In all this talk about the Reverend Wright’s inflammatory statements, I have yet to come across someone who was actually personally offended. It seems like all the discussion of “what this will do to Obama’s chances” revolves around what other people will think. We who discuss it are never that upset, but we live in constant fear of that silent mass of people out there who may look at the Scary Black Man and decide anyone who associates with him must be some kind of secret Satanist or child murderer.

I guess behind all the controversy is the fear that white people, more specifically, ignorant white people, won’t vote for someone who is tainted by the brush of the Scary Black Man. I don’t see it turning off any blacks, but we don’t really need to appeal to them, because there’s no way black people would ever vote Republican. So that means the entire audience for this media spectacle is ignorant whites. What I wouldn’t give for a country in which the campaigns focused their attentions on the intelligent instead of the ignorant.

I don’t have any problem with the Reverend Wright defending himself, and I don’t think what he said was necessarily all that shocking. The world is complex. I think the reason we were attacked on 9/11 was partly because America can sometimes be dicks to the rest of the world. I think my perspective of our country would be entirely different if I was black, and I don’t know why that is difficult for other people with my skin tone to understand. He’s not advising his congregation to go out and murder. He’s expressing an anger felt by a large segment of our population, and I don’t understand who is getting hurt by that.

While I was writing this, I just clicked over and saw that Obama has officially dropped Wright as a friend. Apparently the speech Wright gave yesterday was more inflammatory than ever. I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll report back!