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I am white and I do not understand black rage. None of my ancestors, as far as I know, were lynched, beaten, bought and sold, refused service because of the color of their skin, degraded by a word created solely to debase and humiliate them, spat upon for being black, arrested while driving black, called boy when they were 65, and a host of other examples too numerous to list. Actually, many of my ancestors were probably the perpetrators, except for my black ancestors of whom I do not know but believe unquestionably were there. So, I know nothing of black rage.

Nonetheless, black rage exists. Not just among older blacks, like Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Barack Obama's pastor who at 67 is old enough to have experienced constitutionally sanctioned prejudice (Jim Crow) but among black youth, especially teens who have encountered racial prejudice while growing up in a community, be it black or white. Senator Obama has experienced racial prejudice from his grandmother, so he says, and whether black rage is in the senator we have yet to find out. But, he knows about it.

Surprisingly, I agree with Dr. Wright. Even if his fame as a theologian and orator has not made him politically savvy or he would have thought about the backlash his illustrious communicant would experience after his remarks during a sermon at his church, Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, he was correct in what he said. He let his rage out, and even though it is causing Obama some grief because the media have picked it up and are running with it like a fumbled football, he was right in what he said.

America has killed innocent people. Haven't we? America has threatened citizens as less than humans. Haven't we? America does act like she is the god of the world, striding as Shakespeare said, like a Colossus. Is that not true? Many Americans are proud of those accomplishments in the name of blessed America, but Wright knows that they come from the same place that sanctioned racial prejudice came from 50 years ago and remain today hidden in an unwillingness to end it.

Sucked into the fray, Obama is using it to urge Americans to kill racial prejudice now that it is on the table. We need to discuss it as we need to do away with it. We are Americans, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and all the other people from around the world that make our country so great and unique. We are the envy of the world partly because of our diversity, and we all need to take that diversity to heart and stamp out

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