Jeremiah Wright and Black Conspiracy Theories
By Ian Jobling • 3/21/08
Everyone knows that American culture abounds in conspiracy theories. However, the Jeremiah Wright affair has revealed that such theories are much more common and reputable in the black community than they are among whites. Many white commentators have confessed themselves shocked that a popular minister regularly told his congregation, which included a US senator, that the US government invented the AIDS virus in order to kill off blacks and had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. As Democratic consultant Susan Estrich writes:
I know many Obama supporters who were deeply troubled by what they’ve been reading and seeing of the rants of his former pastor. It’s ugly stuff… It’s the kind of stuff that you know is out there, but you’d like to think of as being at the fringe, outside the realm of where decent people travel, confined to the margins of the blogosphere instead of the pulpit of a large and powerful Chicago church.
In fact, conspiracy theories are so rife in the black community that Wright’s beliefs stop just short of mainstream.
* According to a 2005 study of black beliefs about AIDS:
* Half of blacks believe the AIDS virus is man-made.
* One quarter think it was fabricated in a government laboratory.
* Twelve percent think it was spread by the CIA.
* Fifteen percent believe AIDS is a form of genocide against blacks.
* Forty-four percent think the government is withholding the cure for AIDS from poor people.
Another 2005 study finds that 33 percent of blacks believe that the government uses them as guinea pigs to test new birth control methods.
Many black celebrities, politicians, and other VIPs have endorsed conspiracy theories:
* Steve Cokely, aide to the mayor of Chicago, said in 1989, “Jewish doctors were injecting black babies with AIDS.”
* Bill Cosby said in 1991 that AIDS was “started by human beings to get after certain people they don’t like.”
* Spike Lee claimed in 1992 that the government had created AIDS to wipe out blacks, Hispanics, and gays. He wrote in Rolling Stone magazine, “I’m convinced AIDS is a government-engineered disease. They got one thing wrong, they never realized it couldn’t just be contained to the groups it was intended to wipe out. So, now it’s a national priority. Exactly like drugs became when they escaped the urban centers into white suburbia.”
* Actor Will Smith said in 1999, “Possibly AIDS was created as a result of biological-warfare testing.”
In 2004, Kenyan activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai said, “I may not be able to say who developed the (HIV) virus but it was meant to wipe out the black race.”
Other black politicians and celebrities have stated that the CIA encourages the spread of drugs in black communities in order to undermine it. Jesse Jackson, for example, said that the CIA “was involved in subsidizing drugs.” Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters has also endorsed this theory.
One common form of black conspiracy theory posits that the KKK is adulterating products consumed by blacks in order to cause sterility. As Daniel Pipes writes:
In a minor but indicative example, a new and inexpensive drink named Tropical Fantasy appeared throughout the northeastern United States in September 1990 and sold extremely well in low-income neighborhoods during the next half year. The fact that most of its Brooklyn, New York, employees were black made the beverage the more appealing. But anonymous leaflets turned up in black areas in early 1991, warning that the soft drink was manufactured by the Ku Klux Klan and contained “stimulants to sterilize the black man.” Although journalistic and police investigations found this accusation to be completely fraudulent, it struck a chord among consumers, and sales plummeted by 70 percent. Other products, including Kool and Uptown cigarettes, Troop Sport clothing, Church’s Fried Chicken, and Snapple soft drinks, suffered from similar slanders about the KKK and causing impotence, and they too went into a commercial tailspin.
Even educated black professionals believe things that strike whites as amazing. In 1998, a certain Yolanda Simmons of the American Bar Association’s Council on Racial & Ethnic Justice wrote this letter to the magazine Issues in Higher Black Education:
Dear Editor:
As an avid reader of the magazine, I read the article in the October 29, 1998 issue—titled, “The Tuskegee Experiment’s Long Shadow”—and find that I am also a victim of the conspiracy theories concerning African Americans: I had heard the rumor about the fifth digit in a person’s social security number indicating whether you are African American or not and I sort of believed it.
Well I have now been overwhelmed with another “rumor.” I have been told by a group of well-educated acquaintances that the eligibility for African Americans to vote is up for reconsideration. I was told that it was urgent that African Americans vote in this election because Congress, in the next session, will decide if African Americans should retain their right to vote in United States. Is there is any truth to this rumor.
Again, the magazine is a great resource tool. Please keep up the good work.
The magazine set Yolanda’s fears to rest. Hopefully, she communicated the message to her educated friends.
Some pundits have blamed the media for giving too much play to the Jeremiah Wright story. I disagree, however. The story is a powerful lesson in racial reality to which whites ought to devote serious reflection.
I know I’ve missed a lot of conspiracy theories, so I hope readers will leave comments describing others this weekend.
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Topic: Anti-Jewish, anti-white conspiracy theories (Read 1310 times)