Wright is Right

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is right. Don't be mad at him for speaking aloud what many Blacks (including myself) often think about whites and our situation in America. Lots of voters apparently didn't like what had to say. The truth hurts sometimes.

Many white people actually think we have achieved equality. That sentiment is as asinine as the notion that women aren't treated as the sex class, regulated to second tier status. So anytime a Black person reminds the nation of our sordid past and how it has affected our present and will affect our future, he or she is called "stupid" or stuck in a "time warp".

And this is where I have a problem with Senator Obama. In an effort to conduct damage control and prevent white supporters from feeling hurt or attacked, he pushes away the man who married him and baptized his daughters. That is what keeping real gets you sometimes. In his effort to be a Black man in the White House, he sounds like a fucking apologist.

"Aww shucks, massa, he don't mean not nothin he say. Dat Reverund done gone crazy. Hes sorry. I iz sorry."

His "let's move beyond racial divisions" rhetoric makes me want to vomit. Obama wears his race like I wear a coat. I eat, sleep and breathe Black Woman every fucking day of my life. I am so aware of the contradictory duality that my invisibility and my subjection to white scrutiny that its laughable (in that padded room sorta way) when I hear mulatto men such as Senator Obama talk about moving past history and look ahead...to what? To a time and place where white guilt doesn't exist?

Never.

Reconciliation is a long time coming. Ask the South Africans. Ask the Bosnians and the Serbs and the Tibetans. Ask the Incas and the Mayas and the First Peoples of North America.

The consequences of white oppression and dominance can be felt the world over. There is no excusing that. There are corporations and family fortunes flourishing today that were built on the backs of Black slaves. In my mother's lifetime she couldn't use the same water fountain as a white person. In her lifetime, she went to segregated schools. I graduated from a high school that less than 40 years ago had race riots because the white people in that neighborhood didn't want Blacks there. I know this because a woman who taught my freshman English class was one of those unwanted Blacks.

The prison system is overflowing with Blacks. Black girls and women are under served in the health system, but have the highest rates of STIs and HIV. Everything from the mortgage crisis to natural disasters to fucking digital television conversion affect Blacks at higher rates than whites.

You have got to be fucking kidding me when you tell me that race is rhetoric and that me need to move on. You are telling me to walk away from the very thing that has shaped my existence (good and bad) from day fucking one.

Rev. Wright doesn't speak for everyone, but he is certainly speaking the truth.