Heck, you seem to want us to think that people from that are and those like it are all lumped into one group and destine to fail. That is just not true. Whether you like to admit it or not people make decision on what they are going to do. Some make it some don't.

Jeff Jacoby: It's still a question of Wright and wrong / 3-19-2008-from Dan


No matter what your current political leanings may be, I think this article in yesterdays Boston Globe very effectively reflects many patrotic American's positions on the current Obama dustup.
IT'S STILL A QUESTION OF WRIGHT AND WRONG
By Jeff Jacoby - Wednesday, March 19, 2008

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/ope...of_wright_and_wrong/

I have known my rabbi for more than 20 years. The synagogue he serves as spiritual leader is one I have attended for a quarter-century. He officiated at my wedding and was present for the circumcision of each of my sons. Over the years, I have sought his advice on matters private and public, religious and secular. I have heard him speak from the pulpit more times than I can remember.

My relationship with my rabbi, in other words, is similar in many respects to Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. But if my rabbi began delivering sermons as toxic, hate-filled, and anti-American as the diatribes Wright has preached at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, I wouldn't hesitate to demand that he be dismissed.


Sen. Barack Obama and his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.


Were my rabbi to gloat that America got its just desserts on 9/11, or to claim that the US government invented AIDS as an instrument of genocide, or to urge his congregants to sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America," I would know about it straightaway, even if I hadn't actually been in the sanctuary when he spoke. The news would spread rapidly through the congregation, and in short order one of two things would happen: Either the rabbi would be gone, or I and scores of others would walk out, unwilling to remain in a house of worship that tolerated such poisonous teachings. I have no doubt that the same would be true for millions of worshipers in countless houses of worship nationwide.

But it wasn't true for Obama, whose long and admiring relationship with Wright, a man he describes as his "mentor," remained intact for more than 20 years, notwithstanding the incendiary and bigoted messages the minister used his pulpit to promote.

In Philadelphia yesterday, Obama gave a graceful speech on the theme of race and unity in American life. Much of what he said was eloquent and stirring, not least his opening paean to the Founders and the Constitution -- a document "stained by the nation's original sin of slavery," as he said, yet also one "that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time." There was an echo there of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in his great "I Have a Dream" speech extolled "the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence" as "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."

The problem for Obama is that Wright, the spiritual leader he has so long embraced, is a devotee not of King -- who in that same speech warned against "drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred" -- but of the poisonous hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, whom the church's magazine honored with a lifetime achievement award. The problem for Obama, who campaigns on a message of racial reconciliation, is that the "mentor" whose church he joined and has generously supported with tens of thousands of dollars in donations is a disciple not of King but of James Cone, the expounder of a "black liberation" theology that teaches its adherents to "accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

Above all, the problem for Obama is that for two decades his spiritual home has been a church in which the minister damns America to the enthusiastic approval of the congregation, and not until it threatened to scuttle his political ambitions did Obama finally find the mettle to condemn the minister's odium.

When Don Imus uttered his infamous slur on the radio last year, Obama cut him no slack. Imus should be fired, he said. "There's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group."

When it came to Wright, however, he wasn't nearly so categorical. Oh, he's "like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," Obama indulgently explained to one interviewer. He's just "trying to be provocative," he told another. "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial," he said. Far from severing his ties to Wright, Obama made him a member of his Religious Leadership Committee -- a tie he finally cut only four days ago.

Such a clanging double standard raises doubts about Obama's character and judgment, and about his fitness for the role of race-transcending healer. Yesterday's speech was finely crafted, but it leaves some serious and troubling questions unanswered.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

That's not what I'm saying at all, Nav. Quite the opposite, actually.

I'm saying that the people who do make it out of environments like that are extraordinary, whereas very ordinary people make it out of the places like the one where I grew up. It's not hard to make it out of my town. You can be a schmuck and make it out of my town. Good, mostly intact families, great schools, safe, etc.

Yet the same array of innate talents exist in those kids in Cabrini-Green as exist in the town you grew up in, or the town I grew up in. It's just a lot harder for them to develop them. They don't have the same type of access to the American dream that others do.

You mentioned the decisions they have to make. Well, those decisions are very, very different than the ones I had to make, and the stakes are much higher. I didn't have to deal with a fraction of the shit these kids have to deal with. And that's not white guilt talking. That's just the reality.

I can't speak for you.

As for my need to help everyone, I don't feel a need to help everyone at all. I just think there are some policies that are better than others, and I argue for them. There are better answers than simply admonishing people in those situations to suck it up. That doesn't address the problems of environment.

You're never going to have equality in opportunity. But the inequality of opportunity that exists in America right now is unacceptable.

I don't think you'd argue that there's no room for improvement, would you? Could anyone look at inner city Chicago, or Detroit, or Cleveland, or Memphis, or LA and say, "Yeah, that's how it should be."

Comparisons by Topic >
Teens who are high school dropouts: Percent: 2005

Rank
United States 7%
36 Alabama 9%
36 Alaska 9%
36 Arizona 9%
27 Arkansas 8%
16 California 7%
27 Colorado 8%
2 Connecticut 4%
36 Delaware 9%
Not Ranked District of Columbia 8%
27 Florida 8%
47 Georgia 10%
1 Hawaii (lowest) 3%
36 Idaho 9%
16 Illinois 7%
36 Indiana 9%
4 Iowa 5%
9 Kansas 6%
36 Kentucky 9%
27 Louisiana 8%
16 Maine 7%
16 Maryland 7%
4 Massachusetts 5%
16 Michigan 7%
2 Minnesota 4%
36 Mississippi 9%
27 Missouri 8%
16 Montana 7%
4 Nebraska 5%
50 Nevada (highest) 11%
9 New Hampshire 6%
9 New Jersey 6%
47 New Mexico 10%
9 New York 6%
36 North Carolina 9%
4 North Dakota 5%
9 Ohio 6%
47 Oklahoma 10%
16 Oregon 7%
16 Pennsylvania 7%
Not Ranked Puerto Rico N.A.
27 Rhode Island 8%
36 South Carolina 9%
16 South Dakota 7%
27 Tennessee 8%
27 Texas 8%
16 Utah 7%
4 Vermont 5%
9 Virginia 6%
16 Washington 7%
36 West Virginia 9%
9 Wisconsin 6%
27 Wyoming 8%

http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/tables/1_Table_1.htm

2005 Drop out rate
White, non-Hispanic alone 6.0%
Black alone 10.8%
Hispanic 22.5%
Asian alone 2.8%

Percent of all dropouts per percent of population.
White, non-Hispanic alone 39.3%
Black alone 16.7%
Hispanic 41.3
Asian alone 1.2%

For 2005 the numbers do not add up. Hispanics seem to the largest group. Think that has anything to do with being here legally.

Whites seem to be next with Blacks about half that. According to you it should be the other way around.

50 Nevada (highest) 11% dropout rate, I am not sure but could you tell me the big inner city projects in Nevada.

1 Hawaii (lowest) 3%m Yep Obama knows what it is like to grow up in a crappy school system.

16 Illinois 7%, not to bad about in the middle. I would expect with all those kids giving up it would be a lot higher.

http://www.schooldatadirect.org/app/data/q/stid=14/llid.../compid=854/site=pes

2008 number from the Dept of Education. Lets take a look and discuss the state of Ill. To much info to past.

This doesn't speak to particular areas, just states. The point isn't about blacks or whites or Hispanics anyway; it's about urban blight.

It can be about rural blight too.

While the numbers are state wide, if certain areas where that bad they would be represented in the numbers. So which is it, Urban or Rural? Heck if it is that bad where are all these kids coming from that graduate.

I think people watch to much TV and think that the world is really all like that.

quote:

Originally posted by heckofajobBrownie:
That's not what I'm saying at all, Nav. Quite the opposite, actually.

I'm saying that the people who do make it out of environments like that are extraordinary, whereas very ordinary people make it out of the places like the one where I grew up. It's not hard to make it out of my town. You can be a schmuck and make it out of my town. Good, mostly intact families, great schools, safe, etc.

Yet the same array of innate talents exist in those kids in Cabrini-Green as exist in the town you grew up in, or the town I grew up in. It's just a lot harder for them to develop them. They don't have the same type of access to the American dream that others do.

You mentioned the decisions they have to make. Well, those decisions are very, very different than the ones I had to make, and the stakes are much higher. I didn't have to deal with a fraction of the shit these kids have to deal with. And that's not white guilt talking. That's just the reality.

I can't speak for you.

As for my need to help everyone, I don't feel a need to help everyone at all. I just think there are some policies that are better than others, and I argue for them. There are better answers than simply admonishing people in those situations to suck it up. That doesn't address the problems of environment.

You're never going to have equality in opportunity. But the inequality of opportunity that exists in America right now is unacceptable.

I don't think you'd argue that there's no room for improvement, would you? Could anyone look at inner city Chicago, or Detroit, or Cleveland, or Memphis, or LA and say, "Yeah, that's how it should be."

I glad someone else here recognizes that people are primarily a product of their environment. It is amusing so many folks think they rose above and made something more than their environment dictated to them.

I never met a garbage collector who was the son of a brain surgeon and I never met a Harvard MBA who was the son of high school drop out living in the ghetto with his single mom who worked for McDonald's.

But some of just have this peachy view of ourselves and this disdain for those who are stuck in the toilet bowl so to speak

A new question on the issue:

Why isn't Trinity Baptist selling Wright's sermons on DVD right out of the bookstore anymore if what is making the talkshow circuit are merely "out-of-context sound bites" ?? Why did they pull them from the shelves?

That's a good question. The sermon doesn't look nearly as bad taken as a whole. It's largely a speech against war, and the cycle of violence, with some nuttiness thrown in.

I don't agree with it, but it's hardly something that would make me write off the candidacy of the guy who wasn't there to hear it, but should have known, yada yada.

PS - Rich, well said.

Let me ask you guys this question:

Are there any Catholics in here? I was raised Catholic. Perhaps there are a few others.

What do you guys think of the head of a church, or Pope, who associated with -- and promoted -- people who not only facilitated the sexual abuse and rape of hundreds of children, but engaged in a decades-long cover up of those crimes?

Did any of you get up and walk out of that church the way you insisted that Barack Obama do when his pastor said bad things about America?

I was Episcopalian prior to my marriage (wife is non-denom). When the issue of the gay bishop came up, the Episco. church I was currently attending fortunately made the decision for me. They disassociated themselves from the diocese. Had they not, I would have left.

Right on.

Because if it's one thing we can't have, it's gay people in the clergy.

(Insert emoticon of guy laughing so hard he's smacking the ground here.)

Forget bragging about it. How about doing it? How about becoming well aware that the hierachy of the very church you're sitting in conspired to keep these crimes not only silent, but continued to put pedophile priests in situations where they could continue molesting children -- and did? Hundreds of times over? Across the country? In every major diocese?

Should Catholics have walked out? Isn't that just a tad worse than saying "God damn America"?