dnA on the Difference Between Wrong and Crazy

dnA at Jack and Jill Politics wrote something that I've been fumbling to articulate, when he discusses the difference between wrong (many of the quotes from Rev. Wright that have been popping up lately are factually inaccurate) and crazy (therefore good reverend must be a paranoid loon):

At the heart of both of these claims is the perception that white people simply don't care what happens to us, as long as it doesn't affect them. At the heart of Obama's pitch is solving this problem by making "black problems," American problems, so that they can't be approached with the same level of cold indifference that drives so much of Wright's rage in the first place.

I get the impression that many white people have little to no knowledge about how messed up this country's racial history is beyond slavery or Jim Crow. So stuff like the Tuskegee experiments, or what Reagan's reckless exploitation of the drug trade in the fight against communism and what it did to urban communities, the kinds of things old heads teach youngbloods in casual conversation, are completely absent from their education (exaggeration is sometimes included in this form of pedagogy, as in most oral traditions. So that partially explains how horrifying but plausible stuff becomes indefensible conspiracy).

Check out the whole post.