I remember the day the Wright Story Broke - or was drudged up - This diary was on the Rec list about a missing Black Girl Missing Daughter... and You Can Help: was on the rec list.  Heaven knows if Elizabeth Smart goes missing the power-holders in this country would have stepped up, because she looks like them.  Who Cares?  Its just another Black Girl.  Theology from the position of the `other' might not be main-stream, it may not be acceptable.  It is also where theology ought to start.  Rev. Wright said nothing this weekend that was not true.  Perhaps he said truths that were inconvenient for common wisdom.  But his role is to speak truth (even truth to power), not common wisdom.

To ask Rev. Wright to shut up now is wrong.  He is being attacked, stigmatized, and demonized.  And not only is Rev. Wright being attacked - there have been an abundance of stories attacking James Cone and Black Liberation Theology.  Joe Klein even said today the Black Liberation Theology does not represent the Black Church, as if Joe Klein knows anything about Black Theology.

Take a look at what James Cone has to say.  Did he commit any wrong other than being Black?

Now the trouble seems to be that Wright is not falling in line with the Obama campaign.  I'll put it out there simply.  The Black Church is more important to me than the Obama Campaign.  People have suggested he is hurting his `friend' but what you have to recognize is that the overwhelming number of his `friends' are being attacked.  We say (save the AIDS comment) what he has voiced every day.  If a politician cannot come out of Rev. Wright's Church without being `Blackened' we can pretty much throw out the idea of ever having a leader arise from the Black Church tradition.

I can imagine after April 4th of 67' many people were asking if they should be associated with Dr. King.  The media and political classes had disavowed him.  He was a stigmatized figure for saying what ought to be said.  The role of the Church, in that time, was to stand by Dr. King.  Rev. Wright, in an analogous yet not tantamount position to King's, is facing criticism from the same folks, only generation removed.  Even members of White Citizen's Councils had children folks.  Many think that our role, as a theological institution, ought to be to stand by him.  Not to mention after seeing many of his sermons and this weekend's event he would be a joy to hear speak. Turning away from plans to let Rev. Wright speak across the county would be giving way to the racists' voices in society there way.  We are effectively segregating his views under the pressures of racists media.  It is the exact opposite of what we are called to do.  Some things are bigger than politics.  If Obama can only get elected in this country by appeasing racists then it is not worth it.

It would be wrong to stand by double standards, as many have called us to do by condemning Wright.  Rev. Wright was wrong (and understandably so in the wake of Tuskegee) to make his AIDS comment.  But so were McCain and Bush's cohort of White Pastors to suggest that "God Created AIDS to do away with Gay People."  Where is the media there?  After Katrina was saw plenty of Black Bodies floating down the street. After 9/11 we saw no bodies on the rubble.  Where was the media there?  Of Rev. Wright's most `hateful' remarks was the suggestion that `America's Chickens are coming home to roost' in the wake of 9/11.  He was quoting a White Fox News commentator.  Why did the media not label the commentator hateful?  America's White innocence is of our nation's greatest sins.  And the task of theologians, especially in the Black Church tradition's, task is to be prophetic.  To point out our sins not matter how painful they are.  This was the plight of the Old Testament Prophets, who paid the price of rejection time and time again.  Jeremiah Wright is paying that same price today.  He is not being 'selfhish' as Chuck Todd suggested, or and 'egotsist' as many on Kos and MyDD have suggested, he is being a good minister of the word.  The ethical, moral, just act is to stand by him and stand by the Black Church.

I thought it would be nice to put in this diary a Nina Simone song, but I couldn't decide between two, so here is one more

Cross posted on the Kos.