Prometheus 6

I read this last night and thought about sending it to you.  If Rev Wright is so morbid and uninspiring, than why did Obama write a book named after his sermon and praise his contributions to his community in his memoir?  Why did he join his church, if Wright is so self defeating?  As a community organizer, Obama found that the black church provided the kind of moral and logistical support for poor, struggling black folk in Chicago's Southside that unions and state agencies like the one this author represents failed to provide.  It is all described there in Obama's memoir.  It baffles me that people wouldn't appreciate this aspect of Obama's world view.  I guess it is too unsettling to some people.  (It maybe too unsettling to Obama at this point.)     

People have every right to disagree with Wright if they want to.  I don't believe that AIDS was created by the US government to kill black people anymore than I believe that it was created by God to kill gay people.  But African Americans have disproportionately suffered from AIDS and other diseases as a result of racist policies and practices.  If critics of Wright have a hard time accepting that he believes AIDS was created to kill black people, they should step back and consider the fact that a staggering number of Americans believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.  Are the folks who detest Wright for spreading these beliefs holding Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell to the same degree of accountability for clinging to their delusional fantasies?  The last time I looked hundreds of thousands of lives have not been lost and billions of dollars have not been wasted as a result of Wright's paranoia.  The author is also pained that Wright would tell his congregation that white America only sees black women as sexual objects.  You don't need to listen to crazy black preachers in order to come across this view.  It is an historical fact that any intelligent, learned person would have an easy time digesting if they studied the historical record.  I guess black women who are not familiar with this history have a better chance at succeeding.                            

for some reason i don't think that gary is white.

I googled his name... i think he was or is the Illinois GOP state chairman

a thousand words...

"King and chief probably had a big beef; 'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.

I always find it interesting that folks who accept the so-called conventional wisdoms about the lives and thoughts of black folk can be granted space in newspapers etc. to write about things that they know nothing about. I strongly suspect that they believe that black people are empty-headed and not capable of exercising independent judgment and thought. They must think that black folk comprise a secret cell of the Borg and before we arise each morning we receive our marching orders for the day.   

for some reason i don't think that gary is white.

Physically or metaphorically?

That crap was not written for Black folks. It was written to mislead white folks...hence our title for today. 

Yes- it was written for white people, and the blacks commenters writing in agreement are pitching their comments at whites, too.

Well, not all of them. Just the ones they let talk on TV or write in newspapers.

MacDougal and others like him act as though all the slaves just accepted slavery until Lincoln freed them, as though African Americans just dreamed dreams until LBJ signed the Civil Rights Acts. They either ignore history, don't know history, or just think the black people are so inferior that simply acknowledging the truth can keep us from pushing forward. It's discouraging to think these are the people we're expect to dialogue with in a conversation about race. And to make matters worse, with their contempt for Rev. Wright, they claim some sort of moral authority to monitor and decide the terms of the conversation! How can we have this conversation if the people who benefit from and continue racism can't bear to hear the truth?

By the way, black children who are told they'll face racism during their academic careers do better academically and emotionally than black children who are told whatever it is MacDougal would tell them. And if he's black, he's doing his community no service by trying to silence the truth under some  notion that acknowledging the truth keeps people from even trying and by pretending that "taxpayers are doing our share."

By the way, black children who are told they'll face racism during their academic careers do better academically and emotionally than black children who are told whatever it is MacDougal would tell them.

Yes. And I have a social sciences that details that (if I can find the flippin' thing...)

I don't think white folks are delusional, though. Just uninformed in this area, and therefore wrong. 

Imagine getting up each morning to go to work in a society that doesn't want you, doesn't respect you and seeks to hold you back.

If this is the message you got from your mentor, would you expect that you could succeed? Would you try very hard, if at all?

There's this group of people who were persecuted for being non-Christians, put into ghettoes, unwanted, disrespected and held back by all of Europe, and eventually slaughtered by the millions, and who still consider themselves the victims of massive ongoing bias and persecution, yet the survivors seem to be fairly prosperous now...hmm.

So maybe this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

delude: to mislead the mind or judgment of; deceive:

There are far too many who have actually been informed and still can't wrap their minds around the truth.

While yielding that point entirely, I'll add that I don't really think the media folk are deluded or misinformed. If they are players, they know what they are doing. If they aren't, they're being backed and/or used by someone that knows what they are doing.

I'll add that I don't really think the media folk are deluded or misinformed.

I completely agree, and that's what makes me all the more disturbed.

Is it not the media's job to inform and educate? Who's deliberately sleeping on the job, and why shouldn't African Americans, and all other Americans, be upset? (rhetorical questions)

Is it not the media's job to inform and educate?

I think there's still a market for that, maybe about the size of the market for the International Film Channel.

"I think there's still a market for that, maybe about the size of the market for the International Film Channel."
 
Sad, but true.

P6, the title of your post is on the money, but I'm completely at a loss to guess the cause of Mr. MacDougal's ignorance.