Link Banana

Michael Eric Dyson makes some interesting points in this LA Times Op-Ed. Pointing to some of Dr. King’s controversial statements made after 1965 to mostly black audiences, he says that Revered Wright is clearly a descendent of King’s split opinion on race.

Perhaps nothing might surprise — or shock — white Americans more than to discover that King said in 1967: “I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously.” In a sermon to his congregation in 1968, King openly questioned whether blacks should celebrate the nation’s 1976 bicentennial. “You know why?” King asked. “Because it [the Declaration of Independence] has never had any real meaning in terms of implementation in our lives.” 

Making it through Kelefa Sanneh long New Yorker piece about visiting Trinity United Church of Christ did nothing to increase my affinity for the publication, but he did make an interesting point.

Across the street from Trinity’s main entrance is a small building with a sign that says, “St. Matthew Gordon AME Zion.” Its presence, for anyone who notices it, is a reminder of the scrappy little church that Trinity used to be, and of the scrappy little churches all over the city, each harboring dreams of fruitful multiplication. For Wright, black Chicago’s highly competitive religious market was a challenge and a spur; for a different preacher, in a different era, it could be a threat. The media frenzy has obscured, and postponed, the real test facing the church. Bad press does no real harm to a church that relishes an air of opposition, and that relies on cheerful givers, not on mainstream sponsors. (On the contrary, Moss told NPR, the controversy “has brought the entire church together.”) But the next challenge will become increasingly clear. After thirty-six years with Wright at the helm, an idiosyncratic megachurch is trying to change its leadership without changing its identity. Once Wright’s moment in the media spotlight is over, his church will have to figure out how to get along without him.

Apologies to those — including Mr. Obama’s campaign — already tired of hearing about it, but Dan Schnur had something interesting to say about Barack Obama’s now-everywhere speech.

It was another conciliator from a distant era whose advice was perhaps most useful as Barack Obama prepared to explain his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “If a problem cannot be solved,” Dwight Eisenhower once said. “Enlarge it.”

Speaking of the Obama speech… Though I’ve never been as down on Mike Huckabee as most, I was never a fan. And then he says something like this:

As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!” I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

(via Donklephant, through Daily Kos)