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108 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography

massacre, the Tuskegee experiment, and similar atrocities, often quite real but all far from your own
privileged existence. The more Ivy League degrees you have on your wall, the louder you must
chant, “God damn America!” The more government contracts you have obtained, the more you
must profess the blowback theory of 9/11, citing the 3,000 deaths of innocent people as God’s
punishment for the racist crimes of US imperialism. All these points represent nothing but the
characteristic outlook of the foundations. The religion preached by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright
and the theologian Dwight Hopkins at the Trinity United Church of Christ is demonstrably not
Christianity, but rather a gnostic-synthetic ersatz belief structure which has been whipped up and
concocted for the special emotional needs of a narrow segment of the black overclass under
conditions of affirmative action in the late Anglo-American imperialist development. To be more
concise, Reverend Wright’s church is a foundation-funded cult. It teaches an ethnocentric, synthetic
religion.


Some in the black community offered criticisms of Wright; here is one from Jonetta Rose
Barras, a well-known radio commentator in the Washington DC area, who was confused about
Obama, but not about that fact that Wright was at least obsolete:


I’ve known preachers like the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., former pastor to Sen. Barack Obama.
Like many of them, he no doubt sees his congregation as full of victims, and thinks that his words
will inspire them to rise out of their victimhood. I understand that. Once upon a time, I saw myself
as a victim, too, destined to march in place. In the 1970s and ‘80s, as a clenched-fist-pumping black
nationalist with my head wrapped in an elaborate gele, I reflected that self-concept in my speech.
My words were as fiery as the Rev. Wright’s. And more than a few times, I, too, damned America,
loudly, for its treatment of blacks. But I turned away from such rhetoric. Is it time that Wright and
other ministers do, too? But just as spirituals eventually lost their relevance and potency as an
organizing tool against discrimination — even as they retained their historical importance in the
African-American cultural narrative — so, I believe, has Wright-speak lost its place. It’s harmful
and ultimately can’t provide healing. And it’s outdated in the 21st century. I came to this realization
gradually. As I expanded my associations and experiences — organizing in places such as San
Francisco, Providence, R.I., Patterson, N.J. and Northeast Washington, meeting caring Hispanics,
Asians and whites — I came to know that we are all more alike than different. I saw that our dreams
sat inside each other. All of us wanted a better America, not so much for ourselves as for our
children, and their children. Achieving this meant that we had to get beyond our past segregated
lives and work together, inspiring the best in ourselves — not the bitterness and the biases. [...]And
today, there is an entire generation of young people who know nothing of segregation, who see one
another as individuals, not as symbols of a dark past. They do not look into white faces and see, as I
once did, a burning cross, a white sheet and a vicious dog on a police officer’s leash. This is the
coalition pushing for a new America. (Jonetta Rose Barras, “He’s Preaching to a Choir I’ve Left,”
Washington Post, March 23, 2008)


DOROTHY TILLMAN, OBAMA ALLY: “AMERICA OWES US” GRAFT


Another of Obama’s Chicago political cronies is Dorothy Tillman, an alderwoman of the city.
Tillman’s specialty is to try to extort payments from banks and corporations which reportedly go to
herself and her clients, based on the accusation that the bank or company in question participated in
slavery. Tillman has been quoted as saying her goal is to “repair the damage of 400 years” of
slavery. “America owes us,” she says. (Chicago Sun-Times, March 26, 2007) Again, this is not the
demand for broad-based economic development programs for the black underclass. It is often an
attempt to extort cash payments to specific individuals to make a public relations problem go away,

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