Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Inauration Day Benediction

I was listening to Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction today, and this bit kind of stuck in my craw:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.

(Emphasis added)

Say what?

Aside from the fact that race relations have improved enormously in the past half-century, look at what's being sought for whom. In Lowry's benediction, he hopes for blacks, browns, and reds to receive some sort of benefit. The yellow need only change their attitudes, but whites need to change their evil ways. Voting a black man into the White House is apparently not sufficient.

(And what's with wanting the "yellow" to be "mellow"? Is he having a flashback to the kamikazes of World War II?)

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