While Pastor Wright Says Some Good Things, What Is He Doing With Kwame Kilpatrick?

Above you see a picture of Pastor Jeremiah Wright goofing around with Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. ( Pastor Wright is on the right and Mayor Kilpatrick is on the left.) 

This was at the Detroit NAACP Freedom Fund dinner last week.

I’m sympathetic to some of what Pastor Wright is saying.

One thing he is saying is what Martin Luther King often said—That America can at times be a wicked and sinful nation, and that if a transcendent moral power exists in the universe, he or she may wish to consider what judgement should be passed.

Fair enough.

But what is Pastor Wright doing playing around here with disgraced Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick? 

Mayor Kilpatrick had an affair with an aide, exchanged racy text-messages with her, lied about it, cost the City of Detroit nine million dollars in a whistle-blower suit resulting from his actions, and is under indictment. 

This is not what Detroit needs.

The Detroit City Council–majority Black and Democratic–has called on Mayor Kilpatrick to resign.

Pastor Wright had the opportunity to admonish Mayor Kilpatrick at the NAACP dinner. That would have been closer to a prophetic course.

Keeping company with a man of power and corruption is less than a prophetic course.

I want to believe Pastor Wright is a man of vision. I did have to wonder though when he canceled his guest sermons in my hometown of Houston a few weeks ago due to death threats.

What kind of prophet cancels a call to to preach because of death threats?

Which Is More Frustrating—Bitter White Working Class Or Do-Nothing Black Middle Class?

Which is more frustrating? Those who are bitter in the white working class, or the do-nothings within the black middle class?

It’s a close call.

While Senator Barack Obama must do his best to win over all potential voters, there is a point where you say about some that if you’ve not gotten the idea of the harm done after years of voting for Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes, than maybe you’re just not going to be reached.

For our black middle classes, when will we see political and social action on the behalf of the urban and rural black poor and others need in help? It took political action to create a black middle class in the first place. The need for activism did not stop just because some were able to do well.

There are people of all kinds who do good things every day. Many working class whites vote Democratic and many middle class blacks do a lot to help others.

Yet it’s also the case that many in our society are going to have to make the call to put aside their anger and assume a greater role in the lives of people who could use some help.