We can dismiss Wright as bitter and twisted -- but are we prepared to also write off somewhere between a quarter and half of all African Americans? If not, we'd better ask why do so many ordinary people give credence to such wrongheaded theories?
Let's turn to Wright, the man with all the answers. Here's what he said this week: "Based on the Tuskegee experiment and ... what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything."
That's not a completely unreasonable perspective. The Tuskegee experiment was a 40-year U.S. Public Health Service study on the effects of untreated syphilis. Who were the lucky human guinea pigs who got to experience untreated syphilis? Poor and mostly illiterate black sharecroppers in Alabama, that's who. They were falsely informed that they had "bad blood," not syphilis, and denied access to the necessary medicine. The study was terminated only in 1972, when an appalled researcher leaked reports to the media.
That could make you a little paranoid. And it's not a form of paranoia Americans can afford to scoff at. As the 2005 Rand study concludes, African American distrust of the healthcare system -- stemming from "well-documented cases of racial discrimination that led to substandard healthcare for African Americans" -- may be "one factor contributing to the AIDS epidemic."
In other words, if we want to score political points, we can dismiss AIDS conspiracy theories as crazy. But if we're actually interested in ending the AIDS epidemic, we need to understand how rational people can end up believing such theories so we can persuade them to change their minds and their behavior. The same goes for most of Wright's other seemingly far-fetched assertions.
In the end, this is probably the true tragedy of the Wright controversy. His self-indulgent antics make it all too easy for the comfortable white majority to write off black anger and mistrust as "crazy" and offensive. Wright says he wants to open our eyes to racist oppression, but he ends up playing into every right-wing caricature. As Obama laments, Wright's comments ironically "end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate."
Let's not make it even worse. Feed Wright to the chickens -- but even if it makes us queasy, we should take his theories about the world seriously enough to refute them, carefully and thoughtfully. If we truly want to move beyond the politics of division, we can't afford to do anything less.
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rbrooks@latimescolumnists.com
