I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumors spread by the Christian right….and the Clinton campaign: Obama’s a Muslim. His father was a Muslim! He had a buddy in high school that was Muslim. And on and on we go. Actually I made up that part about the buddy in high school. See? That’s how rumors get started!
But if there’s ever a time in Obama’s campaign when the people he’s associated with have got him in trouble, it’s now. His pastor, Jeremiah Wright has made some statements that have put him at odds with much of America. Examine exhibit A:
First of all, Mr. Wright, you’re wrong in so many ways. But one thing in particular: Jesus was a Jew that was delivered to Romans and killed by Romans. He wasn’t black. He was Jewish. And the Jewish Pharisees were the ones that were ultimately responsible for His death. So if you compared Him to Barack Obama, the story would have to be that black people formed an angry mob and delivered him to the “white people.” Wait, maybe that does make sense: Wright, a black man, delivering Obama up for political crucifixion… Ah, I can’t make this stuff up. The irony is almost unbelievable.
Exhibit B:
I apologize. Some of that was repeated from the previous video. Notice his words, and I quote “God d*** America!” Thank you, Mr. Wright. I can tell that you’re just oozing with patriotism. By the way, did anyone know about the U.S. inventing the HIV virus as a form of genocide for minorities? That’s amazing! I guess white people don’t get AIDS. I must say though, a slow-killing though incurable virus like HIV seems to be a little less effective than say…Ebola? I’m sure our uber-Aryan scientists have got something better cooking in the labs, just waiting for a chance to be released. Side note: correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t HIV originate in Africa?
Now, it’s not that Mr. Wright is Obama’s pastor. I could excuse that. I mean, I don’t agree with everything my preacher says. But we have to consider the fact that Wright was Obama’s spiritual adviser, which seems to be a bit more significant than just a mere pastor. He’s the one that performed Obama’s wedding. One of his sermons inspired the title for Obama’s book Audacity of Hope. He’s a close friend to Obama. He’s not just some guy that happens to preach at Obama’s church. It’s much deeper than that.
And in spite of all this, I was still willing to give Obama a bit of a pass. That is, until I found out that Obama was endorsed by the New Black Panther party:
Remember the black panthers? The militant group that hate whites and Jews, you know the one. And you know it’s pretty bad when a group of African-Americans is considered to be an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Obama was so proud of this endorsement that it was featured on his website. However, all of a sudden, it was taken down. I guess someone got offended…
Obama can talk of racial equality, progress and change all he wants but how can he possibly be taken serious when he is surrounding himself with the very people that are fanning the flames of hatred in America?
As you can see, Barack Husayn Obama considers his company to be people who hate America, who cause division, who support extremism, and believe insane lies like the ones his pastor tells from the pulpit. If elected President, I believe that the harm he would do to our country would be almost irreparable. America cannot afford a President like him.
Braden's Take on the Matter 
One of the other writer’s on Highbrid Nation did a nice post talking about the Black Panthers endorsing Barack and what this means in light of the Rev. Wright controversy. Honestly I’m feeling like the panthers are doing Barack a disservice for even making such and anouncement. Between Rev. Wright and the Panthers I’m starting to feel like black people may be responsible for Barack not getting elected when it’s all said and done.
Exihbit A: Is Jesus black. I don’t know but…..
Black Madonna
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Black Madonna or Black Virgin is a statue or painting of Mary in which she is depicted with dark or black skin. This name applies in particular to European statues or pictures of a Madonna which are of special interest because her dark face and hands depicted as her true color. In this specialized sense “Black Madonna”.
There are about 450-500 Black Madonnas in Europe, depending on how they are classified. There are at least 180 Vierges Noires in France, and there are hundreds of non-medieval copies too. A few are in museums, but most are in churches or shrines and are venerated by devotees. Many are associated with miracles and some attract substantial numbers of pilgrims.
Mexico
Our Lady of Guadalupe (Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe). Her skin is not as black as the European Black Madonnas but she is not white. The general opinion is that she represents an indigenous woman. A comparative religious belief traces her figure to the Egyptian Goddess Isis, since her apparition day (December 12th, or 1212) can be read as an anagram for her name. Some experts argue that the Templars’s affection to the Black Madonna was related to Isis; Notre Dame in Paris was built above a Roman temple dedicated to the Egyptian Goddess.
Emergence of racial theories
While the early descriptions of hair, skin and eye color clearly have implications for defining Jesus’ “race,” they are not explicit in their desire to ascribe a racial identity to him in the modern sense. By the 19th century, however, theological arguments were increasingly replaced by more secular biological ones, as attempts were made to envisage Jesus in the context of the people and culture of the Middle East. While some writers stressed his Jewishness, the growth of anti-Semitic racial theory led others, such as Emile Burnouf and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, to argue that he was racially an “Aryan.” This led to portrayals of Jesus as a blond Nordic individual, a concept that was taken up by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and by Hitler. Hitler argued that Jesus was of Celtic ancestry, on the grounds that “Galilee was a colony where the Romans had probably installed Gallic legionaries, and it’s certain that Jesus was not a Jew.”[11]
A hypothetical reconstruction of someone from the same time and place of Jesus, created by forensic artist Richard Neave.
In more recent times the fact that the Middle East was a meeting point of cultures and races has led to suggestions that Jesus may have been African or Arabian. The ancient Near East was a cultural crossroad, and the only land route out of Africa, where that continent physically joins the Eurasian landmass. The Roman province of Judea, where Jesus lived, had many different waves of immigrants pass through at various points in and before recorded history, with the last major group being the Arab conquest in the 7th century. As such, it is not inconceivable that Jesus could have had traces of Arab, Aramean, Berber, Roman, Greek, Black African, Persian or Indian ancestry. The aggressive policy of territorial expansion and forced conversion to Judaism practiced by John Hyrcanus a century before Jesus’ birth may also have affected the ethnic make-up of the local Jewish populations.
It is most commonly argued that Jesus was probably of Middle Eastern descent because of the geographic location of the events described in the Gospels, and, among some modern Christian scholars, the genealogy ascribed to him. For this reason, he has been portrayed as an olive-skinned individual typical of the Levant region. A team of forensic scientists recently attempted to recreate what Jesus may have looked like based on human remains from the area where and time period when Jesus is believed to have existed. However, this image does not reveal any specific details about what Jesus looked like; it is intended only to give a view of the typical person living in Jesus’ time and place.[12] In the December 2002 edition of Popular Mechanics, Jesus was shown as looking like a typical Galilean Semite. Among the points made was that the Bible records that Jesus’ disciple, Judas had to point him out to those arresting him. The implied argument being that if Jesus’ physical appearance differed that markedly from his disciples, then he would have been relatively easy to identify.[13]
More recently the claim that Jesus was black has gained some currency, chiefly among African American religious movements, either as a serious historical hypothesis or as a symbolic statement of black pride. Groups such as Black Hebrew Israelites claim that black people are descended from Israelites and that therefore Jesus was black.[14] In 2004 Jesus was voted “greatest black icon of all time” by the British journal New Nation. The journal commented jokingly that he must have been black because “he called everybody ‘brother’, liked Gospel, and couldn’t get a fair trial”.[15]
Exhibit B: Spritiual leaders who are anti-American. Mmmmmm let’s see.
PHOENIX (AP) – John McCain is refusing to renounce the endorsement of a prominent Texas televangelist who Democrats say peddles anti-Catholic and other intolerant speech.
However, in no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee’s views, which I obviously do not,” McCain said in the statement.
Democrats quoted Hagee as saying the Catholic Church conspired with Nazis against the Jews and that Hurricane Katrina was God’s retribution for homosexual sin, and they recited his demeaning comments about women and flip remarks about slavery.
McCain was pressed on the issue Friday morning in Round Rock, Texas. Hagee “supports what I stand for and believe in,” McCain said.
“When he endorses me, that does not mean that I endorse everything that he stands for and believes in,” McCain said. “I don’t have to agree with everyone who endorses my campaign.”
He added that he was “proud” of Hagee’s spiritual leadership of his congregation at the 17,000-member Cornerstone Church.
Washington, D.C. — John McCain’s campaign is pushing back on recent allegations that controversial Ohio pastor, Rev. Rod Parsley, serves as a “spiritual guide” for the GOP presidential nominee.
The Ohio-based religious leader has made a number controversial statements about Muslims, previously calling Islam an “anti-Christ religion” based on “deception.” In a recent book, he also wrote that the prophet Mohammad “received revelations from demons and not from the true God,” adding that “Allah was a demon spirit.”
McCain praised most of the leaders in attendance, saying of Parsley: “I am very honored today to have one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide…thank you for your leadership and your guidance. I am very grateful you are here.” (Coincidence note: This was the same event of the infamous Bill Cunningham remarks
JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way – all of them who have tried to secularize America – I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.
Exhibit C: Hiv/Aids in the minority community. I don’t know but they did this one. So maybe, just maybe
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male[1] also known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Pelkola Syphilis Study, Public Health Service Syphilis Study or the Tuskegee Experiments was a clinical study, conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 399 (plus 201 control group without syphilis) poor — and mostly illiterate — African American sharecroppers were denied treatment for Syphilis.
This study became notorious because it was conducted without due care to its subjects, and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had “bad blood” and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating.[2]
In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies.
By 1947, penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Prior to this discovery, syphilis frequently led to a chronic, painful and fatal multisystem disease. Rather than treat all syphilitic subjects with penicillin and close the study, or split off a control group for testing penicillin; the Tuskegee scientists withheld penicillin and information about penicillin, purely to continue to study how the disease spreads and kills. Participants were also prevented from accessing syphilis treatment programs that were available to other people in the area. The study continued until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, cited as “arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history”,[3] led to the 1979 Belmont Report, the establishment of the National Human Investigation Board, and the requirement for establishment of Institutional Review Boards.
In closing arguement;
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient –The Declaration of Independence: CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
James A. Baldwin
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
Mark Twain
There are no second acts in American lives.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
I look forward to a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
John F. Kennedy
The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin’ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.
Elvis Presley
Barbara Bush: Hurricane Katrina Good For Poor
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Dumb Things Said By Smart People, Hurricane Katrina
Here’s the actual quote:
“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this [she chuckles slightly] is working very well for them.”
Now, I’m sure she didn’t mean anything vicious by it, but that’s kind of the point. Anybody who says that the flood is actually working out well for the poor in New Orleans because it allowed them to come to Houston doesn’t have any appreciation for what the working poor goes through in our country.
The wife and Mother of President,’s. Maybe we didn’t need the two Bushes’ either but that’s the America we live in now. And to you my countryman read and learn from our American history and our spritiually beliefs and tread not on me or one other. For the biggest threat to America is someone who will judge a person by race, creed, faith or the color of their skin, they who judge are the true and only terrorist in this United States.
“These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”— Barack Hussein Obama
As I said, Jesus was Jewish. He had Jewish parents. If Jews=blacks, then okay, I suppose you’re right. But Jesus was of Jewish descent, just like many modern-day Jews. It’s not really a white v. black issue because he was neither. It’s at the very least disingenuous to say he was black…or white.
So you dodged the issue of Obama by attacking McCain. Fair enough. But I don’t really like McCain either. Therefore, you have no argument and the one you do have is irrelevant. Besides, McCain had also once referred to Falwell and Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” which he has obviously flip-flopped on. But it doesn’t matter because this blog isn’t about John McCain.
As for the AIDS discussion, your reference of the Tuskegee experiments provides little insight into the actual distribution of AIDS to blacks that Jeremiah Wright is speaking of.
And, Barbara Bush and Katrina? What in the world? What does that have to do with Barack Obama?
You can’t just copy and paste some random quotes and Wikipedia articles and bash Republicans and somehow think that deflects the fact that Obama is a hypocrite on the topic of race. It just won’t do.
I am just saying that you make claims based in your on fears and lack of knowledge. To say that I bashed. Sen. McCain is proof. I like him .he’s a Navy man like me.
You don’t know what Jesus was or is, that only comes from a protestant bible. And you can’t say that the government didn’t introduction Hiv/Aids program because you don’t know. If they tried one program that gives them impotents to try another skulldulery program.
People say stupid things like former first lady Barbra Bush (hint) but I guess you are just not capable of seeing that. When you present something be able to back it up or at least have a close analogue to something other than your own opinion that youTube did not just miracle its self on your blog (think you got that from somewhere).
Sometime others are a little smarter then you. Of course, you’re right and everybody else is wrong. That show a small and narrow mind and sometime the lack of knowledge is more dangerous than racism. If you think that Sen. Obama is a racist then he will be to you. If you think that Rev. White is Anti-American than he is to you (his a former U.S. Marine I like them too).
If you think that it’s bad for Rev. White but ok for former Rev. Farwell and Rev. Robertson to say thing and just discount them then its ok. Nobody in heaven or earth can change that and I am not trying too.
But like racism hatred come in many different colors and shade and degrees.
I’m just saying where there’s smoke there’s fire. Obama has a racist spiritual advisor in Jeremiah Wright and he’s endorsed by the Black panther party.
I know exactly who Jesus is. If Jesus wasn’t a Jew, then the Bible is lying. Are you prepared to make that assertion that the Bible is wrong and these poorly researched conclusions are right? If so, that’s fine. But it’s a fact that Jesus was Jewish. If he wasn’t, then there’s no reason to believe the Bible at all.
I can say that the government didn’t introduce AIDS because it’s a known fact that it came from Africa. It’s like you’re trying to make a case for Wright’s ignorant statements.
Instead of actually defending Obama or Wright with any relevant facts, you’ve merely attacked McCain and Barbara Bush. That’s not a defense or an argument, it’s a dodge. When you’re saying that if I think Obama is a racist, then he will be to me, I could just as easy say that to you about McCain, Barbara Bush, Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. There’s no point in discussing that because it’s irrelevant.
I’m not excusing Falwell or Robertson and I never have. But I’m not talking about Falwell or Robertson, I’m talking about Obama and Jeremiah Wright.
The youtube videos show exactly what Wright said and how he said them. They are clear and direct references to his statements. They DO back up what I said.
I don’t claim to always be right. I’m more than willing to acknowledge that sometimes people are smarter than me. But that doesn’t mean that you are. And it doesn’t meant that you aren’t.
Wright’s statements were inflammatory, racist, and ignorant. If this man is a close spiritual advisor to Obama, I don’t want Obama in the White House.
Some people will believe anything. And that’s what I am saying one they bible is not fact. Ok two hiv-1 was detected in monkeys in West Africa after we were trying to make a polio vaccine. That was at Fort Riley Kansas USA.
I am not trying to defend and body. I have been lied to by the Catholic Church for years and I can’t be held responsible for their sins either. I have been lied to by the United States government for years and I can not be held responsible for there wrong doings around the world.
What bothers me is maybe Rev. Wright said things that hurt people but, he like you have issues that nobody can heal. The Black Panthers have been out of business since the late 60s so that’s another untruth. People judge by what they don’t know,and that’s how real racism starts.
Now if you were a real Christian you would not judge or so you will be judge. Love one another as I have loved you-Jesus Christ(ian) not Jew. Power to the people- Huey Newton(Black Panthers)
So question our government it is just run by human’s who are prone to lie, question who wrote the bible cause man will lie. Hate not your brother or sister. But first remove the sty from your own eye before you try to remove it from your brothers eye.
Believe only half of what you hear and none of what you read-Will Rogers.
Rev. White is not the first and last person to say something in this country that will upset people. Several Rabbi’s (like Jesus) Priest, Pastor, Politicians,and bloggers say just stupid stuff to cause uproar and then profess their faith e.g. Pope Benedict XVI.
Try the Greatest Commandment of all and that’s how we should all live. I am sorry that you are hurt by what was said and I also give my deepest apologies for anything I have said that may have hurt your feelings.
Peace, Love, and Hope and may the Lord be with You.
great post Braden. It is shocking to hear a so-called man of God use God**** in a so-call church with so-called Christians praising him on….
Great post. Full of insightful information. Wikipedia also has been put to good use here. Just to clarify, Jews in the first century and Jews today may not necessarily resemble each other. So it is entirely possible that Jesus while not being of African decent, was darker than what we think of the Jewish community today. Also, the Jews did not kill Jesus or hand him over and demand the Romans do it (despite what your bible may say). Crucifixion was an entirely Roman punishment for Rome’s political offenders (or terrorists). So the Black Panthers support Obama, is that at all shocking? I’m 100% sure the KKK supports McCain and Palin (We at least know the AIP and various other racist secessionist groups do). It may have been ill-advised for Wright to say “G-D” but he made his point. Who cares if he isn’t patriotic. I mean, GOD DAMN! Since when is America such an integral part of the kingdom of God or vice-versa? I may not agree with everything he says, but isn’t he just speaking out against the kingdom of man?
Excellent write-up. I certainly appreciate this site. Thanks!