I really enjoyed the final reading for this week, and yes, partly because it was short. I think that Harvey’s epilogue very neatly wrapped up the semester. The one thing that I was vey drawn to in Harvey’s conclusion was his elaboration on the former president of the United States.  I remember the day when pretty much all the news sources were covering pastor Jeremiah Wright’s sermon that was taken out of context by the media when the issue was covered by a segment on NPR. I also took the time to look up the speech that Obama had to give in defense of  Wright’s words, and honestly, it was great. I remember when my mom and I were first hearing about this and she told me something that I still think about; this is the generation that can get offended by anything and everything. That’s still very true today, just as they did with Wright’s words, society maintains this habit of cherry-picking whatever makes them look the best. Having gone through Obama’s entire defense for Wright, he made some very valid points. People took offense to his words because people misunderstood the context of them. As Harvey points out, Wright’s words on condemning society and their almost complacency for allowing religion to condemn slavery has been heard in the voices of African Americans since the diaspora began  from Africa. Many people took this sermon to mean that God was going to punish all of America, but that wasn’t the point at all. The fact of the matter is, Wright again worked to make the point that Christianity had been passed down to the slaves as a “white-mans religion” and as a result of this, people no longer felt the guilt of having to feel guilty for enslaving other human beings. Furthermore, I found it very interesting that Harvey worked to note that Obama didn’t come from an extremely devote background, he found his way to this community and found an identity through it. The cultural references were important as well because it goes to show that even in the modern age there are musicians who are still working to bring into the light that past actions do need to be answered for. Overall, Wright’s sermon started a spark in  the United States, and I honestly think that this incident actually ended up helping Obama to be elected, because it proved how gifted and poised he was when communicating to the American people on very touchy subjects.