Father Michael Pfleger, speaking about Rev. Wright:
Notice how skillfully Pfleger calls out the reporter.
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26 comments
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April 21, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Kathy
Thanks so much for this video. Fake News is a joke, but it was great watching the Father tackle every issue and hold his ground.
I wish Senator Obama had been more loyal to Rev. Wright, but I guess politics is politics.
April 21, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Mer
Wow, that is impressive.
April 21, 2008 at 8:27 pm
c
Father got down!
Calm, direct and oh so refreshing.
That reporter was trying very hard to twist his words, it was ridiculous and even i became frustrated, but Fr. Pfleger didn’t fall for it. i agree with Kathy though. i wish Obama could have done such.
April 21, 2008 at 8:44 pm
panracial
Isn’t it amazing how some white people (like the reporter) have interpreted not judging people by the color of their skin but the content of their character as meaning that anyone who accuses white people of being racist is racist?
April 21, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Father Michael Pfleger Knocks Fox News Down a Notch | A Slant Truth
[...] Just saw this via Resist Racism via Zuky and had to [...]
April 22, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Juan
Nah, I wouldn’t say amazing. More like typical. Heck just add the words put the words “white” and “hate” in any sentence, not even next to each other, and most of them go crazy. lol
April 22, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Kathy
It is amazing that while there is this strong fear of being called a racist,
there is little empathy or investigation or listening behaviors. I do think there is a lot of pressure from family and friends to cling to colorblind racism in public while harboring racist thoughts and feelings in private.
I suffer from the fear of not getting it, I worry about the juxtaposition of my ethnocentric thinking and my ingrained bias and fears. Seems to me that many white people are trying very hard to justify racism by accusing others of racism.
Yeah, Juan, I think it is typical,and I also think when Obama said “bitter” he meant small minded. And the reason for this small mindedness, is that the vast majority of white peole living outside of any major city in the US has no person of color in their own personal life with which to offset the stuff they are fed in the media. They live in an ivory tower, and have no real life experiences outside of their own little circle of family and friends.
They hear sound bites on T.V. and believe it to be true. I would think this would be true of any group of people who live in a monolithic setting.
April 22, 2008 at 10:19 pm
panracial
I have to respectfully disagree, Kathy. I think that the white educated urbane guy displaces his racism onto the small town white person as I read in an essay the other day, it’s not “poor white trash” who deny loans to qualified blacks, redline black neighborhoods, and only hire other whites for upper level jobs. It’s been my experience that white educated liberal’s experiences with people of color doesn’t make them less racist, simply more careful about their racism. As a person of color from a large US city, I hate what Obama said. I know he meant small-minded when he said bitter, and it was a classist and incorrect thing to say.
April 22, 2008 at 10:31 pm
panracial
Furthermore, and Kathy, I don’t mean to pick on you, but I just see this attitude a lot among white liberals (I assume you’re white.) People in small towns on small islands, etc. have rich live experiences, deep and diverse (even if not racially diverse) circles of friends and families, and are critical thinkers. They don’t mindlessly accept media as truth. They are wise interpreters of reality and lead vivid full lives — some of my family’s dearest friends are elderly white rural folks. They don’t tolerate prejudice against people of color, and I don’t tolerate prejudice against them. Its the fact it is many urbane educated people who are closed off in their own ivory towers, believing everything they hear on npr or that comes out of Jon Stewarts mouth, surrounded by people who only think like themselves who are small minded and practice the prejudice they accuse poor rural whites of.
April 23, 2008 at 12:15 am
Juan
I didn’t think Obama’s remarks were all that classist in putting a focus on the racism that exists in the working class. Not that all working class white folk are racist, but heck, I know it exist in the working class because I have to put up with the antics of working, lower and middle class white people DAILY.
They may not be the ones to reject me a loan or live in an ivory tower but I do have to put up with the looks I get or don’t get–that wall they take a sudden interest in must be quite beautiful–or being eyed when I’m buying something in a gas station, harassed by the police or having to put up with confederate flag boots, belt buckles, key chains and truck stickers.
I don’t think we should ignore the systematic racism that exists in the higher class status of our society but we shouldn’t ignore the systematic racism that also exists in lower sectors as well.
April 23, 2008 at 12:32 am
Kathy
Panracial, I don’t think you mean to pick on me,
Agreed that white educated people displace racism, but the all white small towns I have seen are not the critical thinkers you have assigned them.
And yes, ubran whites live in their own little circles too.
A white liberal isn’t less racist. I wasn’t commenting on that. Well…..
Actually, I didn’t realize I was making a comparison until you pointed this out, however, the areas that I am most familiar with, (of small towns), have no experiences outside their own world, and do take in the messages from the media. My opinion on this is based only on the many, many discussions I have had with white people, because I do talk to white people like myself, about race. Particularly because I have school aged children, and have searched for information on the best sort of environment they would do best in. Geographically, where I live there is a wide range in the socio-ecomonic inneighborhoods, as well as some very
divided area in terms of race, class, and education.
I would never send my kids to one of the small town all white neighborhood schools. I did, and it was a horrible experience. Of course,
your experience may well be different than mine, and your perspective,
as well.
Your assumption of me as a well educated white liberal is understandable,
but not exactly on target, although my family ranges from phd’s to farmers.
I do have some college education at the local community college, but basically, my education comes from my work experience in a high paid blue collar job in a highly diverse work environment, my love of reading, and a natural interest in life. I know I am white and accept my limitations in understanding racism.
Thank you for giving me some perspective. Perhaps my opinion of the small town people that I know is wrong.
April 23, 2008 at 1:17 am
panracial
Kathy and Juan, thanks for sharing your experiences with me. I don’t mean to suggest that only upper or middle class whites could be racist, but I DID want to emphasize that prejudice against poor or rural whites and the assumption that they are insular, ignorant, and small minded hurts me, as a person of color, as much as attacks on minorities. I’m just as wounded by the slur “poor white trash” as I am by the “n” word. As a person of color who has lived exclusively in predominantly white worlds I’m familiar with racism from lower class whites who resent my parents socioeconomic status — my dad gets frivolous tickets for driving a certain type of car or waiters act snooty when we eat in a certain restaurant, but I’ve also had to challenge the headmaster of my private prep school alma mater about what real diversity is — I’ve seen racism on all ends of the spectrum. 99% of the prejudice I’ve faced, however, has been in urban centers, whether my own hometown or Paris or Dublin, in elite enclaves, which, themselves, are nearly exclusively white. Somehow, the all white upper class world where everyone has a college degree and exclusivity is a code work for racial supremacy isn’t given the same kind of attention as the all white rural town. There are certain rural white towns where a person of color shouldn’t go because they will face extreme prejudice. There are also certain wealthy neighborhoods where my friends lived where non-whites were forbidden to live and if you drove through them, as my family did, visiting friends are on our way to school, you’d get harrassed. My experience with rural whites has been that so many of them are articulate (which may or may not mean grammatical), respectful, wise, and incisive thinkers. Others of them are ignorant and hateful. In other words, while there are definitely some rural white communities I would be scared to enter, and while there is a disproportionate amount of overt prejudice in lower class whites, lower and working class whites are diverse and intelligent like everyone else.
Are insular communities inherently bad? For example, a kid at my college was raised on a Hopi reservation and didn’t learn English until age 7 — would you call his world mindlesss because its insular and racially homogenous?
I went to an elite all white private school in a metropolis — is that different than a rural public all white school?
Can people be racially diverse but still, class or ideologically-wise homogenous?
As a person of color whose parents are privileged, I’ve tried to subvert that privilege to advocate for others. Because of where my college is located, all the non-professional staff is white. I’ve had extensive conversations with these poor and working class white men and women who were generous about sharing their stories with me. As someone who has received the gift of their stories I can’t stand silent when I hear them generalized and dehumanized. One thing several of the workers pointed out was their respect for students of color who were more polite and drank less heavily than their white peers. The white lady who cleans the bathroom in my dorm room told me that if I ever couldn’t fly home for a holiday due to weather, I could share Thanksgiving or Christmas with her.
So yeah, poor rural white people are probably more prejudiced than other classes of whites and a many rural white towns are Jasper Texas and Jenas waiting to happen, but we can’t make an essentialist argument, as Obama did, about rural or poor or working class whites.
Juan, at my private school many of the moms were Daughters of the Confederacy. In 7th grade we would tour the family plantations…
April 23, 2008 at 5:45 am
Kathy
Panracial,
yeah, spend a holiday with the cleaning lady, I know all about that. The last time I had a white kid over to my house for a play date, her father was obviously upset that his daughter was in the company of a “mixed” crowd of children. I told my mother that I predicted that his daughter would never come to our house again, and I was right.
White educated people aren’t much better, but poor, uneducuated white people are not the charming lot that you describe here. I don’t know who I would be more afraid of, in the final analysis.
April 23, 2008 at 2:47 pm
CJsDaddy
Please allow me to throw in a little insight given that I grew up in a tiny rural white town, and most of my family lived in tiny rural white towns in the Mid-Atlantic.
Part of the problem with Obama’s remarks is that he made them in Pennsylvania where people tend to be more defensive about their racism. In other words, all of the people he characterized in that speech may very well have voted for him. They don’t exude the same kind of racism one sees historically in the South or in urban areas. In the South, Obama isn’t going to lose any white voters in the South by calling them bitter because he wasn’t going to capture them anyway.
The racism that existed in my household and town came more from sheer ignorance. Unlike most of the South, there simply are no black people around. In our minds, we didn’t have any means to act on our racism except when maybe a black dude might show up with a road repair crew, then our mother’s wouldn’t let us go outside.
Poor white voters in PA are not bitter toward other races in the US for their plight. Their bitter at corporations and trade policies that they perceive to be stealing their factory jobs. At least that’s been my experience. To accuse them of being bitter, rather than empathizing with their bitterness creates a problem, and it’s not just racial.
April 23, 2008 at 3:04 pm
panracial
Kathy, I’m not offering conjecture — I’m talking about my real experiences with a large number of poor white people as a person of color. The non-professional staff at my college are rural whites in a community that has no black population. The cleaning lady is a white woman from this community who offered, in all sincerity, to take me home for the holidays. This woman has been my college mother ever since I first arrived. All I’m trying to say is can we please extend poor and white working class folks the same humanity that we do towards poor and working class people of color? Also, I always double check someobody’s liberal credentials when they’re classist — I think, yeah, so they don’t hate minorities, but they hate poor whites — they’re still hating so they haven’t grown - they need to feel superior to somebody so they’ve transferred their prejudice to a more politically correct group. Note — I’m not calling you a hater, but I’m explaining why I’m sticking up for that demographic.
April 23, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Kathy
Panracial,
Yesterday, I volunteered at a local grade school, tomorrow, I will help feed homeless people at a local soup kitchen. Too many times I hear the attitude from educated liberal bloggers who have a lot of experience reading a book but actually do nothing more than that. Talking is good, but it can leave an empty hole in the middle of reality.
I am glad you are having a positive experience in the town you are living in. To paint with a broad brush or sterotype is not a good thing, my bad.
Of course, I have empathy for all those who are poor/working class.
But I am not going to excuse hatred, bigoty, cruelty, from any class of people. I believe one of the reasons that Clinton’s campaign has been
successful is because she plays on the fears of a group of people whose only access to People of Color is the tv. Perhaps I am wrong, I am always willing to think things over, and I concede your point of view.
On Monday, a woman told me in regards to Rev. Wright that “They are more racist than we are.” She isn’t some poor white woman living in a small town, this was on 42nd street. So I understand your point.
I still think that education broadens the mind, and experience is a good teacher. Sorry for sounding so cliche, but that is what I think.
April 24, 2008 at 1:12 am
panracial
Kathy I appreciate you so much for your patience with me and your generosity in sharing your point of view with me. There are definitely some small rural white towns, Southern and Northern, I’d be terrified to set foot in. But I’ve lived my entire life among wealthy college educated white people — and I’ve seen how pervasive racism is among them — when we focus on racism as a lower/working class white problem, we give the white middle and upperclass people a pass. It was my best friend’s mom, a white millionaire lawyer, who told my mom that she didn’t want me going to a girls’ choice cotillion with a white boy at our school (which was 95% white.) She said if I didn’t know any boys of color (since I lived in the same world as her, she guessed, accurately, that my social circle was as lily white as hers was) I should bring a cousin so that she and the other whites wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. I could give you many more examples of racism I’ve suffered from wealthy white people. Sometimes the racism was subtle and genteel, and sometimes it was blatant. It’s not just rural small town or poor whites whose only experience with minorities comes from tv. In the white upper class world the only non-whites they know are the ones on tv and the ones who clean their homes and raise their kids. Somehow that insularity gets excused. It’s a different type of insularity — these people have traveled the entire world, gone to college, grad school, and had all sorts of experiences, still, except for the people cleaning the toilets and holding the service trays, their worlds is entirely white. No matter where they travel in the world, they spend time only with the other wealthy white travelers. Or they volunteer with other wealthy whites in poor countries. Or they know the one surgeon or lawyer or board member of color in their social group, but they assume he or she is just an exception to the rule. I live in a city that is 60% Hispanic, but because of the circle I traveled in (95% white where we lived, went to school, played, etc.) I assumed the city was 80% white. What I’m trying to say is that insularity and occur within large diverse cities. Insularity can occur even when you’ve traveled to six different continents and speak five languages.
All this is to say, I agree with you — racism shouldn’t be tolerated from any class of people — and classism shouldn’t be tolerated against any race of people.
April 25, 2008 at 12:40 am
macon d
Wow, fantastic video, makes me think about religious leaders in a different way. Thank you for posting it. I suppose the only part Fox would replay is the very end, where he says “they” decided MLK “had to die.” Should be easy to snip that out and play it over and over.
April 25, 2008 at 7:54 am
more cowbell
And the church said — Go, Father! Too many good points to even address. I am long removed from religion, but damned if I wouldn’t visit that man’s church. I love how he called the FOXer on every bit of slick labeling and breathless drama he tried to slip in there, didn’t let him get away with any of it. Excellent. Best 9 minutes I’ve seen all week long. In fact, after some of the other things I’ve read around the blogosphere this week, the good Father restored my faith, if not in god, at least in the fact that we allies aren’t a total lost cause. Thanks for posting this.
April 25, 2008 at 2:37 pm
panracial
more cowbell — have you ever thought of attending a minority race church, whether or not you’re minority? In those churches there is often a combination of revolution and theology — or, rather, a recognization of the fact that theology is revolutionary. You might enjoy it — even if you’re removed from religion. Jeremiah Wright isn’t an anomaly — I’ve heard stuff like that from my own preacher and he’s really not that radical:)
April 25, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Less Lee
This was incredibly moving. Thank you for posting it. I will let others know to come back here and check out the video.
April 25, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Kathy
Panracial,
I want to thank your for your patience too, and also your willingness to share. The incident with your Mom’s friend is f’n horrible, and for it to be a close family friend makes it even worse. That’s a terrible grief and sadness to hear.
I am really interested in learing more about how class and race are affected by values/behaviors/religion/ ect.
April 26, 2008 at 10:19 pm
more cowbell
Panracial — well, if I ever were to darken the doors again, a church like Rev. Wright’s is probably the only way I could do it, and yes, that aspect of it (revolution+theology) is appealing to me. For me personally though, attending now would feel hypocritical, as Iknow I don’t have the belief anymore. I was formerly very religious (to the point of knocking on doors and having a heavily highlighted Bible), but have not been in that place for years. There are aspects of it I miss, but I just personally couldn’t go knowing that the belief is no longer part of it for me.
April 27, 2008 at 3:48 am
panracial
I get exactly what you’re saying, but if you ever get that urge don’t feel hypocritical:) I love going to learn in houses of worship of religions I know I’ll never practice. Even though I know I won’t be converting those faiths, I’ve learned so much going to different types of religious services, reading different religious texts, and talking with different religious leaders and different parts of those worldviews often become part of my life even if I don’t adopt the whole cosmology. The people I’ve talked to have known from the get go I wasn’t about to convert but they were glad I was trying to learn from them — nobody ever called me a hypocrite.
Plus, I know of non-religious white people who enjoy black churches just for the music and I’ve never seen a black Christian mind:)
April 27, 2008 at 8:49 am
more cowbell
Hmm, good point. I wouldn’t feel hypocritical going to a non-Christian church just for the learning, but it definitely comes into play thinking about attending any of the Christian brands. I’d never realized that difference in feelings. I’ll have to give that some more thought.
May 8, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Wright then « Molecular Shyness
[...] of Pfleger’s response/rebuttal to a Fox News person drew the conversation in the direction of how more people should stand up to [...]