I think both Michael Crowley and Amy Holmes have half a point.
Crowley isn't wrong that the sense of alienation from white America
felt by Jeremiah Wright and his congregants is shared by many black
Americans outside Trinity United Church of Christ, many of them
middle-class or better. Holmes is right that many blacks, including
many black Republicans, don't feel this alienation. But I'm not
sure that Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, as much as I, white W.
James Antle III, admire them, are representative of majority black
opinion. There are many African Americans closer to the black
mainstream who also reject Wright's views, but I'm not sure the
best way to draw them out is through an appeal to the authority of
Michael Steele.
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