4um: Wright Moves On Up

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Title: Wright Moves On Up
Source: IBD
URL Source: http://www.investors.com/editorial/ ... tus=article&id=291855469309054
Published: Mar 31, 2008
Author: Not Attributed
Post Date: 2008-04-04 11:08:54 by Tauzero
Keywords: None
Views: 159
Comments: 8

Wright Moves On Up
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 3/31/2008
Election '08: What could be worse than an Afro-Marxist preacher exhorting thousands of blacks to hate whites and swear off their middle-class materialism? One who does the exact opposite.
Barack Obama had hoped the retirement of his fire-breathing pastor would put the controversy to rest. But the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is retiring in luxury — with all the trappings of the white "middleclassness" he warns his flock to avoid.
Wright is forsaking South Side Chicago and the black ghetto for a gated golf club community in Tinley Park, an affluent suburb. The area has seen a boom in growth from mostly non-Hispanic whites buying upscale homes in new subdivisions like Wright's adopted Odyssey Club neighborhood, which boasts some of Tinley Park's largest homes and a mix of townhomes. It adjoins the Odyssey Country Club and golf course.
"It's really suburban sprawl," said Michael Mertens, Tinley Park's economic development director. "It's a lot of people wanting their own homes and more space."
Nothing wrong with that; it's the American dream. Except that Wright has condemned that dream (along with America) in sermons he's delivered to the 8,000 mostly black congregants of Trinity United Church of Christ. He says it's all part of a white conspiracy to get blacks hooked on middle-class materialism and separate them from the inner-city and their African roots.
He also preaches the gospel of "Black Liberation Theology," a false Christian doctrine promulgated by Marxist-leaning black writers of the 1960s that espouses "economic parity" and other collectivist claptrap.
The concept of practicing what you preach is apparently lost on Wright.
After decades of lecturing blacks to remain loyal to the black ghetto and eschew the white suburbs, he's now building a 10,340-square-foot mansion in the white suburbs. Among its amenities: an elevator, a rubberized exercise room and room for a future theater and indoor swimming pool.
Wright has made a lucrative career of convincing other blacks they can't succeed on their own. For decades, he's collected their alms in exchange for a steady diet of bitterness and resentment.
Shouting "God damn America" for its treatment of blacks, Wright got his parishioners hooked on misplaced anger in the South Side so he could cash out in Tinley Park.
Perhaps this is "sharing in the prosperity," as Obama has so eloquently rephrased redistribution of income. Funny how those who demand economic parity end up taking the biggest share.
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#1. To: Tauzero (#0)
Special Report: Wright's Theology as Victimology
Wright's Theology as Victimology By Anthony B. Bradley
Black Liberation theology actually encourages a victim mentality among blacks. John McWhorters' book Losing the Race, will be helpful here. Victimology, says McWhorter, is the adoption of victimhood as the core of one's identity--for example, like one who suffers through living in "a country and who lived in a culture controlled by rich white people." It is a subconscious, culturally inherited affirmation that life for Blacks in America has been in the past and will be in the future a life of being victimized by the oppression of Whites. In today's terms, it is the conviction that, forty years after the Civil Rights Act, conditions for Blacks have not substantially changed. As Wright intimates, for example, scores of black men regularly get passed over by cab drivers.
Reducing black identity to "victim" distorts the reality of true progress. For example, was Obama a victim of widespread racial oppression at the hand of "rich white people" before graduating from Columbia University, Harvard Law School magna cum laude, or after he acquired his estimated net worth of $1.3 million? How did "rich white people" keep Obama from succeeding? If Obama is the model of an oppressed black man, I want to be oppressed next! With my graduate school debt my net worth is literally negative $52,659.
The overall result, says McWhorter, is that "the remnants of discrimination hold an obsessive indignant fascination that allows only passing acknowledgement of any signs of progress." Jeremiah Wright infused with victimology, wielded self-righteous indignation in the service of exposing the inadequacies Hilary Clinton's world of "rich white people." The perpetual creation of a racial identity born out of self-loathing and anxiety often spends more time inventing reasons to cry racism than working toward changing social mores, and often inhibits movement toward reconciliation and positive mobility.
McWhorter articulates three main objections of victimology: First, victimology condones weakness in failure. Victimology tacitly stamps approval on failure, lack of effort, and criminality. Behaviors and patterns that are self- destructive are often approved of as cultural or presented as unpreventable consequences from previous systemic patterns. Black liberation theologians are clear on this point: "People are poor because they are victims of others," says Dr. Dwight Hopkins, a black liberation theologian teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Second, victimology hampers progress because, from the outset, it focuses attention on obstacles. For example, in Black liberation theology, the focus is on the impediment of Black freedom in light of the Goliath of White racism.
Third, victimology keeps racism alive because many Whites are constantly painted as racist with no evidence provided. Racism charges create a context for backlash and resentment fueling new attitudes among whites not previously held or articulated, and creates "separatism"--a suspension of moral judgment in the name of racial solidarity. Does Jeremiah Wright foster separatism or racial unity and reconciliation?
For black liberation theologians Sunday is uniquely tied to redefining their sense of being human within a context of marginalization. "Black people who have been humiliated and oppressed by the structures of White society six days of the week gather together each Sunday morning in order to experience another definition of their humanity," says James Cone in his book Speaking the Truth (1999).
Many black theologians believe that both racism and socio-economic oppression continue to augment the fragmentation between Whites and Blacks. Historically speaking, it makes sense that Black theologians would struggle with conceptualizing social justice and the problem of evil as it relates to the history of colonialism and slavery in the Americas.
Is black liberation theology helping? Wright's liberation theology has stirred up resentment, backlash, Obama defections, separatism, white guilt, caricature, and offense. Preaching to a congregation of middle-class blacks about their victim identity invites a distorted view of reality, fosters nihilism, and divides rather than unites.
Anthony B. Bradley is a research fellow at the Acton Institute, and assistant professor of theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. His PhD dissertation is titled, "Victimology in Black Liberation Theology."
Obama, albeit using slightly different terms, agrees: "To defeat al Qaeda, I will build a twenty-first-century military and twenty-first-century partnerships as strong as the anticommunist alliance that won the Cold War to stay on the offense everywhere from Djibouti to Kandahar." - Sen Obama, June 4, 2007
Jethro Tull posted on 2008-04-04 11:20:02 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#2. To: Tauzero (#0)
Does Obama Favor Slavery “Reparations?”

AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | March 26, 2008
www.aim.org/aim-column/does-obama-favor-slavery- reparations/">http://www.aim.org/aim-column/do...avor-slavery-reparations/
A reparations plan for blacks could extract several trillion dollars from American taxpayers’ pockets.
Barrack Obama’s pastor not only spews anti-American rhetoric from the pulpit but favors shaking down U.S. taxpayers for “reparations” for slavery. The Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright was the keynote speaker at the 2007 annual conference of N’COBRA, which stands for the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.
Wright’s talk, “A Call for Justice and Repair,” followed a statement in which he declared that “The Biblical principle of true repentance is that the offended party is given compensation to make up for that which has been stolen from them, the losses that have been inflicted upon them and their families.”
A reparations plan for blacks could extract several trillion dollars from American taxpayers’ pockets.
But Wright isn’t the only controversial member of Obama’s church. Dr. Iva Carruthers, who describes herself as an active member of the church, is an outspoken advocate of reparations for blacks and was a participant in N’COBRA’s 2004 conference.
Carruthers was identified, along with Wright, as a member of Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee. Wright has since been dropped from the group. But Carruthers is sometimes referred to as a spokesman for Wright and works with him closely.
Indeed, Carruthers may be even more controversial, especially on the issue of reparations. She wrote The Church and Reparations-An African American Perspective, which was reportedly “distributed by her denomination” at the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The conference was considered so extreme that the U.S. delegation, led by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, walked out.
Not only are members of his church involved in the reparations movement; Obama is said to have been politically close to former Chicago Alderman Dorothy Jean Wright Tillman, who led an effort by the Chicago City Council to demand reparations for slavery. “Chicago has become the de facto center of the slavery reparations movement,” noted a journalist for the far-left In These Times.
The Obamas’ just-released 2006 income tax return shows that they gave $22,500 to Trinity United Church of Christ, which they attended with such figures as Wright and Carruthers.
Despite going to the same church, however, Carruthers told me that she has no idea as to where Obama stands on the controversy. “I don’t have any insight at all,” she said, before saying that she had to leave for another engagement.
Carruthers is the General Secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, which includes Wright on its board and describes itself as a social justice organization. The website of the group includes a statement that “Dr. Wright represents the best among us, one of the best in this tribe of prophetic preachers. He has made his church a place where one could express the centuries- old pain of being Black in America, while finding strength for a brighter day. An attack on this man of the God is an attack on all those of the cloth who believe in the social Gospel of liberation.”
Both Wright and Carruthers were involved in the Illinois Transatlantic Slave Trade Commission, established by the Illinois State Legislature in 2005. Its purpose was to examine the “past and present effects on African-Americans” of the slave trade and it issued a report in 2007. Wright was an “associate” of the commission while Carruthers was the “senior research consultant.”
Its findings included that Christopher Columbus was part of the Catholic Church’s “century of blood” in the establishment of the slave trade system, and that civil war U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, acknowledged to be “the most famous son of Illinois,” didn’t morally object to slavery but only wanted to “restore the Union to white consensus.”
In 2003, Carruthers spoke on behalf of Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ at a “summit on reparations” opened by Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Another group represented at the Farrakhan summit was the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), which seeks the creation of a black nation in the U.S. in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
In 2007, Carruthers endorsed a document urging that “Financial and human resources be identified and made available, in trust and otherwise, with appropriate church, community, and academic entities to effect institutional development and remedies from the Transatlantic slave trade system and colonialism at the local, national and global levels.” The document said that reparations should be “offered for the healing of peoples who were once enslaved.”
Like Obama, Carruthers and Wright have been deeply involved in African affairs. They traveled to the “motherland,” as they call it, where Wright was photographed in Ghana in “full ceremonial regalia” as a “development chief” and Carruthers was elevated to the position of “queen mother.” Obama’s wearing of African garb became a national controversy.
But the more important issue, from a public policy perspective, is how he would handle taxpayer dollars.
While Carruthers said she did not know where Obama stood on the issue of reparations, the Chicago Tribune reported that he was asked in 2004 about the matter and “spoke about how slavery had left a stain on the country that has yet to be eradicated.” Nevertheless, he said that he opposed “just signing checks over to African-Americans.”
During the presidential campaign, the issue came up during a Democratic presidential debate and only Dennis Kucinich said he favored reparations. Obama changed the subject, saying he favored more spending on schools.
Carruthers told AIM that reparations have to include much more than financial payments.
She may have in mind not only an apology from the federal government but some form of spiritual or psychological help for black victims of the slave trade.
In this regard, the N’COBRA conference that featured Wright also included a panel discussion of “Post-Traumatic Slavery Syndrome.” In a variation of this theme, the Philadelphia branch of N’COBRA had advertised a sold-out lecture on the subject of “Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder (PTSD),” described as one of the Psycho-Racial Spiritual Diseases of Americanized Africans (PRSDAA). The speaker, a psychologist, said that black-on-black violence could even be attributed to undiagnosed PRSDAAs.
While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are now engaged in a fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, it was the Clinton Administration that helped to make reparations into a national issue. President Clinton had proposed a $10 million federal research program to study the problem of racism in America. It was described by the Associated Press as “a way to measure the impact of racial bias in everyday life” and was seen as potential backing for legislation proposed by Rep. John Conyers to establish a national commission to study the matter.
Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has endorsed Obama for president.
Conyers’ bill to create a “Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans” was first introduced in 1989. He praised N’COBRA in a statement he issued in 1999 and sponsored a subsequent event, “Capitalizing on Our Strength53;Empowering the Reparations Movement,” featuring a representative of N’COBRA.
The issue became so big that the CBS Evening News, then hosted by Dan Rather, did a story about the controversy, highlighting the fact that the Chicago City Council has become the fourth major city to pass a resolution calling for reparations.
Randall Robinson, the director of the group known as Trans Africa, wrote a book, The Debt, on the subject, and hosted a conference on reparations featuring such luminaries as actor Danny Glover.
One of the liberals’ favorite television shows, “West Wing,” about a fictional White House, also examined the controversy in the context of a controversial nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights who advocated financial reparations for slavery.
At the time, we noted that three veteran Democrats were advisers to the show. They were former Clinton White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, former Carter official Patrick Caddell, and former Senate Democratic aide Lawrence O’Donnell. Time magazine reported that Conyers’ staff had sent along “200 pages of material on the issue of paying reparations to black Americans as compensation for slavery” to the producers.
Interestingly, it has now been reported by The Guardian that one of the characters in the show, a presidential candidate, was modeled by one of the Democratic writers after Obama. The character in the program wins the presidency.
If this happens in real life, we may finally find out where Obama really stands on the issue of reparations.
One thing is certain: Carruthers is hoping for an Obama win. Federal Election Commission records show that she gave his Illinois Senate campaign $500 and his presidential campaign $2300. She gave contributions to no other candidates.

Hot links throughout article at weblink above.
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." -- Herbert Sebastien Agar (1897-1980) Source: The Time for Greatness, 1942
Peppa posted on 2008-04-04 11:34:21 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#3. To: Tauzero (#0)
The teacher is now learning from the student.
Wright heard Obama's "race speech" in which he told African-Americans to stop calling this kind of behavior "acting white."
“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston
Sam Houston posted on 2008-04-04 12:00:35 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#4. To: Peppa (#2)
Reparations?

Somebody wants $3 quadrillion just for Katrina.
I'd be happy to pay reparations, provided the checks can only be cashed in Liberia.
...Both methods yielded similar results, which support the previous findings; that is, of all modern human samples, sub-Saharan Africans again exhibit the closest phenetic similarity to various African Plio-Pleistocene hominins...
Ancient teeth and modern human origins: An expanded comparison of African Plio-Pleistocene and recent world dental samples, Journal of Human Evolution Volume 45, Issue 2, August 2003, Pages 113-144
Tauzero posted on 2008-04-04 17:01:12 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#5. To: Tauzero (#0) (Edited)
Of course, leading a church, especially this one, isn’t just a matter of preaching. Wright inherited a small congregation in need of a spark; Moss has inherited a sprawling corporate labyrinth that includes dozens of subassociations (the Drug & Alcohol Recovery Ministry, the Career Development Ministry, the Diabetes Support Group) and initiatives, including an “African- centered” grade school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy, which is scheduled to open in September. Jeremiah Wright, scholar and preacher and political activist, was also a successful entrepreneur, with a knack for figuring out his congregants’ needs, both pastoral and rhetorical, and meeting them, though not always in expected ways. (His post-9/11 fulminations, for example, were undoubtedly less startling to some members than his support for gays and lesbians.) Motivated and emboldened by the decline of the politically engaged black Church and, perhaps, by the rise of Farrakhan, he built an empire and a community in his own image, and in his congregants’. Now it is Moss’s turn.

How the article in the current issue of the New Yorker on Trinity Church sums up Rev. Wright's career.
It's always been culturally conservative and emphasized self-reliance.
Before you assert

Wright has made a lucrative career of convincing other blacks they can't succeed on their own,

perhaps you should read the New Yorker piece. It does not support that characterization.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
aristeides posted on 2008-04-04 17:10:55 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#6. To: Tauzero (#4)
Somebody wants $3 quadrillion just for Katrina.

Holy cow, hadn't seen that one.
The figure I've seen on a number of sites so far, is $777 Trillion with a T.
I bumped into quite a few interesting discussions of it, in addition to reparations for the Holocaust.

I'd be happy to pay reparations, provided the checks can only be cashed in Liberia.
There is a movement organized to have the SE partitioned off and given. I ran into one post where essentially (pulling from memory) an acre of land was granted to slaves when they were freed, then later it was recinded by Shelton. I'll see if I can find that post again. However, it was only a post, I don't know the entire context.. just putting it out there. It did mention that Indian slaves were freed as well, but did not mention a similar offer.
I realize the information I mention is incomplete. If anyone can speak to the fact of it, I'd would really like to read it, if only for historical understanding.
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." -- Herbert Sebastien Agar (1897-1980) Source: The Time for Greatness, 1942
Peppa posted on 2008-04-04 17:14:45 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#7. To: aristeides (#5)

Before you assert

I asserted nothing you claim.
Ari, when you get a minute, can you make the case to vote for Obama?
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." -- Herbert Sebastien Agar (1897-1980) Source: The Time for Greatness, 1942
Peppa posted on 2008-04-04 17:16:03 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
#8. To: aristeides (#5)
New Yorker...culturally conservative and emphasized self-reliance
Well I can't say just WHO that reminds me of.
Reeks of limited separation, i.e. the right to form their own neighborhoods and institutions while demanding admission to whitey's.
To hell with that.
...Both methods yielded similar results, which support the previous findings; that is, of all modern human samples, sub-Saharan Africans again exhibit the closest phenetic similarity to various African Plio-Pleistocene hominins...
Ancient teeth and modern human origins: An expanded comparison of African Plio-Pleistocene and recent world dental samples, Journal of Human Evolution Volume 45, Issue 2, August 2003, Pages 113-144
Tauzero posted on 2008-04-05 0:10:52 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
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