The Rev. Jeremiah Wright caused quite the tempest during the 2008 presidential campaign when videos popped up of Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor, condemning America for all its sins, real and imagined.
Wright has now turned his attention to Cuba, and he doesn't like what he sees.
Wright is one of 60 prominent black American scholars, artists and professionals who have signed a "Statement of Conscience by African-Americans" condemning the Castro dictatorship's crackdown on Cuban dissidents, many of whom are black. Among the specific complaints, the group called for the immediate release from prison of Cuban human rights activist Dr. Darsi Ferrer.
Fidel Castro and his regime had long been a favored cause of many prominent black Americans, like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Wright, who traveled to Cuba with Jackson in 1984, a visit punctuated by Jackson's cries during a speech of, "Viva Fidel!" and "Viva Ché Guevara!"
But there's apparently been a change among Wright and other black American leaders.
Scholar Carlos Moore tries to explain why:
Changing demographics in America and the election of a black U.S.
president, seem to have spurred African-American curiosity about the
fate of Afro-Latins south of the border. Through that process, many
U.S. blacks have realized that Castro, once admired for thumbing his
nose at America, is now an 82-year-old dictator, struggling to prolong
five decades of absolute power through terror and policies that deepen
racial inequalities in Cuba.
Victoria Ruiz, U.S. representative
of the island-wide civil rights group, Citizens Committee for Racial
Integration, says Cuba's black movement — vigorously suppressed in the
1960s, at the early stage of the revolution — resurrected in the 1990s.
She complains that young, black Cubans suffer aggressive racial
profiling by police. She claims that about 70 percent of Afro-Cubans
are believed to be unemployed, a staggering figure by any standard.
And 85 percent of Cuba's jail population is estimated to be black, Ruiz
reports.
I usually don't make note of the race of the political prisoners and other dissidents I profile here. What matters to me is that they are Cuban.
But there is no ignoring the fact that some of the most prominent, most eloquent, most courageous freedom fighters are black.
Activists like Jorge Luis Perez Garcia "Antunez," and his wife Iris.
The independent journalist Guillermo Fariñas.
The political prisoner Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet.
And Dr. Ferrer, who has been unjustly jailed since July 21 because of his efforts to expose the sad realities of Cuban society.*
These Cubans, and thousands of others like them — black, white and mixed — are waging a brave struggle against enormous odds to challenge the tyranny that enslaves their nation and to build a better Cuba. Their race matters only that it makes them twice the victim.
Theirs is a cause with which black Americans should identify, and support. Hopefully, "the statement of conscience" released this week is the first of many such acts of solidarity by black American leaders.
Jeremiah Wright's rants about America may have raised questions about his character, and that of his famous ex-parishonner.
He may not deserve absolution for that, but with this display of conscience, Wright is, at least for now, on the right side.
Read the whole statement, here.
Read the Miami Herald story, here.
(*For more information on how to join an Internet-based campaign demanding the release of Dr. Ferrer, go here.)
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