photo by g-hat

The race issue has finally come to the forefront. Barack Obama has to answer questions about his pastor’s racially divisive comments and 90% of blacks are voting for Obama whereas 80% of whites are voting for Clinton in the Mississippi primary.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is Obama’s pastor and is supposedly very close to Obama. He even inspired the title of Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope. So the fact that Wright is making racially incendiary comments about Hillary Clinton is quite disturbing.

The thing is, most of his comments are probably true:

Rev. Wright said, “Hillary ain’t never been called a n—–!”

“Hillary never had a cab whizz past her and not pick her up because her skin was the wrong color…”

“Hillary never had to worry about being pulled over in her car as a black man driving in the wrong nei…”

“Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home…”

“Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and culture controlled by rich white people…”

Check out the video on youtube.

What’s so interesting about his speech is that he gets everyone really riled up. Everyone is going crazy resonating with every word this guy says. Clearly it’s not just one man who feels this way. Clearly at least a decent portion of the black community feels this way.

This leads me to believe: Whites do not understand. Black people live a different existence and struggle with more difficult circumstances than white people do. The anger in his voice is because white people do not acknowledge that there IS a difference. “Rich white people” do not acknowledge that they don’t understand. They don’t know that they don’t live the same lives as black people. Black people ARE oppressed and we’re no longer acknowledging it. That’s part of the oppression. Those in control have the privilege to ignore those less privileged. Blacks cry out about police brutality and what does the government say? “It’s rare occurrence.”

So many people today feel like the race issue has been “taken care of.” Clearly it has not. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We choose to ignore it. We choose not to think about it. It’s there. At least we’re talking about it now…