American History Rev.

Bill Fletcher Jr. on the vision of Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

Rev. Wright has, throughout his career, dared to challenge the myth of US history. For the larger society this “mistake” is of far greater importance than his performance at the National Press Club, and for that matter, whether or not he brings down Senator Obama, US history has a basic narrative: The settlers were heroes; the indigenous people were either heathens or naive primitives, but in either case they were in the way of progress. Slavery was an unfortunate episode that was cleaned up by the Civil War, though it has never been quite clear that the former slaves were ever meant to rule themselves, let alone anyone else. US foreign policy has generally been benign, nearly always driven by either a God-given imperative to improve the world or our sense that the planet would be better off with our version of capitalism and democracy. Where Rev. Wright fell into problems was by challenging this myth. Taking the standpoint of those who have seen the underside of the “American Dream”, he was prepared to speak to a counter-narrative that identifies the problematic nature of US history. By doing so he opened himself to ridicule, but only when his counter-narrative was treated in sound-bites rather than taken as a whole.   much more here