By Lubna Abdel-Aziz What utter rubbish, Reverend Wright! How can you claim in this day and age, that the brains of the white and black man are different? In case you have not heard, Reverend Jeremy Wright was the senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, of which Barack Obama is a member. He can now boast that singlehandedly he has arrested the incredible charge of the successful campaign, brilliantly launched by the senator from Illinois, for the Democratic nomination. The race was proceeding with such grace and speed, sure to get him to the finish line before his competition. Obama may still get there, but very much weakened by the controversy caused by the emergence of the senator's pastor, mentor, and friend. This "friend" baptized Obama's children, inspired him personally, and brought him to Christianity. What happened to rupture this closeness? Sermons of an angry Reverend Wright somehow surfaced and were released to the media which played and replayed 30 second snippets of the most incendiary language, infuriating every American. Wright condemns America and its racial and foreign policy. He uses words like "damn America" and that the AIDS virus was deliberately administered to contaminate blacks, and after 9/11 his inflammatory comment of glee,ت "the chickens have come home to roost." Even if any of this were true, how can it come from an American pastor, in an American church, addressing an American congregation? While Obama expresses his unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people, Wright spreads his venom of hate, setting black against white, brother against brother, American against American, and all this uttered from the pulpit in the sanctity of the house of God. This is America, however where freedom of speech is deeply cherished. Yet how can it become associated with a presidential hopeful? Is it possible that the senator from Illinois, who has been a member of this church for 20 years, had never heard any of these hateful comments from his pastor, or as some have described him, this crackpot, this demagogue? Obama gave a good explanation, but a relentless media and an offended public would not buy it. Perhaps Reverend Wright would have enough sense to lay low until his friend could weather the storm. Oh No! Out he comes, fresh from a short holiday and ready to spar again. "His 15 minutes of fame," were much too short. This notoriety was rather appealing, so off he goes on another nasty tirade against everyone in sight, including good friend Obama himself, accusing him personally of lying as all politicians "say what needs to be said" to be elected. What a friend! What a Pastor! While all this is internal US politics, and the electorate will make the final judgement, there is one statement made by Reverend Wright that we must take issue with, because it concerns us all, as a human race. In his speech of Sunday Rev. Wright contends that black children's brain is not deficient, as some have claimed, but different from white children's brains. Referring to a book written some 40 years ago by African-American teacher Janice Hale, which compares African-American children, to European-American children concludes that they have two different ways of learning. Europeans have a left brain cognitive, object-oriented learning style, while Africans are right-brained and subject oriented, creative and intuitive, which means they learn from a subject, not an object. Deficient, different, inferior, such theories are as old as racism and they keep lingering. From The Bell Curve by Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray (1995), to Race, Evolution, and Behaviour, by J. Phillipe Rulston, The Decline of Intelligence in America by Seymour Itzkoff (1994). James Watson, Nobel Prize Laureate, for his part in elucidating the structure of DNA, himself, claimed in 2007, that blacks have inferior brains. "We should not assume that their intelligence is the same as ours. Testing proves it is not so." An outraged scientific community is fighting back. Dr, Steven Rose, Professor of Biological Science at the Open University, rebuffs Watson's theory: "this is Watson at his most scandalous. If he knew the literature, he would know that he is out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically." Says Keith Vaz, Labour Chairman of Home Affairs: "It is sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless, unscientific, and extremely offensive comments. Nothing in the scientific literature supports the physical inferiority of any race." Environment, exposure, education, may be culprits, creating inequality amongst us. Given equal opportunities they have achieved equal heights. How else can you explain a Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Martin Luther King Jr., or Barack "Hussein" Obama, as Rev. Wright loves to identify hum. Racism, discrimination, prejudice are dispositions embedded in some hearts -- not minds -- therefore hard to erase, no matter what evidence is available to the contrary. The Bell Curve written 13 years ago, created a flurry of controversy which still resounds today. Its premise was that class structure was determined by intelligence, which is race related, with the Africans at the bottom of the barrel. You are rich because you are smart, and you are poor because you are dumb. Not true by every measure! My grandmother would have called it luck or God's will. Just look around you, at smart professors, scientists, writers, musicians, leaders, artists -- very smart, not so rich! True, we cannot all be geniuses, black, white, brown, or yellow, but to single out one race because its members are by and large poorer and have achieved less, is preposterous, pernicious, and pitiful. Does not Rev. Wright realize that by promoting his theory, he discourages his own race, stunts their growth, and gives the lazy a way out? Just blame it all on our genes. Whatever happened to the sanctity of friendship, of religion, of conscience? Wright has deceived his congregation, and condemned his country. Surely he is angry at a despicable past of discrimination and bloodshed. Even though the US is the country that everyone seems to love to hate nowadays, it has made significant gains in the field of human rights in a brief time span. There are 8,000 black elected officials, mayors, senators, congressmen, and judges. Perhaps a look atr the positive is more productive. Fairness and kindness is also holy. This country has made it possible for a black man to run for the highest office in the land, and build a coalition of rich and poor, young and old, black and white, despite its tragic past. Obama's success should have been the fulfilment of Martin Luther King's dream, the dream of every black American as well as every liberal, fair-minded citizen Wright has done Obama wrong. He may have prevented a parishioner, a friend, a bright, black man from becoming president of the US, the leading country in the world. The colour of the heart is infinitely more important than the colour of the skin. An open foe may prove a curse, But a pretended friend is worse John Gay (1689 -- 1752)
