Based on this, I have to agree that maybe America as a whole doesn’t really know black America. I had no idea this sort of language is acceptable in the black community. Regardless, I don’t like it or accept it, and the fact that it is accepted by many doesn’t make it right.

Maybe in black America Wright is a “master theologian” but I don’t think that is accepted universally outside the black community. You have given me no facts that demonstrate that to be true.

In fact, I don’t think he even reaches out of the black community where he would even have a chance of receiving accolades like that.

I read a recent article in the LA Times, quoting Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, the emeritus rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel, a Reform Jewish congregation near Trinity. “He’s been aloof to the concerns of the local [religious] community, which is a good union of different views and different churches and synagogues. He has not been a part of that,” said Wolf, who described himself as a strong Obama supporter.

A friend of mine said that this past MLK day, a black minister came and spoke at this church. The minister said “white people do not have a monopoly on racism. It’s an equal opportunity disease.” And THAT is a message we all need to hear more often.

The problem is that America never wants to face up to this particular truth. What Jeremiah Wright and most true spiritual leaders know and understand is that there’s America’s truth, and there’s God’s truth. Most real “Men of God” (and there are not as many as profess to be - black or white) care little about covering up America’s racial history. That was the major rift between King and white theologians that caused him to write his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Another problem here is that America is so busy dismissing black America, that it doesn’t really know black America. Because if they knew black America, they’d know who Jeremiah Wright is, a master theologian who has a national following and is considered one of the premier teachers of other preachers. He is not some “fringe cleric” or “rouge religious leader”, just a few of the names the white pundits are calling him. He knows the Bible (and Qur’an), understands prophesy and he knows history in the context of America’s relationship with oppressed people. America may not like what he says, particularly when he says it as coarse as, “Not God bless but God damn America,” but few can refute it or call him a liar.

While I have policy differences with Hillary Clinton and by the way, Barack Obama, I question the level of hostility between the two camps. On one hand, Clinton’s recognition of the vicious battle that it will take to overturn Republican policies is correct; while, on the otherhand, Obama’s extention of an olive branch to the Republicans may get his srm chewed off and he will end up as Paul Krugman says a Jimmy Carter ushering in another conservative crusade.