Quote:
Originally Posted by Caltex
No he's saying that all whites are deluded and that America is really a shitty country. America has done many wrong things in the past, there is no doubt, but everyone knows that. We chose to celebrate the good, and try to rectify the bad. What does he want everyone to walk around damning their country? Is it not far more productive to fix what we find to be wrong, and go on with it?
The author very much did blame modern whites for past injustices in his saying that "Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity." He is saying that it's our fault, and Wright has every reason to hate us. Forget that the men responsible for those injustices are all long dead.
Bladwin's quote asserts that all whites are woefully ignorant of the past, or chose to ignore it. Which is false. Everyone knows that injustice occurred, but there is no reason to damn the America that we the people are now, for we have not committed those injustices. A sovereign nation is an evolving entity, it is not static. We do not have to celebrate, or embrace the things that we no longer hold sacred to our nation. We have outlawed slavery, and forced segregation long ago. There is no need to feel bad about the fact that Americans generations before us had such institutions, because we are not them.
Modern Americans are Patriotic to modern America, and the ideals which it theoretically stands for. We do not stand for the America of 50 years ago, as we have changed what America is much since then. What is so woeful about today's Americas treatment toward blacks that Wright is justified in damning it? Last I checked, there is a disproportionate amount of government social aid to blacks, and no (or very little) government institutionalized racism against them.
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I agree with both you and Obama that anger is not productive.
But I still maintain that the article and especially the James Baldwin quote were not at all about blaming. They pointed to the lack of understanding, perhaps even the lack of POSSIBILITY of understanding from the white community. We have an intellectual knowledge of the harsh truths of our history, but an intellectual knowledge alone is quite limited.
As for Wright's remarks, they were certainly angry, and therefore, not productive. However, taken in context, would it seem that he was trying to say (in a graceless fashion) much the same thing as that article (which I agree with), or "Down with America!", which I disagree with???
I don't know because I don't know the context of his sermon.
Anyway, in a similar vein, here is another interesting article I just ran across today.
Frank Schaeffer: Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero - Politics on The Huffington Post