April 29, 2008
The Detroit News
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. is not the only person I know of who believes AIDS was concocted by our government, but he's the only one of them in heavy rotation on CNN.
To me, and most likely to you, the concept is well north of ridiculous -- that the virus was released as a way to rein in minority populations. But if you're Wright, and you're familiar with the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in which nearly 400 black men weren't treated for the disease or even told they had it, maybe it's not such a stretch.
I didn't catch Wright's speech Sunday at the NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner in Detroit. I've heard him before, though, in smaller settings -- as a groomsman and a mourner.
He's a key figure in the life of a key figure in mine. He is charismatic and inspiring and entertaining, even at a funeral. And he is black, which means that sometimes, he and I might look at the same set of facts and circumstances and see completely different things.
That's not to say every African American thought O.J. Simpson was innocent, and every Caucasian wanted to reopen Alcatraz for him. But if you've been pulled over enough times for being a black male at the wheel of a car in a white neighborhood, maybe it's easier to believe that dozens of people from assorted city departments who'd mostly never met one another all conspired to try to frame a former football star.
In short: Sometimes, color colors perception, the same way geography and economic level and religion do. There's no sense pretending it doesn't, and we'll all be better off if we try to take that into account.
We'd also be well served to consider context. When Wright damned the USA in that sermon we keep hearing snippets of, he wasn't cursing us from sea to shining sea. He was cursing specific practices and policies, as he sees them, and as most of us do, at least under our breath on April 15.
He just did his damning with a bigger audience, an enormous choir, and a multicolored robe and stole that quite frankly, most of us couldn't pull off.
As Wright pointed out Monday before a conference in Washington, D.C., he spent six years in the military. That puts him six years ahead of me and Dick Cheney combined, and it should buy him some latitude from the people who question his patriotism.
He's also been called a racist, a characterization my friend Von strongly disputes.
Von is a member of the congregation Wright built in Chicago -- Trinity United Church of Christ. In a body that describes itself as unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian, Von is undeniably white.
His wife is black, and shortly after they became engaged 26 years ago, she had second thoughts. How could someone committed to black social causes, the activist daughter of pioneering activist parents, marry a white man? She broke things off.
Her pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., heard about her decision and summoned her to the church.
Racial divisions are unacceptable, he told her. Race is not a criterion God accepts as a basis for evaluating a human being. There can be no racial progress unless people are willing to break through barriers, and what better reason could there be to bulldoze one than love?
A few months later, he married them, and last summer, he presided over her father's funeral. It was a low-key service, by his standards. By the standards of a Grosse Pointe Presbyterian, it was probably raucous. Again: sometimes color colors.
As I sat in Wright's stunning church, I thought back to joy and revelry at Von's wedding reception, a quarter-century before.
To a black person, I realized, I'm probably a bad dancer. To a white person ...
Well, I'm a bad dancer. But at least it's good to find common ground.
Reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874 or nrubin@detnews.com.
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