Watching the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright gesticulate like a peacock and spew out ignorance, hatred, and bitterness towards America last week, absolutely inspired my religious faith (View Wright’s sermon).
Once Wright pointed out that he was “still in Bible country,” I began to “love the hell out of” rich, white people just as much as Wright does.
How could so many people not understand that white people have caused all the world’s problems? As Wright pointed out to his congregation, the Bible says it’s so. I’m not sure what verse actually says that, but I’m now betting that rich, white people are responsible for my biblical ignorance.
Regardless, I’m rejoicing because I have prayed for forgiveness that God made me white, not Wright. I’m also praying for all the people Reverend Wright identified as “Negroes who just don’t get it.” I hope that Wright will change and that those “Negroes” won’t make him “sick” anymore.
I don’t know about you, but I feel liberated now that I realize that my own stupid decisions and selfish actions are no longer my fault. Now that I won’t have to accept responsibility for my thoughts, my words, or my decisions, I am thanking God for creating rich, white people for me to blame all my problems on. I’m also thanking God for justifying my sin whenever I allow myself to think something I shouldn’t about other people -- just as Reverend Wright has taught me to do.
Praise the Lord that I’m not like rich, white Hillary -- I actually know what it’s like to have “a cab whiz by me.” But I didn’t realize, until last week though, that my not being white enough was probably the reason I was shunned. Thanks to Reverend Wright, now I understand that rich, white people were responsible for those non-white cab drivers’ refusing to pick me up.
I also realize now that rich, white people are responsible for poor children growing up in single-parent families. I used to think that the irresponsible sexual behavior and lack of commitment between the children’s parents were responsible. But I guarantee these parents feel a lot better knowing their fornication is someone else’s fault. Thanks to the Wright kind of reverend, I now have a totally new respect for sexually immoral people – unless they are rich and white, of course.
Despite the conflicting medical evidence, I now know too that AIDS and drug abuse are rich, white people’s fault. Individual’s who choose to abuse drugs and engage in deviant sexual behavior are merely victims driven to bad decisions by rich, white people. Certainly being a victim of evil people feels better than thinking of one’s self as just a pathetic drug addict or a promiscuous sexual deviant. “Oh, I am so glad” that Reverend Wright worked “twice as hard…to get a passing grade” and that he knows he is “smarter than that C-student sitting in the White House.” Otherwise, I would have never known the truth about drugs and AIDS.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was Tuesday concerning Obama and Wright’s twenty-year relationship. Obama said, “Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms.” Praise the Lord for prepositional phrases like “in my conversations with him.”
When Obama said, “I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community,” I was glad Obama didn’t actually mean, “If I disowned Reverend Wright because he’s a racist, I would instantly become one of those ‘Negroes who just don’t get it.’”
I finally swooned (actually, I cringed) at Obama’s hopeful audacity when he eloquently humiliated his white grandmother for political gain because “she once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion [had] uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made [Obama] cringe.”
I haven’t figured out, however, how rich, white people caused Obama’s father to abandon his responsibilities as a dad and a husband – thereby forcing someone else to provide for and care for his child. Perhaps Mr. Obama strategically deserted his family so Reverend Wright could preach that Barack “fits the mold” of a poor, black man -- even though Obama was raised by his generous and loving white grandparents.
More importantly, I’m just grateful that Barack refocused our country on “the real culprits” related to racial hostilities. Obama targeted “a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed,” as well as “economic policies that favor the few over the many.” Yes, Obama, if America’s evil corporations and economic policies were not preoccupied with causing greater suffering in the world, perhaps they could find time to develop medications to treat AIDS and continuously improve technology to better our lives.
Obama has reminded all of us that we have a choice. We can examine disturbing evidence in order to draw the right conclusions. Or we can simply ignore it and have the audacity to hope it just goes away.
(Lee Culpepper is a former Marine and high school English teacher. Currently, he is woking to complete his first book, Alone and Unafraid: One Marine's Counterattack Inside the Walls of Public Education. Vist Lee's website at http://www.leeculpepper.com.)
