South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu weighed in on the presidential campaign Tuesday in Chicago, praising America's ability to produce the first viable African-American presidential candidate while describing the nation as haunted by a racial divide that still offers blacks what he called only "the illusion of equality."

"You are a crazy country," Tutu, 76, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, said in an interview with the Tribune. "You're a country that has I think some of the most generous people I've ever come across in the world."

But he chided Americans for getting "very, very upset" with the pastor of Sen. Barack Obama, noting that Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. "may have said more crudely what, actually, almost every African-American would have wanted to say. I mean that is how they feel in your country, that race ... is a very, very real issue."

"And I think on the whole you keep trying to pretend it isn't," he added, noting the issue will haunt Americans until there is a way to talk honestly about race, such as holding a reconciliation forum.

Tutu, who headed South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission probing human-rights abuses under apartheid, was here to receive the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation's Lincoln Leadership Prize, presented by Oprah Winfrey.

Unlike in South Africa's apartheid era, he said, where blacks were treated as "nothing," in America, "You say to them, 'You're equal, and the sky's the limit.' And they keep bumping their heads against this thing that's stopping them from reaching out to the stars."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,4305030.story

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Hmmm - he must be an uncle Tom. Doesn't he know that people were slave 150 years ago. The fact that no-one alive today was ever a slave doesn't matter.

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ABoyNamedSue - Speaking of Crestwoods posts - And then there'll be some link to some page, written in hindu or something, talking about sherpas and A&W root beer, and how George Bush is to blame for some Jewish neo-nazi death camp, run by Elvis Presley, on the far side of the moon that's been busted for killing kittens or something

Racism exists - both ways; however, he discounts the enormous strides made in the last few decades. He discounts the many self-made millionaires and many other successful African-Americans. He discounts that there are many more poor whites than there are poor blacks. He discounts that the "thing" they are bumping their heads against exists for a far greater majority than just African-Americans.

who cares what he thinks....

We should be sending troops into South Africa to protect our white brothers there who are having their land taken away from them for absolutely no reason

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Your right. White discrimination is running rampant in South Africa. White farmers and their families are being killed by being hacked to death with machetes by vigilante tribal negro's.

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One would think that after the events of September 11, 2001, you might think it is important what the citizens of the world think of the US.
US blood for white's foreign land? Is that truly your philosophy? Is that the best and most urgent use of the US military in your mind?

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Which is why racial killings, torture, separations, and Aparteid should never have begun in the first place.
Yes, the killing should stop.

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Having heard him speak, he does not discount wealthy African Americans. This particular article just doesn't address them.
He is addressing the racial divide and it's results, not general poverty statistics.
Even white Americans who frequent this forum have pointed out their belief that blacks in America are poor for reasons different from whites in America. So does Archbishop Tutu.

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