Obama clarifies about Grandma: it’s not that she’s a racist, per se — it’s that white people are typically racist. Think I’m making it up? Audio is here, and here is the relevant quote:

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person who, uh, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know there’s a reaction that’s been been bred into, uh, our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it.

Let me remind you what Obama considers to be a typical white person:

I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Thanks to Rick and James D.

Posted by WLS:

This would have been a kooky post 2 weeks ago, but I think this subject may now find its way into the bloodstream of the body-politic, and I think the events of this week elevate it above crackpot conspiracy theory.

For several decades since the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, there has existed at the fringe of that movement a BlackNationalist  movement.  One of the tenets of the “Black Nationalist” movement is the idea of “racial separation” in the United States — the creation of a majority black sovereign entity within the confines of the United States as a remedial measure to redress the long-standing impact of institutional racism.   

This Black Nationalist movement found intellectual heft in the writings of W.E.B. DuBois, but was most prominently embodied in secular terms by the creation of the Black Panther Party by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.

At the same time, however, the Black Nationalist movement found traction in the Mosques of the Nation of Islam …… in Chicago.  Black Muslims advocated the establishment of a separate African American homeland in the United States. Wallace D. Muhammad, who succeeded his father Elijah Muhammad in 1975, downplayed black nationalism, admitted nonblack members, and stressed strict Islamic beliefs and practices. In the late 1970s, however, a dissident faction, led by Louis Farrakhan assumed the original name Nation of Islam and reasserted the principles of black separatism.

This is the same Louis Farrakhan that was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Trinity United Church and Rev. Wright.

And, as pointed out in his column  today by Michael Medved, a heretofore unexplored aspect of the political theology of the Trinity United Church that Obama has been a member of for 20 years is the Church’s self-described “Black Value System”. 

The website for the congregation begins with an introductory paragraph under the heading, “About Us,” that unequivocally proclaims: “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”

For many years, the next paragraph (recently removed due to the Wright controversy) appeared on the website and shamelessly explained explained: “Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the Black Value System….We believe in the following twelve precepts and covenantal statements. These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered.” Those “precepts and covenantal statements” include, “Commitment to the Black Community” (Number 2), “Disavowal of the Pursuit of ‘Middleclassness’” (Number 8), “Pledge allegiance to all Black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System (Number 11) and “Personal Commitment to embracement of the Black Value System.” (Number 12).

  Medved points out that still on the Church’as website is a Rev. Wright’s “10 Point Vision” for the Church, which begins with “A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITTMENT TO AFRICA.” 

So, Obama has been a member of a Church for 20 years, and developed a close and abiding relationship with a minister who preachs hate from the pulpit, who advoctates in writing a ”Black Value System” that is based on racial identity, and has a vision that is fixated on an ancestral land and not the land and country of one’s birth that is responsible for the blessings he has received in life.

How are these “values” different from the racial separatism values of the Nation Of Islam and the Black Nationalism movement?  They arose in the same city by religious leaders who are contemporaries, friends, and political allies. 

Does Barack Obama’s embrace of the political theology of Rev. Wright, and all that it entails given its foundation and city of origin, create less than Six Degrees of Separation between Barack Obama and the Black Nationalist movement for racial separatism? 

These are questions that deserve to be asked now.

Is Barack Obama simply a the smiling face and eloquent voice of a new Black Panther Party built upon the twin spires of racial identity and liberal white guilt?

Is Rev. Wright the GOP pathway to victory?

My response to that is: don’t get cocky, kid.

I still believe that whichever Democrat wins the nomination will win the Presidency. The war is just too unpopular and the economy is just too shaky.

A commenter asked: would I still rather have us run against Clinton than Obama? The answer is yes. I still think Hillary’s years of negatives add up to more discomfort than one Jeremiah Wright can cause.

We have seen Jeremiah “God damn America” Wright on our TV screens nonstop for days — but in the general election, Big Media will back him up. They will be like the Los Angeles Times and run dishonest stories to minimize the controversy in people’s memories. They will be like the New York Times and declare him absolved when he gives a speech that fails to show any understanding of why people are so upset by this.

And it will work. It doesn’t always work, but this time, with the war and the economy, it will.

Posted By WLS: 

I’m in no way enamored of Obama — neither his style nor his politics. 

So, I’m looking at his speech with a very jaundiced eye.  And there are lots of things I don’t particularly like in the text:

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together…

 From what I’ve read over the last few days, he didn’t learn “togetherness” as a method of problem solving from Rev. Wright.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

Which remarks have you condemned, and why did it take until this moment for you to condenm them?  Were they not equally worthy of condemnation two weeks ago?  Two months ago?  Two years ago?  Two decades ago — because he’s been saying them as long as you have been a member of his church.  You are the one identifying — without specifying — that he has made comments in your presence that you disagreed with and considered controversial.  Tell us which of his comments you consider controvesial — so that we will know which ones you DO NOT CONSIDER CONTROVERSIAL.  That would tell the voters much more about you than you have told us in the 4 years since you hit that stage in Boston.

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Did the title of this post offend you? I did say “Hitler” . . .

If you answered “yes,” you would make a fine Affirmative Action Officer at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. That’s the university where a janitor pursuing a communications degree received a threatening letter from the Affirmative Action office for the thoughtcrime of reading a historical book about the KKK during his breaks from work:

The book is about how for two days in May 1924, a group of Notre Dame students got into a street fight with members of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was meeting in South Bend for the express purpose of sticking a collective thumb in the eye of the country’s most famous Catholic university. Notre Dame vs. the Klan was a Notre Dame Magazine “Pick of the Week” and garnered an average customer review of 4.5 stars on Amazon.com. In its review, The Indiana Magazine of History noted that Tucker “succeeds in placing the event in a broad framework that includes the origins and development of both the Klan and Notre Dame.”

[Janitor and Thought Criminal Keith John] Sampson recalls that his AFSCME shop steward told him that reading a book about the Klan was like bringing pornography to work. The shop steward wasn’t interested in hearing what the book was actually about. Another time, a coworker who was sitting across the table from Sampson in the break room commented that she found the Klan offensive. Sampson says he tried to tell her about the book, but she wasn’t interested in talking about it.

A few weeks passed. Then Sampson got a message ordering him to report to Marguerite Watkins at the IUPUI Affirmative Action Office. He was told a coworker had filed a racial harassment complaint against him for reading Notre Dame vs. the Klan in the break room. Sampson says he tried to explain to Watkins what the book was about. He says he tried to show her the book, but that Watkins showed no interest in seeing it.

This is, keep in mind, an alleged university, where books are supposedly held in high regard. Keep that in mind as you keep reading, and your jaw falls further and further open in amazement:

Then Sampson received a letter, dated Nov. 25, 2007, from Lillian Charleston, also of IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office. The letter begins by saying that the AAO has completed its investigation of a coworker’s allegation that Sampson “racially harassed her by repeatedly reading the book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan by Todd Tucker in the presence of Black employees.” It goes on to say, “You demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your coworkers who repeatedly requested that you refrain from reading the book which has such an inflammatory and offensive topic in their presence … you used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black coworkers.” Charleston went on to say that according to “the legal ‘reasonable person standard,’ a majority of adults are aware of and understand how repugnant the KKK is to African-Americans …”

Next thing you know, some professor will be trying to teach students about slavery, right there in a room with black people.

Must be something in the water in Indianapolis. I seem to recall writing a post in 2003 about a local high school banning To Kill a Mockingbird from the school stage. Because that’s a famously racist book, you know. Uses the “N” word and everything. It’s right up there with Huckleberry Finn!

Thanks to Simon.

UPDATE: Weaselly non-retraction letter here.

The L.A. Times reports:

One of the costliest racial harassment cases in the history of the Los Angeles City Fire Department grew more expensive Monday when a jury awarded $1.6 million to two white captains suspended after a black firefighter they supervised had his meal laced with dog food.

Capts. John Tohill and Chris Burton sued the city in October 2006, claiming they were made scapegoats for the misconduct of a Latino firefighter who placed dog food in the spaghetti dinner of firefighter Tennie Pierce four years ago.

Of course, the lesson learned from this depends on your perspective. The author of the article seems to think the lesson is that L.A. Fire Department management is really bad. But the lesson I take from it is slightly different: the city should have taken Tennie Pierce to court. He wouldn’t have won one thin dime.

By blowing the whole thing out of proportion, refusing to tell readers key facts about the case, and putting political pressure on the Fire Department to Do Something, the paper’s editors bear some of the blame.

You don’t see that in today’s story, of course. And you won’t. But you’ll see it here.

A correction in today’s Los Angeles Times:

“Jena Six”: An article in Friday’s California section about nooses found at Cal State Fullerton said that six black teenagers in Jena, La., who became known as the “Jena Six,” were arrested on suspicion of attacking a white student accused of hanging nooses from a tree. Three students in Jena were accused of hanging nooses; however, the student who was attacked was not among those accused of hanging them.

You first read about it here.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Mychal Bell, one of the “Jena 6″, has been jailed again in connection with prior unrelated charges.

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[Guest post by DRJ]

There’s more Jena 6 news:

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Via Instapundit comes an article with the best observation yet on the Jena situation. Although many seem intent on making martyrs out of violent thugs, the author suggests that there are better heirs to the legacy of Selma:

[A]ll along, Jena has had a better symbol for civil rights on offer. The anonymous black students who defied the informal segregation at the high school and sat under the perversely misnamed “white tree” are the movement’s true legatees. They have received so little attention that I don’t even know their names or how many such brave and defiant young people there were.

Why don’t we let the system deal with the violent criminals, and do some digging to learn who these real heroes are?

UPDATE: Or, conversely, to learn that the whole story is made up? Several commenters are saying that there was, in fact, no “white tree.” One points to this AP article in which some locals deny that the tree was a “white tree”:

There is, however, a more nuanced rendition of events — one that can be found in court testimony, in interviews with teachers, officials and students at Jena High, and in public statements from a U.S. attorney who reviewed the case for possible federal intervention.

Consider:

_The so-called “white tree” at Jena High, often reported to be the domain of only white students, was nothing of the sort, according to teachers and school administrators; students of all races, they say, congregated under it at one time or another.

Hmmm. Well, if I were a school administrator, I might say that even if it weren’t true.

The article also confirms something else I’d heard:

There was no connection between the September noose incident and December attack, according to Donald Washington, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department in western Louisiana, who investigated claims that these events might be race-related hate crimes.

Look: what are you going to go with? The facts? Or the narrative?

Ok, then.

So how bad was that beating in Jena? Pretty bad. This is an old article, but it has more detail than anything else I’ve seen yet:

Investigators from the LaSalle Parish Sheriff’s Office have gathered statements from more than 40 people — a number of them students — who told investigators they saw everything that happened. Many of these statements were included in court documents.

“When I heard a black boy say something to Justin, I turned my head and I saw somebody hit Justin,” one student wrote in a statement. “He fell in between the gym door and the concrete barricade. I saw Robert Bailey kneel down and punch Justin in the head. … Then Carwin Jones kicked him in the head. … Theo Shaw tried to kick him so I pushed Theo Shaw down. I also saw Mychal Bell standing over him.”

Phrases like “stomped him badly,” “stepped on his face,” “knocked out cold on the ground,” and “slammed his head on the concrete beam” were used by the students in their statements.

Free the Jena 6!

P.S. I read a lot about how the victim went to a “party” afterwards. Here’s more on that:

Barker was discharged about 2½ hours after being admitted to the ER. Later that night, he attended a ring ceremony at the school, where he was presented his class ring by his parents, something Kelli Barker said her son really wanted to be a part of, even though he was still in pain.

“All that keeps being said is that he was just in the hospital for a little bit and not really hurt,” Kelli Barker said of Justin. “I thank God he wasn’t hurt more than he was. But we have medical bills to show that he really was hurt.”

According to court documents, the initial trip to the emergency room cost $5,467.

P.P.S. I keep reading unverified reports that more than one of the suspects has a criminal record. I have yet to see any proof, but I will tell you frankly that it would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that individuals who participate in a brutal group beating like this have gotten in trouble before. I will follow up on this and see if I can get any verification.

The New York Post on Jena:

Indeed, white teens involved in two similar (though less serious) incidents against black victims in Jena itself faced much lower charges, resulting in no jail time.

Such inconsistency leads Americans to lose confidence in the racial impartiality of law enforcement and the judicial system.

Someone explain this to me. Less serious charges for less serious offenses should concern us all . . . why, exactly?