“In 1957, Doubleday released Richard Wright’s White Man Listen. In it, he wrote “…the greatest aid that any white Westerner can give Africa is by becoming a missionary right in the heart of the Western world, explaining to his own people what they have done to Africa.”
Nobody expects the media to educate the public about Africa. The current coverage is consistent with the images found in the Tarzan movies. It’s not going to change. I’ll settle for missionary work among the American public. Free them from entrapment by the corporate media, which are causing their brain cells to atrophy. Teach them the other points of views that are smothered by the noise, and trivialized on You Tube. Then maybe they’ll understand where the crazy Rev. Wright is coming from…”
Controversial but well argued piece by Ishmael Reed at Counterpunch, on the continuing media “scandal” about Obama’s tough-talking preacher man. Reed is a”racialist” by all accounts, but while race is central in media (and public) perception, it isn’t clear to me that making it the centerpiece of any campaign makes sense….
Lila, I read your book with Bill Bonner and decided to check out and bookmark your blog here, but after reading this leftist garbage about White guilt and a nice little link to a communist website, I will immediately unbookmark this page and never buy any of your books again.
I didn’t know you were a leftist.
I thought you were smarter than that.
Really, really disappointing.
Hi Phil –
I link to a number of sites…..I have linked to articles by neoconservative Zionists and to conservative racialists (John Derbyshire). I am neither. I like arguments that are unafraid to go where the logic takes them – whether left or right.
I think ( not that I especially have read much about it..it bores me) the Wright business is overblown. If you know liberation theology and if you know the history of the black and evangelical church, you will see that what he said is not only not that exceptional but rather characteristic of the hellfire and damnation style of that preaching…..inflected with black racialist (not racist) feeling. I am no more shocked by it than by expressions of white nationalist resentment..I understand where he is coming from. It does not make me like Obama’s campaign any less or more because I find Obama’s positions economically leftist and essentially more of the same…
People don’t all react to race alike. Blacks feel differently and whites feel differently. White guilt, white backlash, black rage, black grievance…all different things that can’t be equated but must be understood sympathetically….I am an Asian immigrant who doesn’t always feel the need or right to comment directly on race issues here..so I let those who feel it most strongly speak for themselves.
But I am not a leftist at all by any definition of the term (I am for limited government on all counts, welfare to warfare, against affirmative action in almost all cases, against reparations based on group history, for free markets and against managed trade, for civil liberties)
My intellectual forebears are Burke, Chesterton, Barfield…much Catholic writing…
….on the other hand, I also don’t think the right has a monopoly on intelligence and have profited from reading viewpoints from all sides.
Making any one opinion or viewpoint on a topic so complex as race the touchstone of how you define a person is the Stalinist approach to thinking. It is, if we have to put a label on it, more characteristic of the left than of the right…which is why I am a person of the right, by temperament and self-definition.
I welcome you to check out my posts on race and ideology. See what you think when you’ve actually taken the time to understood where I am coming from.
And thanks for troubling to write.
I appreciate it.
Lila
<p>And here are two links on the subject of race on the blog:</p>
http://mindbodypolitic.org/?p=204 (a controversial discussion about racism versus racialist with white nationalists)
<p>http://mindbodypolitic.org/?p=188</p>
I don’t see why if it’s ok for libertarians to treat white nationalists and separatists seriously, they can’t also read black separatists (not in the literal sense, since I don’t know if Wright is one except by association with Farrkhan)…without having a hissy fit
A reply from email:
Re: A rightist by most definitions?
From: Phil (veritas81aequitas@yahoo.com)
Sent: Sat 4/12/08 7:02 PM
To: Lila Rajiva
Thank you for responding, Lila. I guess I deserve being labeled a ‘Stalinist’ for my rash statement on your blog. It was not an intelligent, thought out remark on my part. My apologies.