I think I figured out Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I think he may be a case study of the phenomenon I recently wrote about regarding light-skinned blacks over-identifying with their blackness. Just look at him. He’s lighter than Obama, and Obama is half white:
Here’s a reminder of what one reader explained based on his familiarity with the phenomenon:
For those familiar with the Afro-American community in this country, black prejudice toward mixed race people is bitter, vitriolic, and in some cases homicidal…Blacks of lighter skin color, or who bear European features, are branded “chocolates,” and verbally and socially abused. Their racial and ideological purity is questioned…I know the children of mixed race parents are subjected to school ground hazing. I know that some mixed race kids, especially those who are very light complexioned, over-identify with their “blackness.” I recognize their anger as that which comes from a wounded spirit. It’s as if they have to prove how “black” they are by repeating all the appropriate racial political mantras showing the proper amounts of disdain and anger and culture consciousness. I recognize in their judgemental behavior the desperate need for acceptance…
So here’s what likely happened:
As a kid, Jeremiah was ragged on and resented by fellow blacks, because of his “lightness”, accusing him of not really being a “brother” and resenting him for being able to sometimes even pass for white and most likely getting better treatment, or at least no scared looks, from white people. And, as difficult as race relations were when Jeremiah was growing up, he may have even had white girls checking him out — not unlikely in the racially mixed area of Philadelphia where he grew up, especially since his high school was 90% white. This would have really been too much for his fellow blacks he was trying to fit in with.
Poor Jeremiah didn’t fit in with the brothers, or with Whitey. So what could he do? Light bulb: out-black and out-anti-white EVERYONE by peddling the darkest kind of dark and becoming the uber-black leader of the blacker blacks. I would bet money that this is what formed the “reverend” Jeremiah Wright.
Jeremiah Wright, sufferer of the Barely Black syndrome
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