Posted on 04/30/2008 1:03:59 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Ranting Rev is back, trailing malodorous clouds of sulfurous new controversy, imperiling the Obama campaign at its very core. The Obama promise of “a more perfect union” directly contradicts the Jeremiah Wright insistence on unbridgeable racial difference and distinction.
Nothing makes this pastor-protégé conflict more obvious or more significant than Wright’s crackpot theories on education and his fiery insistence that the different “brains” of black kids and white kids require totally different educational approaches.
In his Detroit NAACP speech on Sunday night, Dr. Wright cited (and somewhat distorted) the controversial work of a professor at Wayne State University named Janice Hale, suggesting that “in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks.”
And which group of kids, according to Reverend Wright, count as “rocks” – not shiny, juicy fruit capable of providing nourishment, but inorganic pieces of dead matter notable mostly for their threat of smashing school windows? If he thinks of black kids as “rocks” (on which teachers might break their teeth) he’s recycling hateful white supremacist ideology. If it’s white kids who are only rocks, he’s a black racist. Either way, he’s an idiot.
But there’s more from this “mighty man of God,” as he hails Dr. Hale for research that “led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered the two different worlds have two different ways of learning.”
In other words, Wright suggests that race differences are so profound, so overwhelming that African-American kids whose ancestors left “the Motherland” more than 300 years ago have more in common with children in Senegal or Sierra Leone than they do with the white kids who grew up down the block and whose families have functioned in the same American society for generations. If this absurd notion that race trumps every other historical and psychological and cultural factor isn’t racism, then what, exactly, is racism?
Dr. Wright continued in his Detroit dementia: “European and European-American children have a left-brained cognitive object oriented learning style…Left brain is logical and analytical… African and African-American children have a different way of learning. They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive.”
In other words, Dr. Wright makes the same sick and silly claims about fundamental, genetically determined, unbridgeable difference between “left-brained” whites and “right-brained” blacks that white racists have advanced for years.
To him, it’s wrong to compare “African-American” and “European-American” kids with one another because they are virtually different species.
His claims raise a hugely uncomfortable question that Senator Obama must now confront.
If it’s in any sense true that black kids and white kids possess “from the cradle” a “different way of learning,” and if this difference is indeed based on inherited distinctions in brain structure, shouldn’t they then be placed in separate classrooms?
Let me make my own position clear: I believe that the idea of racial segregation in the classroom is evil, outrageous, un-American, un-Constitutional and in every way unacceptable. Of course, the epic Supreme Court Case of Brown-vs.-School Board was rightly decided --- declaring that separate-but-equal is not equal. The government cannot force kids into separate schools or separate classrooms based on race.
But if Wright is right (and like all fair-minded or decent people I know he is completely wrong) then isn’t separate-but-equal exactly what we need in our schools? If blacks and whites really do possess such vastly different styles of learning (according to Wright, “logical and analytical” vs. “creative and intuitive”) then wouldn’t they actually benefit from the segregation that the NAACP itself so conspicuously (and nobly) worked to end?
In other words, this great Civil Rights organization seems to have come full-circle—from supporting Thurgood Marshall and other lions of justice in demanding that black kids can- and must- learn and compete directly with white kids, to now cheering the lunatic Dr. Wright who says it’s wrong to even compare achievements of black children with the performance of white children because the two races are so completely different.
While Obama tries to rally his followers with the chant of “Yes We Can,” Dr. Wright shrieks at African-American children, “No You Can’t” --- you can’t compete with white or Asian kids because your lack of “logical and analytical” and “left-brained” wiring makes it impossible for you even to engage your white neighbors on the same playing field.
Wright says to black children that it’s better, more appropriate, to liken you to deprived youngsters in dusty, destitute townships in sub-Saharan Africa, where previous generations suffered from colonialism and starvation and, yes, dysfunctional, pre-literate tribal cultures, than it is to group you with American children from families that have lived for generations in the same city.
In other words, Jeremiah Wright’s appalling educational theories in no way comport with Senator Obama’s celebrated claim that we should have no “red states” or “blue states” but just “the United States of America.”
The questions for the Presidential candidate are urgent and overwhelmingly important:
--Do you agree with Dr. Wright that in shaping education for our African-American young people, we should look to African rather than American models?
--Do you share his belief that black children must remain so incurably different from their “European-American” counterparts that it’s wrong even to compare them to their white classmates?
--If these differences really are as huge, as fundamental (“comparing apples and rocks”) as Pastor Wright contends, would you support a new educational approach that separates our children at school?
-- Given the fact that Jeremiah Wright has been talking and writing about such offensive and inane educational theory for at least two decades, when did you first realize that your Pastor and “spiritual guide” was actually a raving racist with more in common with Dr. David Duke than Dr. Martin Luther King?
Of course, the mainstream media won’t pose such questions for Senator Obama.
But they should—because any continued effort to justify or excuse the appalling idiocy of Jeremiah Wright undermines the very essence of the Illinois Senator’s “more perfect union” campaign. It’s now blindingly obvious that it’s not just a few “out of context” statements by Dr. Wright that count as offensive and illogical, but his entire race-based world-view and philosophy.
Senator Obama should reject that “Afro-Centric” world-view and admit that he was wrong in ever treating it with honor and respect. If he continues in his refusal to do so, then he admits that his much-heralded role as a “unifier” is nothing more than a convenient political pose.
Obama didn’t disown Reverend Wright because of all of the racist and anti-American things he said.
Obama finally disowned Wright because of what Wright said about Obama. That he was just doing what politicians do, that he didn’t really believe the things he tells the American people.
Obama repeated many times that was the last straw for him, that he disowned Wright because Wright personally disrespected Obama and Obama’s campaign themes.
Obama selfishly puts himself before his country. Unlike Senator McCain, whose life has been dedicated to selflessly sacrificing himself for his country.
amazing isnt it...Wright and the Klan are in agreement...
This story reminds me of the experience of my family as they came to this country.
I am decended from a German-speaking farming community from Eastern Kansas. Our people had lived as an isolated German enclave in the Volga region of Russia for hundreds of years, never mixing with the local population and never losing their language or their distict identity.
Around about 1900, they were forced off land in Russia, and moved as a cohesive group to rural Kansas. They set up their community along similar lines, with a German church, German educational systems, and a completely isolated German community.
To my Grandfather’s community, isolation and separateness from the American community was paramount. My father was never to mix with American children, never to go outside the community, never to attend non-German church or school, and most of all, never to learn to speak English. My grandparents fought bitterly to keep their children isolated and down on the farm, but it is the great gift of America that each and every one of my father’s siblings left the farm to make a new life.
My grandfather knew in his heart he was doing the right thing. He was conviced that maintaining the isolated community was the right way to go. Centuries in Russia had taught my people that the going outside the community meant poverty and isolation and death. He was trying to give his children a great gift, but he could not have been more wrong. In Russia, he may have been right, but in America, he was wrong.
It seems to me that Jeremiah Wright and those like him are trying to give the same “gift” to African American children today. They are convinced that life within an isolated community is better, and want to keep the children “down on the farm”. But this is America, and they could not be more wrong.
I have seen and enjoyed your postings for a long time and know you typed that question in a rhetorical manner. Of course Wright and others like him aren't going to take their flocks and repatriate to the motherland. They have grown too accustomed to their great life styles in the U.S. Of K.K.K. A. and would never accept the conditions existing in large parts of the motherland. If they did repatriate, they would lose a key component of their everyday existence which is the redistribution of wealth from productive Americans facilitated by guilt ridden white people who think they can assuage their own guilt and buy peace.
But he would have to give up his million dollar house with a swimming pool and live in a shack fighting others for grain.
You’re right that Obama went out of his way to make that clear yesterday, but it was the sort of two-sided, doubly-coded message in which he specializes:
- To ignorant whites it is meant to be his Sister Soujah moment, with the key point being the ‘denunciation’,
- But to blacks it’s supposed to be just a personal thing about ‘disrespect’, which of course is supposed to be a Black Thang.
- LLS
What a great story. Thanks for sharing it.
ping to post 4
But the problem facing Obama is two-fold.
We left-brained Europeans aren’t fooled by that.
We know that his claimed inability to recognize the true character of Reverend Wright for 20 years means he lacks the judgement to be president.
And the right-brained Africans can see now that Obama is an impostor, first using the Reverend Wright and his church to get to where he is, and then casting them aside once he got too uppity.
It is lose/lose all around, and I think Obama dug his hole infinitely deeper in his speech.
It was about the worst political move I’ve ever seen... (at least since John McCain called North Carolina Republicans “out of touch” anyways.)
I will not be surprised if Hillary Clinton now wins North Carolina when blacks abandon Obama for being the sellout that he is.
And I won’t be surprised if Mike Huckabee wins North Carolina, either.
Barak Obama is politically DOA.
The only question is if the Democrats will dump the body before the convention.
I agree with you, I think he’s done for—though I’m not sure blacks as a group are ready to abandon him. (Hear! Hear, for left-brained voters!) I’m in the camp that believes he was more beatable all along and so I find it regrettable if he’s come apart too early, in time for Hillary to take the nomination.
I agree that he is way more beatable than Hillary.
And even still, the Clintons are so unpopular that I cannot see them winning, unless Ross Perot comes out of retirement again...
Perhaps the only thing to motivate conservatives to come out and vote for McCain is Hillary Clinton.
But don’t delude yourself.
Running against Obama would be full of pitfalls.
I think in the end it may be better for us and the country if the Democrats strip Obama of his victory. It would serve as a lesson to blacks across America that the Democrats make a lot of promises they aren’t willing to deliver on. It’s the Democrats who won’t let a black man win.
I’d much rather the Democrats be the ones accused of racism for stopping Obama, than all of America.
But there is still the very possible longterm fallout from Operation Chaos if Hillary becomes the nominee:
As the years wear on and blur what really happened with the Democrats in 2008, there is a strong possibility the Democrats will construct an urban legend that it was racist Republicans, lead by Rush Limbaugh, who sabotaged the primary so Hillary Clinton would win because they didn’t want a black man to be president. 30, 40 years from now history will probably be rewritten to say that Hillary “won” the race with the help of Republicans. Long gone will be any memory of “superdelegates” or proportional voting (which they will certainly do away with now). Any record that Obama actually won the primaries and the Democrat party bosses stripped him of it will be all but whitewashed.
I think Obama is the most dangerous candidate, and so it may be good to get him out of the way without the risk of his taking the general election. And I agree that everything that might be perceived as a racial attack on any level does need to be brought up in the primary or it could well backfire on the Republicans.
On the other hand, the primary season and contrast with Obama has allowed Hillary to be recast as some sort of working-class hero, which is why I think she’s a tougher candidate for McCain now than she was 90 days ago.
I worry about the Supreme Court under a Democrat administration, but then again, much like ‘92-’94, an overreaching Democrat president and congress could get the Pubbies back into legislative power soonest. And, who knows, a chastened President Hill reined in by a Republican congress could conceivably preside over the relatively innocuous economic policies of her husband.
So while I hope for McCain (though he’s not really my flavor of Republican), I don’t even necessarily know that his victory would play out to the best other than for foreign affairs, our military and our judiciary in the short term. No crystal ball here, so I vote for the best man (or woman) from among the choices. Still, I strongly believe Obama is simultaneously the most dangerous candidate and the most beatable.
So all those black college students Obama has been gathering in his support have just been told they might as well give up, because your brain is not good enough for you to be a success.
And I wonder, since Obama is 50/50 white/black...how does he function at all? His left side (black heritage brain) is lacking in "logical and analytical" thinking, and right side (white race heritage brain) is less capable of "creative thinking." According to Wright if you are of black or white race, one of these sides is deficient. So...poor Obama, deficient in both.
On the other hand, the primary season and contrast with Obama has allowed Hillary to be recast as some sort of working-class hero, which is why I think she’s a tougher candidate for McCain now than she was 90 days ago.I agree with that completely and have been thinking the same thing.
So true. But her willingness to go with the workin’ gals makes me think—though still I dread the scenario!—that after her first 24 months of an attempted socialist utopia, she like Bill would go along with a Republican or Republican-leaning congress.
Either way he is cooked. I had thought after the first speech, given the gushing reaction of the drive-bys, that Obama was going to get away with it---and he would have, except idiot Wright just wouldn't shut up! Now, Obama will claim he "never heard" this, that, or the other, and Wright is going to start producing "pwoof" that, in fact, Obama was there, heard it, and slapped him on the back and said "well done" at the end of the service!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.