"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

He then went on to blame America for 9/11 since America has been engaged in state terrorism that has murdered far more innocents than were killed in America on 9/11. We should recall that when some conservative Christian leaders suggested that America had in some ways brought on 9/11 by its sins, these people were read the riot act by the mainstream media.

According to the Associated Press, Wright "also gave a sermon in December comparing Obama to Jesus, promoting his candidacy and criticizing his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. 'Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,' Wright told a cheering congregation. 'Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a nigger.'"

Sen. Obama says he was not present when the Rev. Wright said these things.

Maybe so. But it is hard to believe that Sen. Obama has never heard such things from his Afro-centric minister. Additionally, one must ask why a man raised entirely by a white mother and white grandparents after being abandoned as a small child by his black father would choose to identify so fully with such a pastor. Coupled with his wife's remarks, fair-minded people -- whether Democrat or Republican -- may well conclude that until we know more about who Sen. Barack Obama is, he ought not be the Democrats' candidate for president of the United States. His two greatest living influences have raised red flags.

In fact, if Shelby Steele (who also has a white mother and black father) is right, we should not only be waiting until we better know who Barack Obama is. We probably need to wait until Barack Obama better knows who he is.