God Damn America - in context (page 2)

mavie

Burn, Trinity church has posted many videos of Wright's speeches on youtube. I encourage you to go and check it out.

BrentR

He should be saying "Hot dam America!!!"

JeffT

I'm at work and couldn't listen to all of it. Did he ever get around to mentioning the 360,000 white Americans that died to change the country he hates?

He says the military supported racism. There was a time when he was right, but that time ended better than 50 years ago. US troops enforced the desegregation orders in the '50's.

BurnTheShips

I'm at work and couldn't listen to all of it. Did he ever get around to mentioning the 360,000 white Americans that died to change the country he hates?

Double that.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/casualties.htm

America paid a high price for it's error.

Burn

VoidEater

Jeff: There is room for discussion in your assertion that there is no more segregation in the armed services:

"And yet the US military is a deeply segregated institution. Nearly all of its officer corps, all front-line combat commanders, highly skilled or high prestige jobs (pilot, special forces ‘operator’, submariner, and so on) are deeply and thoroughly White, that is, as segregated as the military as a whole was pre-1950...

"Such racial separatism could lead to problems...because it “foster[s] supremacist attitudes among white combat soldiers” (the Secretary of the Army’s Task Force Report on Extremist Activities, Defending American Values, March 21, 1996, Washington, DC, p. 15)."

- http://whiteprivilege.com/2002/01/29/racism-us-military/

Beyond internal racism, there is quite a debate on how the US military treats non-combatants, due to their race, both out in the field and within its prisons. It's not easy to take a reductionist view of such activities, I realize, but there are those that propose a deeply racial motivation to recent activities in Iraq, Somalia, etc.

I don't think racism within the military - just as within American society at large - can be so easily shrugged off.

Rapunzel

BizzyBee - Even though you say that slavery, discrimination, and segregation are "very old news," the truth of the matter is that today - in the year 2008 - slavery continues to be a world-wide scourge, especially [but by no means exclusively] the enslavement of children for sexual purposes. And when I say "world-wide," I mean world-wide. It happens often in Europe and in the United States. Children [and adults] are held in bondage against their will. They are literally nothing but chattel, another person's property.

And, as for segregation and discrimination, both nefarious forces are alive and well in the United States. American society is one of the most racist societies in the world. It was founded on racist ideology such as the notion of the "white man's burden." One of the founding fathers - Thomas Jefferson - was a slave-owner. Even today - in the year 2008 - if a person is born black in certain parts of the United States, they may as well be born dead. There are some ares of the United States in which black people have the same life expectancy as people in Bangladesh. The low life expectancy of black Americans lowers the average national life expectancy of the United States in general. There are quite a few countries with a higher life expectancy than the U.S., and the reason for this is the inequality in life expectancy rates between whites and blacks in the U.S.

So, by no means are slavery, discrimination and segregation "very old news;" they are as persistent and as destructive as they always have been previously.

Terry

I find it very very hard to swallow any so-called "context" which excuses the words of Reverend Wright under any circumstances.

You will make excuses for him if you like. But, I think it would be dishonest and cogitively dissonant to do so.

As a leader in a minority community who stands before families with impressionable children it is inexcusable.

As a representative of Christianity who fronts for the message of Jesus Christ it is unthinkable. Jesus clearly promoted a "turn the other cheek" approach to those who curse and abuse you. Reverend Wright comes across as an Old Testament declaimer who wants the destruction of his enemies, not their conversion or salvation.

No, you folks don't have your brain screwed in all the way if you think there could ever be a context to say: "God Damn America!"

Here is the game being played out in the black community.

1. Dishonest leaders gain power by keeping black people weak and making them out to be victims. These leaders foment anger and not healing. They promote hatred and not understanding. These leaders dwell on the past in order to control the future.

2.Haters are willing to teach their children to hate. They are willing to promote lies to energize the grass roots who will stand and cheer when the worst libel and slander is spoken.

3.Angry black people are used as a bargaining chip so that people like Jesse Jackson can threaten boycotts and lawsuits against corporations who don't appease Jackson's demands for hush money.

4.Farakhan, Wright, Jackson and others paint the world as Black and White so that fear and discontent blind their own community to progress, advancement and opportunity to self-advance through merit.

I'll ask you to consider this. Who did more to advance people of color? The passive-resistance preacher Martin Luther King who preached sermons which gave hope and goals for future solidarity WITH and ALONGSIDE the white community---or--a man like Reverend Wright who despises non-whites?

Like Ghandi before him and Jesus before him, Reverend King promoted what COULD BE rather than what ONCE WAS.

The wounds against black people are never allowed to heal in Reverend Wright's church. Ask yourself how this benefits healing and advancement.

Justifying any evil by pointing to a greater evil is illogical, dishonest and fallacious. Two wrongs do not make a right and will never make a Reverend Wright right.

If you believe Wright's lies and calumny against the Government of America that the HIV virus was developed and sent into the Black community as a deliberate holocaust---you need your thinking treated by health professionals. You'll believe anything.

America is our household. If you bring down wrath upon your own household you shall inherit the wind.

BurnTheShips

You nailed it Terry.

Burn

AuldSoul

4.Farakhan, Wright, Jackson and others paint the world as Black and White so that fear and discontent blind their own community to progress, advancement and opportunity to self-advance through merit.

Amen! Booker T. Washington would be proud of that post, Terry. No matter who we are or where we find ourselves in life, and however we got where we are; we cannot ever get where we want to go as long as we are content to do nothing more than lament and wail over who we are and/or where we are.

Respectfully,
AuldSoul

VoidEater

Terry, Burn: I beg to differ. Without going into detail, in general we must have a larger context within which we live, where "God damn America" can be spoken and grappled with. To be otherwise is to live in, say, a high-control religion that tolerates no disagreement.

America is strong enough to face criticism. Indeed, a measure of it's strength will be its ability to face itself in this way.

And America must exist in a larger context, have a higher ideal and a future goal beyond what it is today. There is room for growth.

God Damn America - in context

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