An atheist's view: White Ignorance, Wright's Narcissism

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: April 29, 2008
White Ignorance, Wright's Narcissism
Susan Jacoby

I was not present at the National Press Club when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright spoke on Monday, but I have read the full text of his remarks--and I can recognize an egomaniac, black or white, when I read one. For Wright to say that an attack on him is an attack on the entire black church is utterly ridiculous, and it plays in the mainstream white press only because so many white journalists--and I mean both liberal and conservative journalists--are so ignorant about African-American religion that they think of it as a monolith. Wright represents the "black church" in the same sense that Rod Parsley, John McCain's wacko spiritual adviser, represents the "white church."

I don't know which white commentators have been stupider about Wright. On the right, many are gleeful about Wright's emergence and try to tie Obama to his every utterance. On the left, a number of liberal members of the punditocracy, oozing patronizing superiority, have tried to portray Wright as a misunderstood member of a black church rooted in a historic tradition of resistance to slavery and discrimination. Tell it to Martin Luther King, whose steps and philosophy Wright isn't fit to walk in or claim.

Any white person who ever sat in pews in black churches in the South during the civil rights movement, or anyone who has, more recently, taken the trouble to hear the weekly sermons at the Reverend Calvin Butts's Abyssinian Baptist Church or at Mother Zion in Harlem, has heard the voices of black pastors who speak to common dreams rather than grievances. There are many black ministers across the nation, for example, who have attacked the notion that the U.S government in particular, and white people in general, are responsible for spreading AIDS in the black community. They have spoken about drug use, and about black men who are ashamed of their homosexuality and have unprotected sex on the "down low," as vectors of AIDS. We're not hearing about those black ministers, because Wright, and his connection with Obama, are the whole story. We're also not hearing about black churches, in the plural, because the white press doesn't have a long list of black ministers in its collective Rolodex....

On Wright's part, what is clearly playing out is an Oedipal drama in reverse....He is Moses saying to Joshua, "I'm not going to see the Promised Land, and you aren't either."

As an atheist, I would also like to point out that all of the pontificating from white pundits about the role of religion in the black community ignores the fact that religion was also, at one time, used by blacks to keep other blacks subservient and to placate white supremacists. (See W.E.B. DuBois, whose views about the Reverend Wright I would give up my fixed mortgage rate to hear.) Wright is being taken seriously, by blacks and whites, precisely because he is a representative of religion. And that's a tragedy. If he were a black political scientist, he would never have made the front page in the first place. He would never have been invited to address the National Press Club. I can't offer a better example of the unfitness of religion to serve as a guide to public policy....

(Susan Jacoby is the author of The Age of American Unreason.")

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2008/04/white_ignorance_wrights_narcis.html

[rpannier]

1. Rec

You always seem to find the most interesting articles.

Thanks for sharing.

Keep it up.
It is appreciated by this DUer

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Thank you, rpannier!

:)

[genna]

3. Monolith NO. Liberation theology YES.

I agree with you about what the critics said the black church is. They don't know what they are talking about when it comes to religion and black people.

However, the media's lack of awareness or its inability to explain the nuisance to its reader is NOTHING NEW. As news rooms decline, the diversity of staff media have becomes OBVIOUS.

I have no idea what if anything useful comes from saying a group of people all adhere to one set of beliefs whether it is the media critic or it is one minister in one conference of churches (the United Church of Christ). Just to be fair, I didn't feel too good about Obama saying his grandmother was a TYPICAL white person.

Now what you go on to say about liberation theology simplifies a set of beliefs. If you don't think Wright worthy to carry MLK Jr.'s mantle, fine. But don't dredge up Reverend Calvin Butts's Abyssinian Baptist Church or at Mother Zion in Harlem thinking you have said something serious about liberation theology. New York does not define nor does it typify what the black Christian experience is, has been, or will be.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Thanks for your thought-provoking post, genna.

Just to be clear, though, you're addressing the writer Susan Jacoby, and not me as the poster of the WP piece.