Posted on 05/20/2008 5:21:50 AM PDT by Red Badger
He has a right to express his views,” Al Sharpton said last year in response to a racially charged remark by radio shock jock Don Imus. “This is ridiculous,” he said of the public outcry over the remark. “I think Don Imus has been totally distorted.”
Actually, that wasn’t Sharpton’s response. In truth, Sharpton was one who successfully lobbied for Imus to be fired for his racial slur. The quotes above were made by Sharpton in March in defense of Barack Obama’s spiritual adviser for 20 years—the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Sharpton maintains that the media’s treatment of Wright’s bigoted diatribes was “grossly unfair.”
On March 18, Barack Obama, who also lobbied for Imus’s firing, attempted to distance himself from his spiritual mentor. But he too maintains, albeit with more tact and eloquence than Sharpton, that Dr. Wright has been misunderstood and unfairly characterized. He said the fact that so many people are “surprised” by Jeremiah Wright’s anger reveals how segregated whites and blacks are during the church hour on Sunday mornings. “[T]he anger is real—it is powerful,” he said. “And to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races” (emphasis mine).
That anger, of course, is rooted in slavery—the cause of many disparities and inequalities within the African-American community, Obama said. In other words, the legacy of slavery justifies Wright’s racist rants.
But as Orlando Patterson noted in his 1982 book Slavery and Social Death, “Slavery has existed from the dawn of human history right down to the 20th century, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. There is no region on Earth that has not at some time harbored the institutions.”
The roots of slavery run deep. And the fruits of it to this day go far beyond any lingering discriminatory injustices—whether real or perceived—in American society. In his 1999 book Disposable People, Kevin Bales estimated the world’s slave population to be 27 million. As E. Benjamin Skinner points out in his new release, A Crime So Monstrous, there are more slaves in the world today than at any point in human history. In the first chapter of his book, Skinner described in shockingly vivid detail how easy and inexpensive it was for him, working as an undercover investigative reporter, to purchase a teenaged sex slave in Haiti.
From New York, Skinner explained, it’s about a three-hour flight to Port-au-Prince. The unemployment rate in Haiti runs at around 70 percent. About the only industry that’s booming is the slave trade. In 1998, approximately one in ten Haitian children—some 300,000—had been sold into slavery. A few years ago, that figure had ballooned to 400,000. “These are the children who won’t look you in the eyes,” Skinner notes.
These are also children who have infinitely more reasons to be angry than Jeremiah Wright, who is living a life of wealth and privilege in an upper-middle-class suburb of Chicago.
Slavery—never mind what the most vocal leaders in the black community say—is not distinctly American, or even Western. What is distinctly Western, as Dinesh D’Souza pointed out in The End of Racism, is the abolition of slavery. “The American founders articulated principles of equality and consent which formed the basis for emancipation and the civil rights movement,” D’Souza wrote. Of course, abolition came with a heavy price. Over 500,000 whites were killed during the Civil War—about one for every six blacks who were emancipated. “In all the literature condemning Western slavery,” D’Souza wrote, “few scholars have asked why a practice sanctioned by virtually all people for thousands of years should be questioned, and eventually halted, by only one. …
“[F]or Lincoln as for [Frederick] Douglass, the greatest white and black statesmen of the time, the triumph of the union and the emancipation of the slaves represented not the victory of might over right, but the reverse; justice had won over that of expediency and the principles of the American founding had at long last prevailed.”
As endemic as slave trading still is in our modern world, imagine how much worse it would be in America had the South won. This point was not lost on leading voices of black America soon after emancipation. Booker T. Washington, who began his life as a slave, later became one of the most prominent black educators of his day. He said at the beginning of the 20th century, “Think about it: We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands. … Notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.”
It’s hard to imagine any American leaders today—white or black—expressing that kind of gratitude for the many blessings God has bestowed on the United States of America. We have taken these superabundant blessings for granted in a way that Booker T. Washington and Abraham Lincoln never would have. The average American has never visited war-torn, disease-infested, poverty-stricken, slave-trading regions in Southeast Asia, Central and South America or black Africa. Most Americans have never observed firsthand the filth and squalor that most people in this world live in—even in places like Haiti, a short plane flight away.
In Third World Haiti, the average family barely survives on a few dollars per month. By Haitian standards, even the poorest Americans live like kings.
Yet, without question, the blessings that black and white Americans have come to take for granted are now rapidly beginning to disappear. And social hardships have been especially brutal within the black community—where nearly three fourths of all children are born out of wedlock and the unemployment rate is almost double that of the rest of the nation.
And for these people, the message coming from leaders in the community like Jeremiah Wright is undeniably clear: Blame the white man. In 2006, Dr. Wright summed up our nation’s core values this way: “We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority, and believe it more than we believe in God.”
In truth, the belief that the United States is a racist nation is more fundamental to the church’s body of beliefs than God Himself.
Divided We Fall
Frederick Douglass, many years before Abraham Lincoln emancipated blacks, acknowledged, “It is evident that white and black must fall or flourish together.” Douglass understood, like Lincoln, that for the nation to survive, it had to be unified. A house divided against itself cannot stand, Jesus said (Matthew 12:25). Douglass, though he had criticized the Constitution early on, said later in life, “Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered.”
Far from upholding the Constitution today, many leaders in the black community see America’s foundational law as fundamentally racist. And instead of urging Americans to unite as one so that we might “flourish together,” many black leaders are actively inciting hatred and division.
When asked for his reaction to Wright’s incendiary remarks, black activist Jesse Jackson said he was “not going to address any of that now.” He had no comment. Al Sharpton believes Wright has been treated unfairly and that his reputation has been “totally distorted.” And Barack Obama, while he condemns the “controversial” statements of Wright, still considers him part of his own family. “He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children,” Obama said. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” Obama’s wife, as was widely reported, said it wasn’t until her husband’s presidential campaign that she finally became proud to be an American.
Every once in a while, a voice of hope will emerge from the black community, like when Bill Cosby urged his fellow blacks in 2004 to stop blaming the “white man” for their problems and to look at themselves. But those voices are quickly silenced by the cacophony of race merchants and their many accomplices in academia and the liberal media.
Their audacious message of hate may empower and enrich the black leadership, but it does little in the way of helping the black community—and it further divides our nation.
Meanwhile, beyond our borders, the hateful animosity aimed at Americans of every color has never been so intense. Enemies who despise us are circling like vultures, observing our internal strife while planning for our demise. They are intent on taking our peoples captive as real slaves!
Does it seem far-fetched? Do we think that such a colossal collapse could never happen to such a great power as the United States? Do we somehow reason that the great God who gave us such unprecedented power and wealth is not able to take it all away?
Blaming other races or genders or political groups for our ever-intensifying evils and curses will not solve any of our many problems. “The future of great nations rests on the promises the Eternal Creator made to Abraham,” Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. “The only hope of life after death for anyone—regardless of race, color or creed—is dependent on the spiritual phase of these promises to Abraham—the promise of grace through the ‘one seed’—Christ the Messiah!” •
They portray it as racist so they can make money.
If the civil war had not been fought, if the South were allowed to cecede from the union, if all those black and white soldiers would not have died in the name of liberty, where would Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson be?
A good read. Sadly, in a Jeremiah Wright’s world, the lessons of barely a century and a half ago are being lost in favor of blaming the white man for all perceived ills.
I am curious to know what relevance slavery has to modern Blacks. Surely it is no more relevant than the Highland Clearances are to modern Scots.
After a couple of generations surely there comes a point where historical grievances — as bad as they may have once been — fade into insignificance.
What can the good Reverend Wright possibly know about slavery, that could possibly justify his vituperate fulminations from the pulpit? Methinks he uses “slavery” as a convenient peg to hang his bigotry hat upon.
Like all good con men, there must be a "mis-direction" in order to keep the "mark" from finding the "money card". Slavery is the universal misdirection. No one alive today was ever a slave, yet according to the civil rights organizations it happened only yesterday. Keep the people agitated and angry, don't let them discover truth for themselves, blame everyone else that's not your color for your own shortcomings.........
Excellent read. Obama is a radical racist and there will be a race war should he be elected.
Which is precisely what the left does at all times. Everywhere on this planet, not just America, the white man is fair game. War, racism, hatred and global warming would not be problems if there were no white man creating all this stuff................
Slavery is NOT the cause of “disparities and inequalities” in the AA community, Bambi.
Thomas Sowell analyzes this in “Economic Facts and Fallacies”.
Simply, the “disparities and inequities” were LESS, and the advances made by blacks were at more than double the rate they are today, PRIOR TO 1960.
If “slavery is the root cause”, then those closer to the slave era would show MORE disparity than those further from it, unless something else is the cause. ([cough]liberals)
I don't think it will go that far. There will be increased animosity and the pendulum will swing back to the 60's era of street violence in some places. But overall, there will be a "cold war" between the races for a long, long time.........
Want to understand why they have this conclusion?
Read/Watch “Regurgitating the Apple” by Evan Sayet - it’s on the heritage website.
[[
All cultures are equal, therefore, any disparities in outcome must be because the successful exploited the unsuccessful, and since the white/Western culture is successful and brown people are not, whites oppress and exploit brown folks worldwide.
To conclude otherwise would be judgemental on the brown cultures.
]]
It's a misdirection in two ways. Not only is no one alive today a former slave, no one alive today in this country was ever a slave owner in the days of this country's slave era. In fact, many, if not most, of the ancestors of Caucasians came here long after the slave era was past. My grandparents came over in the 1890s and early 1900s. Yet these race baiters are going to wave the bloody shirt of slavery in my face?
Yep, that’s “class envy” institutionalized............
Good point. The waves of immigrants, legal I might add, who came here in the post civil war era, faced many of the same conditions that the newly freed slaves did. The political machines of the late 1800’s ensured that the power flowed to city hall and nowhere else. The poor, no matter what color, had little or no power at all. The self segregation of the immigrant communities (Little Italy, Chinatown, etc.) coupled with the racial segregation of the black community ensured that the different factions did not overlap and “get to know one another” thus giving rise to single group bosses that owed their allegiance to the machine. All they had to do was keep the people in the communities “riled up” over some dispute or another with the others. Balkanization of the big cities was the way to keep power concentrated in one man or party. Now the game is played on the national and global level.................same rules, same outcome.......
Not surprising that a Marxist, Black Liberation 'Theology' inspired individual, gave hate such a bold, challenging intro..
The same kind of terrorists who support Obama did this:
http://www.frugalsites.net/911/attack/
Never apologize for them.
Never appease them.
Never forget.
I wonder how well African-Americans would be doing if every self-appointed or media-appointed Black leader for the past forty years would have stepped into a large abyss never to seen again. All they have been are anchors around the legs of average Aframs. There are no Greek, Irish, Polish/american, etc leaders to try to tell their ethic brethren how to live their lives. The emergence of slimy maggots like Sharpton, Farrakhan, Jackson and the rest have helped set back Afram progress for too long.
All one has to do to figure that one out is look at how the other oppressed minorities that came to this country are doing now.
Irish? Asians? Jews?
Blacks were advancing in income and social stats like illegitimacy and lifespan at twice the rate prior to 1960 as post 1960. (perhaps that was 1940, but the point remains)
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