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Mar 20, 2008 1:00 pm US/Eastern
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Obama Camp Rejects Supporter's Past Use Of Slur
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Sen. Barack Obama is target for critics again Wednesday night in another incident involving a minister and race.
According to CBS Station, WBBM-TV, on Wednesday evening Fox News Channel ran parts of a 2-year-old story by WBBM-TV Political Editor Mike Flannery on language used by State Sen. James Meeks. Meeks is now a delegate pledged to Obama.
"We don't have slave masters, we got mayors," Meeks said then while preaching. "But they are still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able to be educated. You got some preachers that are house n------. You got some elected officials that are house n------. Rather than them try and break this up, they're gonna fight you to protect that white man."
When confronted in 2006 about his divisive language, Meeks initially defended it.
"The word n----- is not, in the African American community, a bad word," Meeks said. "It's a term of endearment and I don't see it as derogatory or offensive."
"No one will be offended by it, except an individual it applies to," he added.
Shortly after Flannery's story aired two years ago, Rev. Jesse Jackson said it was time to stop using the N-word. And Rev. Meeks announced from his South Side pulpit that he was "retiring" the N-word from his vocabulary.
Although Meeks was never very close to Obama, last month he was elected as a delegate pledged to Obama.
An Obama spokesperson told WBBM-TV Wednesday night: "Sen. Obama has appeared at hundreds of churches and served with scores of colleagues and can hardly be expected to be held responsible for all that they say."
The man Meeks once called a "slavemaster," Mayor Richard Daley, is enthusiastically backing Obama, as is Daley's brother, Bill Daley, who once served as Bill Clinton's commerce secretary.
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