President Barack Obama’s former mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, compared the United States with apartheid South Africa during a seminar in Chicago last week and claimed the civil rights movement was about "becoming white."
The comments were part of a five-day class Obama's former pastor taught at the Chicago Theological Seminary, according to Fox News and The New York Post.
In the seminar, Wright reportedly told those in the class they will never "be a brother to white folk," describing racial divisions in the country as entrenched -- as he did as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ.
The civil rights movement "was always about becoming white," Wright said at the seminar.
At another point, he said: "White folk done took this country. You're in their home and they're going to let you know it."
Wright also alleged that the American education system is built to poorly educate black students "by malignant intent" and criticized civil rights leader Martin Luther King for advocating nonviolence, the Post reported.
"We probably have more African-Americans who've been brainwashed than we have South Africans who've been brainwashed," he said.
Obama left Wright's church during the 2008 presidential campaign, after his fiery sermons shook up the Democratic primary race and compelled Obama to distance himself from the pastor.
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