“Conservative” Christians say segregration excuses Wright’s racism, but he wasn’t segregated

About Jeremiah Wright’s demented rage at America, Rod Dreher wrote:

Mike Huckabee … said last week that whites should regard [Wright] with mercy, considering the likelihood that we would have come through segregation just as damaged as he.

Why do the Christian bleeding hearts Huckabee and Dreher assume, on the basis of zero information, that Wright grew up in an oppressive impoverished environment that “damaged” him—indeed, damaged him so badly that 60 years later, as the head of large and successful church with 8,000 members, he just can’t help but tell his parishioners that the U.S. government invented the AIDS virus to commit genocide against blacks?

Here’s the truth about Wright: he went to a top-rated virtually all-white high school in Philadelphia, his father was a pastor, his mother had a middle class job, and he lived on a pleasant tree lined street in the nice Germantown section of the city.

The problem with Wright is not poverty or segregation. The problem with Wright is that he is a black man who hates America because it is white. And the only way for white America to cure that grievance is to go out of existence.

- end of initial entry -

Ed G. writes:

Reverend Wright is deracinated. He comes from an all white neighborhood and high school. He was raised in a basically white middle class environment. Since he could not become white and at the same time had no real comfort with black society he became deracinated. We see the same phenomenon in the Arab world. It is not the poor dirt farmer Arab that leads the terrorist movements, it is those that have been educated in Europe and America, or who have been educated in Western type schools in their own country. They see the superiority of Western civilization, but irrespective of how hard they try they can never be completely Western. Once having gone to Western universities they can no longer identify with their Third World society. This psychological schism turned them to hating the white man and European civilization.

Reverend Wright can never be white, and he doesn’t feel comfortable with being black. He has no identity and therefore he hates those who have “robbed” him of his black identity. If you want blacks to stop hating whites, then stop affirmative action and make them earn everything they have. Stop subsidizing and teaching black studies in schools. If you want Arabs to be docile and peaceful stop teaching them Western science, technology and values. We see this in Ghandi who was sent to England to study law and came back to India to lead a revolution against England. Stop trying to make the world Western.

Once you destroy a man’s inherent identity and can replace it with nothing, you have created a man filled with rage and hatred.

LA replies:

I’m not sure that Ed’s theory applies to Wright, any more than it would apply to any middle class black .There are many happy, well-adjusted middle class blacks in America. However, I do think there is something to it in general. That the educated class in Third-World countries are caught in an in-between state, no longer being part of their country but not being really Western either, is a familiar theme. But to carry out Ed’s program, the West would have to cease all connection with non-Western societies, because to the extent that there is any connection, the elite of the non-Western societies will inevitably be educated in Western ways, creating the problem Ed is describing.

Richard O. writes:

I met a young man in London in 1962. One parent was British, the other East Indian. I can’t recall specifics of our short acquaintance but I do recall being impressed by the disdain that he had for the Indian side of his heritage. I may be incorrect. Perhaps it was a disdain for colored peoples in general, or just blacks in Britain. Whatever the specific target of his disdain, it was nevertheless clear that he held his views with very great conviction indeed.

People of that heritage in India were used by the British to staff the civil service. I believe they were much trusted by the British but that they suffered in that they were not fully accepted by either Indians or the British.

Whether in his case, or Wright’s, or Obama’s, it may be that the choice of which side to take can be an arbitrary one. My London acquaintance’s choice was with his British side, though he too had a brown skin.

Obama’s face time with his father appears to have been measured in mere weeks, was it? Yet, what was the title of his book? “Dreams of My Father.” Obama shoehorned himself into the identity of “Black Man” yet little of who he was was of the black experience. Certainly, it was not of the American black experience. Is it anything other than bizarre that he would shout to the crowd in Kenya, “You are all my brothers and sisters!”

There appears to be a likelihood of very strong emotions’ boiling up from not being a “genuine” part of one or the other group. And no little amount of confused thinking. I have little doubt that the resentment we have seen in Michelle Obama is the mirror image of the resentment he has but keeps hidden. By his association with Wright, it’s clear his thinking is as confused as Wright’s and hers.

In truth, I have sympathy for Obama. Obama’s parents were two adults who found the precise formula for producing a child who would lack a sense of where he belonged. What hope did he have from the moment of his birth?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 24, 2008 07:57 PM | Send