Jeremiah Wright Speaks at Fresno State

Rev. Jeremiah Wright spoke at Fresno State on Monday night, and in the mold of his protégé, Barack Obama, bent the truth for his audience.

Wright, who infamously called the United States the “U.S. of K.K.K.A.” while he was the pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago; and who snapped that the nation’s “chickens are coming home to roost” after the 9/11 terrorist attacks because the U.S. had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II; actually told his young audience that his comments only gained prominence because the media were against Obama and wanted to scare voters from putting a black man in the White House. He said, “That’s just egregious.”

According to the Fresno Bee, Wright recounted that he had grown up in a mixed neighborhood of black and white, and knew nothing about racism until he visited his grandparents in the South and saw segregation first-hand. “I grew up seeing segregated lunch counters. I knew segregation up close and personal and I didn’t understand it.”

Wright served six years in the military, beginning in the Marines, where he claimed he heard racial epithets roughly 50 times in boot camp.

Some other choice quotes from Wright include:

Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!… We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.

Islam and Christianity are a whole lot closer than you may realize.

America is the #1 killer in the world.

We started the AIDS virus.

We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty.