Just a thought…

I was watching Glenn Beck on CNN last night and we all know what the topic of the evening was…..you guessed it… Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Once again he played the infamous sermon from 2003 and he had some old colored coot from the SCLC propped up there to give his take. Now as soon as his guest opened his mouth I knew he was full of it because he said that he visited many black churches throughout his entire career and has never heard a sermon such as the one Rev. Wright gave. Bullshit! Just give the dude his check so he can be on his way. Man, you can go into any black church, Trinity, Apostolic, House of Hope, Memorial, hell…even St. Sabina (yes us Catholics can go there as well) etc… close your eyes and listen to the sermon and you probably couldn’t tell the difference. This has been the normal way of worship for people of color since Wallis Willis created the Negro slave anthem “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” back in 1852 (and first recorded by the world renowned Jubilee Singers of my beloved Fisk University…had to throw that in). Current events and the word of God have always been entwined…it served to ease the burdens and lift the folk up in between shifts of picking cotton and an occasional attempt of mutiny.

Now, let me play devil’s advocate for a minute…Let’s for a moment forget the fact that we are in the midst of thee most important election of this century. Let’s for a moment forget the fact that for the first time since Reconstruction there is a real opportunity for a person of African decent to obtain a pertinent, valued, and highly regarded public office. Let’s go back to 2003 and analyze the words that Rev. Wright spoke. He mentioned the atrocities that America has engaged in…the slaughtering of the Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans in America, Hiroshima, etc…and used the “chickens coming home to roost” theory as it pertains to 911. Where is the fire? Where are the so-called bombastic traces? Where are the divisive elements? To US it makes perfect sense but to THEM the speech reminds THEM of the Jim Crow era and how anyone person of color who made an attempt to “waken sleeping giants” i.e., Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr, had to be dealt with. They’ve labeled Rev. Wright everything but a child of God but what they refuse to do is call him a liar and that is more telling then anything. When they attacked Farrakhan and called him anti-Semitic (read “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” by the late Khalid Muhammad) they could never twist the situation enough to labeled him a liar…folks get real upset when your only tool is the truth. Granted, Rev. Wrights’ actions after “God Damn America – gate” have been less then stellar but we have to ask ourselves is the fury over the man or the message or does even matter at this point?