The Best Discussions I've Heard on Reverend Wright

NPR has two current events programs whose hosts are Harvard-educated African American women: Tell Me More and News & Notes. And since I was away last week, I took the time over the weekend to catch up on some of the segments covered in my absence. (I am an admitted NPR junkie actually as they have so many programs that I try to listen to or download regularly. In fact, for people like me they have a mapquest-like feature for roadtrips that shows all of the NPR stations along the way between points A and B.) Listening from NPR's website is the best way to hear all the news, choosing only those segments that you want to hear, which is better than a podcast really, but I digress. Needless to say, both shows have offered some much needed perspective on the whole Reverend Wright blowup.

On Tell Me More, host Michele Martin had the best rejoinder I've heard yet about the sanctimony of the commentariat who claim that they would have surely taken a stand had they heard such language in church. Puh-lease! How many of us have sat mute in the presence of another--be they friend, family, co-worker, or stranger--who has uttered something offensive and we have chosen to say nothing. Martin makes the most cogent argument I've seen so far to tell folks they need to get off their high horses.

On another episode of her show, Martin had two scholars explain Black Liberation Theology and the possible context of Wright's sermons. They explained that the snippet we heard is most likely just part of a sermon in which the reverend is heard condemning the American government (which does not equate to white people) but in the end Wright would likely have offered hope of deliverance or uplift for his congregation. That is, if Wright had been preaching in the oratorical style of the Black church, the sermon was most likely not one long anti-American polemic. This type of fiery sermonizing in the Black church according to the scholars usually ends with a message of hope, but of course context and nuance are not what the U.S. media care to offer us.

Testify, my sister!