Reverend Wright's Wrongs

The True Reverend Wright Ideology

Most Blacks are accustomed to going to churches on Sunday and hearing zealots like Reverend Wright speak; some of the Reverend Wright zealots are far worse. Yet, blacks continue to patronize the church. We go not as soldiers carrying the banner for an ebullient preacher, but because the place just happens to be our place of worship. Now the Reverend Wright that jolts us all is whiter than you think.

The man presents with a smidgen of black blood in him; and, like my grandmother, who is lighter than he, light skinned blacks have in my experience been the most radical. Many, who admitted this to me said they were confronted with the issue of claiming sides if a black person was mixed; they said it louder, (I was told) to be heard.

People like Reverend Wright, exhort bitterness of a real identifiable, horrifying past. Most Reverend Wright’s ages have literally witnessed history in the making and the Civil Rights Movement from first hand experiences as I have. I was reared on the streets of Los Angeles, California when we had to walk across the railroad tracks post war era, on my way to school each day past blossoming gangs and bitter police.

Bitterness existed in the LA police department that invariably infiltrated the surprising decision in the OJ Simpson trial. As, some of the jurors were also old witnesses of the rogue behavior the LAPD had become famous for in the inner city. Reverend Wright speaks as he feels. He speaks as he fears and, he shouts to release his anxiety of a past none of us shall ever forget. Alternately, the young and inquisitive the smart and inspirational younger generation like Barack Obama are intrigued by this history; Wright’s reality.

They are hungry for knowledge via first-hand experiences, but, they are not necessarily predisposed fully by people like Reverend Wright. Barack's days are different. His nights are safer and are not filled with shrieking voices of those who have seen a cross burning on their lawns.

Barack was not a witness to the Woolworth sit-ins where hoses were being sprayed onto the innocent; where tongues wagged bitterly at five young black men who dared to order a bologna sandwich. Reverend Wright saw these people pave the way for Barack to exact a modern day platform for world change. So you see, the very things that make Reverend Wright angry, and you so uncomfortable are going to be the glue that binds our nation as one. Listening, hearing and understanding a fellow man's angst does not make you he or me them.

And, having gotten the chance to know Barack better now; be glad that Barack wants to turn Reverend Wright's ire into something positive, proving to him that his ire can be mixed into the ingredients to form a new America too. In order to make this change in a way that unifies us all here and abroad, black and white, Asian and Hispanic, straight and gay we must hear Barack now when he says, “Yes We Can.”

I can speak on “Wright” righteously becau

Carol Denise Mitchell of CA 1:59PM October 28, 2008