PrintApril 28, 2008
Reverend Wright's 'Brainy' Theories on Race
Before reading this, I want you to imagine that the words are not being uttered by Obama's controversial preacher Jeremiah Wright but by, let's say, Pat Buchanan:
The bulk of his remarks addressed, however, different groups seeing each other as deficient. He acted out the differences between marching bands at predominantly black and predominantly white colleges. "Africans have a different meter, and Africans have a different tonality," he said. Europeans have seven tones, Africans have five. White people clap differently than black people. "Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style," he said. "They have a different way of learning." And so on.After jokingly mocking the Boston accents of former Presidents John F. and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Wright said, "nobody says to a Kennedy, 'You speak bad English,' only to a black child was that said."
To say that there is a double standard at work when it comes to talking about race is made painfully obvious by Wright's words. Made before a gathering of the NAACP, these words would, if uttered by Pat Buchanan, would have set off a firestorm of protest that may have driven Buchanan from public life. Instead, Wright is lionized as a deep thinker - a scholar who is nationally recognized.
This is nuts. It is bilge no matter who says it. And the fact that Wright apparently can't tell the difference between a Boston accent and the incoherence of a language deficient child in the ghetto is stupid beyond belief.
Yes, but Wright is not an issue in the campaign, right?
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
