Wright remains, nevertheless, indicted by the students of Room 203. If he had been their teacher, instead of Erin Gruwell, most of them would probably be dead, or living dead, instead of experiencing, through their own hard work with the encouragement of a loving teacher, lives of substance; most of them in careers in which they pass on the lessons they discovered to other children. Their lives were transformed by studying the root of the Holocaust, the same ethnic prejudice preached by Wright and playing itself out in the War on the Jews by his spiritual son, President Obama.
History taught the Freedom Writers that they were uniquely responsible and able to effect true transformation of society by genuine tolerance, respect, instead of living a life of acrimonious blame. They became the epicenters of social change by their personal achievements.
Erin Gruwell’s life-changing words to the Freedom Writers can be perfectly applied to Jeremiah Wright:
“You will be forgotten, because you will leave behind you nothing but this,”
hatred, hatred that produces nothing, but only destroys.
