The nexus of race and war

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."

Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", 1967   (King was shot dead 40 years ago today.)

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Pastor Jeremiah Wright, sermon, 2001

(For further perspective on preaching "anti-Americanism", read Glenn Greenwald's commentary here.)

Comments

[Craig]

The hugely overblown Jeremiah Wright issue has clearly been ginned up by the right to discredit Obama. Moreover, Obama's speech in Philadelphia, while necessitated by the Wright controversy, could well go down in history as a turning point in race relations in this country. That said, there are clear differences between Wright, who in my mind is a borderline nutcase, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

One obvious difference is that, until a couple of months ago, 99.99% of Americans had never heard of Wright whereas in 1967 MLK was already a household name. Another is that MLK was not the pastor of a candidate for president.

The biggest difference, however, is that MLK never indulged in wild and unfounded accusations or broadside denunciations of entire peoples. MLK never accused South Africa or Israel of "state terrorism" -- or the US government of promoting it -- even though apartheid in South Africa was in full flower in the mid-60s and Israel had just annexed the West Bank. Had AIDS been know in the 1960s, MLK would never have accused the U.S. government of manufacturing the virus to wipe out blacks.

MLK was a transcendant figure in US history. Wright will hardly merit a footnote.

[Terry]

I wasn't trying to equate Wright with King. The post was about the similar media response to the two, the history of which seems to have been forgotten.

That said, both clerics, one far less eloquently than the other, link America's violence abroad with its treatment of the underclass, mainly blacks, at home.