He is back...

He's been keeping such a low profile since nearly derailing Barack Obama's campaign for president in 2008 -- is it possible that the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright has mellowed?

Hardly.

During a five-day seminar Wright taught last week at the University of Chicago, he was back at it, claiming that whites and Jews are controlling the flow of worldwide information and oppressing blacks in Israel and America.

"White folk done took this country," Wright said. "You're in their home, and they're gonna let you know it."

The course, advertised as focusing on politics and public policy in South Africa and America, was taught in a small, ground-floor room at the Chicago Theological Seminary on the university campus, where Wright's voice echoed out an open window. The class was composed of about 15 to 20 students, mainly older African-American women who would arrive early and giddily linger during lunch breaks and after class, looking for the reverend's attention. (The course cost a little over $1,000 if taken for college credit and $300 if taken without.)

The absence of young people was telling: The lectures seemed ossified, relics of a pre-civil-rights America -- a point that Obama himself made during his famous speech on race in March 2008, prompted by the incendiary comments ("God damn America!") made by his former pastor and mentor.

"Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect," Obama said.

Yet during this course -- which was described as asking, "What is the response and public witness of persons of faith to ongoing developments in both countries?" -- Wright made many statements about what he believes are the true aims of whites and Jews.

"You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be a brother to white folk," he said. "And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble."

He cited the writings of Bill Jones -- author of the book "Is God a White Racist?" -- as proof that white people cannot be trusted. "Bill said, 'They just killed four of their own at Kent State. They'll step on you like a cockroach and keep on movin', cause you not a brother to them.' "

Wright referred to Italians as "Mamma Luigi" and "pizzeria." He said the educational system in America is designed by whites to miseducate blacks "not by benign neglect but by malignant intent." (Continues here)