Jeremiah Wright

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. was the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, a large Chicago church with a black congregation. This was the home church of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Wright married Obama and his wife, and had been a close spiritual adviser to Obama. Wright even inspired the title of Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. Wright came under fire for some anti-American statements he has made, and for implying that the AIDS virus was spread by the United States government to wipe out the black population and that the United States got what it deserved on 9/11.

Wright's comments were widely criticized across the political spectrum, including by Obama himself, but Wright was defended by some.

In response to the controversy, Mike Huckabee stated: "We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me."[1] However Huckabee went on to say that "...no one can defend the content" of Wright's statements.

Background

In fact, Jeremiah Wright had a relatively privileged upbringing in Philadelphia, where his father was a Baptist minister in the Germantown section and his mother was Vice-Principal at the prestigious Philadelphia High School for Girls. Jeremiah Wright himself attended the Central High School for Boys, which was a selective school that ranked among the very best in the United States.