Interesing....how the meaning can change when a quote is selectively edited.
Wright's sermon:..."It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere … That’s the world! On which hope sits.”
and left unsaid, in reference to the painting of Hope, with her one remaining string "...‘to take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope…that’s the real word God will have us hear…"
Rather changes the association Frank is attempting to make with the painting.
Not at all!
Obama and Wright are describing their white hating world view by looking at a painting of a woman sitting on a globe and fashioning "White folks greed" and "cruise ships tossing out food"
White hating? Or injustice hating?
Believe it or not there is truth in the statement: :..."It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere … That’s the world! On which hope sits.”
Wright's sermon makes use of the painting as a metaphor....and it speaks a certain truth. There is a lot of inequity in the world, there is real hunger, starvation in places and wasteful abundance in others. There are people taking advantage of other people and people content to look away. There are areas still recovering from the exploitations of empires. And there are no easy answers. But denying it as the fiction of a man who "hates whites" doesn't make it any less real or valid.
They only way you can see that in the painting is if that's what in your head in the first place irrespective of the subject. It could have been a brick instead of Watt's painting "Hope" and Obama and Wright would have seen the brick of a symbol of greedy white folk.
Your completely missing the point of the sermon and the painting together. Hope sitting atop a world and what people like Wright see in that world - what that world means to them. It's not what you see, but it's not any less valid. When you strip away the conclusion - you strip away half of the meaning.
What he sees in the world Hope is sitting on....and what he sees in Hope herself: of Hope, with her one remaining string "...‘to take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope…that’s the real word God will have us hear…"
That is not such a bad thing.
I would be interested to see the text of the whole sermon.
There's is a world of white devils that they see in every painting, around every corner and they use that to exploit their respective congregations.
For some...yes....but there is also truth in his words.