Bill Moyers interviewed Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor at Barack Obama’s church. The very interesting interview is in two parts. The interview ranges from Jeremiah Wright’s background, to Black Liberation Theology, to Wright’s reaction to Obama’s speech in Philadelphia.
REVEREND WRIGHT: Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I’m through now. But let me leave you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate – the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!
That is a fuller snippet of the favorite single from Wright’s Greatest Hits collection. In the interview, he expounds on why his quote created such a firestorm. I think he overlooks that most of the airings of that clip included only a loop of: “No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America!” <cut to> “America’s chickens”…{and twirl}…”are coming home to roost!” [FIN]. Many would hate him even more if they heard the fuller quote.
REVEREND WRIGHT: I think I come at that as a historian of religion. That we are miseducated as a people. Or because we’re miseducated, you end up with the majority of the people not wanting to hear the truth. Because they would rather cling to what they are taught. James Washington, now a deceased church historian, says that after every revolution, the winners of that revolution write down what the revolution was about so that their children can learn it, whether it’s true or not. They don’t learn anything at all about the Arawak, they don’t learn anything at all about the Seminole, the Cheek-Trail of Tears, the Cherokee. They don’t learn anything. No, they don’t learn that. What they learn is 1776, Crispus Attucks was the one black guy in there. Fight against the British, the- terrible. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal while we’re holding slaves.” No, keep that part out. They learn that. And they cling to that. And when you start trying to show them you only got a piece of the story, and lemme show you the rest of the story, you run into vitriolic hatred because you’re desecrating our myth. You’re desecrating what we hold sacred. And what you’re holding sacred is a miseducational system that has not taught you the truth.
A few times through the interview Rev. Wright lays the blame for many of the the failures of America to fulfill its promise on the educational system. With kids in schools that by many measures are very good, I agree there is something basic wrong in the educational system. Starting with the determined attempt to assume responsibility for the intellectual development of the children they are entrusted with.
BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you that millions Americans, according to polls, still think Barack Obama is a Muslim?
REVEREND WRIGHT: It says to me that corporate media and miseducation or misinformation or disinformation, I think we started calling it during the Nixon years, still reigns supreme. Thirty some percent of Americans still think there are weapons of mass destruction. That you tell a lie long enough that people start believing it….
Overall, the interview was informative and Wright is an interesting character. After watching the video, I expect Reverend Wright will be able to salvage his reputation and move on to a more interesting retirement than he otherwise might have had he not become a political pawn. Or maybe Americans prefer Bill Cosby’s liberation theology.
There is an open thread for comments on Moyer’s site. It is fairly civilized considering the topic.
politics &religion
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dan @
26 Apr 2008 13:14
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