Cone’s groundbreaking 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power announced: “The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people…. All white men are responsible for white oppression…. Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.’ … Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement.”1
The above-cited passage is supposedly directly taken from a work by Cone, the theologian who was the main inspiration for the theological views of Trinity Church, which Barack Obama attends. Having read this passage, I have but one thing to say: I hope that Obama will have the political sense — to say nothing of the moral decency — to disavow Cone as readily as he disavowed Samantha Powers just recently, especially when I personally feel that Powers acted rather admirably, albeit foolishly, when she spoke so candidly of Hillary Clinton. If not, I hope that this passage will be sufficient to destroy Obama’s campaign, which I formerly thought highly of.
These words constitute the worst sort of hate speech and derive from what may be the font of all hatred: the eternal search for scapegoats. If it is not clear enough how horrid these words are, simply replace “white man” with “Jew” everywhere, and the probable speaker of these words should be become apparent.
- Quoted today on the Volokh Conspiracy↩