Editor:
Regarding Tiara C. Auxier’s latest column (“Barack can’t hide it,” April 2), what exactly should blacks be thankful for?
Being classified as subhuman? For slavery? For the lynching? Jim Crow laws? Segregation? Having slave masters breed blacks for the slave trade as if they were animals? Being shipped from Africa in living conditions where slaves defecated, urinated and even died on each other? Living in a country with laws that allowed for the hunting of slaves whose crime was seeking freedom? Having crosses burned in their front yards? Being dragged out of their homes and hung from a tree? Being burned alive? Being shot dead because of skin color? Having to fear the Ku Klux Klan? The broken promises of the U.S. Constitution?
Auxier casually mentions the Rev. Wright’s 40 years of sermons but does not even bother to connect it to the fact that the Civil Rights Act was passed a mere 44 years ago, and the baggage that came with it is still fresh in the minds of many black Americans.
Let me contextualize it for Auxier so that she gets it.
Brigham Young once said, “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man…mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.”
Young’s statement can be easily construed as racist. However, the fact that it was said more than 100 years ago takes the sting out of such vitriolic words. If we can dismiss Young’s statements as a reflection of those times, then we ought to do the same for Wright. How quickly we forget that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints only deemed blacks priesthood-worthy in 1978.
Instead of channeling her inner Pat Buchanan, Auxier really should step out of her small window of white privilege and learn a little bit about this nation’s history (here’s a big hint: blacks didn’t come here by choice).
Richard WolfgrammJunior, Communication