Wow this must be what it feels like to be on the receiving end...

[walldude]

I have seen tons of posts about the Reverend Wright in the past week or so. I've been laying off those threads because the Reverend isn't running for office. However, today I have jumped into the fray, so to speak, because I see many people who are now wearing the shoe on the other foot, yet the truth and the lesson continues to elude them.

Don't like it when white people are compared to the anti-christ? Wow this must be what it feels like to be on the receiving end of racism.

Don't like it when white people as a race are denigrated by a preacher? Wow this must be what it feels like to be on the receiving end of racism.

Don't like it when white people are accused of trying to kill off black people? Wow this must be what it feels like to be on the receiving end of racism.

Don't like it when white people are judged by the color of their skin? Wow this must be what it feels like to be on the receiving end of racism.

So what did you learn from the Rev Wright?

BTW in case you are wondering, I got my racism lesson years ago, from the brilliant Ossie Davis directed film Cotton Comes To Harlem. It was the first time I was made to realize what it's like to be on the receiving end of racism. Ossie Davis made me understand how he felt being a black man. What was my response to the movie? Did I freak out? Did I start calling him a racist? Did I attack any political figures he might have a relationship with?
No I didn't. I took the lesson he taught me to heart, I thanked him for showing me a perspective I would have never been able to understand without his help. I became more aware, more sensitive and much more understanding of what life is like for a minority, and for that, I am forever grateful...

[AlabamaBrightBlueDot]

Excellent post!

[walldude]

21. Welcome to DU! n/t

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Wow this must be what it feels like to be on the receiving end of racism.

Explain to me how you're not making their point?

If you're trying to convince people of the therapeutic value of retribution, and that white people deserve racism, then you could make that point more clearly.

[walldude]

2. I didn't say "white people deserve racism"

What I said was white people for all their talk and bullshit have no fucking idea what it's like to be on the receiving end of racism. And now that they do know, they are all kinds of pissed off. Yet instead of showing any level of understanding about why people like the Rev Wright are pissed off, just like white people are now, the denigrate him. The level of hypocrisy is quite amazing actually.

[TheDebbieDee]

4. I'm African-American and I never thought of the

things Rev. Wright said in quite that way until now. Thanks for teaching me something new instead of insulting me because I support Sen. Clinton.

[walldude]

5. Hey I'm an Obama guy but she gets my vote is she's the nominee

we are after all still on the same team.

[JimGinPA]

15. I Just Added You To My List...

Of Mrs. Clinton's supporters who can engage in a conversation in a mature manner. It's refreshing.

[Bake]

23. But now that we DO, it's cool, right?

It's OK for us to be pissed off, because it's OK for Rev. Wright to be pissed off too.

Or did I miss something?

All you have accomplished is to piss off more people. Well done.

Bake

[walldude]

24. Uh you missed something...

Nice try though.

Please, show me all the people I pissed off with my horrible dissertation of the many facets of racism and the thought that maybe, just maybe a little perspective on this non-issue might help. Please? Show me the angry horde of pissed off white people. Because so far it's just been you and the Lumberjack dude...

And for fucks sake, you are putting words in my mouth in response to a response to a guy... who was putting words in my mouth. :crazy:

[Bake]

25. All I heard was your "suck on it" tone. Way to promote unity, though.

Re-read your OP.

Bake

[walldude]

26. I wrote it.. no need to "re-read" it.

Sorry you didn't "get it". And after looking up some of your posts you have a lot of nerve calling someone out on "unity" my friend..

But thanks for kicking the thread.. :toast:

[Bake]

27. "Lot of nerve?" No need.

I cannot, and will not, vote for BHO in the GE. Just can't do it. I'll stay home first. But good luck winning without us.

Bake

[walldude]

28. Your perogative,

Not surprised in the least, considering the way you talk to people.. Good luck to you.

[Bake]

29. And good luck to you.

In the meantime, say hello to Pres. McCain.

Bake

[walldude]

30. If I have to it'll be thanks to people like you..

And thanks for giving me a link, I just heard that there are no Hillary supporters saying they wouldn't vote for Obama, in the general if he wins. You just proved him wrong.

[Bake]

31. There are plenty of us.

Most of us just abanonded GD: P. But not me. Put me on your Ignore list, now, please. Hell, put me on the Master Ignore List for the Kool-Aid drinkers!! Please!!

Welcome to defeat in the fall.

Bake

[walldude]

32. I have no one on my ignore list. Don't flatter yourself.

And I'm happy for you that there are plenty of you. You need to inform all your fellow Hillary supporters who keep telling me that there isn't a single Hillary supporter who won't vote for Obama if he gets the nod. You guys need to get organized and on the same page, really, are you going to take the "holier than thou" approach, or the "we'll destroy you, the party and perhaps the entire country if our candidate doesn't get the nod" approach. :rofl: :rofl:

[Bake]

43. Then by all means, PLEASE, put me on your Ignore list!!

I'll wear it as a badge of honor while you hide your head in the fucking sand! Dear God, don't ever listen to an opposing opinion.....

Bake

[walldude]

46. Like I said, don't flatter yourself,

And please, if you are going to make a sarcastic remark about "not listening" don't fucking do it seconds after telling me to ignore you :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[donheld]

36. John McCain thanks you, and so does a right wing supreme court.

Not to mention National Right to Life.

[Bake]

38. You know what? I'm tired of voting against my self-interest

And having it thrown back in my face by the likes of you. I'm over 50, make over 100K a year, my wife and I aren't worried about family planning (Roe v. Wade). Why keep fighting it when asshats like you tell me I'm not good enough? Screw you.

I've been a Democrat for decades, probably longer than you've been ALIVE. Sometimes I wonder why ...

Bake

[donheld]

44. Well don't you sound like the best little republican ever

How is Obama going against your self interest?

[Bake]

47. My tax bracket, for starters.

But I have, on principle, defended the Dem position. If the O-bots are going to label me unDemocratic and un-progressive, perhaps I should vote dollars and cents.

How's that?

Bake

[donheld]

50. Maybe you shouldn't let the crap that goes around here at DU

Get to you so much.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

22. Explain to me how you were harmed by Rev. Wright's words.

I mean, really. What physical, psychological, or economic harm did it do you? How did his words impact your life in any way shape or form? Did you get, say, refused a job or profiled by the police because of what Wright said? Have your chances of being imprisoned or murdered gone up exponentially because of the pastor's sermons? I doubt it.

The OP is making the point that this is a relatively harmless way for white people to experience the shoe being on the other foot. That is, if the outrage is genuine, which in the case of most people blathering and spamming about it on DU, it is more than likely not.

[Bake]

33. "God Damn America"

What part of that don't you think the 527s will run over and over again in the fall? Couple that with Obama's hand not over his heart pic ... Michelle's "I'm proud ... for the first time".

I just don't like losing. I'm SICK of losing to these bastards who don't love this country the way I do, and painting ME as unpatriotic. Sick of it.

Bake

[mrreowwr_kittty]

35. We are talking about people who turned a decorated Vietnam veteran into a traitorous coward.

When Bill Clinton was running they dug up his passport records to prove that he was a draft-dodging commie symp. You can bet your ass they'd be preparing ads attacking Hillary Clinton on some made-up bullshit. I am DONE worrying about what these scumbags are going to do. There is no candidate we could put up who would escape their slime machine. Jesus Christ himself would be portrayed as a terrorist-coddling class warfare fomenting sissy. It's time to stop being chickenshit cowards and FIGHT BACK!!

:patriot:

[Bake]

37. Obama handed it to them on a silver platter, Kerry didn't.

Kerry just failed to fight back, and he'll have his own hell to answer to for that. Obama GAVE it to them, knowing what Wright's words were.

I hope he's got more fight in him than Kerry did.

Bake

[mrreowwr_kittty]

39. "I voted for the funding bill before I voted against it."

He went windsurfing. He went pheasant hunting. His wife said some things. He mentioned that Dick Cheney's daughter was a lesbian. So fucking what?

If Barack Obama and every single person he surrounded himself with never said anything that could be the slightest way twisted, if his middle name weren't Hussein, if he were a white Presbyterian, it wouldn't matter. He's a DEMOCRAT, thus a target for every lowlife Republican hack to push the buttons of the lowest common denominator. Obama has already proven that he can, and will, fight back. If he loses it will be because American voters are still too easily led sheep who respond to fearmongering and operant conditioning. It will be about terra and "National Security", and who will bomb more brown people to keep us "safe". McCain will always win on that score, whether it's Hillary or Barack.

[Bake]

42. Obama made a Rodney King speech.

Hillary will fight back.

Bake

[mrreowwr_kittty]

45. Rodney King??

Racist asshole. Welcome to my ignore list.

[Bake]

48. Can't we all just get along?

Screw you and your Ignore list, COWARD.

Bake

[Bake]

49. Obama has voted to continue funding several times.

But you knew that.

Bake

[lumberjack_jeff]

34. I'm not suggesting I was.

I understand Wright's point. I don't understand the OP's.

It is one thing to empathize with Rev Wright's lashing out in frustration. It is something else to justify his rhetoric on the basis that all those who suffered collateral damage deserved it - solely because they're white.

[walldude]

41. How exactly have you suffered?

Are you in pain? Do you feel like Rev Wright was talking directly about you? Have you lost income? A family member? Or is it that his words damaged your psyche? All I see in this story is a bunch of people who have had the tables turned on them, a bunch of now angry people. Angry because they now know what it's like to be on the receiving end of racism. Instead of thinking logically and taking away the point that racism sucks they, (and I assume you) took away the point that Obama's pastor is as racist as any white person.

I spoke of a movie. Cotton Comes To Harlem. I watched that movie with 3 other people. One of them walked out, disgusted by the anti-white sentiments expressed in the film. Myself and the other two people realized that the film was using reverse racism to awaken us to the thoughts and emotions that lie behind what it's like to live as a minority. We stayed, and we Too bad the other dude couldn't get passed his own attitudes enough to learn what was being taught.

[lumberjack_jeff]

51. Reading posts 22 and 34 will help clarify things.

I don't react to straw men. There's no need for me to defend anything I'm not saying.

My takeaway from Rev Wright's words was that he was frustrated at the injustices that US blacks have suffered. What I took away from your OP is that turnabout is fair play and that being on the pointy end of a rhetorical stick represents karmic (albeit generationally-deferred) justice. E.g. white people deserve it. I empathize with the former, I reject the latter.

There's no such thing as "reverse" racism. It's all one thing. Sometimes it is understantable where the attitudes come from, but I'm not going to argue that this makes them good.

[flor de jasmim]

3. I got my lesson when I was 10 -

There was a black girl in my class - perhaps the only black kid in the school - and I invited her to come home with me after school one day. Her response? "Why?" No one had ever asked her home, no one had ever included her in anything, and the whole idea that what I wanted was simple friendship was foreign to her.

[walldude]

6. You know. it's the little things

like that that change the world. Not a President or a Preacher but, the actions of a school kid or a parent, one person reaching out to another. When something like racism is so integrated into our school of thought, it takes decades to reverse that mindset, and we do it one mind at a time. Thanks for the response...

[DearAbby]

11. My Daughter

when she was 6, in the first grade, made friends with a black girl in school. She asked me if this little girl could come spend the night with her. I told her yes, that would be fine. We would have to ask her parents first.

I asked her parents, and they declined. I accepted it, but wondered if it was because we were white, and distrust. I explained to my daughter, that her Mommy and Daddy knows what is best, just as we do for her. And she let it drop. They remained friends through that year and we moved the following summer.

[flor de jasmim]

13. The mother of my schoolmate also said no.

We also talked at school, and I moved away after that year (funny parallel).

[yardwork]

7. k&r. I agree.

[PetraPooh]

8. My revelation was a book, "Black Like Me" except he wasn't, he used shoe polish to color himself

So he actually had the valid comparison of the exact same man, same conditions, same places; as both black and white. It was heartbreaking. I was about 10 I think when I read that.

[TheDebbieDee]

12. I read that book when I was a teenager in the 70s

and he didn't use shoe polish. He took a daily medication that made his skin darker over the course of a couple of weeks.

But it was a great book.

[PetraPooh]

16. Then we read a different book. I'm sure it was shoe polish, but being 10

well, I'm going to go see before I claim to be right.

[PetraPooh]

17. Apparently we are both right, except it was shoe dye.

"In the autumn of 1959, John Howard Griffin checked into the Monteleone Hotel, located at 214 Royal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. Once there, under the care of a dermatologist, Griffin underwent a regimen of large oral doses of the anti-vitiligo drug Oxsoralen and spending up to fifteen hours daily under an ultraviolet lamp. (Vitiligo is a disease that causes lightening of the skin and is most noticeable among people of African ancestry.)

To complete the illusion, Griffin used dyes to cover uneven areas and closely cropped his hair.<2>"

from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me

[futureliveshere]

9. Great post

I was inclined to ignore thinking it was more of some anti-Obama racism topic. Glad I read through it.

edited to remove a typo.

[walldude]

10. Can't judge a book by it's cover!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :toast:

[futureliveshere]

19. True true

:toast:

[PylesMalfunction]

14. k&r

Thanks for this great post. It's very much appreciated.

[walldude]

18. kick...

[walldude]

20. Just a kick before I go...

I surely will return...

Traveling twice the speed of sound...

[CitizenLeft]

40. thank you.

I don't understand the total and complete lack of empathy for a people who have suffered http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/main.html">this kind of violence and hatred. At the end of that most horrific era, if things had truly changed - had discrimination ended, had the systematic economic racism ended - then Rev. Wright wouldn't need to make such sermons. But the oh-so-natural response is to berate him, and COMPLETELY IGNORE the ugliness that makes such a sermon necessary - and in effect, CONDONE that ugliness, guaranteeing that it continues ad infinitum. How many cheeks can you turn?

The fake outrage makes me ill. And to see it on an allegedly "progressive" message board makes me vomit.