The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Red and Yellow, Black and Blue

3.24.08 @ 12:01AM

NOT BRAIN SURGERY
Re: Tom Bethell's Obama and His Minister:

Tom Bethell asks about the current Obama position on racial preferences. He opposed the Michigan referendum which outlawed same. His statement is the usual rap which of course never deals with the subject of what sucker gets the affirmative action neurosurgeon.
-- James Jackson
Santa Cruz, California

I appreciate the fact that we live in a country where you can write and distribute your comments on the Wright/Obama matter and be paid for doing it. It makes me happy to be an American.

And, of course, I am free to tell you that your column is mainly baloney of the first order. You cannot know the black experience or understand the historic fact that we were founded as a free/slave nation and still compose such nonsense. Multiply your unhappiness with racial preferences by several fold and you begin to approach the level of generations-long anguish which people of Wright's generation have known. To deny this is to live in a fairy land of comfortable facts and ordinary grievances.

I know it's your job to attack liberals, and I expect that you'll continue to do so as long as others read what you write. Fine. Do it. But recognize that there are millions of citizens who know that your experience of racism is still at the kindergarten level. In essence, you're a fake.
-- Charles Cureton

There was nothing inadequate about Mr. Obama's race speech. It got your full attention and acknowledged your discomfort with affirmative action. It held up a mirror to our discomfort with race in America, and challenged us to work together to solve the actual problems which threaten our lives, our children's lives, and the continued progress of the human race, which brings me to question the good news you speak about, how word travels so fast on the internet.

Yes, Reverend Wright's malicious words, taken out of context and apparently not reflective of the man himself, will travel cyberspace until the election is over, or until Obama is out of it. And many swing voters may be impacted by it, just as voters in Virginia were impacted by Mr. Macaca.

However, I have a prediction for you. Every hateful word spoken against racial equality, or even implied, by every conservative, by every friend of McCain, will also find its way to You Tube. Mr. McCain has visited Bob Jones University. His political friends have also visited. Who knows what has been said. Many many hateful things, of this we can be certain. For every Reverend Wright, there are a dozen George Allens, and "Macaca" will continue to resonate.

Be careful what you wish for. It will probably bite you in the [rear].
-- Michael Strauss

I'm sure you understand that in this current PC atmosphere you will labeled a racist. That of course is the natural answer to the truth about race in America.

Your article is excellent, yet incomplete, the larger problem for Sen. Obama is the nature of the church and congregation of Wright (Reverend and Mr. are terms of honor). In Michael Medved's "Three Big Problems with Barack's Speech," the key requirements of church membership and the admonishment that the church was/is Afrocentric and grievance driven and Africa not America was to be venerated, in this light Wright's preachings' were/are in keeping with that church's stated doctrine. As congregant, of long standing, Sen. Obama was honor bound not only to hear Wright's message but take it to heart or get out.

Wright has been exposed and his rants should continue to be on display, unless and until he recants, repents and reforms (that would be in public). The church/congregation that cheered racist anti-American rants must do the same also in public. Sen. Obama must publicly recant, repent, and reform to keep true Americans; Black and White, Brown and Yellow, Red and all mixtures thereof, from rejecting him. Of course, if he did that his candidacy would be over.

This issue has legs and will follow Sen. Obama forever. The particular vision from his speech that will haunt him is that of him throwing his grandmother under the bus (figuratively) to protect a racist anti-American.

The only fault I could have with your piece is it didn't go the distance. But, then, I understand time and space.

See the truth, speak the truth.
-- Robert Schuman
Jenkins, Missouri

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