The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (based in Atlanta), who gave the benediction today at the inauguration of President Obama, seems to not realize what decade it is. Indeed, after reciting the third verse of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a hymn also known as the “black national anthem,” he said this:

“We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

How petty of him. Is he not aware that over 60 million people just elected Barack H. Obama to the office of President of the United States? Does he not realize that the majority of those people were, point in fact, white? Where today are these blacks which are asked to “get back” and where are the browns which are allegedly “sent away.” And are asians getting too excited for his tastes because they aren’t “mellow” enough? Notice, of course, how in Lowery’s eyes whites still evidently don’t “embrace what is right.” Pathetic.

It is Lowery who cannot seem to move on from the past and who embraces victimhood with both arms. The SCLC has made clear that even with the election of Obama the United States is still a racist country, and it is again obvious that the true bigotry lies within Lowery’s own soul. Too bad, frankly, because the rest of the Republic long ago moved on.

[UPDATE] As Michelle Malkin notes on her post concerning this matter, “A reader points to this old civil rights chant that adds context to Lowery’s remarks — but makes the jab against whites all the more egregious.”