Thanks to Fond of Snape for highlighting the following quote from Snopes (I recommend checking out this urban legends debunking web page) and for her awesome reaction to Barack Obama's speech the other day!
As for the (subjective) issue of whether a church with an 8,600-member black congregation that espouses a “Black Value System” and urges commitment to the “Black Community,” the “Black Family,” and “the Black Work Ethic” is a church that is dutifully attending to the needs of its congregation, or one that is advocating a form of separatism or racism, Chicago Sun-Times journalist Monroe Anderson tackled that subject in a piece about TUCC back in March 2007:
If a white presidential candidate’s church had a similar statement and “you substitute the word white for black, there would be an outrage in this country,” [Sean] Hannity -preached. “There would be cries of racism in this country.”
True and Catch-22. If a white church plainly and proudly pronounced its whiteness, Hannity, [Tucker] Carlson and company would be right. But if it was the Holy Trinity Polish Church on Chicago’s North Side, proclaiming its Polishness, who’d care? [EXACTLY!!!] This is how African Americans find ourselves in a trick bag. We’re defined racially even when we’re acting like any other of this nation’s ethnic groups. Issues knee-jerkily become black and white when in reality they may be African American and Irish American. Or Serbian American and African American.
-The controversial Barack Obama March 18, 2008, speech in it's entirety here.
-An urban legend...claiming Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Why would people spread a rumor that an African American Christian politician was a Muslim?
3 comments:
I just read that at Fond of Snape, too. Excellent speech! I'm even more impressed with him now than I was.
As for the rumors... It's so depressing how many people there are who are so hateful and narrow-minded, and who believe every bit of trash they hear. I've had that particular email forwarded to an email list I'm on, and seen people defending it, and defending the general anti-Muslim hysteria. It's not helping my general cynicism at all.
Hi Darla...you know...I had no idea there was that e-mail...it wasn't untilI read all the Urban Myth stuff at Snopes...I was wondering how people had gotten the strangeidea that this rather devoted Christian was a Muslim.
What is also depressing is the idea that being a Muslim is like a dirty word. And the idea that all Muslims have clothing laws or one way of restrictions...that would be like saying that all Christians dress like the Amish.
because they need a reason to dislike him; because his name is different; because people fear change.
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