If not anything else, the primaries have taught me just how very little people understand about African-American culture and history, specifically with regard to what many will recognize the very real nature of racism within the United States. It's clear that Americans (Black, White, Hispanic, etc.) recognize American culture on totally different wavelengths, and it's embarrassing that people that call themselves Progressives don't realize this.

Regarding "racial reconciliation" and some perceived notion that Reverend Wright is somehow "divisive, polarizing, and stoking the flames of racial resentment," let's take a look at the brief history of "racial reconciliation" after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively. Oh, what, a period of about 40 years?

With the institution of Affirmative Action, attempts at racially integrating public schools and equalizing funding for public education, one case after another has attempted to roll back any form of progress that America could possibly experience. If I'm not mistaken the Bakke decision was handed down in the 70s (not one full decade after Affirmative Action measures were instituted), and Supreme Court decisions regarding school busing and equalizing funding in public education were handed down as well, and if your attention span is short, it occurred even before then.

White flight occurred with the enactment of Fair Housing regulations, and now, in almost every major city, re gentrification is occurring whereby many inner city residents are being relocated to suburban areas, while the affluent are rebuilding high-price condos, essentially economically limiting the possibility of those same residents that once inhabited these areas to remain in communities that they have known all their lives.

Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, Republicans capitalized on white Southern resentment of the enactment of Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation and instituted a Southern strategy, fictitiously developed a so-called "welfare queen" and continuously railed against Affirmative Action, citing "reverse discrimination" while simultaneously neglecting the 400 years of Affirmative Action in the form of slavery and Jim Crow laws that occurred previously.

Congress decided to enact legislation that would enforce harsher penalties for crack (as opposed to cocaine) offenders, effectively encouraging the scales of justice in the criminal justice system to be imbalanced.

The "War on Drugs" effectively never existed and it has only been replaced by a much more ill-conceived notion of a "War on Terrorism" that only seeks to vilify and demonize a sect of people. It happened with the Japanese with Internment, the Chinese during the Gold Rush, Black Americans since the founding of the United States, and now American citizens that just happen to be Muslims or immigrants (undocumented or otherwise).

Racial reconciliation? Over the last 40 years? Are you serious?

Over the past 40 years, racial reconciliation has been a large smokescreen for people to make themselves feel somewhat vindicated by their past sins, but the larger truth is that very little reconciliation has actually occurred.

Statistics have shown that black men are more likely to gain some form of experience with law enforcement rather than their counterparts. The criminal justice system has become a farce and for some reason, those who commit the same crimes somehow are being sentenced in a different fashion. You may not want to recognize this reality, but it is the TRUTH. If you don't believe me, I suggest that you speak with Sean Bell's fiancee and ask her how it feels to know that the person that was to be her husband was gunned down with 51 bullets unarmed the day of his wedding. You should send a Forget Me Not to Rudy Giuliani and thank him for the precedent that was set with Abner Louima.

The problem is that people have become so immune to the suffering of other people where living in a fictitious existence of racial reconciliation only covers up a much larger issue that very little racial reconciliation has occurred. Once we get beyond that smoke and mirrors show and stop being entertained by the three-ring circus, then maybe we may tackle the monster after all.

You made it. Now, deal with it.

The right wing, of course, will take every opportunity imaginable to speak ill of his wife, his daughters (remember the Chelsea as the White House dog gem from Limbaugh), mention Affirmative Action, talk about taxes, and then bitch and moan at every opportunity imaginable. Remember, being racist, xenophobic pricks is not beneath Republicans. It's been their bread and butter since invoking the Southern Strategy.

They'll drum up this ignorant meme that life was so much better under Bush, ignore the fact that the deficit doubled under his administration, ignore the foreign policy blunders, ignore the continuing trade deficit, ignore the bridges and levees that have fallen (because, Jesus H. Christ, I'll be damned if I'm taxed another dollar) and then work to try to defeat any chance of real progressive legislation being enacted by Congress. Of course, they'll blame it on Democrats, and not on years 2000-2006 where Republicans were raping and pillaging our federal treasury.

Oh, and did I mention taxes. Reverend Wright. The gays. The Mexicans. William Ayers. Abortion. All other forms of non-sensical wedge-issues?

I see the right wing campaigning heavily in "small-town America" and enlist the support of every nutjob imaginable to try to win back Congress. At this point, Hagee and Phelps will be the new Falwell and Dobson.

Then, on the other hand, I see this...

I see an Obama presidency inspiring millions of students (particularly college-aged) to take a part in public service. I see a president that immediately meets with generals in Iraq and convenes a reconciliation conference with the Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds (and even Al-Sadr) and delivers an inspiring speech encouraging these sects to resolve their differences. Merely from looking at his face and name and knowing American History, the United States will be legitimately viewed as a peace-broker and not an imperialist.

I see a president that works to have the Iraqi oil ministry serve as an agent to spawn economic development and growth in Iraq and shows the Iraqi citizens that an investment in their security and freedom is not only economic but political as well.

I see him meeting with the Syrians, the Lebanese, and Fatah, working to ensure that a real two-state solution exists and that we roll back our history of backing Zionism. We support Israel, but we shift our policy to balance the scales for everyone. We roll back the amount of foreign aid delivered to Israel, and we use that same funding to build up a real prosperous Palestinian state, help the Palestinians relocate back to their territory, and they then attempt to maintain some form of peace and tranquility with Israel.

I see Iraq forming as a real democracy, and Pres. Obama giving the message to Maliki and many of the Iraqi administrators that the occupation gig is up and that America will go back to doing the business of America while we work to deliver foreign aid to them and help redeploy our troops (somewhat still within the region) to ensure that total ethnic genocide doesn't break out.

I see a President inspiring new men and women to become members of the Peace Corps and different branches of the military so that our military might returns back to the years where it was used for humanitarian purposes and not for imperialism. I see the US in the Sudan, many refugees in Darfur being granted asylum, relocate to the US and gain an education and become productive Americans.

On the homefront, I see a redirection of focus. I see the campaign against public education stopped in its tracks and I see parents parenting again. I see even the "worst" of our public schools improving their performance by leaps and bounds. I see the US cutting programs that have been ineffective, maintaing the solvency of social security. I see over $150 billion invested in renewable sources of energy (creating new jobs). I see new automobiles manufactured to run on these renewable fuels and the Mid-West and Upper-Midwest (as well as the Rust Belt) bringing back an economic boom to places that have had to endure recession. Detroit will become Motown again and the Big Three will be able to realistically compete again.

I see us returning to the bargaining table with Chavez and providing more trade advantages to the state of Venezuela and we ensure mutual prosperity (while simultaneously gaining respect).

I see a President that begins to shift his foreign policy interests to inlude Africa and understands the possibility of opening Africa to real trade deals and economic development. I see a President that promotes the idea of producing renewable fuels worldwide, balancing oil dependence with a larger reliance on alternative fuels.

I see so much more. I guess this will do for now.

So, today I decide to log on to DU because I wanted to catch up on the latest manufactured outrage, and behold, there's something new. The only problem is that the "new" isn't really new, and it should be common knowledge for anyone who halfway pays attention to economic patterns and trends and what has happened over the course of the last 25 years.

I was raised in small-town America in the South in a community with a tax-base primarily supported by people working in marine and fisheries, oil refineries, textiles. You name it, the blue collar worker was there to work the job. Small businesses (the local pharmacy, convenience store, a few small banks and small mom-and-pop clothing retailers were there) and you felt some sense of security and you held a belief that the American Dream was possible, even in what is often a small part of America often forgotten. You know small town America -- little league baseball games, Friday night football games, cotton candy and the county fairs, etc. Everything America was intended to be in a little encapsulated space.

Small-town America felt the pinch of Reagan economics and somehow managed to "get by" enough to endure the savings and loan crisis and the ensuing government bail-outs and waited for the day where a man like William Jefferson Clinton would save America from itself, right? After all, something just had to be done about the welfare queens driving off in their Caddy's right?

Wrong.

In my small-town America, Wal-Mart eventually invaded, and everything that I had known about my piece of small-town America was destroyed. NAFTA ushered in a period in which a small textile plant that employed workers at $4.25 an hour with minimal benefits (in the 80s) decided to ship its jobs to Mexico, and my small-town lost half of its population. People felt the pinch in their pockets, and couldn't afford the very modest lives that they'd built for themselves.

Thanks to upward mobility and that chemical engineering degree and a little Affirmative Action, our family was able to thrive, while watching small-town America collapse into economic decay.

Horrible.

This all tells me that yes, people are bitter, angry and frustrated, and they certainly shouldn't be pandered to by multi-millionaires that vote for and "laugh away" back-door trade deals and bankruptcy bills that keep small-town America in its current condition while simultaneously shipping GHB toys to its children, only to make sure that they just may have enough money to buy milk at $4 a gallon.

Honesty. Try it. It feels good. Even better from someone wanting to be YOUR president.

Let me preface this post by saying that yes, I am a Barack Obama supporter, and no, his affiliation with Rev. Wright won't deter my support for Senator Obama. Why? I'm smart enough to separate the ideology of his pastor from Barack's personal beliefs.

Having said that, I must say that if these videos and the ensuing spin work so easily on some of the people posting in this forum who claim to be Progressives, then it would almost guarantee a GOP victory in November. The larger story here is not the delivery of Rev. Wright's speeches, but the history of political activism within the Black Church (which came into its own existence as a direct result of several factors which I'll get into a little later) and how religion has almost engulfed the public sphere so much so that it has become unbearable.

The history of black religious and political activism is nothing new, and I understand how it surprises those who really don't understand the role of political evangelism how it came about. If you consider that any attempt at assembly by former slaves was deemed illegal and met with extreme retribution, you understand the sacrifice (both politically and economically) that former slaves endured during Reconstruction and how the Black Church (and the operative word here is Black) helped to build educational and religious institutions to both educate and Christianize former slaves in an effort to eventually realize American Independence.
HBCUs just didn’t spring up without funding, and many slaves (post-Reconstruction) used their collective efforts to pool their very marginal economic resources to build churches (that often were destroyed).

The operative word is Black because these institutions were forced to remain independent of their white counterparts, which is why the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and other predominantly black Protestant denominations were formed. Many people conveniently neglect the fact that many slaves while they were being Christianized could not even sit on the same pews as their masters.

Many of the people who are using snippets of sermons to use some “guilt by association” reasoning to attribute the statements made by Sen. Obama’s pastor as if they were his own are totally neglecting the history of service (as a United States Marine) that Rev. Wright has provided to the same country he “damns” and the invaluable services he provides to the community within which his church is located. I’d venture that many of the people who are feigning outrage have probably never visited one predominantly African American Protestant church in their lives.

Within these same clips, ironically there is no mention of the litany of ministries within the same church that address societal mores, but we are supposed to assume that 30 years of ministry in this same church can be condensed into two minute video clips which (if you really analyze the statements that have been made) haven’t necessarily been addressed critically?

Has Hillary Clinton ever been called a (insert expletive here)? There’s a large chance that she hasn’t.

Has the federal government invented AIDS? Well, it all depends upon whether or not you want to believe in the benevolence of government. The Tuskegee Experiment did happen.

Is the United States government the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons as an arsenal of its military force? Hiroshima and Nagasaki did happen.

Has the United States government consistently pursued a foreign policy that has only fueled the flames of resentment abroad? The Iraq War should answer this question. Iran-Contra should answer this question. Providing weapons to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War (there are some photos of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Hussein) should answer this question. Attempting to strong-arm Hugo Chavez because he wants to utilize resources located within his own country for the benefit of the people of Venezuela should answer this question…

… yet we continue to somehow believe that God should continue to bless America because somehow this country is without fault for many of the things that it has done to its own citizens and people abroad?

I’ll also say that speaking out against a government that has pursued agendas that one may not necessarily agree with doesn’t make you un-American. It’s the very definition of American, and the last time I checked, the First Amendment was still a part of the United States Constitution. Remember, it was black ministers who organized via the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (along with white priests, ministers, members of the clergy, etc.) who were vilified as communists and rabble-rousers because they wanted America to live up to its promise of providing the blessings of liberty to all of its citizens (some who had previously been thought of as 3/5 of a human being).

The truth is, we don’t all share the same experiences in this country, but that shouldn’t separate us from understanding the benign neglect in realizing that yes, even as passionate as patriotic as we are to this country, America is still not without fault. For this country to build and to truly progress, we have to understand the reality of our past to reshape this country so that we can have a better future.

If we are going to start going on witch hunts to destroy people who have served this country just because we haven’t quite come to grips with the horrid nature of racism and discrimination that has and currently exists and has only morphed into new forms in this country and then deny that it exists because it helps us remain in our comfort zones and helps us neglect entitlement issues that some (not all) of us face, then I must say, the Democratic Party isn’t as Progressive as I once thought.