Exactly, white folk don’t even have a “choice” per se to attend an HBCU even though most times the HBCUs are right up the street from their houses or in their backyard and they offer quality education just as hundreds of others TWIs. Moreover, as you said, no one asks why are whites choosing a TWI over an HBCU.

Hmm, you may have given me a new blog topic.

I thought the comments you pulled from that other site were informative in they showed how people frame issues.

The comment about people “choosing” to attend non-diverse colleges speaks to what you talked about regarding what is considered diversity. If diversity is having 7 percent of the student population be non-white, then yeah, many white school are more diverse than Spelman or Howard. But, that’s a pretty self-serving way to define diversity. The fact is, most colleges are either majority white or majority black. White folks choose the ones that are majority white and black folks choose both.
So who is seeking diversity?

I talked to another source last night and he was informing me the same thing as far as how Riverside was run.

But he suggested that Braxton simply didn’t have the diplomatic skills that Forbes probably had because there were some deep-seated issues already at work prior to Braxton coming and that Braxton just merely muddied the waters. I debated about including it in the article, but there are some disputes as to what his true salary was. This friend informed me that the dissenting group was beginning to lose the struggle and their last ditch effort was to go to the press; some figures say his package was only around $300K.

Have you checked out this article at Religious Dispatches? http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/oped/1606/by_the_way%3A_riverside_minister’s_abrupt_resignation_reveals_the_perils_of_the_pulpit

He did not have the cultural capital to make the changes that he was proposing during the time he was proposing them.

Riverside is not a pastor-run church. The pastor is the star, but the congregation runs the church.

Now, since it is a majority black church, you have to know that he ticked off enough non-whites to have them kick him out, rather than splitting the church… so, again, channel Dr. Thompson here.

These pay packages for priests just blows my mind as a striving-to-be-faithful Catholic, but that’s again another story for another time.

This seems to be a classic manifestation of the levels of ignorance and fear that still exist among people of European-Anglo descent in this country. I try very hard not to paint people as ‘white’ or ‘black’, so you really have to focus on those individuals who are fomenting this dissidence and put their views/ideas ‘on blast’ as best you can.

I am also shocked about how people come up to you to ‘critique’ your sermons. I can understand an honest discussion over brunch, but folks just stepping up to you probably because you’re some ‘young whipper-snapper who’s gettin’ too big for his britches’ makes me question their a) parenting skills, if any, and b) their respect of the position of a cleric.

Again, what does a pastor do with $300k a year?

I know a lot of Black pastors who have full-time non-church “day jobs”. The large Black congregation in my city has a paid senior pastor (and perhaps full-time paid associates) but also a lot of associate pastors who have other jobs during the week. The ministerial associations are made of up the full-time pastors. It seems to me that this division feeds into some of the racial fault lines in religion.

Is the $600K compensation package at the root of Dr. Braxton’s leaving or is it really the painful stymied discussion surrounding ‘diversity’ with the advent of reduced white membership’s fear of loss of control of ‘the message’?

Because Dr. Braxton used the phrase ‘speaking truth to power’ in the second clip, I have included an old comment from UNN that speaks to the perceived power sharing that appears to be off-putting and frightening to those not of color.

Re the $600K compensation package, IMO, is it simply reflective of business CEOs (that have led to the bankrupting of this current economy and) of further politicizing of protestant prophetic ministry at Riverside?

How does the $600K salary package line up with other religious congregations, Christian and/or others?

Speaking Truth to Power———–
dL Says:
April 20, 2008 at 12:52 am

If I have this right (and I think I do), for black theologians the boldness to correct conventional wisdom came about probably before James Cone and others of the 60s and 70s (think JCW Pennington in 1841). ‘Speaking truth to power’ from the Black Church experience resulted from the sorely needed correcting of the 3/5 human part of the Eurocentric view that far too often reflected essentially biased and more importantly racist views of what black theologians could contribute to the shaping of academic thought.

If one starts from the academic premise that a ‘black theologian’ constitutes an oxymoron—then it follows that a black person in seminary and divinity schools (reflected in the wider culture) has nothing to contribute culturally and academically to any discussion in the ‘Academy.’

The power spoken to by black theologians (and womanist theologians) is the Academy. The ‘truth to power’ is essentially stating to those in power the biblical truth that God made us human AND in His image.

The resistance to this radical thought, over time, is as simple as stating (including some black church settings–think Catholic and others less tuned in to actual scripture) that according to historical, geographical, and cultural history references as recorded in the Bible, Jesus, the Christ, was black and oppressed by those who were not.

This is why being uppity matters. Maybe only uppity Negroes dare venture to ’speak truth to power.’ The status quo in America tends to reject truth-spoken plain, even in the Academy.

‘Truth to power’ applies outside of the Academy though the Academy informs much of America’s conventional wisdom even when remotely connected to religion (not just confined to Christianity), religious thought, and definitions of moral turpitude when connected to God-talk.

Thank you for being an Uppity Negro!

Solutions? Nothing easy. Be willing to mix with folks from other backgrounds even when it is painful and upsetting. Work for social justice. Keep trying even when things go wrong and everyone gets mad.