Nethaway: Rev. Wright rants

WACO, Texas — Barack Obama's unity message is being destroyed by his spiritual adviser.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is doing such a great job undermining Obama's presidential campaign that some people accuse Hillary Clinton of manipulating Obama's former pastor into the spotlight.

Supposedly a Hillary supporter organized the National Press Club event in which Wright refused to back off from blaming the government for attempting to exterminate African-Americans with the AIDS epidemic.

"I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said at the televised National Press Club event.

Wright also stuck by his belief that the United States should be blamed for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The terrorist attacks, he feels, were simply an example of "chickens come home to roost."

"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you," he said.

Although Wright has complained that highly inflammatory portions of his sermons played repeatedly on YouTube were taken out of context, he refused to add context or back away from his damnation of America.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, not God bless America. God damn America, that's in the Bible, for killing innocent people," Wright preached in 2003.

Support for Farrakhan

Wright also stood up for Louis Farrakhan by describing the Nation of Islam leader as "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century." This is the same Farrakhan who denounced Judaism as a "gutter religion."

Obama has excited legions of supporters with a message of unity. Ecstatic Obama supporters have burst into chants declaring that "race doesn't matter."

Wright is doing such a good job destroying Obama's message that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested on ABC's "Good Morning America" that Wright may be deliberately trying to undermine his parishioner's presidential bid.

Obama, who sat in the pews of Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for more than 20 years, has said that he can no more disown Wright than he can disown his white grandmother who occasionally uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes.

Obama does distance himself from some of Wright's comments that offended him and the American people. "He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign," Obama said.

Wright, however, said Obama had to put some distance between himself and Wright's remarks "because he's a politician." By implying that Obama might not mean what he says, Wright hit Obama below belt.

In a speech at the NAACP convention in Detroit, Wright said, "European and European-American children have a left-brained cognitive object-oriented learning style and the entire educational learning system in the United States of America."

By contrast, he said, "African and African-American children have a different way of learning. They are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style. Right brain means creative and intuitive. Subject oriented means they learn from a subject, not an object. They learn from a person."

He also made a point that European and European-Americans have one musical beat and African and African-Americans have another.

Wright's point that the races are different, not deficient, brings up discredited theories of genetic differences among different races.

The American Anthropological Association declared years ago that all human beings are members of the same species, Homo sapiens, and that differentiating species into biologically defined "races" is a meaningless and unscientific way to explain differences and traits.

Obama should disown Wright completely and renew his message of unity. Someday we should hope that chants of "race doesn't matter" will actually be true.

Rowland Nethaway writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald. E-mail: RNethaway AT wacotrib .com.