He didn't justify the comments. Did you listen to it? Did you read it?
Quote:
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity...
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profoundly distorted view of America? The remarks were
not only wrong but divisive?
Now he DID put them in a context, which is a very different thing. He also didn't call his grandmother a racist - he said she would occasionally use a slur or a stereotype, but again, that's a very different thing.
Now you're right, he could quit the church, but that wouldn't avoid the fact that he would be forced to address the issue.
*EDIT* Also, this:
Quote:
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
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The Reverend's mistakes? His failures to understand? We know that America can change, that our society is not static? Holy crap, the man is spitting FIRE. My whiteness is feeling the burn.