The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, was laid to rest on August 31, 2018.  Her funeral was an eight-hour star-studded event that featured many recording artist and prominent speakers.  Seated in the front row, behind the pulpit, were former president Bill Clinton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan.  Several other black pastors were in attendance as well.  For some unknown reason, Farrakhan was the only one on the stage who did not speak.

The funeral quickly turned into a circus when race-baiters Al Sharpton and Michael Eric Dyson took political shots at President Trump during their remarks.  Dyson even took a swipe at former president Obama, claiming that he and former first lady Michelle Obama didn't make it to Aretha's funeral because it was "too black," insinuating that they didn't want to be in the presence of so many black people.  In addition, Bishop Charles H. Ellis III gave a shout-out to Rep. Maxine Waters, who was sitting with the congregation.  She responded with a greeting from the Black Panther movie, standing up with her arms crossed in front of her chest.  While she was standing, the bishop instructed the congregation to tell Rep. Waters in a loud chant, "We got your back."  Bishop Ellis also inappropriately groped singer Ariana Grande in front of everyone standing behind the pulpit, which read: "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism."

It was after waiting nearly seven hours that Pastor Jasper Williams finally got up to eulogize Aretha – and that's when the trouble began.  In his remarks, Pastor Williams did what I call a Bill Cosby "pancake II speech," where here criticized the black community.  In his speech, he made comments about the bogus Black Lives Matter movement and single mothers.  He said single mothers are incapable of raising young boys to be men.  He also said black lives really don't matter due to the high rate of black-on-black murders.

That infuriated the race-baiting liberals.  There was such an outcry that Rev. Williams was forced to hold a press conference to defend his comments.  He made the following comments to push back against the attacks:

The way that you are internalizing that they felt is incorrect.  I did not mean they are unable to raise their children.  I am talking about many single women struggling to raise their children.  And in the black community, there is no mentoring for the children and that when a boy is there, for example, and when 70 percent of our households are headed by our precious women.  And as precious, beautiful and proud as they are, they cannot teach a boy how to be a man.

So one of the ails and ills we have in the African-American community is that too many of our homes are headed by women without men in the house.  Now, it's been too many women who have raised excellent men.  Jesse Jackson, one of my dearest friends, was raised by a single mom.  But the women need help in their homes and our race needs to become sensitive to that.

Rev. Williams committed the same sin as the once vaunted (now disgraced) Bill Cosby: he placed the blame for the problems in the black community squarely on the shoulders of black Americans.  Terrell Jermaine Starr, a writer for The Root, was not having any of that.  He shifted the blame for black single motherhood and black-on-black crime right back on white America:

The problem with Williams' message is that it perpetuates the dangerous myth of the missing black father without much-needed context on how white supremacy has systematically worked to destroy black families.  Mass incarceration plays a huge role in the "missing black dad," something Williams' black respectability politics doesn't mention.

Williams' eulogy reeks of the conservative black respectability politics that have long been connected to many black churches and will not go away anytime soon.  That said, such ideological approaches are dangerous and must be checked.  Hopefully, the pushback Williams is getting will make him and others think a bit more deeply about the white supremacy that is harming the black families that they claim they want to keep together.

What I find incredible about the speakers at Aretha's funeral is that the only speaker who offended people and had to defend his comments was the one who spoke the truth.

Contact the author at patdickson@earthlink.net.  Follow on Twitter at @Patrici15767099 and YouTube.