Last week, Barack Obama released a statement condemning the controversial comments of his retiring pastor, Jeremiah Wright. On Tuesday he gave a speech on race in light of the controversy. My question is: What does Barack Obama have to do with the comments of an independent, fully grown pastor 20 years his senior? Who cares about Rev. Wright? Why is Barack Obama accountable for another man’s words? Obama is not his clone. This is a classic case of political scare tactics intended to frighten white voters.

But this mode of political attack begs the question: What is so scary about Wright in the first place? Why are people shocked by Wright’s comments? I guess most whites (liberal or conservative) have not been in many black mainline churches during Black History Month and heard the preachers of the Jim Crow generation offer reflection. If they did they might notice what should be obvious—given the context—Wright’s comments are not unusual or extreme for the religious left.

Consider the generation from which Wright hails. As one of America’s Jim Crow generation, Wright grew up in a legally segregated, racist America. He has witnessed and was shaped by the turmoil of the civil-rights movement. The fact of the matter is that Rev. Wright sounds exactly like many, many other black pastors of his era. And while I do not support Wright’s comments, I understand why he feels the way he does.

The new pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ, the Rev. Otis Moss III, defended his predecessor in The New York Times: “It is an indictment on Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound bite.” We should not consider Wright’s words apart from what they are born of. Nor should we consider it the sum of his ministry. Rev. Moss continued in his statement, highlighting the focus of Wright’s ministry over the past 30 years, which included:

… places for senior citizens, day care for children, pastoral care and counseling, health care, ministries for persons living with H.I.V./AIDS, hospice training, prison ministry, scholarships for thousands of students to attend historically black colleges, youth ministries, tutorial and computer programs, a church library, domestic violence programs, and scholarships and fellowships for women and men attending seminary.

But that is Jeremiah Wright. And Wright is not running for president; Barack Obama is. Should we not be more concerned about $800 billion in new spending Obama has proposed? An exploding welfare state seems to be more of a threat to our republic than the isolated views of a retired pastor.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists has issued a warning that women are at risk for mental health breakdowns if they have an abortion. The Times of London reports that this professional and educational body for psychiatrists in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland has recommended that abortion information that’s distributed should be updated to include details of the risks of depression. “Consent cannot be informed without the provision of adequate and appropriate information,” the group said.

Meanwhile, the British Parliament will soon vote on a proposed reduction on the number of weeks into a pregnancy a woman can have an abortion from 24 to 20 weeks.

Stateside, Planned Parenthood’s eugenic and racist roots are showing in Idaho, thanks to a UCLA pro-life student magazine, The Advocate.

The same week that the Virginia Senate voted to cut off funds to Planned Parenthood, pro-life students outed the organization for alleged racism.

Lila Rose, UCLA sophomore and founder of The Advocate, a pro-life student magazine, recruited an actor to make phone calls to Planned Parenthood clinics in seven states posing as a racist who wanted to make a donation earmarked for the abortion of black babies. Without objection or question, every representative the actor spoke to said they would accept such a donation.

Here is the dialogue between the actor and the representative at the Idaho branch, according to a video montage Rose posted on YouTube:

Actor: …I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids.

Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.

Actor: And we don’t, you know, we just think the less black kids out there the better.

Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable… This is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out.

This was not the first time Rose, who claims to be a Christian, used “behind the scenes” techniques with Planned Parenthood. In November 2006, Rose posed as a pregnant 15-year-old. She used an undercover camera to record a Planned Parenthood employee advising her to claim she was 16 so they wouldn’t have to report it as a case of statutory rape. When Planned Parenthood found out, they threatened to sue Rose.

Rose told WoW that she believes Christian journalists, like government agents, are justified in going undercover, and even lying, in order to fight against human rights abuses, such as slavery and abortion.

“You see Christians in history going undercover with this kind of infiltration to save a life, or find a truth…this is the kind of thing we can do bravely,” she said.

On Thursday, Planned Parenthood’s CEO Rebecca Poedy apologized for the actions of the representative at the Idaho branch and said, “Planned Parenthood firmly and unequivocally denounces racial bias in the delivery of health care.”

The charge of racism has legs, though, because Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger helped to fund her organization by suggesting — accurately — that it would cut down the number of African-American births. A much higher percentage of black babies than white babies are now killed before birth.

Earlier this month, Spanish fans hurled racial taunts at Formula One’s first black driver, Lewis Hamilton, prompting the International Automobile Association to create a “Racing against Racism” campaign for the Spanish Grand Prix in April. Some worry the attacks aren’t isolated, and they aren’t just aimed at blacks.

Sports authorities, athletes and media have either condemned the taunting as endemic of Spanish sports or dismissed it as an isolated event. Spanish soccer has had a number of racist incidents in recent years. Despite fines and legislation aimed at curbing such behavior, some say it is not enough, particularly in light of the most recent abuse. Others, however, disagree, saying that racist incidents in Spain are lower than the UK, France or Germany.

Some say the incident highlights a growing prejudice among some Hispanics. In 2006, after Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez denounced Israel’s advance into Gaza, anti-Semitic graffiti appeared on the main Sephardic synagogue in Caracas. The Anti-Defamation League has tracked other incidents throughout the world.

Hispanic anti-Semitism began in Spain, according to Ilan Stavans, professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The sentiment later spread to Latin America. In 1994, a terrorist attack killed 85 and injured hundreds at the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association in Buenos Aires. More than a decade later, Stavans says that Jewish sites in Latin America are “tensely vigilant.”

Some have pointed to the Iranian government as the culprit for the attack. In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, Abraham Foxman, national director the Anti-Defamation League, says Chávez is building relationships with countries and movements that are unabashedly anti-Semitic, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Foxman warns that the increasing acceptance of anti-Semitism should not be taken lightly. “Throughout the ages, Jews have been the canary in the coal mine, with any downturn in their treatment or status as equal citizens signaling the decline of democracy within a society.”

Here’s the third and final excerpt (and WMB post) from Richard Thomas Ford’s The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse.  The first excerpt/post considered the word racism and its many abuses, the second excerpt/post considered the Jay-Z/Cristal controversy, and the third excerpt/post considers Hurricane Katrina and who, precisely, was being racist during those terrible days.

Yesterday, I posted on excerpts from a new book by Richard Thompson Ford, The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse.  This second excerpt starts with a consideration of the Jay-Z boycott of Cristal (champagne) for its owner’s “racist” comments.  In short, Cristal suggested that it didn’t like the fact that hip-hop artists were rapping about how much Cristal they could afford to drink.  Jay-Z said this was a racist suggestion.

Why, when black unemployment, poverty, rates of incarceration, and life expectancy remain severe and unaddressed problems, did anyone pay a moment’s attention to the offhand comment of the representative of a vintner with roots in prerevolutionary France? Jay-Z talked the line of a scrappy civil rights activist, but with the inflections of a jilted socialite: “Jay-Z … will now be serving only Krug and Dom Pérignon,” sniffed the press release. When a young, black, self-described “hustler” from Brooklyn seems as precious as a Park Avenue debutante, we’ve turned some sort of corner in race relations. But where are we headed?

Ford makes an important distinction here, and this is one of the central problems of racism: “[Cristal’s] comments might have reflected racism-we don’t want blacks drinking our wine-but they might have reflected concern over the association of the brand with an ostentatious subculture that extols violence and crime.”  If this isn’t a good conversation starter, I don’t know what is.

Today is MLK Day, when lots of people will talk about racism and how, though it’s not as bad as it used to be, it’s still bad.   Slate is publishing excerpts of a new book, The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, by Richard Thomas Ford: “Ford examines the claims of bias that pervade modern American discourse in an attempt to understand why a growing number of people claim to be victims of bigotry in a country with fewer and fewer real bigots.”  Ford says that the term racism has no clear and common meaning anymore:

Self-serving individuals, rabble-rousers, and political hacks use accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other types of “bias” tactically, in order to advance their own ends. And people of goodwill may make sincere claims that strike others as obviously wrongheaded. 

Christians most often suffer from this misunderstanding when others call us homophobic for saying anything about homosexuality that could be defined as “something homosexuals would not say.”  Here’s the first excerpt, and Ford starts his examination by looking at Justice Clarence Thomas’s accusations of a “high-tech lynching” to see if his confirmation hearings were, indeed, a lynching.

Dozens of students from a Cincinnati suburb worked for nearly three months memorizing lines, building sets, making costumes, designing sound and lights, and rehearsing for a production of Agatha Christie’s classic “Ten Little Indians.” But then school administrators suddenly cancelled the play after receiving complaints it was racially insensitive. Now some are wondering whether it was really a case of censorship.

Nooses in Jena, Louisiana, nooses at Columbia University in New York City, and their lingering ancillary protests, reveal that America has yet to recover from centuries of racial tension. Even worse is the fact that American Christianity has little credibility in pointing to the church as a model of social progress in the area of race.

In 1958 Martin Luther King once said, “Unfortunately, most of the major denominations still practice segregation in local churches, hospitals, schools, and other church institutions. It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Is this still true today?

Brutal honesty confesses that not much has changed in evangelicalism since 1958. Sunday morning is segregated, yes, but so is every other day in the lives of most Christians. At 6:00 pm we retreat back to our racially homogenous marriages, families, neighborhoods, and the like, only to reintegrate for work, entertainment, or commerce. Our Sunday associations represent nothing less than those relationships we choose to enjoy throughout the week.

America confuses institutional diversity with relational diversity. The races tolerate each other at work or school because our private lives are designed for affinity associations, “people like me.” Many Christian parents say, “We’re not racist” until their blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter starts dating a man of Mexican descent, or even worse for some, a black family discovers that their Ivy-league son is courting a white female classmate.

Good complaints are made about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton but where are the evangelical leaders, of all races, publicly demanding airtime and offering an alternative vision when conflict arises? We should have no expectations that American culture will advance in her race consciousness until the church embodies the implications of our common anthropology expressed in the Gospel lived out in local community life.