Obama's Ex-Pastor Maintains Fiery Rhetoric | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Dan E. Way, who is an associate editor for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright speaks at United Church of Chapel Hill

    RALEIGH — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright told attendees of a Sept. 19 event at a progressive church in Chapel Hill he is "giddily happy" with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, blamed U.S. foreign policy for the rise of ISIS, and took swipes at President Obama for failing to push racial reparations and Donald Trump's stance on immigration.

    Richard Edens, pastor of United Church of Chapel Hill, said Wright, pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Obama attended regularly for two decades, was invited to deliver "a transformative response to the latest call to be an anti-racism church, racial justice church."

    Wright sang, played the piano, danced, drew peals of laughter with a series of humorous remarks, called Israel an "illegal" nation, and mocked devotion to UNC basketball.

    Asked by an audience member for his views on immigration, Wright ridiculed Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner.

    "I've heard Donald Trump saying if you're here illegally you need to go back. Let's start at the 1400s. We're all immigrants," Wright said. "Georgia was founded as a colony for criminals, so let's talk about immigration holistically," and "stop the B.S. about Hispanics."

    Native Americans "have the same kind of theological questions" as a Palestinian Christian friend pastor of a church in Bethlehem, which is "not in the illegal state of Israel," but in the "Palestinian territory. ... What kind of God have you got that would promise your ass my land?"

    Wright also addressed "the geopolitical problems of this whole Syrian problem that [the United States] started, had it not been for what we did in attacking Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. We created ISIS. We created the whole Syrian refugee problem, the Sudanese refugee problem," similar to problems created in this country, he said.

    "Hard, honest dialogue" is needed to bring about racial justice, he said. "Let's talk about white-on-white crime" instead of focusing on black-on-black crime.

    "I am giddily happy" with the rise of the Black Lives [Matter] movement," Wright said of the activist organization.

    The movement has been linked to violent unrest and widespread vandalism in Ferguson, Mo., disrupting several Democratic presidential campaign speeches, and anti-police marchers chanting "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" at the Minnesota State Fair.

    Some critics have blamed the movement for inciting urban violence and assassinations against police officers.

    "A lot of us forget ... that the civil rights movement was young people just like these young people, and if you think their language is harsh y'all ought to hear" the rhetoric of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the 1960s, which was led by current Georgia Democratic U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Wright said.

    "Let's go back to what started that movement," he said of SNCC. "Young people saying, 'Hell no.'" So while the older generation scoffs at Black Lives Matter, Wright said, "They know exactly what they're doing. You [middle-age and older Americans] don't know what you're doing."

    Wilma Liverpool of Durham asked Wright about his view on financial reparations for slavery. She said that "300-plus years of free labor" created "forced poverty," and "until that can be eradicated, I don't see us being one."

    "Without reparations there can be no reconciliation," Wright said.

    America won't confess to the sins of slavery because "confession means repentance, but if you repent you've got to repay," Wright said.

    Financial reparations should come not as a check to individuals, but in "structural things for generations to come" such as eradicating slums created by restrictive covenants and business flight, he said.

    But "that's where the conversation breaks down most of the time starting with ... the African American president. Half African. He don't talk about reparations," said Wright. Ynder the media glare and political liability created by the pastor's inflammatory rhetoric, after Obama was elected, he distanced himself from Wright.

    Wright contended racism in America is rooted in the nation's founding, and its founding documents. The first Africans disembarked in Williamsburg, Va., in 1619, he said. By the 1630s colonies were dealing with how to classify and restrict babies born to interracial couples.

    "The laws of the colonies of England were not based on legal precedents, were not based on English Common Law, were not based on any related jurisprudence," Wright said. Racism was inserted into "the legal structure of all 13 colonies."

    As a result, he said, "The Constitution of the United States of America has sewn into it legally the fabric of racism."

    The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to blacks, and the 15th Amendment "gave them the right to vote that North Carolina has undone," Wright said, an apparent reference to 2013 election law changes that have been challenged in federal court.

    "I submit another world is possible" than the one viewed through "the distorted lenses we are handed" through education and value systems of the dominant culture that cause people to see differences in others as deficiencies, Wright said.

    "We need to learn the cultures of those we walk beside. We need to learn the faith traditions of others," he said, citing a 2002 controversy at UNC-Chapel Hill. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, incoming freshmen were required to read the book Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations by author Michael Sells.

    Then-UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser wanted to address the situation that "most Christians in North Carolina had not a clue about Islam, and the Christians had a stroke," Wright said.

    "The [chancellor] after one year was proud to report that there was not one conversion to Islam," Wright said, "and the primary faith at UNC was still basketball."

    Marie Clarke Torian of Hillsborough was representative of audience reaction.

    "I thought it was great," the 94-year-old graduate of Hartford Seminary said.

    "I see what he was talking about in building another world," Torian said. "I'm puzzled at how it's going to happen ... but I think we're approaching it."