Last week, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was forced to tackle the issue of race in the midst of the controversy over the explosive comments of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama’s speech reflects the hard truth about America, we still struggle to talk openly and honestly about race.

However, looking back on how this got started reveals a lot about double standard this country applies to people of color who talk about events of 9/11. The news media depicted Wright as a racial extremist and anti-American. During the last two weeks, the media flooded the airwaves with excerpts from sermons of the Rev. Wright.

One of the most controversial statements in this sermon was when he mentioned “chickens coming home to roost.” However, Rev. Wright was actually quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force, who was speaking on FOX News.

I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox News. This is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, (Did you see him, John?) — a white man — he pointed out — an ambassador — that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true; America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
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America’s chickens are coming home to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism.

A White ambassador said that, y’all, not a black militant. Not a Reverend who preaches about racism; an ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and whose trying to get us to wake up, and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said that the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them, and we need to come to grips with that.

Let me stop my faith footnote right there, and ask you to think about that over the next few weeks if God grants us that many days. Turn back to your neighbor, and say, “Footnote is over.”

That’s what he told the congregation. However, instead of seeking the truth, Rev. Wright was met with the same fervor and damnation the media lauded on Ward Churchill, the tenured professor who was kicked out from the University of Colorado in July 2007 for alleged “research misconduct.”

George Orwell once wrote, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” From all indications, the gatekeepers for big media in the United States don’t want people to hear what people like Rev. Wright or Churchill have to say.

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general public. It is their function to inculcate individuals with the values and beliefs that are deemed acceptable to society. It is not surprising to see major media outlets seem far more interested in marginalizing Rev. Wright than allowing him a space for his own words. Media attacks on him are especially vitriolic with venomous misrepresentation.

Since Sept. 11, the distortions have been predictable: Although he’s an unequivocal opponent of terrorism in all its forms, Rev. Wright is portrayed as an apologist for terrorism. His life is now threaten and is forced to cancel upcoming appearance.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, presidential candidate Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, canceled plans Wednesday to receive an award at a summit on black churches.
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Wright has also canceled plans to speak at three services in a Houston church Sunday. He canceled plans Tuesday to speak at a church in Tampa, Fla.
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The Rev. Marcus Cosby, pastor at Houston’s Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, told Houston television station KTRK and the Houston Chronicle that safety concerns had prompted Wright’s decision.

More troubling is how white and Republican voters forced Barack Obama to “distance” himself from his pastor of twenty years due to a few phrases; no context whatsoever has been offered or explored.

The media and other institutions form prisms through which ideas and information reach the public, according to Noam Chomsky. Those who care about freedom and democracy, about controlling their own lives, must discern how social realities are distorted by such prisms.

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