By Ian Jobling • 5/2/08
Yesterday, Wall Street Journal Online pundit James Taranto declared that Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell’s egregious defense of Jeremiah Wright did not represent the views of American blacks. Citing a single article in the Los Angeles Times that claimed most black pastors in that city disagreed with Wright, Taranto concluded that Wright was wrong to pose as the spokesman of the black church. Taranto also criticized the media for failing to publicize the black church’s repudiation of Wright’s slanders of white America. Taranto’s remarks are consistent with the general mainstream conservative line on race: if “race hustlers” like Wright, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson went away, racial resentment would die out and blacks would all become good Republicans, indignant over high taxes, affirmative action, and trade barriers. Taranto, like his fellow conservatives, has fallen prey to wishful thinking, however. The weight of the evidence shows that a large majority of black pastors side with Wright and resent criticism of him. On March 29, at the Summit of the Black Church Conference, 20 black pastors and religious scholars held a press conference to defend Wright. As one of the speakers said, Wright was only “guilty of loving the United States enough to tell the truth.”
The San Francisco Chronicle reported in March that Rev. Amos Brown, pastor of the Third Baptist Church, and many of his congregants “wonder exactly what the controversy [over Jeremiah Wright] is all about.”
Wright’s sermons are no different than sermons that get delivered every weekend in black churches around the country, said Gordon Greenwood, a lawyer who attends the Western Addition-area church. “And it’s not just churches,” Greenwood said. “You could walk into a black barber shop or beauty shop and this is being talked about all day.”
The Memphis Commercial Appeal interviewed five black pastors in that city who all defended Wright. As one of them said:
What Rev. Wright said was the truth — ugly truth. The truth of America’s history as it relates to African-Americans is ugly.
Byron York of National Review Online interviewed several black notables who attended Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia, and all of them were on Wright’s side. As one Rev. Alyn Waller said:
While it may be divisive to talk about 9/11 as chickens coming home to roost, what was really being said there is that America cannot believe that our hands are totally innocent in worldwide violence. So at the core of his arguments, I think there is a truth.
At the NAACP dinner in Detroit where Wright spoke on Sunday night, Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the local NAACP chapter, called Wright an “innovator and sustainer of the word of God” and the “hottest brother in America right now — outside of Barack Obama.”
Besides, most of the criticism directed against Wright in the article that Taranto cites in his vindication of black pastors is quite weak. Indeed, most of the Los Angeles pastors are angry at Wright not so much because he slandered whites, but because he had hurt Obama’s chances of becoming president. As the article says:
But the biggest concern Tuesday among local black religious leaders — and across a wide swath of black Los Angeles — was not about Wright’s words per se but about their impact on Obama’s historic campaign.
So most of the pastors are not worried about whites at all. They only blame Wright for harming blacks’ interests.
In short then, Taranto’s criticism of Mary Mitchell’s racial narcissism also applies to the black church generally, no matter how much he wants to think otherwise
Wright is black, black is right, white is wrong. Never mind that Wright’s claim is false, or that propagating such lies may encourage the spread of HIV among blacks. The color of the speaker’s skin matters more than the truth of his words.
When will conservatives confront the heart of blackness?