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Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 10/9/2008 11:04 AM (GMT -6)

(I'm branching the conversation from the Palin thread, where I committed to pray and fast over the issue of white supremacy in America.)

Interesting. As I've been praying and reflecting today on my own advantages as a white male, I started my list by noting my own upbringing, in an intact family where my father has been intently involved in my life from the beginning. Statistically, I understand this is rarely the case in African-American homes. Even if I think my dad was wrong on a number of issues, I can't deny the advantage of having him there. This may be my single-most important advantage as a white male.

Here's some stats I just found. Children from fatherless homes are:

4.6 times more likely to commit suicide,
6.6 times to become teenaged mothers (if they are girls, of course),
24.3 times more likely to run away,
5.3 times more likely to have behavioral disorders,
6.3 times more likely to be in a state-operated institutions,
10.8 times more likely to commit rape,
6.6 times more likely to drop out of school,
15.3 times more likely to end up in prison while a teenager

I don't understand much at all as to why these stats are the way they are, or why fatherlessness is so prevalent in the African-American community.

So, speaking today, if I were to try to leverage my privilege as a white male, I'd first look for ways to help fatherless kids, and look for ways to help break that cycle.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 10/9/2008 11:07 AM (GMT -6)

A thought.

Looking at African-American history in this country (including American slavery), can you see any environmental reasons, generationally applied, that would contribute to "fatherlessness" in the African-American community? Obviously, the problem didn't start overnight, right?

In other words, what SYSTEMS are and have been in place that could contribute to the trend?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 10/9/2008 11:07 AM (GMT -6)

D: Looking at African-American history in this country (including American slavery), can you see any environmental reasons, generationally applied, that would contribute to "fatherlessness" in the African-American community? Obviously, the problem didn't start overnight, right?

Corey: Absolutely. I see it. But I want to understand it better.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 10/9/2008 11:09 AM (GMT -6)

Corey:
Absolutely. I see it. But I want to understand it better.

You want to understand what better?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 10/9/2008 11:12 AM (GMT -6)

Maybe this could be a helpful way to frame things...

How does white privilege contribute to the problem of "fatherlessness" that we are talking about? In what ways do participation in white privilege create or sustain the systemic effects that may lead to the "father" issue? The process of asking and answering these questions, I think, can help here.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 10/9/2008 11:16 AM (GMT -6)

Maybe this helps...and this...

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 10/9/2008 11:25 AM (GMT -6)

Waldo Johnson, Jr.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 10/9/2008 11:30 AM (GMT -6)

D: You want to understand what better?

C: The whole swirling mess of interrelated factors that result in a predominance of fatherlessness in the African-American community.

I haven't read your links yet. I'll do that now.

P.S. Why do you use "fatherlessness" in quotes? Is there something you're trying to signify by that?

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 10/9/2008 11:36 AM (GMT -6)

D: Maybe this helps...and this...

C: I'm familiar with both of those lists. Connect the dots.. it's not exactly clear to me how these sorts of things result in the fatherlessness problem.

Are you referring to: "My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership."

This one bothers me. I don't think all "choices of domestic partnership" are equal. That's my point here: a "traditional" married family IS more beneficial than the alternatives. Why should should we pretend otherwise in "texts and classes"?

Post Edited (Corey) : 10/9/2008 11:44:53 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 10/9/2008 11:46 AM (GMT -6)

Corey:
I'm familiar with both of those lists. Connect the dots.. it's not exactly clear to me how these sorts of things result in the fatherlessness problem.

There's not going to be a direct relationship that you see there, Corey. But I do think that "soaking" in what you see of yourself in those lists (to whatever extent) will be helpful in interpreting the context of the problem. Wrestle with them. That's what they're there for.

**********************************

Corey:
Why do you use "fatherlessness" in quotes? Is there something you're trying to signify by that?

I really hadn't noticed it. As I'm thinking on it, maybe I believe that because God is our Eternal Father, no human being is ever truly "fatherless"...ever. That's our faith. I don't know. Maybe that's it...

*****************

By the way, Corey...I REALLY, REALLY think that Tyler is an excellent person to talk about these things with as well. He's quite knowledgeable on White Privilege and the reconcilation issues we are talking about here. You know each other pretty well...and I know you'd be able to have "safe talk" with him on this. He's done wonders for helping to educate the staff at Woodland on these issues...and still does!

Holla at him on this.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 10/9/2008 1:50 PM (GMT -6)

I went for a walk today at lunch with a coworker (an evangelical) and brought up this subject with him. I mentioned I've been praying and fasting over race relations, and he responded, "In America?" I said, "Yeah, that's the point."

Sahid
Megistered Rember

Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013

Posted 10/10/2008 2:43 AM (GMT -6)

There have always been dominant classes and these are frequently racially homogeneous. That's not exactly a new discovery. The pressing question is not "How can I better hate my skin-tone," but rather "How can I live in solidarity with 'the least of these.'" What we need is not a list of 50 reasons to be ashamed for your melanin concentration but 50 ways of infecting (or flat out replacing) the standard American Christian lifestyle with the mother Teresa lifestyle. Let's spend our energies there instead. I apologize if this is way off the mark, but it seems like the emphasis is in the wrong place.

Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre

One Love
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Posted 10/10/2008 7:20 AM (GMT -6)

Sahid:
The pressing question is not "How can I better hate my skin-tone," but rather "How can I live in solidarity with 'the least of these.'"

Unfortunately, this sentiment is often very prevalent. That somehow looking at one's participation in a fallen system is functionally equivalent to ethno-cultural self-hatred. This is inaccurate. This would be like me (being a male) thinks that becoming sensitive to my micro-aggressions towards women because of my socialization is DIRECTLY RELATED TO me hating my self for having a penis and being enculturated as a "male". (Unfortunately, some men do feel this way about getting the sexism "matrix" revealed to them.)

The end goal is EXACTLY what you say: Living in solidarity with the "least of these". The MEANS that we are talking about is getting more of a perception of the societal, UNSEEN powers that make it very hard for the culture of power/privilege to identify and live in solidarity with those "least of these." THEN we talk about the marginalized and how the SYSTEMS keep them marginalized.

Bottom line: Just like a man doesn't have to hate himself as "male" to understand his complicity in America's sexism, so also a white person doesn't have to hate themselves as "white" to understand their complicity in American's "white supremacist" system.

Feel me?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Sahid
Megistered Rember

Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013

Posted 10/10/2008 9:59 AM (GMT -6)

I think I understand. But I don't think the subtleties you expressed in your last post are very often communicated during the course of conversations which include the term 'white privilege'. Where there is complicity it should be acknowledged, forgiven, and repented from. But in the article you linked to by Peggy McIntosh, complicity is applied with a fairly wide brush.

I like to make curry. So do my Bangladeshi and Indian friends. In Waco you can't find it at the supermarket. According to McIntosh (number 12) this is an effect of latent racism. Does every white American really share complicity in the "racist" stocking decisions of HEB? I actually like the stuff; I've repeatedly requested that they carry it.

This is ridiculous on two levels. First, it amounts to the complaining of a five-year old who refuses to eat pizza because his favorite food is spaghetti. To speak of the very real problem of racism in terms of a childish tantrum is counter-productive. If you can't get your favorite food trucked across the country to you, then welcome to the real world. The complaint that my people are not allowed to be wasteful spoiled brats like white people is not effective in gaining much sympathy.

Second, the complicity is not there. Sure, a butterfly can flap its wings here and set off a tornado over there. But is the butterfly complicit? And if we stretch complicity to the point that every white person can have complicity traced back to him or her, then it is not much more of a stretch to trace it back to every black person or every Jew or every Eskimo or every Cro-Magnon.

The ridiculousness, whether intentional or not, serves to exasperate observers (and not just the white ones). If you hear complaints of racism framed consistently in terms of over-the-top exaggeration of the Peggy McIntosh variety, then it's not surprising when you write off racism as a non-issue.

If 'complicity' can be applied without exception to people of a certain race, then the term has lost its meaning. 'Complicity' implies a choice. If I could not have chosen otherwise, then I am not complicit. Maybe I am irrational enough to have misplaced feelings of guilt... but that's not complicity. There IS real complicity in evil systems that needs to be addressed, but watering down the terms only hinders that process.

Post Edited (Sahid) : 10/10/2008 10:33:00 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 10/10/2008 10:36 AM (GMT -6)

I'm glad that you understand what I was trying to articulate. My hope is that this perspective can be applied as a "lens" through which to see McIntosh's (and others') "over-the-top exaggeration" that you see in the framing of some of the questions. Not throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Good stuff.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 10/12/2008 8:27 AM (GMT -6)

Zach: If 'complicity' can be applied without exception to people of a certain race, then the term has lost its meaning. 'Complicity' implies a choice. If I could not have chosen otherwise, then I am not complicit. Maybe I am irrational enough to have misplaced feelings of guilt... but that's not complicity. There IS real complicity in evil systems that needs to be addressed, but watering down the terms only hinders that process.

Jeff: Exactly. I think a lot of people do just lose interest in "movements" when those movements don't really posit anything people can do as individuals. It's too hard to get a consensus of enough people to get movements going on a lot of things. People of good-will already DO try to do something about systemic evil in their own individual way. It's just that it's hard for individual good to significantly affect systemic problems. Because the reason why systemic problems ARE systemic is because majorities are willingly complicit in the problem.

On an unrelated note, that's why I have no doubt that slavery would have ended in this country as technology increased. Once it got to where slaves only existed as house servants for the rich, it would have been voted down by MAJORITIES who had no reason to condone that. But voting for millions of slaves to be freed overnight in a society that had no way to accomodate that in a way the average person could see as doable seemed problematic to Lincoln even. He sympathized with that very view until his war was in need of a non-economic justification after the fact.

Hindsight is 20-20 though. It turns out that the slaves could be freed and allowed to do share-cropping as many of them did after the war. It would have been a doable transition. But who was going to vote for compensated emancipation when most slave owners were rich. The political problem was huge. It is little known that Virginia actually opposed the importation of slaves. The King (with the support of a minority of rich property owners) is the one who wanted it to augment the profits of mercantilism, not the majority of colonists. But once the sheer number of slaves grew large, even those who opposed slavery like Lincoln could see no easy way to politically pull off emancipation. And of course, there were the rich who opposed emancipation anyway. And they had political influence too.

But all this goes to show that pure unadulterated racism is not always the real bottom line. It can be a contributing factor even when it is not the most significant one. Economics and preservation of "ways of life" are also important in these matters. IOW, people just find it hard to love their neighbor as their self when that involves personal sacrifice independent of racial differences.

Truth Aficionado
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Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544

Posted 11/10/2008 10:53 AM (GMT -6)

Hey D,

Tom posted the following link on another thread: Obama's post-racial promise. I found Steele’s view to be filled with self-contradictions, especially when you juxtapose it with what he said 11 months earlier, check out the following: Shelby Steele: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race So by June, Steele is losing credibility and is found back peddling on the subtitle of his thesis, "Bound Man: Why We Are Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win". I resonate towards Jason Linkins view, he quickly exposed many holes in Steele’s thesis in the following: Author Of 'Obama Can't Win' Book Doesn't Believe Himself

So Dwayne, I'm interested in getting your feedback, what do you think?

Thanks,

Mark

Post Edited (Truth Aficionado) : 11/10/2008 10:51:10 AM (GMT-6)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 11/10/2008 9:38 PM (GMT -6)

Frankly, I thought the author was a hater. Just being honest.

Before I had read the article you posted, I had thought about Obama's Father's Day Speech, his times on MTV, and other times he's spoken. I understand the "bargaining" idea that Steele's talking about...and Obama was NOT doing that. At all. It's like the author really believed that Obama believed more in his "blackness" than his American heritage (which is exactly what's being presumed). I wondered..."has this dude even LISTENED to Obama?" Does he even know how deep that separation went with him and Jeremiah Wright? Obviously not.

Now, I'm not saying the psychological process that Steele talks about wasn't going on in some white people's minds. It probably was. I'm saying that I didn't see Obama trying to overtly or covertly elicit that process at all, let alone use it to his ends like Steele wants to say. Neither Barack nor Michelle.

So...again...I thought the author was a hater. After reading the article you posted, TA (I haven't seen the video yet. Need a Flash upgrade) I'd say he's an incongruent hater.

Yeah.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/10/2008 8:42:16 PM (GMT-6)

Truth Aficionado
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544

Posted 11/11/2008 12:01 PM (GMT -6)

Update your flash and check it out. Take note of chapter 7.

Thanks,

selah
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210

Posted 11/12/2008 10:02 PM (GMT -6)

hi u guys..

Corey, please help me understand where you are...today.... regarding race relations.

thanks,

teresa

"When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love."
~ Soren Kierkegaard

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 11/13/2008 8:19 AM (GMT -6)

I believe race relations are about to get significantly worse in this country. I have almost no confidence that true reconciliation, true justice, true mercy, true forgiveness will be advanced.

selah
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210

Posted 11/13/2008 8:47 AM (GMT -6)

I hear ya Corey... It's likely just the sad reality of a fallen world full of obstinate people.

Gosh, it's becoming hard to think optimistically about anything these days!

selah

"When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love."
~ Soren Kierkegaard

BBBCanada
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763

Posted 11/13/2008 11:34 AM (GMT -6)

Discuss amongst yourselves biggrin : http://www.gregboyd.org/blog/the-heresy-of-an-unreconciled-church/

A few things.

1. Why were these white Christians outraged by Obama's election? Was it because a black man got voted in? Or was it because he was a Democrat and his Democratic policies? Most white Christians vote on the Republican ticket, so I'm wondering if that would have anything to do with it. Greg never does say. So if I disagree with Obamanomics (hey, I just made up a new word!) do I qualify as racist?

2. Bringing up Emerson's studies, while they may be interesting, are not evidence for voting habits.

3. What does he mean that whites are "less able to appreciate the significance of his racial achievement?" Is racial achievement this?

While significant historically, I don't think one can fathom the significance of an Obama victory for perhaps years to come which may not be tied to his race at all.

Brandon

It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.

To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 11/13/2008 11:46 AM (GMT -6)

I think Greg oversimplified things here, to say the least. Ouch.

Yes, the statistics he's talking about are real (The Emerson book is a great book)...and the "White evangelical" effect that allows for subtle racism is real. (Being a person of color on staff at WHC for years, bless my church, I KNOW that effect is real experientially. Greg wouldn't tell you different, either. We've been on this journey TOGETHER for some time now...)

But, to say that THIS is THE reason why White evangelical Christians were upset about the election results...is a little too far and a but myopic.

Dang, Greg...

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 11/13/2008 11:53 AM (GMT -6)

Corey:
I believe race relations are about to get significantly worse in this country. I have almost no confidence that true reconciliation, true justice, true mercy, true forgiveness will be advanced.

For my score, my experience on this board and in Woodland Hills gives me hope and confidence that reconciliation, justice, mercy, forgiveness (and all the other manifestations of Love) can break forward. There was once a time that I hated white people with a virulent passion. If a white person would have caught me on the wrong day...curtains. Literally. Now, I love all peoples more than I ever thought I'd be able to in my life. I can only attribute that to the liberating Spirit of God using all of my life experiences, bringing me to this end. And that Spirit is working in all things. Right now.

So...

Things may get darker, even darkest before the dawn...but the dawn is coming.

I believe that now.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

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