Church Write-Up: God As Parent; a God Thing; Black Lives Matter

I have three topics for my church write-up today.  Last Sunday, I went to a Baptist church.  Most of the people who attend, as well as the pastor, are African-American.  But there are a significant number of white people who also attend.

A.  The character of God as a parent was one topic that came up.  The pastor asked, "How many of you like to give things to your children when they're disobedient?"  The expected answer, of course, at least among those who have children, was "none of us."  The pastor was arguing that God is that way, too.

I went home and listened to another of this pastor's sermons.  He was presenting a scenario of people going to God in prayer with a request, and God responds, "What have you done for me lately?"  The pastor's point was that Christianity is about more than us getting our needs met.  God has God's agenda.

Contrast that with a message that I heard from the pastor of a Word of Faith-like church that I attend every now and then.  This pastor presented a different scenario.  Suppose you are a parent, and your child is disobedient, and your child gets into trouble.  Wouldn't you go and help your child?  Many parents would.  The pastor said that God is the same way.

All three of these are plausible scenarios, when it comes to how people act as parents, and perhaps when it comes to how God acts.  But they are quite different from each other.

B.  The pastor----I mean the pastor at the Baptist church that I attended last Sunday----was saying that God blessed him with his wife.  He and she first met at church, when neither one of them wanted to be there.  But they went, and they met.  His wife was sensitive to spiritual things and prays for her husband.  For the pastor, their marriage is a God thing.

I thought about a conversation that I had with a friend a while back.  This friend was talking about going to college and dating, but he did not find anyone with whom he was compatible.  But he met the woman who became his wife when he was off in the boonies somewhere, and they have been together since.  He considers that a God thing.

When I had that conversation with my friend, I resented what he was saying.  What about people who never find their soul mate?  What about people who get into marriages that don't work?  Does God care less for them?  Can Christians think about anyone other than themselves and their own well-being, for once?

After hearing the pastor, though, I could sympathize more with what my friend was saying.  When a person meets a person in an off-chance encounter, and they form a relationship that actually works and is a blessing to both of them, then I can understand why they would consider that a God thing.  It's like the arguments for Intelligent Design: things could have turned out differently, and there would have been no life in that case, but they turned out as they did, and so there is life.  Many see that as a God thing.  They think that something more than luck is going on.

I would say that there have been events in my life that I would consider a God thing.  Something breaks down, there is not enough money to buy a brand new replacement, and yet we find a fairly inexpensive replacement on Craig's List.  Many would call that luck.  But I can understand why people see that as God's provision.

None of this solves the problem, though, of why God seems to be so present and active in some people's lives, but not in others.  But the key word is "seems."

C.  I do not like calling the tragic events this week a "topic."  I'd rather not comment on those tragic events at all, since nothing I say can do justice to them.  Plus, I don't want inadvertently to say something offensive, or for commenters to leave offensive comments on my blog.  But the pastor said something last Sunday that relates to these events, or at least to similar events.

The pastor was criticizing the "Black Lives Matters" movement, saying that all lives matters.  As an African-American, he acknowledged that the "Black Lives Matters" movement is protesting real problems.  But he does not believe that rioters display much wisdom.  He said that it is unwise for rioters to burn down businesses, because then they don't have a place to go to work the next day.  He said that he wouldn't express these opinions in the middle of Chicago, however, since then he'd be killed.

I do not really know this pastor, but my guess is that he has this perspective because he believes that is how African-Americans can get through life.  He probably acknowledges that things are unfair, but he may think that people need to make due with the hand that they've been dealt, on some level.  But the problem is that there are African-Americans going through life, and they end up dead after a tragic encounter with the police.  I wonder what the pastor thinks about that.  I'm sure he's against it, but is it more to him than something that he sees on the news and has an opinion about?

Of course, I cannot make a judgment, since I know little about the pastor.  I read on his bio that he used to be a cop.  That may factor into his views, somehow, and not necessarily in a gun-ho pro-police manner.  He may have a unique perspective.

Book Write-Up: Prophetic Lament, by Soong-Chan Rah

Soong-Chan Rah.  Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times.  Downers Grove, IVP Books, 2015.  See here to purchase the book.

Soong-Chan Rah helped plant a church in inner-city Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his first sermon series was about the biblical Book of Lamentations.  As Rah jokes, “Church growth books would not advocate for six weeks of lamenting as a way to spark interest in a new church” (page 20).  But Rah believes that the Book of Lamentations and the concept of lamenting are relevant to today, especially in the time of Ferguson and the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of law-enforcement officers.  Rah stresses the importance of lamenting with the victims of societal injustice.

Rah’s application of the Book of Lamentations to modern justice issues is artful and faithful to the text, particularly in terms of Lamentations’ themes about God not respecting the “important” of society, the futility of materialism, giving voice to the suffering, the sovereignty of God, and how sin is not always individual but can be collective.  From the standpoint of biblical scholarship, I appreciated Rah’s comparison and contrast of the Book of Lamentations with ancient Mesopotamian hymns of lament about fallen cities.  In terms of Rah’s larger agenda in the book, Rah does well to challenge attitudes that are pervasive within Western white evangelicalism: attitudes that celebrate fame and prosperity rather than faithfulness in the midst of suffering, that are patronizing towards victims of injustice, and that expect applause for reaching out to the poor.  Rah’s discussion was convicting to me, as a white liberal.

On first sight, the book does not appear to talk much about practical solutions.  This may be disappointing to privileged people who feel morally obligated to do something about the problems that Rah discusses, yet may not know how to do so, and may even get the impression from Rah’s book that what they are doing is inadequate, even counterproductive.  There is one part of the book in which Rah mentions an inner-city church that served as a mediator between the police and the community, but, as far as I could see, the book did not have too many other positive stories.  Perhaps, however, Rah believes that having a proper attitude is a significant part of the solution: lamenting with people in their pain rather than ignoring it, downplaying it, trying to make oneself feel better about it, or condescendingly trying to solve it.  I particularly appreciated Rah’s story about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a privileged German who was abstract about his theology, yet had a life-changing transition through his experience in the African-American church.

I had the privilege of visiting Pastor Rah’s church a couple of times when I lived in Massachusetts.  I consider this book, Prophetic Lament, to be powerful, well-written from a stylistic viewpoint, and important for people to read.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from Intervarsity Press in exchange for an honest review.

John Kasich on ABC This Week: He Reminds Me of the Huckabee I Loved in 2008!

This morning, Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich was on ABC This Week.  He was on shortly after Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who was defending Kim Davis.  Here is the interaction between George Stephanopoulos and Kasich on Kim Davis (see the transcript for the show here):

STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, we saw Governor Huckabee earlier in the program say that he stands by Kim Davis, her decision not to issue those marriage licenses. Do you agree with that?

KASICH: No, I don’t agree with him. I think, you know, the court has spoken, the court has ruled as everyone know. I — or most people know, I believe in traditional marriage, but the court has ruled.

But George, there’s one other big issue here, we have a lot of young people who sit on the fence on an issue like this. And they also think about their, you know, their belief in god. And you know for me I think we need to talk a lot about the dos, about humility, about helping our neighbor, about the need to live a life bigger than ourselves. And when we see these kind of battles going on I get a little bit afraid that it turns people off to the idea of faith in god, what it means to be a Christian.

For me, it’s giving me a solid foundation to deal with the strong winds in life, to be a better person, a better guy.

Now, I respect the fact that this lady doesn’t agree, but she’s also a government employee. She’s not running a church. I wouldn’t force this on a church, but in terms of her responsibility I think she has to comply. I don’t think — I don’t like the fact that she’s sitting in a jail, that’s just absurd as well. But I think she should follow the law.

Kasich reminds me of what I liked about Mike Huckabee in 2008, before Huckabee became a Foxified cultural warrior.  Believe it or not, I was actually thinking of voting for Huckabee in 2008!  Huckabee in 2008 talked about faith, but it went beyond the usual culture war issues.  It entailed the type of people we are and the kind of country we should be.  Huckabee in 2008 struck me as a humble Christian man who served others, and whose Christianity led him to care about the vulnerable and to have a holistic and compassionate view of how faith could relate to public life.  That is my impression of John Kasich.

Huckabee in 2008 defended his decision as Governor of Arkansas to help expand health insurance for children, when conservative groups like the Club for Growth were questioning whether he was fiscally conservative for so doing.  Similarly, John Kasich supported Medicaid expansion and has been quoted as saying: “Now, when you die and get to the, get to the, uh, to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not gonna ask you much about what you did about keeping government small, but he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor. Better have a good answer” (see here).  Mike Huckabee in 2008 pointed to the large number of African-Americans who voted for him when he was running in Arkansas gubernatorial races.  Kasich also has sensitivity towards racial issues.  In this video, Kasich talks with George about race and police brutality, and the need to make the excluded feel included, to give them a chance, and to make them feel that their grievances are heard.  Kasich then says that he believes that it was what the Lord wants us to do.  Amen to that!

I disagreed, somewhat, with Kasich’s statement that Kim Davis should be required to provide same-sex marriage licenses.  I do believe that her office should provide them, in compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling.  If she has a problem personally providing them because that violates her own conscience, then someone else where she works should do so.  That is how a number of states handle this.  The thing is, I think that, for Kim Davis, this is about more than her own personal conscience: I suspect that, in her mind, she is performing an act of civil disobedience against a policy that she believes is wrong.  She believes that America was founded on godly, biblical principles, that America is a Christian nation, and that the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage violates America’s Christian heritage.  She is right that religion has played a significant part in America’s heritage, but so has the separation of church and state and pluralism.

My comments on Kim Davis aside, will I vote for John Kasich?  I may in the primaries.  I was talking with my Mom, explaining Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid.  She asked me, “So he supports Obamacare?”  I responded that he most likely does not, and I doubt that he does: he is, after all, a Republican.  He is a better Republican, but a Republican nonetheless.

See this article for more on Kasich’s faith.  The article, interestingly, is entitled, “Does John Kasich’s religiosity turn off religious conservatives?”

My First American Crime Write-Up

I’ve been watching the new ABC series, American Crime, which is on Thursday nights at 10 pm.
I want to write some of my reactions to the show, and I’ll use as my starting-point wikipedia’s succinct description:

“The show follows the aftermath of a murder in Modesto, California. War veteran Matt Skokie is killed during a home invasion in which his wife, Gwen, is brutally attacked. The series uses the crime and its subsequent journey through the legal system to explore complex issues, mainly through the lenses of the victims’ and suspect’s families.”

I’ll go through some (but not all) of the characters so that those who have not seen the show will know what I am talking about when I share my reactions.  It is tedious, I know, but it is necessary background information.

Felicity Huffman (of Desperate Housewives) plays Barb Hanlon, who is Matt Skokie’s mother.  Timothy Hutton plays Russ Skokie, who is Matt’s father, and who is divorced from Barb (and it was a bitter divorce).  David Hoflin plays Mark Skokie, who is Matt’s little brother, and who is also in a branch of military service.  On Gwen’s side of the family, Penelope Ann Miller plays Eve Carlin, Gwen’s mother.  W. Earl Brown plays Tom Carlin, who is Gwen’s father.  Lili Taylor (of Six Feet Under) plays Nancy Straumberg, who assists Barb as part of a victim’s advocacy group, and who herself lost a daughter to murder.  They are all white.

The person accused of murder is an African-American named Carter Nix.  His girlfriend is a young white woman named Aubry Taylor, who uses drugs, but who does love her boyfriend.  Regina King plays Aliyah Shaheed, a convert to African-American Islam who does not care for her brother’s decisions, but who is marshaling resources from her community (i.e., an excellent lawyer) in order to support her brother.

We learn in the course of the first two episodes that Matt and Gwen were not picture-perfect as people thought.  Matt was selling drugs, and he was selling drugs even before he went into the army after 9/11 to fight in Afghanistan; that was why his Mom got him to join the army.  Gwen was sleeping around, and her father Tom is disappointed to learn that, calling her a slut.

The show explores racism.  If Archie Bunker was the stereotypical angry white man, Barb is an angry white woman.  She has prejudice against people of other races—-not really at the KKK level, but in the sense that she looks down on them and thinks that society gives them special privileges.  She may have had those prejudices most of her life, but they were amplified after her husband left her and her kids due to his gambling addiction, and she had to raise her kids in the projects, where she says that her kids were bullied by some of the minorities there.  Aliyah, the sister of the accused, is an African-American Muslim.  She does not trust white society, hates her brother’s relationship with a white woman, and even mocks one of the prosecutor’s Jewish names.  Barb and Aliyah are different in their ideology, but they are remarkably similar in certain respects: there is their prejudice and sense of disenfranchisement, but there is also their strength.  They are confident, intelligent women who will not let anyone push them around, who do not hesitate to say what they think, and who fight to get what they want.  In terms of differences, I would say that Barb is a lot more morose than Aliyah is—-and that’s not just because Barb has lost a son but because she is a rather bitter woman, in general.  Barb is like Felicity Huffman’s Desperate Housewives character, Lynette, in terms of her strength and confidence, but Barb is a lot more morose than Lynette was.  Aliyah, on the other hand, has found fulfillment and pride on her religious path.  I like stories in which strong characters confront (yet hopefully come to understand) each other, so I am eager to see what the interactions between Barb and Aliyah will be like.

Mark, the brother of Matt, seems to me to be a peacemaker.  He probably had to fulfill that role much of his life—-with his parents hating each other, and his brother dealing drugs.  In one scene, Mark tries to encourage Tom (Gwen’s father) to be a responsible parent and to support his daughter, even though Tom thinks that Gwen is a slut.  Mark shares some secrets about his own family that Tom does not know and urges Tom to be better than that.  In a moving scene at the end of last Thursday’s episode, Tom and Eve are watching as their daughter Gwen comes out of her coma, and you can tell by the look on Tom’s face that he is ready to support his daughter, whatever mistakes she may have made.

Last Thursday’s episode was the best so far because it went into the backgrounds of various characters.  There is Aliyah’s phenomenal, powerful speech about why she became a Muslim.  There is also Nancy’s advice to Barb about how to dress at the trial, and Nancy’s tragic personal story about why that is so important.  I get tears in my eyes as I think about last Thursday’s episode.

Concluding Black History Month 2014

A person who knew my story would probably say that I was naive about race when I was younger.  At the undergraduate institution that I attended, I was taking a Winter Term class.  I was arguing against affirmative action, saying that people should be hired based on their qualifications, not their race.  My professor asked me, “Do you seriously think that an African-American woman has the same shot as you do in life?”  I sincerely answered “yes.”

Years later, at a graduate school that I attended, I was talking about race with an African-American friend.  The year 2000 was approaching, and Democrat Bill Bradley was running against Al Gore for the Democratic nomination for President.  My friend was continually saying that he was supporting Bradley because Bradley was sensitive to the issue of race and racism.  I then asked him, “Is racism still a problem?”  My friend was surprised that I even asked that question, and he launched into a lecture about racism, the problems of the inner-city, hate crimes, and the list goes on.

I’ve thought to myself more than once: What exactly did I believe back then?  I know that I wasn’t completely unaware of the problems of the inner-city.  That wasn’t my world, but I knew about those problems, on some level.  As a conservative, I supported school choice as a way to get poor African-American children out of inner-city schools, showing that I believed that inner-city schools were not particularly good.  I supported enterprise zones, showing that I was aware that poor areas needed investment if people there were to rise economically.  To believe that way, I had to be aware that it wasn’t easy for everyone, everywhere to pull himself or herself up by his or her own bootstraps, that there were places that lacked opportunities.  Still, for some reason, when I watched a news special about African-Americans protesting outside of a Korean-owned store in their neighborhood, I wondered how they could persecute that nice, hardworking Korean man.  I was unaware of their perspective: they wanted African-American-owned businesses in their neighborhood, not businesses owned by people of other races or ethnic groups.

Quite frankly, I cannot account for my worldview back then.  Maybe I felt that there were African-Americans in the inner-city, but that the fact that many were not demonstrated that racism was no longer a problem.  On whether or not I believed that an African-American woman had the same shot that I did, perhaps I thought that an African-American woman could be like Claire Huxtable, if she worked hard enough.  After reading for Black History Month this year, it did interest me that African-American women on average do economically better than African-American men.

I also think that there was a part of me that saw racism as individual prejudice, not as something that is systemic.  When my African-American friend was talking about the murder of James Byrd, I was definitely compassionate about what happened to James Byrd, but I did not know what that had to do with me.  Of course it’s wrong to kill someone on account of his race!  Most white people would agree that this is wrong!  But what I did not realize was that individual prejudice could lead to systemic racism: people’s individual attitudes influence whom they hire, for example.

I’m kind of struggling to write this post, so I will call it quits here.  I do not know what it is like to be black in America, but hopefully I learned more by reading the books that I did this month.

Is Bill Cosby Right? 9

I finished Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?), by Michael Eric Dyson.  In this post, I’ll talk about Dyson’s discussion of the economic situation of African-Americans.

Dyson acknowledges the economic improvements in the lives of many African-Americans, as more African-Americans become professionals, business-owners, and managers, and as the median household income for African-Americans rose between 1967 and 2003.  Yet, problems persist, and in some cases have become worse.  There was a 6 percent decline in median income for African-American households between 2000 and 2003.  The African-American unemployment rate when Dyson was writing was 10.1 percent.  The poverty rate for African-American households was over 24 percent.  As the number of African-Americans with manufacturing jobs went down by 18 percent between 1992 and 2002, more African-Americans entered the service sector—-”including professions like data processing, advertising, and housekeeping—-which employs 43 percent of the black workforce” (page 63).  These jobs, according to Dyson, “have shown weak growth and provide fewer benefits”, and thus only 52 percent of African-Americans have employer-sponsored health insurance, and less than 40 percent “have private pension plans” (page 63).  Over half of African-American families “live in major metropolitan areas”, and over 12 percent of the African-American population depends on public transportation, the cost of which is rising.  While there is an African-American middle class, Dyson argues, it “had a far less sure grasp of economic security” (page 62), and African-Americans on average lag behind whites in income and in how many receive employer-sponsored health insurance, while being ahead of whites in terms of poverty and employment in the service sector.  Dyson says that disparities in wealth lead to disparities in the quality of education that children receive, in terms of resources, the skills of teachers, and the quality of curricula.

I find Dyson’s statistics to be realistic.  Granted, most African-Americans are not poor, but it is far from rosy even for many who are not.

I should also say something about the second part of Dyson’s title, Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?  Dyson is rather critical of elements of the African-American middle class.  On page 218, he states: “And many black folk who have climbed upward are morally and intellectually irresponsible when they benefit from affirmative action—-not because they lack talent, but because they possess it and have been historically denied the opportunity to exercise it—-and then blast the black poor who have not received the slightest benefit from this measure of compensatory justice.”  More than once in this book, Dyson says that Cosby’s controversial “Pound Cake Speech” before the NAACP reflects the embarrassment of the middle and upper-economic class African-Americans at African-Americans among the lower economic classes, something that has existed for years.

A question that one can ask is: Does Dyson believe that African-Americans should conform more to white standards in order to advance?  He acknowledges that the purpose of curricula that consider ebonics is to help African-American children to learn white American English, and he does not seem to me to deem that to be a bad thing.  Dyson also praises Jesse Jackson for criticizing lyrics that demean women.  At the same time, Dyson does appear to admire elements of African-American culture that turn off whites, and many middle-class and upper-economic-class African-Americans as well: rap, baggy pants, the hip-hop culture, unusual names, etc.  Perhaps his hope is that these things can be preserved, even as poor African-Americans are given more opportunities for economic advancement.

Is Bill Cosby Right? 8

On page 250 of Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?), Michael Eric Dyson quotes something that Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. said about the program Amos ‘n’ Andy.  Gates stated in a November 12, 1989 New York Times piece:

“One of my favorite pastimes is screening episodes of ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ for black friends who think that the series was both socially offensive and politically detrimental.  After a few minutes, even hardliners have difficulty restraining their laughter.  ‘It’s still racist,’ is one typical comment, ‘but it was funny.’  The performance of those great black actors—-Tim Moore, Spencer Williams and Ernestine Wade—-transformed racist stereotypes into authentic black humor.  The dilemma of ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy,’ however, was that these were the only images of blacks that Americans could see on TV.  The political consequences for the early civil rights movement were thought to be threatening.  The N.A.A.C.P. helped to have the series killed.”

Dyson’s quotation of Gates is in an endnote that goes with a paragraph on page 31.  There, Dyson talks about stereotypes of African-Americans in entertainment media: as “dumb, lazy, criminal, sex-crazed, and so on”, or as “coons, maids, cooks, butlers and the like” in early depictions.  Dyson states that “Cosby has attempted to resist stereotypes from the start of his career.”

There have been possible exceptions, though.  For example, Dyson notes that, although the show I Spy sought to ignore race and to depict the Bill Cosby-character as the Robert Culp’s character’s social equal, there was a time when the Cosby-character was posing as the Culp-character’s valet and tennis-trainer when they were undercover.  Cosby also played a doctor with Richard Pryor in California Suite, and the two of them were bumbling, leading critics to allege that they were depicting African-Americans as dumb.  Cosby lashed back in an ad in Variety: “Are we to be denied a right to romp through hotels, bite noses, and, in general, beat up one another in the way Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, Martin & Lewis, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin did—-and more recently as those actors did in the movie Animal House?  I heard no cries of racism in those reviews.  If my work is not funny—-it’s not funny.  But this industry does not need projected racism from critics.”

In my opinion, comedy entails depicting people as bumbling or as short-sighted.  This was the case with I Love Lucy, and all sorts of shows.  The problem, as Gates noted, occurred when African-Americans throughout the entertainment media were primarily portrayed as bumbling or as short-sighted.  That could perpetuate stereotypes.

Is Bill Cosby Right? 7

In my latest reading of Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?), Michael Eric Dyson praises Jesse Jackson for acknowledging the importance of personal responsibility within the African-American community, while also working to address the structural problems that keep poor African-Americans down.  Jackson has been politically active because he realizes that laws and government policies affect the lives of poor African-Americans, yet he has also promoted literacy and has organized churches to mentor first-time offenders lacking a family.  Jackson also has a Wall Street Project, whose aim is to help bring capital to the ghetto, which can increase the local tax base and thus bring more money into the area’s public school system.  I hope that his efforts are bearing fruit.

Is Bill Cosby Right? 6

In my latest reading of Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?), Michael Eric Dyson discusses different views regarding the causes of poverty.  Some blame the poor individual, as if he or she is at fault for not working hard enough.  Some blame society for the lack of opportunities.  Still others appeal to luck as an important factor.  According to Dyson, there are many who may carry around in their minds more than one of these views.  Someone from the African-American middle-class, for example, may pat himself on the back for the hard work that he believes brought him to where he is, and yet he also recognizes that there is structural racism that was a barrier for him, and that is a barrier for other African-Americans.

On page 196, Dyson has a paragraph about the role of religion in influencing the self-perception of some poor people.  Some poor people feel bad because the prosperity Gospel says that those whom God blesses and favors will be materially prosperous, and they look at themselves, see their lack of material prosperity, and wonder if God loves them, or if they are doing something wrong.  Others consider their poverty a blessing or as God’s good will.  Still others believe that God wants to help them to fight for an improvement in their social or economic condition, “if not for themselves, then for their children’s sake.”

I thought about the Book of Proverbs as I read this.  I have been reading Proverbs for my Daily Quiet Time, and what I notice is that it manifests a variety of attitudes about the poor.  It conveys the message that those who do not work hard will likely end up poor, yet it acknowledges that oppression and injustice often hold people down economically.  It is optimistic, however, that God will intervene and punish the oppressors.  Does God intervene by helping the poor in their political or organizational push to improve their conditions, according to Proverbs?  I haven’t seen that in Proverbs so far.  The idea in Proverbs seems to be that God unilaterally steps in and punishes oppressors.  It does not favor people sitting back and letting God do all the work, however, for it promotes charity and generosity for the poor as something that pleases God, and that God will likely reward.

There are times when the Book of Proverbs appears to romanticize poverty, as if it is part of a simple, humbler lifestyle, which contrasts with the pride and the strife among the rich and powerful.  But there are other parts of Proverbs that are quite honest about the misery of poverty, especially in terms of the lack of social support that poor people have because people scorn them for their poverty.  This may be to promote compassion towards them, to encourage people to work hard so they don’t end up poor (and what about the working poor?), or both.

Is Bill Cosby Right? 5

In my latest reading of Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?), Michael Eric Dyson talks about Bill Cosby’s family problems.  Dyson does this, not to air Cosby’s dirty laundry or to accuse Cosby of hypocrisy in attacking poor people’s family problems, but rather to argue that many families have problems, whether they be in the upper or lower economic classes.  Thus, according to Dyson, Cosby should show compassion towards poor African-American families facing problems, rather than judging them as he did in his 2004 speech before the NAACP.

Dyson also quotes remarks that Cosby made in the early days of his career about poverty.  This, according to Dyson, was “when [Cosby] wasn’t yet so far from poverty’s orbit that he could fly off into a rage against its victims” (page 179).  In that statement, Cosby acknowledged the cycle of poverty: poverty making people less attractive to others, the lack of jobs taking a toll on people and their family lives, etc.  Dyson states on page 180 that “That’s the Cosby we need to revive: a critical, clear, compassionate analyst, perhaps even an informal ethnographer, of the lives of the poor.”

Is Bill Cosby Right? 4

In his controversial “Pound Cake” speech before the NAACP in 2004, Bill Cosby criticized and ridiculed fashion trends within the African-American community: baggy pants, body piercings, etc.  Cosby was also critical of African-American parents who give their children unusual names, such as Shaniqua and Taliqua.

In Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?), Michael Eric Dyson attempts to explain the phenomena that Cosby criticized in his speech.  A lot of this phenomena, according to Dyson, is an attempt by African-Americans to assert their identity, their individuality, and their freedom in a world that has historically looked down on them and held them back.  Dyson provides historical background on this.

While Dyson refers to a study that argues that employers tend to discriminate against people with unusual names, Dyson says that African-Americans should not be blamed for being discriminated against: that the goal should be to eliminate the discrimination, not to blame the African-Americans who give their children unusual names.  Dyson also points out that white American society has accepted certain prominent African-Americans with unusual names: Oprah Winfrey, Shaquille O’Neill, and Condoleeza Rice.  Perhaps his hope is that this development will continue, and expand.

On page 139, Dyson does what he has done elsewhere in the book: he has compared the Bill Cosby of the “Pound Cake” speech with the earlier Bill Cosby.  Cosby, for example, exercised his freedom in naming his children according to his hopes and dreams for them: some of the names that he gave them were not conventional, and they all began with E, for “excellence.”  Dyson asks: “Why can’t poor parents enjoy the same freedom with their children?”

Is Bill Cosby Right? 3

In my latest reading of Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?), Michael Eric Dyson talks about a time when an African-American held him and a female companion up at gunpoint.  Dyson reasoned with the man as a fellow African-American, learning that the man was trying to feed his family.  What’s more, the man said that he himself had been held up at gunpoint not long before.

That made me think about the times that I have lived in cities and have come across pen-handlers.  I have bought them food, since I was often told that I should give pen-handlers food rather than money, for they would probably use whatever money I gave them on drugs or alcohol.  But suppose that was not always the case.  Suppose they were trying to collect money so they could feed their family, or save for a rainy day.  If that was the case, then I could understand why they preferred for me to give them money rather than a sandwich or a hot dog I bought for them at a nearby stand.

And suppose that they were collecting money to buy drugs or alcohol.  It’s wrong, but it’s understandable that people in dire economic straits would try to self-medicate.

Would I give to pen-handlers if I still lived in the city?  Well, I’d probably buy someone a meal here and there, but, overall, I would not.  I only have so much money.  I think that it is best to give to charities.

Is Bill Cosby Right? 2

In my latest reading of Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, Michael Eric Dyson cited studies that contradict Bill Cosby’s assertions in his controversial 2004 speech before the NAACP.  Bill Cosby chided the poor African-American parents who bought their kids expensive sneakers rather than Hooked-on-Phonics; Dyson referred to a study indicating that gross materialism was not a significant problem among poor African-American young people, many of whom were spending a lot of their money on necessities.  Bill Cosby lambasted anti-intellectualism within African-American communities; Dyson responded that the African-American drop-out rate is dramatically lower than Cosby said, and that there are studies indicating that African-Americans are as (in some cases more) committed to intellectualism on average as whites.  Cosby criticized crime within African-American communities; Dyson cited a study indicating that there was a higher incidence of illegal drug use among white twelfth-graders in 2003 than among African-American twelfth-graders.

In some cases, I was wondering how some of what Dyson was saying could co-exist.  For example, Dyson referred to a study indicating that African-American parents, on average, are more involved in their children’s education than white parents.  Earlier in the book, in responding to Cosby’s attack on negligent African-American parents, Dyson asks how poor African-American parents can be attentive to their children, when the parents are working long hours just barely to make ends meet.  Both, I am sure, are aspects of reality, in some way, shape, or form.

Incidentally, Dyson does quote John WcWhorter, whose book, Losing the Race, challenges the sorts of narratives that Dyson holds.  Cosby in his speech was criticizing the linguistic tendencies within poor African-American communities, and Dyson quoted a statement by McWhorter, a linguist, that Cosby himself “speaks more ebonics than he knows” (McWhorter’s words).

All of this is interesting, but what I find most fascinating is when Dyson quotes things that Cosby has said that contradict or undermine Cosby’s remarks in his 2004 speech.  Cosby disregarded inequalities in education in his speech; in his dissertation about two decades before, however, he acknowledged them, and made arguments on the basis of them.  In his 2004 speech, Cosby was critical of the way many poor African-Americans talk; his show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, however, featured African-American dialect, and Dyson on pages 78-79 quotes a beautiful passage in which Cosby acknowledged (maybe even appreciated) the distinct black southern dialect of his 85-year old grandfather.  Cosby in his 2004 speech bemoaned crime among African-Americans, but Dyson quotes a statement Cosby made years earlier that criticized the unfairness and inequality of the American criminal justice system.

At times, in my reading thus far, Dyson appears to criticize Cosby for hypocrisy.  Cosby is critical of African-Americans who drop out of school or do not do well in school, when Cosby himself was not a good student and dropped out of high school; Cosby’s road to his doctorate was rather roundabout.  Cosby was bemoaning alleged materialism within poor African-American communities, when Cosby himself has catered to materialism by appearing in numerous commercials.

I’ll stop here.  So far, I’m finding this book to be much better than many of the Amazon reviews said it was.

Is Bill Cosby Right? 1

I started Michael Eric Dyson’s 2005 book, Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?).  The book is a critique of Bill Cosby’s controversial 2004 speech before the NAACP.  Dyson contends that Cosby in that speech was unfairly targeting the African-American underclass, which needs compassion and assistance, not blame and belittlement.

I’ll have plenty of opportunities over the next few days to talk about Dyson’s criticisms of Cosby’s arguments, so I won’t focus on that here.  What I want to discuss in this post is what fascinated me in my latest reading of Dyson’s book, namely, Dyson’s point that Bill Cosby has made a conscious decision over the years not to talk about race.

Of course, Dyson in making that point is asking why Cosby suddenly decided to talk about race in his 2004 speech before the NAACP.  That’s a good question, but it’s not of primary interest to me right now.  What interested me was that Cosby’s ideas about racial equality actually influenced his long decision not to talk about race.  Cosby did not want to portray himself as a black man, per se, but rather as a human being who happened to be black.  He was promoting color-blindness: not looking at a person’s race.  On I Spy, he was just a guy who was working with the Robert Culp character.  In his comedic routines, Cosby talked about life rather than race.  Cosby did not want for black people on television to be problems (i.e., victims of the problem of racism), but to be people, with aspirations, hopes, and dreams, just like white people.  Cosby thought that could promote social equality between whites and African-Americans.

My impression is that Dyson, on some level, understands and is sympathetic towards where Cosby was coming from.  Dyson believes Cosby was ultimately wrong not to focus on race, but Dyson can see the logic in Cosby’s approach.  Dyson’s problem with Cosby’s approach is that it essentially pretended as if racism did not exist, as well as ignored African-American struggles and culture.  In effect, it presented a distorted picture of what race relations were like.

Let’s take The Cosby Show.  On the one hand, the show was good because it depicted an African-American doctor and lawyer.  One way to undermine the stereotype that African-Americans can’t be doctors and lawyers is by showing competent African-American doctors and lawyers on TV.  Hopefully, that would inspire African-Americans to want to become doctors and lawyers, and it would open white society up to accepting them as such.

But, on the other hand, whites may get the impression in watching The Cosby Show that most African-American families are upper middle-class, or that many African-Americans have a decent shot at becoming upper middle-class in this society.  They may conclude that racism is not really a problem holding African-Americans back, and that conditions are better for African-Americans than they actually are.

As I said some posts ago, Cosby’s show, A Different World, actually did address the topic of racism.  One could perhaps argue that it looked more at individual white people not liking blacks rather than systemic racism (though, of course, it is the former that leads to the latter), but there was an episode of A Different World that was pro-affirmative action, which indicates to me a support for systemic change.  I thought that criticisms of Cosby for not focusing on race were not entirely true.  Now, after reading parts of Dyson’s book, I see that Cosby himself acknowledged that he did not want to focus on race.  That makes me wonder how one can account for A Different World.  Was it an anomalous incident of Cosby responding to his critics’ concerns?  Was there a part of Cosby that wanted to look at race, but usually did not due to a fear of alienating white audiences?

Two Nations 9

I finished Andrew Hacker’s 1992/1995 book Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal.  In this post, I would like to highlight a sobering passage on pages 50-51:

“If you are a black woman, you can expect to live five fewer years than your white counterpart.  Among men, the gap is seven years.  Indeed, a man living in New York’s Harlem is less likely to reach sixty-five than is a resident of Bangladesh.  Black men have a three times greater chance of dying of AIDS and outnumber whites as murder victims by a factor of seven.  According to studies, you get less sleep, are more likely to be overweight and to develop hypertension.  This is not simply due to poverty.  Your shorter and more painful life results, in considerable measure, from the anxieties that come with being black in America.”

Hacker goes on to discuss police officers’ presumption of African-American guilt, and later he talks about racism.

I am a sensitive person.  There have been times when I have been afraid to go among people out of fear of being coldly received.  I cannot imagine what it would be like if I were an African-American male, going out into the world and putting up with people’s racism.  That would be stressful, to say the least.

Two Nations 8

Is racism a problem that is significantly holding African-Americans back in the United States?  A number of white conservatives would answer “no.”  They would say that African-Americans who are poor or disadvantaged are themselves at fault for their predicament.  There are poor immigrants from all sorts of nationalities who have managed to succeed, on some level, so white conservatives ask what is poor African-Americans’ excuse.  John McWhorter is neither white nor is he a conservative (though he draws from conservative sources), but such an argument appears in his book Losing the Race, in some way, shape, or form.

Andrew Hacker in Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal, however, seems to argue that reality is not that simple, that immigrants who come here lack the baggage that African-Americans have carried for over two hundred years.  Africans were brought here as slaves, and white society for a long time regarded them as savages, as less intelligent, as more suited to menial tasks or tasks requiring strength as opposed to tasks requiring intellect.  According to Hacker, many white Americans still walk around with that conception in their minds, even if they genuinely do not believe that they are racist.  Hacker may hold that African-Americans face barriers of prejudice that have not been there as much for other ethnic groups.  Asians and Jews, for example, are expected by white society to be intelligent.

I am about to make the following point with some trepidation, for who exactly am I, a white American, to comment on this?  I wouldn’t be surprised if both McWhorter and Hacker are correct, on some level.  Hacker argues that racism is holding African-Americans back, and I can understand that point-of-view: if many white Americans carry around in their minds negative stereotypes about African-Americans, then that will impact what opportunities white society gives to African-Americans.  On the other hand, McWhorter argues that there are self-destructive trends within African-American communities.  There is a trend of anti-intellectualism—-a hostility to book learning and doing well in school.  And there is separatism.  As McWhorter argues, if a white person is interviewing an African-American and detects that the African-American does not particularly care for being around white people, the white person may choose not to hire the African-American.  (Note: These are trends that McWhorter believes exist, not absolutes.)

Both, in my opinion, are problems.  In terms of what to do about them, McWhorter and Hacker offer insights about some things that the African-American community can do: organize study groups (McWhorter), or have African-American teachers who can be role models for African-American students (Hacker).  In terms of what white society can do, the answer is probably to work on judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Two Nations 7

In his updated 1995 version of Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal, Andrew Hacker has a chapter about the O.J. Simpson trial, and the difference of opinion between many whites and many African-Americans about it.  Incidentally, Hacker states that one of the lawyers for the prosecution, Christopher Darden, appealed to a passage in the earlier edition of Hacker’s book to argue that the n-word should not be spoken in front of the jury, due to its inflammatory nature when whites utter the word.

Overall, Hacker argues that the authorities were irresponsible in how they handled the evidence, and he also defends the jury that found Simpson to be not-guilty.  For example, while some argue that the few white people on the jury were pressured to vote not-guilty, Hacker notes that one of the white jurors was the lone holdout in a previous trial and managed to win over the rest of the jury: this was not the sort of person who could be easily swayed, Hacker was arguing.

On page 62 of Losing the Race, John McWhorter has a paragraph about what he considers to be evidence for Simpson’s guilt: Simpson’s dog not barking when Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered, indicating that the dog knew the murderer; fibers from the carpet of Simpson’s Ford Bronco at the scene of the crime; “fibers from Simpson’s shirt and hairs from his head…found on Ronald Goldman”; a bloody shoe-print at the crime scene matching a type of shoe that Simpson may have owned; cuts and scrapes on Simpson’s left hand; “a blood trail from the murder scene…from a left hand”; Simpson not answering his home phone when a limo driver was calling him around the time of the murder; Simpson sweating in the limo, notwithstanding the air-conditioning; and Simpson not asking about his children when he heard that his wife was dead.  Hacker does not address a lot of this, but he does go into the pros and cons for certain arguments about Simpson’s guilt: how to explain the dearth of blood on Simpson’s Ford Bronco and at his home, for example.

On pages 220-221, Hacker speculates that whites may seek revenge for the Simpson verdict and the humiliation of their justice system: perhaps they’d vote against affirmative action, or adequate funding for inner-city hospitals, or districts that can provide African-Americans with more political power.  This may strike some as a conspiracy theory, but I think that Hacker makes a legitimate point: what would happen if the majority of whites believed a certain way, and whites happened to be the ones with power?

Two Nations 6: Crime

My latest reading of Andrew Hacker’s Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal focused on crime.  Hacker states that “one out of every five black men will spend some part of his life behind bars” (page 195).  That is not a majority of African-American men, but it is still a significant amount. And this 2013 article is about a report that argues that the number could become one in three, if current incarceration trends continue.

Why is this the case, according to Hacker?  For one, there is the factor of poverty.  Granted, most African-Americans are not in poverty, as most African-American men are not in prison.  But about a fourth of African-Americans are in poverty, and that is a significant amount.  When people are poor and have few options, one path that they may choose is crime.

Second, Hacker contends that there are African-American men who are resentful of African-American women, and that this could account for a number of black-on-black rapes.  More than once in this book, Hacker cites statistics that indicate that African-American women on average do better than African-American men economically, professionally, and academically, and Hacker’s proposed reason for this is that white society believes that African-American women are better at gelling with white ways of doing things: they are supposedly more accommodating, they are more likely to sit down and be quiet in the classroom, etc.  Hacker states on page 192 that this “can create social divisions and stir sexual tensions”, and that “Men have always sought to bring down women whose ambitions or achievements threaten male esteem.”

Third, African-American men who commit crimes are likely to commit those crimes with visibility, increasing the likelihood that they will get caught.  Rather than breaking into a house in the suburbs, for example, they would try to rob someone on the street.  And, fourth, much of the criminal justice system is white.  Hacker asks how a white person would feel if he drove into a black neighborhood and accidentally hit an African-American child, and the only people in the courtroom who are white are he and his lawyer.  Wouldn’t the defendant feel as if the system were biased against him, in that case?  Well, that’s how a number of African-Americans feel.

Of course, conservatives can come back with answers to this: that there are many poor people who don’t commit crimes, and many rich people who do, and that the African-American crime and incarceration rate in the 1930′s was much lower than it is today.  Hacker acknowledges all of this, even if he may not believe that it thoroughly undermines his overall argument and observations.

Two Nations 5

My latest reading of Andrew Hacker’s Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal focused on education.

Is racial integration in education a good thing, overall, for African-American students?  My impression is that Hacker is rather ambivalent on this.  On the one hand, Hacker argues that many African-Americans do well academically at historically black colleges, that African-American students need African-American teachers to serve as role models, and that some have contended that the white classroom tends to discriminate against African-American learning styles (which focus on speaking and moving rather than sitting down and being quiet, and stories that are not linear rather than abstractions).  Even in schools that are racially integrated, Hacker argues, many African-American students are placed in lower tracks, so they are segregated from white students, anyway.  Hacker also appears to be open to curricula that impart to African-Americans pride in their heritage.

On the other hand, Hacker quotes the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which affirmed that segregated schools are bad because they are an example of white society telling African-Americans that they are not wanted.  Hacker notes that colleges that are predominantly African-American receive less funding than many other colleges.  And I’d say that, overall in this book, Hacker argues that the separation of African-Americans from whites blocks African-American advancement.  After all, if whites stick with their own kind rather than trying to understand and reach out to the “other,” they will tend to promote their own kind while excluding the “other.”  Since white society is the dominant society, that means marginalization for African-Americans.

I think that Hacker would prefer to make integration work.  Rather than being happy with minorities attending historically black colleges, he would probably prefer that other universities help African-Americans to feel genuinely welcome.  Perhaps he would like for an integrated school to recognize African-American learning styles, to have more African-American teachers, and to teach African-American history.  I get this from my latest reading.

Hacker’s book was written in the 1990′s, and Hacker stated that 63.2 percent of African-American children are in segregated schools, appealing to studies that the National School Board Association conducted.  I did a quick google search to find later statistics, and I found an August 29, 2013 Washington Post article entitled, “Report: Public Schools More Segregated Now Than 40 Years Ago.”

Two Nations 4

An issue that came up quite frequently in my latest reading of Andrew Hacker’s 1992 (updated in 1995) book, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal was that of qualifications.  Under affirmative action policies for jobs and admission to universities, the required qualifications are often lower for African-American applicants than they are for white applicants.  Critics then ask: Isn’t is disastrous to give people jobs or educational opportunities for which they may not be qualified?

One track that Hacker takes in responding to criticisms of this policy is that perhaps the qualifications themselves are not the best measures of whether or not one can bring something useful to a job, or a school.  African-Americans can bring diversity, which increases the knowledge of the community that they enter.  African-American cops can help the police force to interact better with African-American communities.  Moreover, Hacker wonders why law schools should hire primarily people who have published research or an advanced degree, since “practical experience and an ability to communicate may actually make for better teaching” (page 130).  Hacker also takes a swipe at the SATs, maintaining that they are not a measure of the success that one will attain later in life, that they presume knowledge of middle-class life, and that they “are biased in favor of people who have a knack for solving puzzles at a one-a-minute rate”, even as they discriminate against those “drawn to music and the arts” (page 149).

Why, on average, are other minorities, or people from the white lower economic classes, able to do better on the SAT than African-Americans?  Hacker offers a variety of reasons: Asian students may have studied more American history and literature, immigrants have often been trained in math and the multiple-choice method in their own countries, etc.  But Hacker seems to believe that racism is a factor: that, because there are many whites who look down on black people and do not want to be around them, African-Americans are cut off from the exposure to the white world that they need to do well on SAT tests, or other standardized tests.  John McWhorter in Losing the Race would probably blame anti-intellectualism and separatism within African-American communities.

Hacker does not appear to go so far as to dismiss thoroughly all of the current required qualifications.  For example, on page 132, he refers to the argument that it is important for cops to be aware of complex legal issues and to be able to write precise reports so that what they do will hold up in court.

I think that Hacker makes good points.  I still believe that, say, solid knowledge of the sciences is essential for physicians, but I am open to considering additional forms of aptitude, as well.