March, 2009
On his Bill Moyers' Journal for May 2, 2008, Moyers defended Rev. Wright in an essay that was a follow up to Moyers' interview of Wright a week before, by saying that Wright is a complicated man and that it is normal for preacher's of Wright's ilk to deliver emotional sermons. Snippets of Rev. Wright's inflamatory sermons had been played on television news programs during the Presidential primaries in early 2008 and people were questioning Barak Obama's 20 year long association with Wright and his Trinity Church who was perceived by many as anti-White and a racist. Democrats felt not so quietly that Rev. Wright was a subject that could come back to haunt them in the Presidential elections.
Wright could have given the same sermons very quietly and they would have been just as racist. Moyers contention that people all see Wright "through the lens of their own experience" is childishly disingenuous and smacks of a cynical political agenda on the one hand and a philosophy that is out of touch with reality on the other; in what world is Wright not a demagogue? There is a time and a place for that type of perceptual claim and the sermons of Rev. Wright are not that time or place. One may as well claim that we see the KKK through a lens of experience and that when it comes to the KKK there are two sides to the story. Just because some people defend Wright does not make him any less of a racist or liar. Black Americans themselves often argue that just because a majority believe in a thing does not justify it on moral grounds, using slavery as an example. This television essay which was preceded by an interview of Wright by Moyers on Apr.25 of the same year; both together are a monument to hypocrisy and the provincialism of Plato's Cave. They are also clear examples of how political correctness can distort one's view of reality to the point of dangerous insanity.
Moyers goes on to explain away Wright's comments as excusable because of the way Wright's Afro-American ancestors were treated. Good thing the law doesn't work that way and there is no reason why anything else should work that way either. Because if Wright has an excuse to pillory white society over the wrongs of the past then how much more of an excuse do white people have to object to the thousands of murders a year of white people by black people right now, today? In today's political climate Wright and black Americans in general get a pass on their outrage over what may have been perpetrated by white people against black people in America in a dead past. Any outrage by white folks over the current criminal behaviour of black Americans, which is more relevant, is marginalized as racism. I have never once in my life thought of white people as "my people" which is something black Americans do as second nature and even playing devil's advocate as I do in this essay seems horribly wrong; Wright himself seems horribly wrong. If Moyers excuses Wright on the basis of the maltreatment of his ancestors, his "people", does that mean Moyers is upset that his "people" are being murdered wholesale by black Americans? Not likely.
How in the world Moyers can think of Rev. Wright as anything but the utter racist that he is takes a double standard that is so immense that there is no question that Moyers has been lost in that immensity.
Black Americans would perhaps argue that being pro-black and thinking of other blacks as "their" people has been foisted upon black Americans while a similar view of white Americans towards other whites is more motivated by racial hatred. I think it's 2009 and if such a paradigm was ever credible that it is not now. Every one needs a new clock.
It's probably a good thing that white Americans don't think of other whites as their "people" because if they did adopt the thinking of black Americans they would probably get a little upset over the thousands of white women assaulted and raped by blacks each year. This subject of why black Americans think so little of the idea of white Americans looking out for each other but commonly do so with each other, calling other people with dark skin "brother", may be as much a defensive guilt over current crime statistics as anything else. Moyers blithely mentions the right of Rev. Wright to be upset with the idea behind the Tuskegee Experiment because the 28 men who died were black but Moyers himself implies that he denies the same right to white Americans. Is it time for white Americans to start adopting a black attitude and be protective of white folks because of their skin color? Should whites start calling each other brother or comrade?
Pursuant to this theme of how black Americans view themselves, check out this absolutely perfect example of self-serving, self-delusional hypocrisy when it comes to the idea of whites supporting whites as opposed to blacks supporting blacks, written by John Ridley in the Huffington Post. Here's a clue to Mr. Ridley's problem: it's 2009. Apparently, Mr. Ridley believes that all black racism or ethnocentrism is in fact merely a hyper awareness by black Americans of their own history to say nothing of their willingness to happily revel in that past they claim to hate so much like a pig revels in mud. However if white folks want to look out for white folks then I guess that's just plain, everyday racism. I assume this is the same hyper awareness that motivated the historically obssessed 9/11 hijackers. According to Wright, white America suffers not from historical awareness but historical blindness; a convenient philosophy to say the least.
How about a hyper awareness on the part of black Americans of the amount of crimes blacks commit in this country out of all proportion to their population? How about a hyper awareness about the present and how good black Americans have it today compared to other countries past and present? And make no mistake about it, black Americans love it here and will never emmigrate to Africa as did the jews to Israel; all this talk by black Americans about oppression in the present day and oppression in the past in a country they were perfectly free to leave is so much smoke and mirrors. People like Wright see what they want to see and ignore that which is inconvenient all the while chiding white America for ignoring inconvenient "truths" in it's own past and not telling "the rest of the story". For whatever reason, Rev. Wright wants to maximize and distort the negative position put on black Americans by white Americans while at the same time demonizing American institutions which he portrays as white. Wright's view of history is unbalanced propaganda to the point where history itself becomes unrecognizable except through the lens and priorities of Afrocentrists.
It happened that as I was writing and thinking about this essay a program is running on HBO called, "The Black List: Volume 2" The description of the show is this: "More than a dozen black Americans discuss their lives as artists, activists and athletes." I find these types of shows really, really creepy for many reasons. There is nothing special about this particular program featuring "black voices". It is totally typical of others like it in that it is racist, shallow, full of self-fulfulling prophecies and lies nonchalantly passed off as fact. Black list is full of outrageously exaggerated hyperbole, self aggrandizement and very big soap boxes. For a show that ostensibly is anti-racist, the language of it's inhabitants say that race, skin color, does indeed matter. These people listen twice as hard to a voice coming from a black face than otherwise. This is utterly racist and putting a positive spin on it is perfume on a pig. To me racism is a language. To the cast of Black List I'm sure they say that racism is a position of power and so do they hope to protect themselves against hypocrisy. But what happens when the power subtly shifts and you are still speaking the same language? I'm sure the Cuban government in 2009 still consider themselves revolutionaries; they certainly speak the rhetoric when it comes to that idea. The fact is that the Cuban government is the establishment and have been for decades; their government is every bit as onerous as was Batista's and it is a situation where 2 wrongs make a right.
"It was a great thing." "I just felt so good". This is what Serena Williams says in "The Black List: Volume One", about being in Africa for the first time, contrasting it to the isolating experience of being in Russia where there are few black faces. Miss Williams says that white people who go to Africa might get the same feeling as she did in Russia. This type of wholesale acceptance of the projection of your feelings onto an entire people is the problem with thinking too much in terms of race. It requires a type of mind reading that confirms Miss Williams feelings about race as being on the minds of the whole world when nothing could be farther from the truth. Miss Williams starts off by saying, "Tennis is a very white sport." It's just a sport; the color of the people who play it has nothing to do with it but it shows how Miss Williams and others on the Black List and indeed all too many black Americans filter everything through the lens of race. The people featured on the Black List who speak like this are their own problem and they are caught in a perceptual trap. This trap is one in which you point the finger at others and cry racist because you are so sure of how they think which only is something you have merely projected onto others. If fact, they should be pointing their fingers at themselves. As much as the ideas of truth and justice are bandied about in the Black List fiims, it is sad to say that no one who participated in this project has the faintest idea of what those words really mean.
Miss Williams says, "I loved Muhammed Ali" and one cannot help but get the uncomfortable feeling that the number one factor in this admiration is the fact that Muhammed Ali was black. No surprise that out of all the great tennis players the one Miss Williams mentions in Zena Garrison, a black woman. Miss Williams as much as says that the overriding factor in the reason she was so happy that Miss Garrison got to the semi-finals of Wimbledon one year was because of the fact that Miss Garrison was black. While accusing white Americans of being racist the fact of the matter is that if the average white American was so entranced with black faces as is Miss Williams, Oprah Winfrey would be nobody and Obama would not be president. One only look at black Americans who voted for Obama 95 to 5 and see where the racism is and to see who it is who is so attracted to the idea of putting their trust and love in a person based on the color of their skin.
It seems to be assumed that white people in a minority situation would similarly champion white faces to the exclusion of other factors like talent, always looking for the white face highest up th ladder of achievement. This is pure racism and for Miss Williams to be either shamelessly proud of it or blithely unaware of it is equally troubling. To hear this type of tripe from multi-millionaires like Russel Simmons and Serena Williams makes it worse. If the message from the Black List films isn't that a black face is the single most important component in the lives of these people then I don't know what it is.
What Black List emphasizes to me has more to do with personal fears and lack of confidence than a monolithic presence of white surpremacy. The world has never been an entirely friendly place to anyone but to lay this at the feet of racism on every occasion rather than the cruelty of children to each other, or rudeness or other human traits is for sure going to give you a peculiar view of the world in which you live. This peculiar view is dead weight. It is an anchor to me and an anchor to you. It is an anchor that ensures that you will always give yourself more credit than you deserve and take that same credit away from others. This echoes loudly in the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and in his cheering congregation and it is sad.
I have spent many years backpacking around "non-white" countries and in all the many journals I kept every single day the issue of race never came up once. I was interested in the cultures and what those cultures had to offer but the idea of race was totally immaterial to me. I really never once thought about it until I viewed the Serena Williams video for this essay. I suppose a critic might counter that I was simply being naive as I travelled in those countries and that race does make a difference. I myself see no reason why I should have brought such a cynical and what may have been a provincial attitude based on my own background and project it onto the peoples who's countries I visited. If race was such an prominent element than it would have shown itself to me and I would not have had to go looking for it. As it is, I stand behind my statement that it was never an issue unless I should lay the issue of a consistent attempt to overcharge me for goods and services as racist. Greed is simply a human attribute and I took it as such.
If the black Americans who participated in the Black List project are on the hunt for racist attitudes, they don't have to look any farther than their own mirrors and that is also true of Rev. Wright and his congregation. I feel genuinely sorry for the creators and featured players on the Black List films. Such casual racism and moral boasting are individually abhorrent and worse when combined. When it comes to the idea of racism being only being relevant to those in a position of power and so absolving black Americans of being racist then I would argue the following: such groups in the United States in 2009 as the neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan and other fringe lunatics have been always been totally marginalized with the exception of the Klan in the South after the Civil War. Such groups have no crediblity or power, no power base. Are they racists or not? Of course they are. The idea of racism being only charged to those in a position to act on it in an institutional manner is glib nonsense. Any group or individual can be a racist, irregardless of their position in a class or economic pecking order; the only consideration for membership is to attribute quality by skin color, either good or bad.
The question is now one that includes a hideous double standard; one is easily permitted to say something positive about black Americans, you hear black and white Americans say such things in the media all the time. You often hear Americans, both black and white make negative generalizations about white people; Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, Rev. Wright and many white voices as well take it as gospel that white culture is racist, exclusionary, shallow, square, colonial, etc. What one cannot do is to praise white culture or denegrated black culture; that is right out.
You can watch any number of films like the Black List films where black folks happily list all the accomplishments of black Americans, proudly extol the virtues of Black History month and this is not a problem. In mixed company and in the media, a white person absolutely cannot do the same thing. If I were to get on any TV program in the United States in 2009 and start to talk about how whites have put men on the moon or developed fractal geometry it would not be accepted.
It is wonderful to watch black poets talk about beautiful and lovely black faces in a way that is totally acceptible and realize that if a white person does the same thing it is considered just another expression of white colonial and supremacist attitudes, wherein slanted eyes and nappy hair is a no-no. The fact is that I myself would consider it really creepy for a white person to talk about "white" beauty in such a way; I find it doubly creepy for black Americans to buy into the idea since they evidently find it so unacceptible for white Americans to express themselves in this manner. If you think I'm pulling this stuff out of left field then just get on some black blog; it's par for the course. This is a quote from a story about the Willaims sisters: "It’s also not exactly shocking that the white women will go out their way to praise the new “white” tennis hope Russian Maria Sharapova. I think they hype Sharapova so much because she represents the Eurocentric standard of beauty. Sharapova is considered “beautiful” because she is white, young, tall, and a natural blonde. In white culture blonde women are considered the essence of white beauty."
I love to hear black Americans talk about the white standard of beauty being a blonde woman with blue eyes as if in fact this is how we all feel. What I hear when this type of thing is said has more to do with what is on the minds of the people who say such things and less to do with reality.
I have absolutely no idea why someone would create such shows as "The Black List: Volume 2" and no idea why anyone would participate in such a program. I should point out that the creators of the Black List film are Timothy Greenfield-Sanders & Elvis Mitchell; Sanders is white. I can't imagine what would happen if a show called "The White List" was broadcast but I know it wouldn't be pretty and I know of no white people who would want to create a show based on such a shallow premise as the common denominator of skin color as if skin color in itself possessed certain attributes. If such attributes can be touted as having positive elements as they are in the Black List films, then couldn't they possess negative elements as well? This would seem to go squarely against a doctrine of anti-racism. In any event, such a show that featured white wocies would be black listed as would any white person who paricipated; a monument to the sheer scale of the double standard that has grown around such subject matter."The Black List: Volume 2" is full of nonsense and stupidity passed off not only as philosophy but as a type of profound philosophy. Pastor T.D. Jakes talks about events during slavery using the "our" word, as if he in any way participated in slavery or as if he has more in common with black folks from the 1st half of the 19th century than he does with me just because those people in the past had dark skin.
It is no surprise to me why black intellectualism in 2009 is so utterly bankrupt or why black Americans have problems if they are buying into such nonsense as represented by "The Black List". Such a project is in no way a positive thing for a human being to be spending their time and thoughts on. It is simply harmful. The fact that black Americans speak with such a monolithic voice when it comes to such subject matter is disgraceful. It is disgraceful because of the way black Americans happily wallow in relating to others by skin color but have the loudest and most certain voices when it comes to calling white Americans racists, denying others the same right to admire by skin color, not that I or anyone I know would ever think of such a silly thing. In my opinion, the type of rhetoric displayed on "The Black List" and reflected in all too many black voices across the United States reflects a near obssession with skin color that is unhealthy and unproductive in the extreme. I squirm when I watch such arrogant and smug racists like Angela Davis talk from such a great moral height and to so little positive purpose. I squirm because it is rare to see so many people happily participate in demonstrating their own utter hypocrisy and distortion of their personal world view in such a public way. I know the black Americans who are featured in Black List are in no way embarrassed by the things said by them on the show but trust me when I say that I am mightily embarassed for them; the film is an intellectual and perceptual train wreck whose fundamental premise is emphatically racist.
I would be ashamed to be guilty of such utterances as run through Black List. How there can be such an intellectual and perceptual bigotry so happily put forth by adults is totally beyond my ability to comprehend. One thing is for sure and that is that the people who created and participated in Black List absolutely do not get it; they are as perceptually adrift as any group of people who share a common cause as I have ever seen. Only when listening to the rhetoric of such groups as neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan can one hear such a high percentage of such utter drivel.
The Russell Simmons segment celebrates the "truth" that hip-hop music purports to portray and in this hip-hop truth there is a lot of criticism of white people and white institutions. If a white musician were to write similar lyrics about the black community he would be pilloried and his career would be over so I am not exactly sure what "truths" people like Simmons are talking about. What it seems he really means if that it's open season on white America from the black community but vice versa is strictly off-limits. I just don't get this. The hypocrisy is their for all to see; why do they make such fools of themselves? "The authentic expression of what's on the minds of poor people." That how Simmons put it in speaking about rap music, a source of truth that blinded America. Apparently no similar criticism from a white artist would be considered authentic, just racist. One man's truth is another man's racism and that's the real truth you will not see in the Black List films. The only thing the Black List films celebrate is hypocrisy and a type of racism who's casualness is only surpassed by it's own blindness. One will never hear truth in a situation where the transparency will come only from people who police themselves; it has to come from outside the communty. Criticism of the white community coming from black Americans is considered absolutely valid by the black community and so it must also be considered equally valid for people who are not black to have a say in criticizing the black community rather than shutting those voices off with a reply of racism. If it is considered to be not racist for black Americans to go after white America then neither is it racist for America at large to talk about the shortcomings of black American culture and it is as simple as that.
I must say that in doing an extensive amount of research for this and other essays about the attitudes of black Americans that I was very much surprised to find how much black folks in American identify with people by skin color alone. Black Americans are right to condemn racism but to turn around and practise it themselves is sheer foolishness. I can't think of anything more shallow than to identify with a person you don't even know just because they have the same skin color as yourself and then to make it worse by saying it's on the basis of sharing the same "struggle". And of course "struggle" is shorthand for how badly blacks are treated by whites. The racism of America towards blacks in 2009 is an urban myth that feeds on itself. For black Americans to have such a strong identification with such a small percentage of the population is harmful and a form of segregation that locks out a lot of good stuff. If you are going to turn your back on something simply because you over identify it with white folks then that is a problem.
The problem is that the black Americans in the Black List films do not hang out with others who do not share their views and so challenge them; it's obvious from listening to them speak. It's also obvious that such "reasoning" reinforces itself and also that expecting such negative behaviour from people will deliver exactly that type of behaviour. These voices speaking on Black List are so happily smug about putting their problems and uncertainties onto others that they simply do not realize that they themselves are the single greatest source of their problems. The fact that these "voices" talk about a past they never themselves participated in as if they share that past simply by skin color is worrisome. I'm trying to imagine myself talk about World War II as if I shared the hardships of the soldiers who fought in that conflict. To portray yourself in such a light is a type of intellectual theft, an emotional plagirism that speaks not to the glory of what it means to be human but to some of the ugliest and most puerile aspects we as humans possess. The interest say, black Americans might have in Cleopatra simply based on the fact that they think she was black is ugly and pure racism.
Such behaviour shows what lengths some people will go to identify with a battle they have never fought, sufferings they have never suffered and survival skills that were never put into play. I understand why people are sometimes prone to exaggerate grief and hardship but when it is done in a cultural context it can become a cultural sickness; it is not always good for people to so strongly identify with each other or to win arguments they can't afford to win. "The Black List" is simply another example of black Americans patting themselves on the back in self-congratulation at how little they are guilty of racism, at how good and innocent black folks are compared to white people. It is truly sickening to watch such racism passed off as superior morality and such nonsensical rhetoric as Angela Davis speaks as any kind of a truth or penetrating insight when in fact the logic behind her mindless bigotry wouldn't pass muster in a junior high school debate class of "my people", at least not unless you perpetually live in the year 1955 in your own mind.
Put in this light, the rhetoric about America and Hurricane Katrina coming from Rev. Wright and far too many black voices is easy to understand. If you Google "The Black List: Volume 2", you will come up with nothing but praise and positve points of view about the film. This shows how far out of the loop I am I guess. To me it also shows to what extent black Americans wrap a security blanket around themselves to shield themselves from the apparently all encompasssing effects of white oppression and to what extent black Americans are not only allowed the space to make racist utterances but to even be celebrated for doing so.
One can get a clue to the thrust of Holder's remarks during his now famous press conference where he takes "America" to task for "being a nation of cowards" when it comes to Americans discussing matters of race in the 21st century. Here is a link to CNN' online's presentation of the Holder video. Holder begins, "One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country, one must examine it's racial soul." To me, this is a perfect example of Afrocentric self-aggrandizement wherein the entire complex history of the United States can only be understood by looking at it the way black Americans do. It is sheer arrogance to put 13% of the country's population on a pedestal out of all proportion to the true nature of the black community's real role in the history of this nation. When one points out this same thing in regard to black crime which truly is out of all proportion to the percentage of the population then it is evidently an entirely different thing in Holder's mind and that pedestal is chopped down in a manner exactly opposite to the rhetoric about a true understanding of America. Obviously, Holder has a slight problem of favoritism with what should and should not be understood when it comes to ideas about proportion. When it comes to "talking about things racial", it is clear from Holder's remarks that some things about black Americans should be talked about more than others.
Yes, let's forget about the Industrial Revolution, the race for space, WWII, the history of unions and 1 million and one others things in the history of the United States. It must all be condensed to how it related to a small percentage of the population, namely black Americans who themselves admit that they were forcibly marginalized and took little part in the great movements in this nation's history. Holder says, "...this nation has still not come to grips with it's racial past..." I don't even know what that means but it's not a let's all celebrate white history moment and that's for sure. What in the world does Holder want white Americans to do in 2009 to "come to grips with it's racial past?
If Mr. Holder was directing his remarks mostly toward white America I can say from a personal point of view that I do not share his fascination with matters of race. Black Americans talk about race enough for the two of us; one might say to the point of obsession. There is a difference between finding the topic of race boring and being afraid to to discuss it. If Holder and black Americans want to talk about race all day, knock yourself out but don't criticize the entire country for not being fascinated with the world view of 12% of the population. I personally don't talk about race much outside of essays because I don't use a language where my world view is in any way defined by race. To me, racism is indeed a language and not a position of power and I do not speak that language. It has nothing to do with cowardice but rather an unwillingness to define my environment by skin color.
Here is a quote from Holder: “No matter how affluent, educated and mobile a black person becomes, his race defines him more particularly than anything else.” I think Holder means that blacks in America will never get an even break in this country. Why? It seems safe to draw the conclusion that Mr. Holder feels that whites in America are racist. Can you imagine a white person getting away with saying such a thing? If it's okay for Mr. Holder to say such a thing, can I say that statement holds true for Mr. Holder himself?
I mention Holder's remarks because they took place at virtually the same time as the Delonas chimp cartoon uproar. Also, Holder's remarks give one a clue as to why so many black Americans see the Delonas cartoon the way they do; everything is filtered through a lens of race and racism that has little to do with reality and Holder's own opening remarks at his press conference show to what extent black Americans are prone to distory their place in the day to day affairs of this country both for good and ill. My own rhetorical question to Holder would be: Do black Americans think of anything but black Americans?
In regard to Holder's opening remark, I will say that baseball players tend to view this country's history through their own lens with an emphasis on baseball's influence in our everyday lives. Union organizer's will tend to view this nation's history through the lens of union organizing and how that changed the nation's history, gay Americans filter American through their own experience; one can take such exaggerations with a grain of salt. It is entirely natural to do things like this but there is a time and a place and a context for this type of view and it is not the place of the 1st black Attorney General in the history of the U.S. in the administration the 1st "black" president in the history of the U.S. to do so. Also, it is entirely outside the brief of the job of Attorney General to make such remarks. If Holder had his way I guess the 24 hour news cycle would be entirely about African Americans and all our lives put on hold until we get this "racial" thing figured out.
Obama is not the president of black people and Holder holds no special brief in regard to black Americans. I found his comments offensive and racist. Furthermore, just because one has a special point of view about their country does not mean it is special; everyone brings their own lens to the table. The point is whether one should insist that others share that point of view as does Holder and this is where the problem lies. When gay Americans insist that the rest of America should share their own peculiar views on marriage even to the extent of putting those views into the U.S. Constitution then that is a problem. We should at least try and set aside what we know to be specific points of view and think rather about what is good and true for the whole. I'm sure comic book collector's would like to turn the Library of Congress into one big comic convention but this will not happen anytime soon. I don't want an Attorney General for the United States speaking from the point of view of a comic collector or baseball fanatic or black American. I want him to uphold the laws of the United States without regard to race.
Since it is generally held in the black community that racism in America reflects the faults of white Americans even to the point of many in the black community saying that it is not possible for black Americans to be guilty of racism, it is hard for me to believe that Holder meant his remarks for blacks and whites equally and that in fact he was calling out white America. The question I have is this: how is one supposed to have an even handed dialogue about race in American when any criticism of black culture in America is invariably termed racist? Holder, like many black Americans wants a racial "dialogue" that is one-sided wherein white America is endlessly flogged and taken to task for it's crimes against blacks, past or present, real or imagined.
Moyers is just more of the same and for him to imply that no white man gets a pass on past racism simply because they are themselves white is itself a racist point of view, lumping together people by skin color and not only suggesting that white Americans are all racist but guilty of past deeds to this very day. In this TV essay, Moyers says that white Americans are hearing Wright make an "attack on an America they cherish and that many of their sons have died for in battle, forgetting that black Americans have fought and bled beside them." The latter is certainly true but neither here nor there since it is an argument not put forward in regard to Wright and so a perfect example of disingenuous obfuscation. Also, no one I know was mad at Wright for general negative statements about a cherished America that Wright put forth in his sermons but were angry at very specific consistent lies and racist distortions that went all over the map in time and place.
Moyers goes on to make the same tired defense of the chickens coming home to roost argument in regards to 9/11 by saying that when it comes to intervention in the affairs of other countries that "actions have consequences" and that this is all Wright was saying. In that part of Wright's sermon Wright starts out by claiming to quote an Ambassador Peck from a Fox News interview but in that interview Peck never uses the term "chickens coming home to roost" and in Wright's sermon he not only goes far beyond any criticisms Peck made on Fox but takes an obvious delight, as does his congregation, in the idea that in 9/11, America got the payback she had coming as if the morons who flew airplanes into buildings were historical karmic avengers to all the negative acts ever laid at the door of America. From the dispossession of America from native Americans to slavery to the first U.S. invasion of Irag, Wright portrays the 9/11 terrorists as performing the hijackings for all of those throughout history who had come to injury at the hands of American global politics. There is nothing in Rev. Wright's world view about the muslim lives saved in the Balkans in the 1990's and the jewish lives saved in the 1940's to say nothing of the Peace Corp or the monumental effort under the Bush administration to combat AIDS in Africa. When it comes to accentuating the positve, Rev. Wright is clearly no adherent of Johnny Mercer.
This is foolish on the face of it and never mentions all the good that Americans have done for people throughout it's history. To claim 9/11 as a type of karmic vengeance on America while at the same time ignoring the centerpiece of the idea of karma in the first place which is balance, is so childishly stupid and hypocritical that it defies my imagining the minds that create such ideas. Moyers claim that Wright was misrepresented by sound bites from his sermons holds no water whatsoever; if anything, extended plays of Wright's sermons are worse because the more Wright opens his mouth the more poorly thought out and poorly researched racist vitriol spills out. The problem with Wright is that he puts the entire onus in his sermons on everyone but the black community who are apparently immune to bigotry and violence against others. A truly level playing field would include the idea that black folks are and always have been as capable of bigotry as anyone else.
If Rev. Wright wants to talk about crime by race then let's talk about crime by race. Rev. Wright and others in the black community seem to take it for granted that the reason that white Americans do this so little is out of a sense of guilt for their own racism but that guilt doesn't exist in nearly the number black Americans take for granted. Rather as I see it, it is out of a sense on the part of white Americans of not wanting to judge others by skin color; after all it's 2009 and even the historical racism that black Americans take for granted on the part of whites wasn't nearly so widespread as is usually claimed by the black community who characterize racism in the United States thoughout it's history as endemic and monolithic. To whatever extent it is true then one would have to say it extended to black folks and everybody else too unless it's not racism if you were on the losing end. How can one claim that all Americans in 1865 or 1765 were racists? Doing so usually reveals more about what one wants to believe than anything else. My own people came from Europe around 1910 and kept to themselves in Central Minnesota; are they guilty because of Jim Crow, should they pay reparations to black Americans?
During the Civil War, 20 million Northern whites fought against 5 million Southern whites; all things being equal, meaning that there were probably some anti-slavery people in the South and pro-slavery in the North, then you have a population that was 4 to 1 against the South. In the territories west beyond the Mississippi that had not yet achieved statehood by the time of the Civil Way, they had no intention of allowing the institution of slavery to find a foothold. However, even in the North, there was a difference between not wanting to see black people enslaved and wanting them to have full equality with whites. That was the genesis of Jim Crow laws. However, those Jim Crow laws were never part of a national referendum and it is fair to say that there were many white folks against the passage of such laws.
Wright and many others in the black communtiy have made hay exaggerating the status of white racism in America to the hilt, to the point of outright lies accepted as facts as in the case of Hurricane Katrina. Stalwarts like Kanye West claimed the American government didn't care for black Americans in New Orleans and in fact used Katrina as an excuse to kill blacks and to pare down the black community of New Orleans, belying the footage of helicopters rescuing black family after black family from rooftops. The extent to which people are all too ready to believe the worst of white folks matches the extent to which white racism in America past and present has been exaggerated to the status of a taken for granted urban myth that continues to gain momentum in the black community and a significant percentage of white Americans like Moyers who eat it up with a spoon, challenging nothing and capitulating to the most outrageous double standards emanating from the black community. How in the world past racism from Jim Crow days somehow trumps present day mountains of black crime in terms of it's relevancy in the news is something only Wright and Moyers can speak to.
Here is a dose of what it is like to think like Rev. Wright excerpted from a book review by P. Atwood about the true nature of who is harming who in this country: "Each year, some 1.2 million violent crimes involving blacks and whites occur nationwide. In fully 90 percent of those cases, according to U.S. Justice Department figures, the perpetrators are black and the victims are white. Violent white felons choose black victims for fewer than 3 percent of their attacks, whereas violent black felons choose white victims about 56 percent of the time. Statistically, the "average" African American is an astonishing 56 times more likely to attack a white than vice versa. In one recent year, approximately 100 black women were raped by white men; the corresponding number of white women raped by black men was over 20,000, according to Dinesh D'Souza in The End of Racism.
These numbers are staggering. If America were teeming with white racism, surely the perpetrators of interracial crime would be disproportionately white. Clearly, however, that is not at all the case. Though contemporary civil rights leaders strive to portray white-on-black crime as commonplace, their rhetoric rings pathetically hollow. With tortured faces and ostensibly anguished hearts, they will seek out any microphone or news reporter willing to publicize their lamentations about even the rarest instances of white racism in action. Meanwhile, they turn a deaf ear to the desperate screams of the thousands of white -- and black -- victims who fall prey to black assailants each year." Meanwhile, utter con men and black apologists like Al Sharpton get on TV and claim the exact opposite is happening.
Moyers idea that Wright is angry over such things as the Tuskegee Experiments is one thing but we are not talking about anger here we are talking about lies, distortion and racism and there is no excuse whatsoever for that. It is worth pointing out that the fact that it is apparently okay that Wright would be especially angry with illegal medical experiments on black people in a way that he would not be in regard to a similar situation with people of a lighter skin color. Moyers' apparent de facto endorsement of this point of view for blacks but not for whites gives one an insight into how the minds of Bill Moyers and Rev. Wright work. Does anyone believe that Wright cares one bit for the small percentage of lynchings in American history that resulted in the deaths of white people? If Moyers wants to talk about a double standard it's sitting right in front of him.
The fact that a man like Wright could be so angry about 28 deaths over a period of 40 years in the Tuskegee experiment while utterly ignoring the incredible tide of black crime to the tune of 9,000 murders a year, half of them against whites, by black Americans is hypocritical. These statistics put the Tuskegee figures to shame and is further proof of why people like Bill Moyers and Rev. Wright, who sat opposite each other at a table and talked about challenging people about the truth have no idea of what truth is; you will never hear "the rest of the story" from them. Multiply 9,000 murders a year over 40 years and you have an incredible 360,000 murders as opposed to 28 deaths at Tuskegee. Multiply that by the fact that Tuskegee took place in an America that no longer exists and that the 9,000 murders a year is a current statistic and it is even worse. Where is the sense of proportion or outrage from Bill Moyers and Rev. Wright? Where in the world Rev. Wright and his cheering congregation come up with their sense of outrage about how blacks are treated in America in the 21st century is astounding to me; they must have their heads completely buried in the sand and their news from the outside world carefully filtered. The truth of the matter is that Rev. Wright only cares about justice insofar as it relates to black folks and how is that attitude different from the blase' attitude about justice for all by those who enacted Jim Crow laws?
Black Americans will never take their true place in this country until their sense of justice becomes one devoid of skin color. I place black gangs and their endemic violence right alongside the terrible idiocy of Neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. The latter 2 are buzz words for racism and ignorance while black crime is excused, ignored and generally handled with kid gloves by both black America and the media in the United States as a political issue even going so far as to blame black crime on white racism.
Moyers makes a point of saying that the attacks against Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright amounted to a double standard because they were no more correct than attacks not made against Sen. John McCain and the Republican party for preachers like John Hagee who made inflammatory remarks about Katrina being God's punishment against New Orleans for it's sins or Falwell saying something similar about 9/11 being God's vengeance. This is entirely missing the point because in fact there was an uproar amongst many, including myself, that McCain, who I do not support, would ally himself with a wacko like Hagee to the point of wanting Hagee's endorsement. The point is that two wrongs don't make a right. Moyer's also wonders why a 1972 White House tape wherein Nixon and Billy Graham make remarks disparaging to jews caused no uproar, failing to mention that the tape didn't come to light until 30 years later. Had it's existence been known at the time it would have cost Nixon a second term. I myself lament that Nixon ever had a first term.
The worry among white Americans about Obama and Wright was about the possibility that Obama was coming from a 20 yr. background in a Trinity Church with a coherent Afrocentric philosophy that did not like America nor the story of America, choosing to dwell on the past, exaggerate present ills and distort the negative aspects of American history while not at all celebrating the positive aspects of America. That was bad enough but to in turn use racism and lies to ostensibly rail against racism and lies was too much from Wright and his cheering congregation. The worry was that this Afrocentric view and it's perceptual lack of balance would favor a distinctly black viewpoint that was hostile to mainstream America. Hagee, madman that he is, never made the political mistake of hating America as a whole, today and yesterday. That fact, coupled with the fact the McCain had no long time association with Hagee and temporarily sought his endorsement for what many felt was wrong-headed political expediency ameliorated the whole issue. Once McCain saw which way the wind was blowing he dumped Hagee as did Obama with Wright but Obama would not disown Wright and said as much. One felt that the two separations were entirely different behind the scenes, Obama and Wright's remaining philosophically intact and McCain and Hagee's never having really existed in the first place. But make no mistake, Hagee is every bit as sickening a figure as is Rev. Wright.
When it comes to Rev. Wright and Obama, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that most people have no interest in anyone who views governments as killers of the innocent as if they do nothing else, or as white people as racists as if they are incapable of any other point of view, or of the world as a place of oppression, or of a world view of distrust, mistrust and blame. It may come as a surprise to Wright that many people view the world as a wonderful place full of magical surprise and wonderful opportunity. There is more to this world than the peculiar and dreary views of Rev. Wright, Jim Cone, Louis Farrakhan and the hapless congregation of Trinity Church and mainstream Americans have every reason to be mistrustful of a man seeking the presidency who may share such distorted views.
In the Moyers interview, Wright makes the point that the world view of the blacks below the decks of the slave ships transporting them to the Americas had a far different world view than those above decks. This is obvious but where I disagree with Wright is the idea that a people's world view is forever changed. All cultures have had their ups and downs but to suggest that a people or culture are forever scarred with a memory of that culture at it's nadir is foolishness. If that were true then every culture on this earth would be psychically scarred forever. One must move forward and not live and even wallow in a bitter past, forever blaming others.
One only has to look at how black Americans view Katrina to see an example of a people who see conspiracy and racism everywhere, even in a storm. Wright wants all Americans to share the view of black Americans in the same way that homosexuals want all married couples to share their own peculiar view of marriage. Put 50,000 "married" gay couples on an island in isolation and they'll die out within 50 or 60 years; that's not marriage. Rev. Wright and his Afrocentric adherents view of the world is not the entire world by a long shot and Wright will wait a long time for the rest of us to come to share his dreary provincialism and negative point of view where everyone flaunts the full panoply of negative human traits except for Wright and his comic-tragedy community.
For some reason I don't understand, but probably political, Moyers bent over backward to defend Wright. It's hard to imagine Moyers coming out with such an understanding point of view with someone like Alabama's Gov. George Wallace. In Moyers interview of Rev. Wright on his show, Wright states that Americans cling to America's positive myths and are not taught about, for example, how badly it treated native Americans and that when white America is shown this that we bristle in "vitriolic hatred" because people like Wright are desecrating the sacred myth of America. Wright's view is that we are miseducated and not told the truth. This is wrong and smacks of a smug type of wishful thinking on the part of Wright. What people don't like about Wright is that his "truth" is all he talks about. No American in their right mind is going to allow the negative aspects of American history to be glossed over but neither are we going to dwell on it as if enslaving people is all America was ever about and it is this aspect that Moyers and Wright do not understand when it comes to the anger over Wright's sermons. What can one say about a guy who equates the word government with the word failure?
In Moyers original interview with Rev. Wright which lasted almost 60 minutes, Moyers only once touched on a controversial aspect of a Wright sermon which I found strange because I supposed Wright was on the show because of his controversial sermons and not to gloss them over; so much for "the rest of the story". The part Moyers asked Wright about was the famous "God damn America" sermon. Wright responded that the seeming insult to America was really about choosing allegiance to a goverment over God and how governments "change, how they fail and how they lie". Needless to say Wright's answer was a lot of nonsense that had no bearing whatsoever on the sermon where he says him and his shouldn't say "God Bless America" but rather "God damn America" while his congregation cheered as if their team had just won the Super Bowl. I should point out that as part of his explanation for his God damn America sermon Wright once again brought up the notion that government's kill innocents, a non-sensical remark, which Wright also used in that sermon itself; a rather peculiar repeated emphasis considering the immensely complex role governments have played in human affairs. To portray Rev. Wright's view of the world at large as skewed and racist is an understatement.
Moyers never asked Wright about referring to the United States as the "U.S. of KKK A", about Wright saying the U.S. Government invented A.I.D.S. to kill black people, about the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan without ever batting an eye, about the U.S. Government importing drugs into black communities to kill black folks and much, much more. Moyers was out to portray Rev. Wright as a misunderstood man and so Moyers entire piece on Wright amounted to nothing more than propaganda, something we used to chastise the Soviet Union for.
If you want to talk about killing innocents one can have a lively dialogue about the approximately 9,000 murders and thousands of rapes of white women committed every year in this country by black Americans in peaceful cities that black Americans have turned into war zones. Outside of an essay like this that is never how I view crime but if Wright wants to portray crime by race then let us do so. Intellectually stunted individuals like Rev. Wright and Al Sharpton will respond to the issue of black crime with some puerile, excuse ridden mumbo-jumbo and idiots like Jim Cone will make claims about how black people are dying daily from the poison of white surpremacy while his people commit millions of crimes in the span of only a few years in a decades long spree which shows no signs of abating. For some reason this doesn't count and the plain and simple reason is because the people who perpetrate this onslaught of crime have black faces and it is this which makes Wright and Cone and Sharpton racists and people like Bill Moyers their unwitting pawn. For people like Spike Lee, Wright and Cone to launch repeated attacks against white Americans for crimes from the past as if they were taking place today while blithely ignoring the tidal wave of black crime taking place in America today as if it were taking place in the past is ludricrous and smacks of the type of insanity all too common in Afrocentric rhetoric in America in the 21st century. Black leadership in the form of such people as Tavis Smiley and his unfortunate State of the Black Union conferences every year are totally disconnected from a reality in which white racism is distorted and lied about to the hilt as perfectly exemplified by Katrina, while black crime is minimalized to non-existence or blamed on white America.
On Nov.23, 2007, Bill Moyers interviewed James Cone, a black theologian and a hero at Rev. Wright's Trinity Church. In an amazing example of irony and hypocrisy in light of the tens of thousands of assaults, rapes, thefts and muders perpetrated by blacks in America, here is the beginning of that television transcript: "BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL. Our subject in this hour is one you don't hear discussed very often in politics or around the dining table. It's buried so deeply in the American psyche that rarely does anyone bring it front and center. Our silence on it is one reason we have so much difficulty coming to terms with race in America. I'm reluctant to raise it even now, because it's anything but a comfortable subject for television." An ironic introduction by Moyers considering what he's not talking about. Of course, the subject of which Moyers is speaking is the lynching of blacks in America but it should have been "the rest of the story" about the slaughter of Americans by cold-blooded murder at the hands of blacks in today's America. Using Wright's and Cones type of thinking about race and crime, blacks currently murder as many whites every year as were killed in the entire 80 year history of lynching. If Moyers and Cone can sit down and talk about the lynching of black Americans by whites then I should be able to respond in kind; political correctness says otherwise. Cone talks about lynching in the context "of the brutal facts of history". One can only wonder where Moyers' and Cones' sensitivity to brutality is when it comes to black crime in this country in 2009 which make historical lynchings and a few nooses left around for black folks to find in the year of this interview pale in comparison; the sheer brutality and staggering numbers leave no comparison with the subject of the Moyers/Cone interview.
Jim Cone claims, in his 2004 essay, "Living Stones In the Household of God", "...white supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it. It claims not to exist, even tho black people are dying daily from it's poison." It is hard to imagine why Moyers would paint such an obviously troubled man in such a positive light, as if anyone could really learn anything from such a bitter racist. Contrast that statement with the 9,000 murders a years committed by black Americans and Cone's racist favortism as regards what he wants to see as opposed to the reality is stunning. And this is a man who would "teach" white America about the harsh and shameful truth about themselves. Moyers has his head entirely in the clouds.
In another part of the interview Cone, in regards to lynching and slavery says, "it's white America's original sin and it's deep. Like, for a long time, we didn't want to talk about slavery. They don't like to talk about 246 years of it. Then a hundred years of legal segregation and lynching." In fact, I don't mind talking about such things at all. Do you like to talk about black crime, do you want to, will you James Cone? But the point I would like to make is about Jim Cone suggesting with his DNA comment that all whites in America are responsible for the events from long ago of which he speaks. If that's true, then how much more are all present day black Americans responsible for the level of brutal criminal activity perpetrated by black Americans in 2009? The whole concept is, of course, racist. No one is responsible for what another does who has the same skin color as you. I am merely playing devil's advocate and trying to respond in kind. If Moyers, Wright and Cone have such a deep seated outrage over events by race that didn't even happen in their lifetime's for the most part then where is the outrage over the tidal wave of crime by race that is inundating every major city in the United States as I write this? The fact of the matter appears to be that when it comes to black faces, criminals committing crimes in 2009 get a pass while white criminals decades and even centuries dead and buried are ressurected to parade for Moyers and Cone and Rev. Wright.
Whenever you read or watch something on race by people like Moyers or Cone or Rev. Wright, you often hear the phrase, "Force us to confront", referring to white Americans and their itinerent racist past and unwillingness to face the facts of that past. What can I do to force Moyers and Cone and Wright to confront their own hypocrisy and questionable priorities and sense of proportion? Why is it so okay to talk about the history of white racism and about confronting it while not talking about nor confronting the the orgy of black violence and plague of black crime in the United States here, today, right now? Why can people on television express their outrage over events by race from decades ago with perfect impunity, comiseration and compassion while those who complain about black culture in 2009, who are basically doing the same thing, are painted as racists? It seems to me that we're either all not racists for wanting to engage in this dialogue or that none of are so why the double standard? When it comes to this issue black Americans are untouchable in the media while white Americans are emminently touchable. One can only conclude that Moyers and Wright and Cone see only what they want to see while cheerfully criticizing others for doing that exact same thing.
Moyers seems to delight in portraying white Americans in history as corrupt and racist, he's the Robert Frank of a country who's story he seems to be ashamed of, as if doing so makes Moyers a "real" journalist, a "compassionate" journalist. Unfortunately in his zeal to show "the rest of the story" he leaves out entires swathes in that story, showing no courage whatsoever and delving only into safe and politically correct waters. A journalist who leads Moyers is not. He enjoys putting authors on his show for example who show how blacks were kept in a type of virtual slavery until WWII but on the current crime spree Moyers remains silent; I guess there's no political cache of righteousness attached, the kind that make you look like an anti-racist hero and get Peabody Awards. There's nothing in it for Moyers to put on an author who speaks about the level of black crime in America in 2009 in a political sense. It's just not approved of. It has nothing to do with courage or truth. If it did Moyers would talk about black crime in a political and racist sense on his show the same way he talks about political racist white crimes with Rev. Wright or James Cone. It's just not going to happen on Bill Moyers show and that's fine; but let's not hear any more talk about truth or courage or "the rest of the story" or "forcing us to confront" or justice from Bill Moyers. Truth and justice do not have a politically correct agenda.
Here is an exerpt from an online article by Lawrence Auster in FrontPageMag.com for May 3, 2007: "When, in 1988, Tawana Brawley's and Al Sharpton's then year-old spectacular charge that several white men including prosecutor Steven Pagones (whose name Brawley had picked out of a newspaper article) had abducted and raped the 15 year old was shown to be completely false, the Nation said it didn't matter, since the charges expressed the essential nature of white men's treatment of black women in this country. When the Duke University lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper last year, liberals everywhere treated the accusation as fact, because, just as with the Nation and Tawana Brawley, the rape charge seemed to the minds of liberals to reflect the true nature of oppressive racial and sexual relations in America.
To see the real truth of the matter, let us take a look at the Department of Justice document Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2005.
In Table 42, entitled "Personal crimes of violence, 2005, percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, based on race of victims, by type of crime and perceived race of offender," we learn that there were 111,590 white victims and 36,620 black victims of rape or sexual assault in 2005. (The number of rapes is not distinguished from those of sexual assaults; it is maddening that sexual assault, an ill-defined category that covers various types of criminal acts ranging from penetration to inappropriate touching, is conflated with the more specific crime of rape.) In the 111,590 cases in which the victim of rape or sexual assault was white, 44.5 percent of the offenders were white, and 33.6 percent of the offenders were black. In the 36,620 cases in which the victim of rape or sexual assault was black, 100 percent of the offenders were black, and 0.0 percent of the offenders were white. The table explains that 0.0 percent means that there were under 10 incidents nationally."
Here is part of an article by Paul Sheehan titled, "The Race War of Black Against White" and published in the Australian Sydney Morning Herald for May 20, 1995:
"* According to the latest US Department of Justice survey of crime victims, more than 6.6 million violent crimes (murder, rape, assault and robbery) are committed in the US each year, of which about 20 per cent, or 1.3 million, are inter-racial crimes.
* Most victims of race crime - about 90 per cent - are white, according to the survey "Highlights from 20 Years of Surveying Crime Victims", published in 1993.
* Almost 1 million white Americans were murdered, robbed, assaulted or raped by black Americans in 1992, compared with about 132,000 blacks who were murdered, robbed, assaulted or raped by whites, according to the same survey.
* Blacks thus committed 7.5 times more violent inter-racial crimes than whites even though the black population is only one-seventh the size of the white population. When these figures are adjusted on a per capita basis, they reveal an extraordinary disparity: blacks are committing more than 50 times the number of violent racial crimes of whites.
* According to the latest annual report on murder by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, most inter-racial murders involve black assailants and white victims, with blacks murdering whites at 18 times the rate that whites murder blacks."
In Wright's world, black folks can do no wrong, not really; and white folks can do and have done, little that is right. I guess that's why black folks in prison aren't criminals, they're political prisoners. How in the world Moyers comes up with Wright being other than an utter racist is simply beyond me. According to Moyers, Wright is a misunderstood, complex victim of a media cherry picking sound bites of his sermons. Moyers applies a totally different standard of behaviour to black Americans than to white Americans. When it comes to the issue of sound bites, many in the black community cheerfully defend Wright's sermons on this basis of cherry picking and the media ignoring all of Wright's positive sermons. I say that if I had a 100 page website about how wonderful it is to give to charity but had 2 pages that said, "I don't like black folks.", that would invalidate the entire website. Wright's racist sermons invalidate his entire body of work because they show how his mind operates 100% of the time.
One can only suppose that Moyers' cream puff interview of Wright was in fact an attempt to do what he could to help get Obama elected President of the United States. I wonder if Moyers would be the guy to let out the little known fact that whites died at a higher rate than blacks during Hurricane Katrina despite the racist lies by the likes of Wright, Kanye West and Spike Lee to name but a few of thousands of voices in the black community who universally support the idea that the aftermath of Katrina was an exercise of pure institutional racism. That info comes from the Lousiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals. How's that for "the rest of the story". Talk about an inconvenient truth.
Rev. Wright has no problem going on and on about slave ships and the violence done by white people in the form of rape and lynchings among other things from decades and decades into the hundreds of years ago but is strangely silent on the incredible violence perpetrated by black gangs in every major city in the United States. This is the double standard that Moyers and Wright grasp at so unsuccessfully and one can only wonder what world these people live in and who is glossing over who's history. How about "the rest of the story" when it comes to the role black Africans had and continue to have when it comes to slavery. Wright doesn't want to talk about that because then it would not be about Wright's favorite thing which is white racism and supremacy; the entire issue of slavery would become about man's inhumanity to man in which Wright and many other black Americans have no interest whatsoever. Wright has no problem whatever in criticising America at large for not wanting to hear "the rest of the story" when it comes to it's history but to want to tell the rest of the story when it comes to his own black community or the role of black Africans in the history of slavery then that is off limits and usually relegated to more racism on the part of white people. It is Wright's constant harping about transparency and his own lack thereof when it comes to the black community and it's own history that has so many people hating the guy. Wright claims to be a patriot but the problem is that his patriotism has a narrow ethnocentric focus that involves about 12% of the U.S. population. Fear of that same narrow focus penetrating the White House is what drove the public interest about Wright in the first place. Take away that aspect and Wright is a narrow man on a narrow stage.
Some 420,000 murders were commited by blacks in America from 1950 to 2000, and according to those same government statistics, more people are murdered by blacks in the United States every year than blacks were ever lynched in total; the numbers aren't even close. But let's say that's wrong by half; you still have a 2 year period then to compare to all the lynchings we know of. Even if I'm wrong by a factor of 4 or 6, the gulf is astonishing. You'll never hear this type of statistic from Wright or Moyers because Wright and Moyers are living in a dream land. Do your own research. Approximately half of those 420,000 murders are blacks killing whites but who's counting? Certainly not the Rev. Wright, nor Al Sharpton. The schism between the perception and the reality is staggering. In total you're talking about 1 million crimes commited every year by blacks against whites. In today's political climate, one is usually dismissed as a white racist for mentioning such things while black Americans blithely talk about crimes committed decades ago and in far fewer numbers as if the gravity of those events was so much worse when in fact it amounts to outright lying when it comes to relative viewpoints. Sure, let's all tell "the rest of the story" and let's all feel the "vitriolic hatred" that Wright speaks of. We all know that the truth, the untold story, has much less fascination for Rev. Wright when exposed to the light of day. Neither Moyers nor Wright would know the truth if it sat on them and I'm not talking about things from generations ago but crimes in the hundreds of thousands being committed right now in 2009 as I write this. Everything Wright and others black Americans bring up happened a long time ago by people long dead and the worst of it, slavery, could never have happened without the collaboration and conivance of Africans for hundreds of years.
If Bill Moyers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright are so in love with the truth then perhaps they can answer for me this question: how is it that several thousand lynchings over a period of 80 or 90 years spanning the 19th and 20th century can take precedent over, have so much more visibility than, the some 9,000 murders committed in the United States last year by black Americans, the 9,000 murders that will be committed this year by black Americans and the 9,000 murders that will be committed next year by black Americans and the year after that? The answer is that one has to work at it. The problem for Rev. Wright is that when his own hypocrisy starts to give idiots like David Duke credibility then that is a huge problem and it wouldn't be a problem at all if Rev. Wright practised what he literally preaches and did indeed tell "the rest of the story".
If the truth shall set you free then let Al Sharpton and Rev. Wright tell the truth about how the Duke lacrosse players were treated by local black folks and portrayed in a racially charged way in the media as opposed to the totally different manner bereft of any racial context in which black men who rape white women, which is an epidemic, are portrayed. The former has a racist element to it and the latter does not simply because in the racist minds of people like Anglea Davis, Rev. Wright and Al Sharpton they simply do not want a level playing field when it comes to this. The fact is however that the truth would mightily complicate the lives of men like Rev. Wright and Al Sharpton because of the sheer volume of lies that those 2 men utter to other black Americans and the media. The fact that a person like Angela Davis is referred to as a "scholar" in the black community is a terrible, terrible joke on black Americans which they do not get.
I can still remember the outraged black folks sitting in the front row of a news conference then District Attorney Mike Nifong held in a school gym and the outrage they displayed that day over claims Crystal Mangum made about being gang raped by 3 white Duke University lacrosse players at a party. I remember asking myself that the rush to judgement on the part of those black men and women in that front row wasn't right and asking myself if they would apolgize for so heavily identifying with the alleged victim simply because she was black if it turned out she was lying. Do these black faces show up in the front row for press conferences of white women who are alleged to have been raped? They do not because they are interested only in justice for other black Americans and not at all in the concept of justice for all; white women raped by black men is a concept of no interest whatsoever to black Americans. At the same time these same black Americans hold white people's feet to the fire for even a hint of doing as they themselves do.
No, I answered to myself, those black folks in the front row of the Nifong press conference would not apologize, would never apologize. They have not and Crystal Mangum still claims she was raped even though Nifong was disbarred because of his own rush to judgement in that case which was judged to have happened in order to curry the black vote in his election campaign for District Attorney. Nifong should have had the sense to realize that outside the constitutional world of equality under the law, it is not necessary to rape a stripper/prostitute when just throwing a few dollars their way will do the trick, no pun intended.
I personally have absolutely no problem talking about or acknowledging anything that has ever happened in the history of the United States; I was born in 1954 - it didn't have anything to do with me before then. There is no subject in a historical context when it comes to my country that is off-limits or out of bounds. The Trail of Tears, Vietnam, Jim Crow, none of it is something I feel should be glossed over. Similarly, neither should Moyers and Wright edit events in present day America to suit their political agenda. Bill Moyers is no more a reporter or journalist than a fish is and Wright is no more a truth-teller than is a habitual liar.
One can only imagine the type of racist double standard one needs to employ to find outrage over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of slaves in a past that cannot be changed but which mentions the current murder rate by black Americans only in passing, a kind of a foot note to our daily life, as if it is the past that lives and the present which is dead and buried. One of the most telling aspects of Wright's hypocrisy in pummeling white America for it's past is the manner in which Wright responded to the matter of Louis Farrakhan's anti-semitic statements when asked about them by Bill Moyers; Wright responded, "Twenty years ago." as if that 20 years was an apology in and of itself but totally inapplicable when it comes to white America and Jim Crow and slavery. Wright is willing to say anything to advance his particular brand of hatred and logic and fair play have nothing to do with it.
Far from being complicated, the prism through which Wright and other Afrocentric adherents view the world is racist, one-sided, overly simplistic, biased, thoughtless and dismissive of the world view of others and hopelessly provincial. That Bill Moyers would seek to defend Wright's outrageous sermons and monumental disingenuousness speaks more to his own world view than it does to his skills or neutrality as a journalist. If disigenuousness is a positive in journalism then Moyers should get awards when it comes to that quality as should his colleagues Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, also both experts when it comes to what they don't say. Moyers is a sophomoric child, isolated in an ivory tower. Both Moyers and Wright are as aware of the Dept. of Justice statistics as I am. Moyers has sacrificed his integrity and the truth itself while arguing how elusive truth can be. The truth can indeed be elusive when it is sacrificed in order to achieve a political or politically correct goal; in such a case, the truth can be lost entirely.
From Moyers point of view, apparently no black American is capable of racism, especially if they like your candidate. This is why you see Bill Moyers giving time to an utter racist and bigot like Rev. Wright and why MTV seems to have a love affair with Kanye West, an unapologetic racist who's career would be over in 60 seconds if he were white and made similar comments typical of West. The lesson as regards the media and this essay is this: if you're Kanye West, or Alicia Keys or any other racist performer but you're black, you can get away with racist remarks without a problem; if you're white, learn to keep your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself even if the thoughts are true.
What Moyers did in fact was the exact same thing as if he had come out and defended David Duke after an interview with Duke in which Moyers downplayed Duke's racism. We are talking about a double standard of truly immense proportions. We have political correctness to thank for this double standard, a perceptual blindness that is so disgusting and dangerous to America as a nation that it cannot be over emphasized at this point in America's history. America has many important problems to solve but because of political correctness, the ACLU, people like Bill Moyers, and power hungry judges and mayors all over this land who wish to make law rather than enforce it, Americans are bringing a spoon to a knife fight. We as a nation will all suffer for this in the future. Bankers commit fraud on the American taxpayer and retire to yachts with millions of dollars while options traders on Wall Street raid our 401k's with sophisticated Las Vegas style rules.
Meanwhile, people like Rev. Wright will retire to a 2 million dollar mansion in an exclusively white suburb, having made his money on crying and whining in a loud voice about his lack of opportunity due to people who live in white suburbs and about how "the rest of the story" is never told.
During and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the American media swallowed lies about the role of white racism hook, line and sinker. The media in the United States is totally out of touch with reality and merely spin the same urban myths about racism in America as do a long list of black media figures in the United States such as Spike Lee, Tavis Smiley, Danny Glover, Rev. Wright, Kanye West, Cornell West, James Cone, Al Sharpton, Nikki Giovanni, D.L. Hughley; in short, virtually every black voice in America with almost no dissent. CNN's series, "Black In America" is a joke when it comes to being a document of reality, portraying blacks in America as victims when in fact so many are also predators of a particularly violent nature whose casualties out run casualties on both sides in the Iraq conflict. No Wayang Kulit shadow play on the walls of Plato's Cave ever ensorceled it's inhabitants more so than has Afrocentric and media rhetoric regarding the true nature of racism in America in the 21st century.