racism which yet plagues our culture today is inextricably tied to the past." Surely that's that radical Rev. Wright. No, it's the 1995 Resolution on Racial Reconciliation -- from the Southern Baptist Convention, the bulwark of white conservatism.

Many mainstream religious leaders, perhaps most, agree with the thrust of Rev. Wright's statements about race and injustice. As for the hectoring tone, and sentiments like "God damn America," those would be business as usual for thousands of traditional preachers, most of them white. Today and every day, somewhere on the AM dial, you can hear that America is damned unless we repent from this or that loathsome practice.

In other words, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is not particularly notable. His opinions and his style are not unusual, either in the African-American community or for milions of other Americans. (Compare to Pat Robertson on cable presenting bizarre conspiracy theories while pretending to be Walter Cronkite. Now that is truly wierd. Father Coughlin as Regis Philbin?)

So why is Reverend Wright suddenly such a lightning rod, and such a burden on his friend Barack Obama?

The answer lies in who runs and staffs U.S. corporate media. The corporate media sector knows zilch about religious beliefs and diversity in this nation. For two decades, they allowed right-wing political operatives to define Christianity for them. (And chicken hawks to explain war to them, and business-funded "think tanks" to explain how to have a prosperous nation. Hmm, see a pattern?)

And they know little outside their white professional world, so no African-American is safe from being assigned the role of exotic, as soon as he or she does something they wouldn't do, no matter how predictable or common it may be. ("Look! He's expressing strong emotion at a funeral!" "Look! She's applying a product I never heard of to her hair!" "Look! They know all the words to this strange song called Lift Every Voice and Sing!")

What's the real story on Reverend Wright? That there is no story. And that the corporate media should look in the mirror for the real story.