Secretly, he's one of us

Recall that O repudiated not only Jeremiah Wright but the entire civil rights establishment, an entire generation of black leaders from Jesse Jackson to the Black Caucus.

He said the country had changed and they just could not or would not see it.

In substance if not in these words, he said their claims or beliefs that the country was still full of and dominated by white racism were not only wrong but very wrong and impediments to further black progress.

In effect if not in these words, he said black leadership and black people need to stop scapegoating whites for everything wrong in their lives and move on.

Without, of course, absurdly insisting there is no white racism at all, or that it never causes actual harm to blacks individually or collectively.

After his personal repudiation, Rev Wright gave an interview in which he claimed in substance that Obama was just lying to America, disguising himself to get into the White House.

Other black leaders took the same line.

Yesterday afternoon on MSNBC XM radio I listened as a girl host discussed with a member of the Black Caucus the gap between O's public comments on the events at Ferguson from the killing of boy Brown to the demonstrations and riots after the non-indictment and the reaction of the Black Caucus.

From the outset, while expressing the deepest sympathy for the Brown family and insisting people have a protected and inviolable constitutional right to demonstrate that the forces of the government must scrupulously honor, O had called for calm and restraint, insisting demonstrations be lawful and peaceful.

Though far from blunt, O had insisted on the need for law and order, denounced violence and crime, insisted on positive and lawful political action, and repeated his view that while there is in fact white racism and it sometimes affects law enforcement and creates injustice this is not the usual case.

As for the readiness of black communities to see injustice and racism in law enforcement when it is not there - a readiness he has displayed on occasion himself -, he again attributed that to the legacy of slavery and past racial oppression, characterizing is as a misperception that he and his AG would take action to help correct, while also acting to further ensure law enforcement actually is fair.

In contrast, like pretty much the whole of the liberal and black leadership, punditocracy, and media, the BC has been shouting bigoted denunciations of white racism, individual, murderous, and institutional, since the killing hit the news.

Its reaction to the non-indictment was to furiously condemn persistent and widespread white racism and injustice in the law enforcement system, continuing its constant and groundless insistence that Brown was in fact murdered by Officer Wilson because, of course, Wilson is a racist.

And its reaction to the demonstrations and violence has been to justify them and even not at all subtly threaten more of the same.

The BC rep on the radio show explained the difference between the view taken by O and the view taken by the BC in exactly the same way that Jeremiah Wright had explained his repudiation.

In a nutshell, secretly, he's one of us.

That, of course, is the view taken at Breitbart and lots of conservative venues that paint O as indistinguishable from Wright or even Farrakhan.

And by no means only by white people.

I must say this surprised me.

Black Milwaukee sheriff on O on the Ferguson riots

PS.

Not that everybody who sounds somewhat like O on these matters is sincere or really saying the same thing.

Brendan on Cory Booker