While Reverend Wright's timing is opportunistic and his motives are egotistical and narcissistic, his remarks on the United States are not terribly off mark. The United States support of dictators in the Middle East for the last 60 years, along with its sanctions against 5 Muslim countries did have alot to do with the September 11 attacks. Our abandonment of Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets was cowardly and has come back to haunt us. The toppling of an Iranian democracy, the support of the Shah and countless other monarchs and dictators surely has raised the ire of the current Islamist groups. Finally, our blind support of Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza and our blind eye to Palestinian refugees and their suffering have exposed us to the most violent currents of Pan-Arabism, Islamism, Arab Nationalism, Palestinian Nationalism and Secular Militarism.
Our treatment of African Americans in the past, including Slavery and Jim Crow Laws, coupled with regretful events such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the high number of African American inmates, the high penalty for crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine, the endless stream of fatal police brutality and the small number of African American college graduates have all contributed to an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism in the African-American community, of which Reverend Wright is merely a symptom.
We have to confront these subjects head on and address them fairly. Obama's presidency and Reverend Wright's sometimes shameful rants have exposed a tremendous fault line as well as a golden opportunity to begin to understand, and see from, the other's perspective. As much as Obama's candidacy has made us feel proud and optimistic about our nation's transcendence of race, Reverend Wright's sermons will make us recoil from our ugly reflection in the mirror. But both images are true.
We must begin to answer the questions that are implicit in these infamous sermons. Was September 11 a response to our own actions abroad or did they attack us because we are a beacon of liberty as president Bush would have us believe? Do we owe the African-American community an apology as a nation; do we owe them a museum? Where is the National Museum of the African-American Slave? It doesn't exist but the National Holocaust Museum (a memorial of a crime not perpetrated in US soil) is in Washington, DC.
