WASHINGTON – The niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. corrected Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)’s comment on the “quiet riots” taking place in black communities, stating that they are the result of abortion rather than due to hopelessness as the Senator proposed.
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(Photo: AP / Steve Helber)Democratic Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, D-Il., speaks before a meeting of the Hampton University Ministers' Conference at the school in Hampton, Va., Tuesday, June 5, 2007. Obama said Tuesday that frustration and resentments are building explosively in black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, who are still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, just as they did before the 1992 riots. 'This administration was colorblind in its incompetence,' Obama said at a conference of black clergy, 'but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane. All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see,' Obama said.
Obama said Tuesday that a “quiet riot” is building among black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who are still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, according to The Associated Press. He warned of the frustration and bitterness among blacks that threatens to erupt into riots similar to those in Los Angeles 15 years ago.
The Democratic presidential contender was referring to the riots that broke out after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault charges in the beating of Rodney King, a black motorist, after a high-speed chase in 1991. The verdict sparked several days of riots in the city’s black neighborhood leaving 55 people dead and 2,000 injured.
Yet it is the high rate of abortions in the black community that is the cause of the “quiet riots” challenged Dr. Alveda King, a pastoral associate of the Catholic pro-life group Priests for Life.
“Senator Obama may know of the ‘quiet riots’ coming from the black community,” she said in a statement, “but he doesn’t understand their source.”
King, whose father was brother to the late Martin Luther King Jr., pointed to the 17 million black babies that have been killed by abortion.
“The cries of those children, their mothers, and their families are what Senator Obama is hearing,” King contends. “I invite him to listen to those cries more clearly and compassionately. I pray he will realize that hopelessness and despair are only deepened by aborting those who are the future.”
Over 500,000 babies were aborted in 2006 in the African community – a number of unborn lives that could have populated a whole city, according to the African American church leader Pastor Luke J. Robinson.
Obama, who is pro-choice, has been strongly criticized by Christians for his abortion stance. Last year, a group of conservative pro-life Christians urged Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren to rescind his invitation to Obama to speak at the church’s annual AIDS conference. Warren, himself pro-life, refused to uninvite the senator explaining that he wanted to unite the Church to fight AIDS.
Obama spoke at a conference of black clergies on Tuesday with attendance of nearly 8,000 people. He is attempting to be the first black U.S. president.
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Dr. Alveda King is quite off the mark with her comment. Abortion has been occuring in the black community for years. Because she is pro-life, Dr. King is focusing on the act of abortion and speaking philosophically, not examining what drives women to abort. If you look at the statistics, a large percentage of abortions occur because people are hopeless, and helpless.
The black community is hopelss, and partly because of people like the good Dr. The black community is suffering from lack of education, jobs, housing, and good strong leaders to provide direction. Our so called leaders want to be praised and worshipped., holding up their banner, and negating anyone who is not behind their charge. They spend so much time tearing down each other, instead of working together for a better black america. So, Dr. instead of going to the papers and belittleling Obama for his interpretation of what's happening in the black community, meet with him and see if the two of you can somehow come together for the benefit of us all.
Alexa