“Dr. King would never have desired to see himself or a Black man in the position of being the one who now has his finger on the nuclear trigger. When King was preaching against militarism, he would never have seen himself as: 'My dream has come true, now we got a Black man who's the head of the number one killer, the number one purveyor of violence in the world.'... Dr. King would not have wanted to be in the unenviable position of being the Black man at the helm of a country that now is trying to put military bases in Africa, nor the head of a country that still refuses to deal with what happened in Haiti when the United States government got Aristede out of there—the CIA, United States Marines. Nor would he have wanted to see a Black man have to say, because of Jewish pressure, AIPAC pressure, we are not going to send anybody to the international conference the United Nations is presenting on the [review of the Durban conference on racism]...

"That's not the culmination of King's dream.... King was a preacher! The President is a politician. When I say that, and when it is said, people think it's a put down. I'm not being derogatory, I'm being descriptive. That's simply two different roles, two different allegiances, two different worlds, two different realities. And that gets taken, again, out of context. 'Cause the press will not let you say what I just got through saying—the corporately owned press in America—without cutting you off, interrupting you, or taking what you just said and trying to twist it into something that will send ratings up, it goes against somebody, something negative."

Those prowling for another “gotcha” moment will probably find something worth spinning in these statements (as well as in this prescient 2007 interview with Wright here). But whether you agree or not, the message is most remarkable for its frankness. And when it comes to the division between activists and politicians, Wright's words are a case in point.

Image: Richard Thompson, The New Yorker