By Andrew L. Jaffee

Try as he may, Barack Obama has not separated himself from his controversial pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, whom he calls an “uncle.” Obama has been too weak and indecisive in chiding Wright; he also has waited too long to censure his “uncle.” Obama’s claims that he didn’t know about Wright’s offensive beliefs are ridiculous. Obama has been attending Wright’s church for 20 years. All I can conclude is that: 1) Obama agrees with Wright’s beliefs, 2) Obama doesn’t object to Wright’s beliefs, and/or 3) it was politically expedient for Obama to keep quiet about Wright only until recently, when the public found out what has been going on. After digesting Rev. Wright’s latest offensive outburst, it seems that the pastor actually supports the notion of “separate but equal” (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896), which is confusing and ludicrous, as it goes against the basic tenets of the whole civil rights movement. Here’s Wright from his speech to the NAACP on Sunday:

… Turn to your neighbor and say different does not mean deficient. It simply means different. …

African and African-American children have a different way of learning. …

They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive. Subject oriented means they learn from a subject, not an object. They learn from a person. Some of you are old enough, I see your hair color, to remember when the NAACP won that tremendous desegregation case back in 1954 and when the schools were desegregated. They were never integrated. When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn’t stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them.

Because they learn from a subject, not from an object. Tell me a story. They have a different way of learning. Those same children who have difficulty reading from an object and who are labeled EMH, DMH and ADD. Those children can say every word from every song on every hip hop radio station half of who’s words the average adult here tonight cannot understand. …

Wright goes on and on about how “different” black children are from white children, but proposes absolutely no “solution” to this supposed “difference,” except for saying, “We can make the change if we try. We will make a change if we try. A change is going to come.”

What change? Is he saying that all black children are capable of is climbing up the classroom walls or “say[ing] every word from every song on every hip hop radio station?” What is he proposing, separate teachers and classrooms for black and white children?

That’s just condescending and racist towards his own people. The Wall Street Journal sums Wright’s “beliefs” up:

… Mr. Wright proudly propounded the racist contention that blacks have inherently different “learning styles,” correctly citing as authority for this view Janice Hale of Wayne State University. Pursuing a Ph.D. by logging long hours in the dusty stacks of a library, Mr. Wright announced, is “white.” Blacks, by contrast, cannot sit still in class or learn from quiet study, and they have difficulty learning from “objects” — books, for example — but instead learn from “subjects,” such as rap lyrics on the radio. These differences are neurological, according to Ms. Hale and Mr. Wright: Whites use what Mr. Wright referred to as the “left-wing, logical and analytical” side of their brains, whereas blacks use their “right brain,” which is “creative and intuitive.” When he was of school age in Philadelphia following the Supreme Court’s 1954 desegregation decision, Mr. Wright said, his white teachers “freaked out because the black children did not stay in their place, over there, behind the desk.” Instead, the students “climbed up all over [the teachers], because they learned from a ’subject,’ not an ‘object.’ ” How one learns from a teacher as “subject” by climbing on her, as opposed to learning from her as “object” — by listening to her words — is a mystery. …

So, Mr. Obama, do you believe this garbage?

---

---

Related: Elections, Education, Racism

---