Philanthropy's Jeremiah Wright Problem [Must Read]

Many Americans were startled to learn that the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose campaign is built on an uplifting message of national unity and racial reconciliation, belongs to a church in Chicago where a very different view of America is preached by its longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Mr. Wright, who just retired after decades in the pulpit, has argued that the "United States of White America" is still sharply divided between an oppressive white power structure and oppressed African-Americans, that God should "damn America for treating our citizens as less than human," and that the 2001 terrorist attacks signified that "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Americans might be further surprised to learn that grants from the nation's largest foundations sustain a similarly harsh view of a nation riven by an unrelenting and deeply oppressive racial divide.

America, in this view, is steeped in "structural racism." This "refers to a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial-group inequity," according to "Structural Racism and Community Building," a 2004 report from the Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Community Change (supported by the Annie E. Casey, Charles Stewart Mott, W.K. Kellogg, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations, among others).

Because of these deeply embedded and all-pervasive structural arrangements, "groups of color are continually 'sorted' and experience marginalization, isolation, exclusion, exploitation, and subordination relative to those who are whites. The link between whiteness and privilege and between color and disadvantage is maintained, even today, through these sorting processes."

To protest that the decline of explicitly racist attitudes and behaviors suggests we are rapidly becoming a "colorblind" society only reflects and reinforces a deeper structural racism.

"Many whites are blind to structural unfairness precisely because of their structural advantages," while "their frame of colorblind 'equal opportunity' allows [them] to see themselves as supporting racial equality, and even as part of the solution, while actually maintaining racial hierarchy and legitimating white privilege," notes a 2005 report from the Center for Social Inclusion, a project of the Tides Center supported by Ford and the Open Society Institute.

Given the strength of structural racism, efforts to increase "diversity and inclusiveness are important commitments — but ultimately not powerful enough to drive the changes" for which foundations should strive, argues a philanthropist quoted in "Grant Making With a Racial Equity Lens," a guide from the Ford Foundation's GrantCraft project in partnership with the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (another Tides Center project supported by the Casey, Ford, Kellogg, and Mott foundations).

Merely providing money to "communities of color for services and programs" or focusing on "interpersonal aspects of race and racism" are also insufficient, without "exposing systemic inequities, confronting institutional practices, and initiating policy reform," according to the Applied Research Center, a racial-justice advocacy group (financed by Casey, Ford, and Mott). Indeed, it is generally "not enough to work for reforms and policy initiatives that may positively impact people of color…if we are not explicit about racism as a root cause of the problem," maintains the Western States Center, a group that works to "build a progressive movement" in eight Western states, financed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ford.

Structural racism's embeddedness in America's political and social institutions means that dramatic, perhaps revolutionary, change will be necessary to eradicate it, in order to introduce complete equality to all aspects of our national life.

One way to pursue such change is to import international human rights into the nation's political discourse. Those rights include not just the familiar but limited political rights like free speech and assembly, but also the unfamiliar but vastly more comprehensive economic and social rights embodied in some international compacts.

"Many in the United States do not realize that health, housing, food, work, and an adequate standard of living are all rights protected by human-rights law," notes the Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center (supported by the Robin Hood, Ford, Surdna, and Mertz Gilmore foundations, among others).

In other words, according to the Ford Foundation's "Close to Home: Case Studies of Human Rights Work in the United States," human rights "assert the inalienability of rights in a much broader sense than has ever been expressed constitutionally" in America. Indeed, the Ford document goes on, "U.S. human-rights activists are trying to reshape U.S. society according to a philosophy and framework of rights that most people have not heard of or have been taught to think of as foreign." The American government's resistance to this "revolution of values," this effort to "break out of the chokehold of domestic law," is simply further evidence of the "persistence of structural racism in this country."

The depth of disillusionment with America felt by critics of structural racism became apparent at the U.N. World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001. Scores of American nongovernmental organizations received money from Ford, Mott, and other foundations to prepare for and attend the gathering. Although the most spectacular philanthropic outcome of Durban was the Ford Foundation's hasty withdrawal of support from several rabidly anti-Semitic Palestinian nongovernmental organizations, the sustained outpouring of vitriol against Israel, Europe, and the United States finally drove the official American delegation to leave early.

One of the hotly contested items at the conference was the demand by nonprofit groups for reparations in partial recompense for the West's historical trafficking in slavery. But "America, fattened on the land, lives, and liberty of conquered nations and enslaved peoples, said no," Linda Burnham, co-founder of the Ford-financed Women of Color Resource Center, said at an awards ceremony in October 2001, in a "willful, shameful denial of the past in the service of preserving racist, profoundly unequal relations."

Writing in 2002 for the Poverty and Race Research Action Council (financed by Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Mott, and Tides, among others), Eric Mann praised the Durban conference for demonstrating that "in any arena in which the struggle against racism and colonial domination is taken seriously, the U.S. empire…self-nominates as the main cause of organized racism and national oppression in the world."

The movement for reparations, he notes, "will be driven by years or even decades of a 'crimes against humanity' tribunal, with European and U.S. imperialist civilization on trial." The resulting campaign would "challenge the very legitimacy of the U.S. to exist as a nation state, and call into question its settler-state history of genocide against both indigenous peoples and blacks."

When America was attacked on September 11, 2001, some structural-racism theorists agreed with Pastor Wright that it was a "chickens coming home to roost" moment. September 11 meant that America's "dream of endless greed, aggression and world dominance has been revealed for the appalling nightmare it always was," Ms. Burnham insisted at the awards ceremony. "The fortress has been breached. And it will be breached again and again as long as we have a hand in feeding the desperation, alienation, and disillusionment that stoke the myriad forms of murderous male rage."

Just as Senator Obama seized the Jeremiah Wright controversy as an opportunity to explain his broader view of race in America, so this might be the moment for some of our largest foundations to explain what they intend by giving money to organizations that advance the structural-racism critique of America.

Is it true that American institutions are so fundamentally racist and oppressive that good-faith efforts to increase inclusiveness and diversity, or to relieve distress through nonracially specific programs, are simply futile? How wise is it to try to "reshape U.S. society according to a philosophy and framework of rights that most people have not heard of," much less consented to as self-governing citizens? What powers would the federal government have to wield, which rights overridden, whose property seized, in order to establish complete equity throughout society? Is the principle of a "colorblind" society a worthy aspiration or simply a device to mask and preserve an oppressive white power structure?

Senator Obama ultimately decided that Mr. Wright's "incendiary language" — language so similar to that thrown about freely by structural-racism theorists — reflected "views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation." Could the same be said about some grants made by our largest foundations?

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William A. Schambra is director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, in Washington. Krista Shaffer, a Hudson Institute fellow, provided research assistance for this article.

The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]

(some key excerpts)

REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."

SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.

I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."

The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html

Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02

From "45 Communist Goals":
#27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm

I just viewed for the first time the DVD “The Pursuit of Happiness”, two thumbs up does not do it justice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pursuit_of_Happyness

Although it is more than a year old, I strongly recommend everyone see it. I haven’t been a Hollywood film viewer in many many years but this film gives me hope that great Hollywood story telling is still alive. I also admire Will Smith now whereas I could care less before.

And the film depicts a true story of Chris Gardner:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Gardner

Now this is the type of man that should run for President, not the liberal elitist that defines Obama.

Our son entered college with potential plans to go from there to divinity school. After 4 years of liberal education indoctrination he departed from that plan and now rarely attends church. Wrights comments almost verbatim are what we heard every time he came home. Our daughter who could have been the poster child for youth group in high school became self-proclaimed agnostic by the time she completed her 4 years at this same school. This was what was being taught in a school who once was known for nurturing superb pastors, preachers, teachers and theologians. I imagine based on Obamaâ€™s base this is what is being poured into impressionable minds all over the country. At times we feel as if we have flushed tuition money down the toilet. They could have gotten the same liberal brainwashing at a state supported school. Instead we paid megabucks to sell our children’s souls.

Translated this means: White people are blind to the unfairness of society toward blacks...because...They are more advantaged by society.

White people see themselves as supporting racial equality, and even as part of the solution by creating equal opportunity laws (which many times discriminate against themselves) yet they actually maintain racial rule and legalize white privilege.

Translated again: White people will always be unfair and racist. There is nothing they can do or say that will change this. The only thing that will help is if they eradicate themselves from the planet.

If every voter in America could be induced to read this, the GOP would win in a landslide.

I have to agree with you on that, despite the fact that I; even I, had a hard time gagging my way through it.

At least I can laugh at what I read on DU; but these people have jobs & money, rather than just a hateful mouth.

health, housing, food, work, and an adequate standard of living are all rights protected by human-rights law

I've seen what passes for "work" from certain segments of our populace, yet I have also seen how they live & eat compared to, say, Hatians; Mexican villagers in the out-back; my parents during the Great Depression. A definition of poverty based on percentiles is the biggest deception these poverty pimps have perpetrated.

One of the hotly contested items at the conference was the demand by nonprofit groups for reparations in partial recompense for the West's historical trafficking in slavery.

Nice try, but how about hitting up Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, and all the host of other Arab/Islamic/African nations for their slave trading centuries before the U.S. was even a gleam in pre-Reformation European eyes, right up to the present day?

"The fortress has been breached. And it will be breached again and again as long as we have a hand in feeding the desperation, alienation, and disillusionment that stoke the myriad forms of murderous male rage."

...and I'm glad to see they didn't forget the fembots autobashing of men, either, while perpetuating the specious "desperation, alienation, and disillusionment drove them to attack" line.

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