Silly talk

[Crossposted from Sugar Land is Dreaming]

That's what this question to Obama from Lanny Davis is.

If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the "N" word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

This would be a legit question to Obama if the rhetoric in Pastor Wright's sermons included racial slurs against white people. For all his egregious quotes in the media lately, I haven't seen anything where Pastor Wright refers to white people as "honkies" or any sort of white equivalent of the word "nigger". And I've looked -- particularly at that recent, infamous Newsmax article. I figure that if Pastor Wright said any racial slurs, surely Newsmax would print it. Here's the worst I could find from him:

“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01,” Wright wrote in the church-affiliated magazine Trumpet four years after the attacks. “White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”

Is that kind of rhetoric offensive? Certainly. But does it contain any racial slurs against whites equivalent to the word "nigger"? Not that I can see.

As Obama discussed yesterday, while palpable anger shouldn't be looked upon as any sort of solution, recent American history does give reasons why this anger exists -- and that history must be reconciled. It's hard to forget slavery and segregation. But with the question that Davis poses to Obama about white ministers preaching KKK-styled hatred and whether he would support that, I think such a question is out of line because it mischaracterizes Obama's speech. Obama discussed historical precedents for anger in the Afro-American and white communities -- but there's no historical precedent for the hate foisted upon society by the KKK. Those people are just plain prejudiced, period. Now if somebody can find examples of Pastor Wright preaching the equivalent of KKK style hate then we have a different story; but, like I said, I looked at the worst of Wright's statements and couldn't find it. Only then would Davis's question be legit -- but as is, I think the question is out of line.