He has every right to be angry. He lived through the civil rights movement.
And I have every right to be angry at people who defend people like the Rev. Wright despite all the damage I believe they have done to this country and to me personally.
I have every right to be angry at fathers or mothers or merchants or bosses or irresponsible neighbors or bad drivers because I have suffered at the hands of all. Except the few of us who have led charmed lives, we all have experiences that could make us angry or bitter or hateful people.
Reasonable and honest people accept that the whole world isn't like the bad experiences we have had however. And see it as unethical and worth criticism to pretend that it is and encourage others to become angry and hateful just so that we can enrich ourselves and become millionaires.
I was to young, and out of the country during much of the civil rights movement.
I have never experienced having police dogs or fire hoses turned on me.
I have never experienced the fear of defying the rules, and sitting on a bus where I was neither wanted nor welcomed.
I've never been in fear of my life at the hands of another person.
I've never been afraid for my family, at the hands of someone who hated them for what they were, not what they did.
I have never been a vulnerable teenager attending a newly desegregated highschool for the first time. The first of "my kind" in a school that had no welcome for "my kind".
I have never felt powerless at the hands of the powerful.
I have never been spat upon (ok, I did have someone throw a sandwitch at me when I was waitressing, but that's different).
I have never lost my children, or any family members because someone fire-bombed the church they worshipped in. I've never had to view burned bodies.
I have never seen a sign saying "whites only" or "blacks only" and wondered what it would be like to go through to the other side.
I've never had to think of myself or been viewed as "second class" because of an accident of birth.
I've never been refused housing in a nice neighborhood, because I wouldn't "fit in".
I will never have to worry that "my kind" might be a target of inhumane medical experiments, because as of yet - that hasn't happened.
I will probably never really understand the fear, anger, paranoia, feelings of injustice and helplessness that so many of these people - including Wright - had to go through, and however misplaced that anger might seem now - I have never been in those shoes.