Pro-Life MLK Niece Says Obama's 'Quiet Riot' Comment Misses Point

By Ethan Cole, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, June 07, 2007

WASHINGTON – The niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. corrected Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)'s comment on the "quiet riots" taking place in black communities, stating that they are the result of abortion rather than due to hopelessness as the Senator proposed.

Obama said Tuesday that a "quiet riot" is building among black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who are still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, according to The Associated Press. He warned of the frustration and bitterness among blacks that threatens to erupt into riots similar to those in Los Angeles 15 years ago.

The Democratic presidential contender was referring to the riots that broke out after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault charges in the beating of Rodney King, a black motorist, after a high-speed chase in 1991. The verdict sparked several days of riots in the city's black neighborhood leaving 55 people dead and 2,000 injured.

Yet it is the high rate of abortions in the black community that is the cause of the "quiet riots" challenged Dr. Alveda King, a pastoral associate of the Catholic pro-life group Priests for Life.

"Senator Obama may know of the 'quiet riots' coming from the black community," she said in a statement, "but he doesn't understand their source."

King, whose father was brother to the late Martin Luther King Jr., pointed to the 17 million black babies that have been killed by abortion.

"The cries of those children, their mothers, and their families are what Senator Obama is hearing," King contends. "I invite him to listen to those cries more clearly and compassionately. I pray he will realize that hopelessness and despair are only deepened by aborting those who are the future."

Over 500,000 babies were aborted in 2006 in the African community – a number of unborn lives that could have populated a whole city, according to the African American church leader Pastor Luke J. Robinson.

Obama, who is pro-choice, has been strongly criticized by Christians for his abortion stance. Last year, a group of conservative pro-life Christians urged Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren to rescind his invitation to Obama to speak at the church's annual AIDS conference. Warren, himself pro-life, refused to uninvite the senator explaining that he wanted to unite the Church to fight AIDS.

Obama spoke at a conference of black clergies on Tuesday with attendance of nearly 8,000 people. He is attempting to be the first black U.S. president.