Archive | March, 2010

The Lack Thereof… Intellectual Black Religious Communities

29 Mar

I think I’m going to start a new series, not that I’ve been super successful with my others, but alas, here goes.

I know it’s pretty doom and gloom to write about the “lack thereof” particularly in the black communities of this country, or even various other cultural observances, but I do believe that if we never recognise the lack, or even recognize the absence as a lack that needs to be addressed then we’re doomed from the start.  So, for this inaugural post, I’d like to discuss the broad topic of sustainable black intellectual communities.

This has been one of my new talking points obsessions.  You know the type of thing you’re really feeling at the time that you find away to insert your various key phrases into a conversation.  At one time, it was me using the word “anti-intellectualism” another time I was referring the the “barbershop knowledge” that far to many blacks relied on for real factual information, and now I’m just going to refer to “the lack of sustainable intellectual communities in the black community.”

Same thing more or less, different words.

Now, I’ve more or less been against this anti-intellectualism from the beginning.  Once I developed my blogging voice, and as Rippa from Intersection of Madness and Reality pointed out to me on a Twitter DM, that I was indeed a writer and not necessarily a blogger, that I began to flesh out the fallacies that many of live in in the context of black communal life.

Stick with me, I’m going somewhere.

Fact of the matter is that in the black community, we’re not all that tolerant of the other.

We think we are because we so clearly identify with the Democratic National Party and many of their social ideals, but as I remembered a story posted on the FreshXpress last year, many of us will only go so far, particularly on issues of religion.  And this is my point of departure.

Brian McLaren, a name I’m sure most of my black readers have never heard of, who self-identifies as an evangelical has recently published a book entitled A New Kind of Christianity that has rocked the world of evangelical theology, specifically those who are members of the Southern Baptist fellowship.  You can read the full story as NPR covered it here, but just for excerpts sake here’s some food for thou

Consider the core evangelical belief that only Christians are going to heaven and everyone else is doomed. That may have rung true for his grandparents’ generation, he says, but not now.

“A young evangelical, Roman Catholic [or] mainline Protestant growing up in America today, if he goes to college, his roommate might be Hindu,” he says. “His roommate might be Muslim. His roommate might be Buddhist or atheist. So, suddenly the ‘other’ is sleeping across the room.”

McLaren is onto something here, says David Campbell, a professor at Notre Dame and co-author of American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives. His surveys show that nearly two-thirds of evangelicals under age 35 believe non-Christians can go to heaven, but only 39 percent of those over age 65 believe that. That’s because young evangelicals have grown up in a religiously plural society.

“And, it’s really hard to condemn someone to eternal damnation on the basis of their religion when you know them well and have come to love them,” he says.

Campbell adds that young believers are more flexible about Christian doctrine in general.

“We also know that — particularly within the evangelical community — the younger you are, the less likely you are to take the Bible literally, to believe that the Bible is the inerrant ‘word of God,’ as compared to a book of moral precepts,” he says.

Surveys by Campbell and others show young evangelicals differ from their elders in a lot of ways. They pray less often, read the Bible and go to church less often. And they’re more open to culture and social issues, such as evolution and gay rights.

Well, I guess because I fall into the younger crowd, this makes perfect sense to me.  But let the record show, the majority of my peers, my age, who are church goers, would probably disagree with me.  Why? Because they’re black and Christian.

Is it as simple as that Uppity?

Yes, to me it is.  Do you know why? Here’s the reason why, Brian McLaren is white and in the white religious community, religion is not solely Christianity. Fact of the matter is that white folk read more than us-folk. Not only do they read more, they read actual books.  Trust me, McLaren’s book is going to do just fine. Whether the white folks read it just to disagree with it or to actually embrace new thought patterns, they’ll read it.

What do black folk read?

If we pick up a book…

..we’re going to read Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, or we’ll read some other books that have probably been ghostwritten with the names like T.D. Jakes or Eddie Long slapped on the cover page.  Or even the Chicken Noodle Soup series, which yes, may have bits and pieces that help us in some weird day-to-day occurrences, but seriously, we’re not reading for the sake of intellectualism, but merely reading to satisfy our own personal musings and to shore up our own core beliefs.

This goes not just for laypersons but also clergy as well.  Black clergy seem to be enthralled by books that speak about dynamic leadership and church growth and about how to take a ministry to “the next level.”  We wouldn’t ordinarily pick up the book by Malcolm Gladwell entitled Outlier and discover that yes, talent and some amount of charisma is necessary for fame, but that coincidence, maximizing opportunities and actually sheer dumb luck actually play heavily into the equation.

Especially in the South, there isn’t much atmosphere to engage in core theological disagreements.  The idolatry of the biblical text is far to great, in my opinion, to have any sustainable intellectual conversation. Somehow one’s argument must begin and end with the Bible. Yes, in my post-biblical approach at times, it comes off as heretical. My close friends are used to it, but at times in class, I really want to speak out, but I know the response I’ll get: none. It’s highly frustrating to suggest an idea and sometimes not even the professor will engage the thought-process, let alone the other students.  I think the frustration is compounded because in the white Christian religious circles, such thoughts have a much better chance of finding some traction versus that of the black Christian religious community.

I mean just ask Brian McLaren.

Then ask Carlton Pearson.

One white, one black.

Bishop Pearson had to convert to New Thought in order to still have a following, because the black religious community has given him a resounding HELL NO to his “gospel of inclusion.”

As I’ve said before, not just on the issues of core Christian theology, but black Christians have miles to go in order to provide an atmosphere that is conducive to having real dialogue.  Too many Christians are too arrogant and fail to see that the biblical text isn’t authoritative for everyone. Which means they’ll use Scripture to justify a response, while the other party is trying to figure out how by quoting the Bible makes them right?

If I never say it again, let me reiterate: our idolatry of the biblical text will be the downfall of humanity.  Enough white religious communities are able to poke some holes in the biblical text and deal with the tension that the various voices of the Bible speaks from, but blacks….smh….right along with the evangelicals most certainly believe in the infallibility of the Bible, and far too many believe in the inerrancy of the text.  At this point, if I were having a conversation with someone who believed in the inerrancy of scripture I’d have to change the topic.

I personally think it’s quite simple on how to rectify this problem: pick up a damn book and read!  And read something other than damn Purpose Driven Life or Chicken Noodle Soup for the Soul. Granted white liberalism is a foreign language to black liberalism, it’s probably nothing more than a dialectical difference after all is said and done.  The topics are not so foreign that one cannot grasp it.

At this point, I’m not even attempting to try and change anything. I doubt I’d see that in my life time, but in an age when denominational churches need to seriously think their existence in the next 100 years, we need to at least be having the conversation.  We need to be having the conversation that engages postmodern, and most certainly postcolonial thought. No those words need not scare you, but feel free to look them up and learn something–don’t run away from new ideas.

I think black intellectualism exists, but it exists on an individual level.  It’s not easy to find a community of them that meet on a regular basis.  And I would dare say that if they are members of a church, they’re intellectualism is only going to go so far and probably exist well within modern thought.  Cornel West is truly and exception.  And I will say this, what are the progressive thinkers of the previous generation doing to foster new thought and new ideas in the younger generation.  Seriously, creating mini-mes is not what’s up.

Black culture is still caught up in the “gotta pay your dues” which is really nepotism and brown-nosing 101 masquerading as a meritocracy.  If I’m under 30, and I think the way I think, I am fully persuaded that there are others who think just like me or at least have the wherewithal to engage my ideas on a certain level.  But, the old guard has said HELL NO, you must do it a certain way in order to be taken seriously.  Honestly, as me and The Critical Cleric bemoaned last night that after eight full years of schooling post-high school, I’m tired of listening to someone else and reading other books–when is it my time to write and publish. And the prospect of having to play the politicking game at the doctoral level, and then get on at an institution, and then wait for tenure just to publish what you want to publish and do what you want to do sounds absolutely ludicrous.

Lord deliver me.

This was clearly a rant and ramble.  Have fun in the comment section if you must.

(And yes, I’m aware I talked about all this from a very male perspective, I did so because why? I’m a male. ‘Nuff said.)

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Reclaiming The Black Blogosphere: We Must Do Better

17 Mar

My friend over at The Critical Cleric had long since said that the black political blogosphere did nothing for him.

He went on to elaborate that many writers, he felt, didn’t give enough critical analysis of their own opinions and thoughts and generally just went off the cuff and went forward. At the time, about two years ago and some change when I first started blogging, I didn’t really agree with him, there were some blogs that I frequented enough and began reading and then I started to see just what he was talking about.

What I really began to take issue with, at least for me, was really the commenters.

We may assail the level of mean, evil and vile comments that get said over at the right wing blogs, but please believe let black folks get on the right (or maybe wrong) subject and it’s a wrap: we come out with teeth bared and chains and bats ready for an argument. And we write vile and mean comments to one another on the blog and it comes off as just outright and mean! What’s worse is that the authors of the various posts or blog sites let the commenters do it and get away with murder.

As any blogger who’s been around long enough knows that there is a common thread of commenters personalities. Just like a discussion in class; eventually you become adept at which commenters are going to chime in on certain posts and probably what their response is going to be.  That’s fine, great even, but what happens when a new face comes in and leaves a comment? Does the established commenting community welcome them with open arms or do they treat them like the new kid on the playground and begin bullying them? I daresay that the latter goes on too much in the black blogosphere.

I believe, as I see it that the primary issue facing this borderline cyber-bullying from fellow commenters and the level of just nasty and mean and rude posts that bloggers publish is the inability for the black community to embrace and dialogue with diversified intellectual thought.

I know as blacks we run around claiming that we’re not monolithic as a people, and yes that’s even more true than it was 40 years ago, but still there exists a spectrum in which some ideas and thoughts are not even tolerated within the black community.  For instance, the day I wrote this, there was a discussion in class concerning the ethics and morals of a case study for a class whereas a male professor was hitting on a female student who was his mentee. However, the professor had reasoned that because his life as he had known it was over because of two troubled children in and out of jail and a wife who had been stricken with hereditary early on-set Alzheimers he had not had sex in over a year.  Well, I made the mistake of arguing that the marriage was indeed over because she had “died” in her mind and that I really saw nothing wrong with him having sex.

That was the wrong statement.

I was left to defend my opinion and seriously I pushed the envelope a bit because one brother, who much like commenters and their personalities responded in much the same way he always does. I argued the relativity of truth and thankfully he intelligently debated me.  I still think I won that (lol) on the basis that I was not saying that the professor must push the boundaries of “marriage” as my opponent argued, but that if he so chose to, far be it for us to criticize him for “not being faithful.” My main argument toward him (and to whomever is reading this) was that I fully reject metanarratives that dictate that there is one main truth that superceedes any other truth. Truth is indeed contextual and relative to the situation.

I really wanted to go on and show him the pure fallacy of the argument just based on his life as a black male, living in the south, attending a United Methodist church etc etc, but alas, there wasn’t enough hours in the day.

So to black bloggers here’s some advice:

We can’t afford to do less than quality work. I’ve read some blog posts on some famous black blogs and the level of writing was absolute drivel. Sorry. It was subpar absolutely wretched. No, I’m not talking about black gossip websites like Concrete Loop or even other black bloggers who write on entertainment issues, but those of the self-professed political blogosphere. And no, I’m not talking about mere grammatical errors or even run-on sentences, but I’m talking about the hatred and violence that gets spewed not in the name of sarcasm and wit, but in the name of vitriols that are not words of love, but words of death.

When we write, we incite. Our words, particularly at those black blogs that have large followings and have comments in the 100+, we are influencing the consciousness of those readers. Our words carry weight and carry meaning. Many may sit back and say that we’re hiding behind a computer screen and we aren’t doing anything effective in our community, but please believe if anyone was so moved by what we read that they left a comment that means that our words have left such an imprint on their consciousness they felt compelled to respond. Which in turn probably means that what gets said is something they will integrate into their psyche and their behaviours.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve mentioned stories that I’ve read from either Average Bro, Citizen Ojo over at Desultory Life and Times, Negro Intellectual or The Black Snob just to name a few (as to not leave anyone out) whether I agreed or disagreed, but still even for me, they carried weight.

The comment section should not be used to abuse. And yes, I’m speaking from personal experience with a blogger from a famous blog (and you can check this link for background on that) decided to allow her commenters to berate me to no end.  Seriously, I could have posted that “Obama was great” over at the National Review and gotten comments of the same caliber.

What is more disturbing is that these commenters support the foolishness.

We, as black bloggers, complain about how dumb the American public is, but really it’s a “pot calling the kettle black” situation.  Black folks in barbershops and beautyshops can be just as daft and dense when it comes to politics.

And don’t mention Tavis Smiley around some black people.

The comment section should be used for discourse not destruction.  And to fellow commenters, we need to embrace opposing opinions.  Again, from personal experience, just because I sided with Tavis Smiley and his whole position on holding elected officials accountable, does not give commenters the right to lamb-baste me and it certainly doesn’t give a blogger the right to call me out just for a differences of opinions.

Some black women bloggers need to be okay with black male bloggers being men. Personally, I’m tired of hearing the beefs that happen between black male and female bloggers. Every time I look up someone is falling out with a black female blogger.  Even myself, a few months back last fall, fell out with a well respected female blogger (who is still on my blogroll though) over the whole Chris Brown and Rihanna incident.  And two other male bloggers have told me of their recent falling out with other female bloggers.

Speaking for myself, I got the impression that somehow their femininity or maybe their womanness superceded my male perspective and opinion.  Well, is that not the same reverse hegemony that you’re accusing me of practicing? And for myself, I can clearly say that my opinion was not a result of male chauvinism or anything of the like, but yes, I speak as a male. And let me be perfectly clear, I unapologetically and unashamedly speak from a male perspective.  But, just because I speak from my man-ness does not give black woman bloggers the right to berate me as such because they wouldn’t want me to do the same to them. Feel free to disagree, that’s how both of us are stretched, but don’t go on some childish rant and tell me about how all black men are fools and are dogs and of the like…no wonder some of y’all are single.

Yes. I said it. And I meant it.

At the risk of sounding cliched, these above instances are just some of what we can all do to help keep the black blogosphere a powerhouse. As always, we must, let me repeat myself, we must produce quality and intelligent work, particularly those who consider themselves a part of the black political blogosphere.  When we produce foolishness, it will follow us and I’m sure that’s no one’s intent when they began blogging. This means stop the personal attacks. Your beef should be with the persons ideas, not their being. When you call someone else “fat and nasty” or outright “stupid” then we’ve crossed the line and made character assassinations. And since there is no context in text, we can’t afford to do that.

We’ve got to do better.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Hip Hop and the State of the Black Church, pt. 1

16 Mar

When dealing with the hip-hop generation and most certainly what M.K. Asante, Jr. refers to as the emergence of the post-hip hop generation, one must understand that much of the state of affairs within the inner cities is a result of a systemic governmental policies on the federal, state and local levels.  At issue is a fundamental flaw in the system and the current social structures that will constantly keep blacks and Latinos as a permanent underclass.  To address the plethora of issues from any other point of departure is a fallacy unto itself that would leave one with a skewed view of reality.

Particularly given the recent downturn in the economy, employment numbers are well into the teens in many inner city sectors and in the African American community.  But, what never gets addressed in a connected way is that black males, for instance can not as easily get a job because of red-lining policies.  If a potential employer sees an address, then they may not be as apt to hire them. Which then begs the question how did they end up living where they were living.  That very well may be because they did not qualify for a housing loan from a local bank simply because of the color of their skin, or because they did not have a good enough job or career and that becomes a vicious cycle.

Not to mention actual federal policies and mandates with regards to the criminal justice system that do not aggressively prosecute those who commit civil rights crimes.  There also exists a federal justice department that still has in place these mandatory sentencing laws that sign the proverbial death warrant on the lives of young black males across this country.  They all act in tandem with one another to produce a permanent underclass.

On the state and local levels it is easy to see who gets preferential treatment.  If one lives in an economically depressed neighborhood, property taxes are lower, as a result the tax base is lower, without a tax base to fund the city budget, city services such as fire, ambulance and policing are cut.  And of course schools. Just ask how Gary, Indiana, East St. Louis, Illinois and even the major city of Detroit, Michigan are facing such a tough uphill battle.  Even in Atlanta, when citizens of North Fulton County are clamoring about their tax money going to South Fulton County (which comes off as code word for “blacks”), one can see just how skewed the system is against those who happen to have heavy melanin in their skin.

Anytime a church responds with a “let’s pray about it” attitude in response to adequately dealing with youth and young adults who at times are innocent bystanders in a system that seems to be hell bent on their destruction, is the moment the black community and the black church will begin to lose the war.  The failure of the Black Church, as an institution, to promote an inclusive gospel that addresses social issues in a humanistic and communal way is one of the leading detriments to our community.

The black Christian religious community, by in large, does not create a space for academic or intellectual discourse.  While our white counterparts have been doing this for the past twenty and even thirty years in uber-progressive circles, the black Christian religious community has barely embraced Afro-centrism.  To date Afro-centric Christian thought is about as far as the black Christian religious community has progressed. Our failure to create intellectual spaces from those who are not clergy has perhaps been one of the contributing factors that has rendered the Black Church as irrelevant in the current black community.

It should be one of the roles of black churches to be central and viable parts of the communities they inhabit whether they are urban or suburban churches.  However, when churches fail to adjust their strategy or even adjust core fundamental beliefs and ideas then one should not at all be shocked.  Black churches are still trying to sell vinyl albums and 8-tracks in a world that downloads .mp3 files and listens to them on their iPod.

Such an analogy is to imply that not just has the method of listening to music changed, but that the music itself has changed.  Even still, black churches that consider themselves progressive, perhaps are not as progressive as they should be.  Some will make the argument that methods have changed, but that the Gospel remains the same.  One could counter-argue that from moving from vinyl records to .mp3 files, not just the method of transmitting the music has changed but that the music itself has changed—but it is still music.

I believe that once the black religious community “stops pulpittin’” and putting on a show and begin to live in the liminality that new thought brings then perhaps we will begin to see a shift in the well-being of the black community.  Of course, as a preacher I have no problems with preachers being included in on the discussion, pastors included.  However, when “good preaching” is passed off as intellectual discourse, we have a problem.  What I am referring to are these various panel discussions that occur in front of church folk:

I was looking for another clip where it was a bunch of male preachers, a lot, and they were, in my opinion just full of hot air.  What was really the case was that each was waiting for their turn in order to show their rhetorical prowess and turn a phrase in such a right way that went for the emotional kill factor rather than trying to engage in a discourse.

Since I’ve discovered Jamal-Harrison Bryant (he’s my new whipping post so just be prepared to hear my criticize him in the ensuing months not really because of his whole infidelity thing, but seriously, I expect more from a young brother such as he), I of course think that what he did in his response to Carlton Pearson was much more dangerous than Carlton will ever be. If Pearson is so dangerous, then where’s his following? They ALL left him and he was forced to leave Tulsa.  And the majority of blacks dismiss Johnnie Colemon and Christ Universal Temple so quickly, him being the new pastor there is still a mere drop in the bucket in the larger scheme of black religious culture.  A response such as Bryant’s, and he is not alone by far, I believe is indicative of the anti-intellectual culture that is black Christian religion.

Bryant, or anyone else who would have been sitting in that chair, was not required by the audience to meet Carlton Pearson on an intellectual level and debate him.  The tried and true method of going back to the biblical record was all that was necessary to proceed.

And poor Miss Lexi.

But I won’t go there.

In black churches, we hire youth pastors who are over 40.  In our white counterparts, the first hire job would undoubtedly go to someone under 30, and probably as close to 21-25 as humanly possible.  When the black church structure practices blatant ageism and sexism, which should be the easy ones, we most certainly cannot address homophobia.  When the black religious community still is looking for a “leader” or even “leaders” I think we have missed the boat completely.

In the age of relativism and in a society that truly embraces rugged individualism (just think about your iPod or your Myspace page or even your Formspring.me account) the black religious community must force themselves to deal with the hard questions and not shirk them off as mere jabberwocky. The failure to embrace the hip-hop generation, or even to inculcate them with the same falsehoods that the old guard has been operating from over the post-slavery generations does nothing more than perpetually keep blacks in ignorance.  Even if one wants to claim that doing so is part of our African aesthetic, please believe, by these generations, we’re quite the Americans.  No, I’m not pushing a “love it or leave it” ideology, but I would dare say that at bare minimum there is as much American about us as there is African.  That’s why Langston Hughes sang “I too, sing America” and James Weldon Johnson’s “true to our native land” he was referring to was that of this country, the one of his birth.  And Martin Luther King had a dream that was “deeply rooted in the American dream.”  Once the black religious structure buys into the pluralism of this culture perhaps we’ll see a change.

As it stands, when we talk about the black religious culture in this country, we forget about the varied “differentiated spaces” that it occupies.  Certainly just because one is black and is affiliated with a religion does not make one a part of the black religious space.  This wholly excludes black Catholics, Lutherans, Espiscopalians and by in large many black Pentecostals. Not to mention the Nation of Islam, the black Muslims, black Buddhists or Rastafarians.  And even for those in Louisiana where voudoun is practiced along side of Roman Catholicism–not even in the picture. (Hopefully for the sake of this article one could tell when I was speaking specifically about black Christians versus the entire list of “excluded” religions.)

So when you go to your Bible studies on Wednesday night and the pastor starts preaching–run! That’s a Wednesday night service.  You could get that on Sunday morning. The Bible study is the place to ask those questions about stuff you didn’t know or always wanted to ask but were afraid to.  So, may you be empowered to break down the barriers in your various religious settings and ask those questions you always wanted to know an answer to.

You can do it. We need you to.  As Gandhi said “be the change that you want to see in the world.”

We’re waiting on you.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

An Uppity Negro Response to Eddie Glaude’s “The Black Church is Dead”

10 Mar

The following is a response piece from a forwarded article to me by one of my readers and Twitter followers @tsboddy on a piece that Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, Ph.D. wrote for the Huffington Post entitled “The Black Church is Dead.”  Clearly this is up my alley and I’ve finally gotten around to responding to it. The original article as posted here on UNN can be found at this link.

Let me first respond bluntly: the Black Church (yes as a proper noun) and as an institution is not dead.

From the tenor of the article even, I never got the impression that Eddie Glaude was truly convinced that the Black Church was dead himself.  He seemed to give reasons of critique for the institution. The only definitive statement that he gave was the following:

The death of the black church as we have known it occasions an opportunity to breathe new life into what it means to be black and Christian.

And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a true statement.  But that still is a qualification, “the death of the black church as we know it.”  Well most certainly, the denominational black church particularly the black Methodists, the black Baptists, COGIC and even black Presbyterians have certainly given way to these various non-denominational ventures, numerous different fellowships even including the recent Full Gospel Baptist Church, various Pentecostal fellowships such as P.A.W. for instance, and even these random off-brand holiness groups that are highly regional.

But not to mention that what I’ve somewhat dubbed the “neo-Black Church” has now taken it’s place in the center of the black community.  Now we have the “super preachers” who have far reaches past their congregations on Sunday morning.  Not to mention the big three of T.D. Jakes, Creflo Dollar and Eddie Long, but even persons such as Jamal-Harrison Bryant, Juanita Bynum,  the late G.E. Patterson or even an E. Dewey Smith all influence the consciousness of their listeners.  And in the age of social networking, I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen “retweets” from Jamal Bryant and his fellow AME Bishop Vashti McKenzie on my timeline.

Glaude states that:

…the idea of a black church standing at the center of all that takes place in a community has long since passed away. Instead, different areas of black life have become more distinct and specialized — flourishing outside of the bounds and gaze of black churches. I am not suggesting that black communities have become wholly secular; just that black religious institutions and beliefs stand alongside a number of other vibrant non-religious institutions and beliefs.

Although Glaude highlights the differentiated space of the black community, I would still charge that regionally the Black Church still holds great sway over the mindset of the community.  Especially down South. Given the last eight years of me living down South, the church is highly central to their life.  Even to the mega churches, individuals are quite serious about going to church and being a part of the life of their churches.  Glaude perhaps is right in noticing this shift toward the religious institutions not being the high pinnacle of producing a metanarrative, but I’d still level that non-religious institutions are still penultimate in the minds of many.

Moreover, I think Glaude’s article is indicative of how many approach the conversation of religion, specifically religion in the black community and of course the Black Church. Recently, me and a fellow colleague at school had a similar conversation concerning the Black Church. I simply said, the Black Church is not dead, but it most certainly is irrelevant.

I think that bears repeating: the Black Church is not not dead, but it is irrelevant.

Many of us divide the denominational Black Church and  that of the megachurch and non-denominational movement of black churches.  My friend was quite clear that Creflo Dollar was not a part of the Black Church.  And of course, as Glaude said, he did begin to say “The Black Church has always stood for…” and et cetera et cetera, but I asserted that these newer churches are still apart of the institutional Black Church, we just don’t want to admit it.

These super pastors, as I said earlier, hold great sway over the lives of many African Americans in this country.  And these listeners by in large are full fledged members of the black community (whatever that looks like) and they listen to them.  They are influenced by the prosperity gospel, to the neo-Pentecostal theologies to the “kingdom” theologies that are being said. These streams of consciousness affect the everyday routine of the individual even as related to the community.

As Glaude highlighted, me and The Critical Cleric had also said in a late night discussion, that black churches only know how to do conferences.  As he said we know how to get Megafest together or various convocations, but we don’t have a viable intellectual community.  Well, The Critical Cleric disagrees and refuses to accept the situation is that dismal, but I think it is.  What black church groups know how to do is call in a whole bunch of preachers and ask them to expound on some random hot-button topics–as if they’re going to give an answer that we’ve never heard before.  And when discussions on The Lexi Show probably are classified as intellectual discussion to the average black churchgoer, then we indeed have a problem–if you ask me.

I think Glaude’s article would have been stronger if he had highlighted the vast impotence of the Black Church as an institution.  His three points, I believe, point to the irrelevance of the Black Church, but Glaude’s necrophilia towards the Black Church would best be posited, in the words of Stanley Crouch as a “premature autopsy.”

And if I can throw salt, this is Glaude we’re talking about.

The guy is a self-proclaimed pragmatist. John Dewey is his Jesus. I can’t really hate on that, there are some tenets of pragmatism that I most certainly can appreciate .  But, as Glaude wrote extensively in his book In a Shade of Blue, he pressed his claim for pragmatism–as if John Dewey isn’t dead.

HAHAHA! I kid, I kid.

But, Glaude, as he’s said himself, doesn’t go to church and for some of us, his “regeneration” status or to be real churchy, his “saved” status is still up in the air.  So for him to write about this, was clearly as an outsider looking in and critiquing.  I’ll admit, I would have received this article much differently if I knew he was a member of someone’s church…on the ursher board…the deacon’s board…a greeter or something.

The hyper-critic in me really wants to ask the question is this the post-racial movement rearing its ugly head or the age-old notion of blacks simply not valuing that which is inherent to us.  We live in a society where no one has a problem with the Roman Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, Dutch Reformed, American Baptist or the German Lutheran, but as soon as we talk about the Coptic Church or the African Methodist Episcopal Church or God-forbid mention the Black Church, we don’t need Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck to begin their invectives, we do it ourselves.

The hyper-critic in me also wonders is this type of rhetoric (and I’ve moved passed Glaude per se) is indicative of this pseudo-intellectualism that we love in this country, and specifically we love in the black community.  We love to take this staunch “anti-” argument on issues and we act as if we have received some fresh new revelation and said individual, I say, suffers from the “I’m-the-only-enlightened-one” syndrome that results in an inflated and unnecessary arrogance.

I’m just saying.

Is it dead? No, not by a long shot. But please believe this is not your mother and father’s “Black Church.”  But as any organism, it grows and morphs.  I’m no longer the buck-toothed eight year old that I was 17 years ago, but thank God I’m not what I used to be.

Leave your thoughts, comments and rebuttals.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Yes, I Watched the FAMU Sex Tape

3 Mar

Okay, I watched the FAMU Sex Tape.

I know I was supposed to give a response to Eddie Glaude’s article about the death of the Black Church, but this just seemed a bit more pressing.

So some time last night, on Twitter of course, I started seeing one of my followers talk about a FAMU Sex Tape.  Not even gonna lie to you, because I saw the four letters F-A-M-U, I really wasn’t even interested.  But when I saw another follower mention it and neither of them were in the same region (one east coast and the other Midwest), sorry, my 25 year old curiosity kicked in and I had to watch.

Well, thankfully, the zshare link was crap last night.  Probably because everyone and they mama was trying to download it at the same time, or at least look at the link.  That being said, I never actually watched the tape, it was more of, what I’d like to call an erotic anthropological study of post-adolescent youths in an urban setting.

Catchy right?

So, actually a couple of other mutual followers on twitter, @mrphilosopher3 and @chrisalexander_ who both have blogs Mr. Philosopher: The Thoughts of the Ignorant Intellectual and Colored Boy respectively, had put out a few comments concerning this sextape, here are a few:

@mrphilosopher: @theuppitynegro i menationed that to a friend. Its cool for women to go lesbo & fuck a guy. A guy does it & hes Pub. Enemy 1. #dblstandard

@chrisalexander_ :@theuppitynegro and yes. sadly, at least one of these chicks will get pregnant. and abort. and further destroy lives.

@chrisalexander_ :@theuppitynegro ah. Tis true. Ungrateful. Poorly planned. Okay, the $ from the vid ($10K) gets you some weave, but then what?

And honestly, because of this Christian Education and the Hip Hop culture class that I’m currently taking, I can’t help but do the biggest **smfh** I’ve done in a while.  I’ve long since asked the question about what goes through the mind of these individuals with this apparently myopic sensibilities to allow their face to be shown on the internet and then it goes viral. It’s one thing to have an obscure Xtube upload, but then it’s an entirely different thing to show your face on camera and say “This is what we do in college.”

Look, I’m pretty liberal when it comes to the sex industry.  I’ve always half joked that if I had some sort of a body, I would have been a male stripper.  (Yes, because some guys can rake in close to $1k a weekend doing the right parties, because ladies come thirsty with singles and fives and tens–and yes, even twenties!)  I really have not one qualm about a young lady stripping to pay for college tuition, especially if she has a baby to try and take care of and support.  Take “The Players Club” for instance. At some point LisaRaye’s character did have a level of which she refused to sell out.  There was a teleological rationale for doing what she did–she had a means to support her end: pay for school (at some point) and hell, just put food on the table and survive.

These people in this sex tape… **smfh**

Even from a deontological ethical standpoint, one is still left asking the question: for what earthly reason did you think what you did was okay?

I think what made this sex tape just so God-awful was the fact that it reinforced every single, solitary, stereotype about blacks and sex and sexuality that were humanly fathomable.  Not to mention that these are allegedly Florida A&M University students, which is an historically black university, and yet brought more shame to those of us who have graced the campuses of HBCUs. But seriously, this is what I saw:

  • Young black women who are sexual objects. It’s one thing to exist sexually.  That’s fine, we’re all sexual creatures, but to be so wanton and careless about sex, and this isn’t even your damn profession is just an amazement to me. Again, porn stars, no problem with me.  That’s their job.  They do what they do. No problem, but these young women who felt it was okay to bend over for these young men is just simply unacceptable.  And that one girl who kept on staring into camera lauding this orgy as the epitome of college life….yeah…her with that upper lip piercing…I really wanted to be her mama and reach into the computer screen and knock her upside her head and say “Girl! Harriet Tubman did NOT risk her life for you to be bending over for some lil’ boy!”

    For these apparently college young women to participate in the blatant objectification speaks not only to the college culture, but to the wider culture of society.  I’m not saying that this was a direct result of the commercialized images of the hip hop culture, BUT, I am saying that commercialized hip hop on a macro level certainly does promote and support such images as seen in this sex tape. We’ve damn near seen some sex tapes masquerading as “video vixens” and “thug life” when it comes to music videos.

  • Lesbianism ’bout to take over. Well, I think Pastor Willie Wilson’s sermon was over the top, ridiculous and homiletically irresponsible on so many levels (if you have NO idea what I’m talking about, click the link here), but that’s for another post. However, I think maybe, somewhere in the recesses of his brain, he was aware of this tacit approval of black lesbianism in contrast to male-to-male sexuality in the black community. As we read in Bakari Kitwana’s books and T. Denean-Sharpely’s book Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women, that what we have here is really hypermasculinity at it’s best.

    Black males, at least for the sake of this argument, are okay with women participating on female-female sexual acts because they can come in, assert their masculinity through intercourse, and somehow this makes this woman “straight” in their minds eye.  So, in this FAMU sex tape, the cunnilingus given by the young girls is merely second nature, because the boys are going to come in and insert, and she’s going to scream, for some weird reason, all is well with the world.

    But if one of the young men had even so much as touched one another, and Lord, committed a sex act, it would have been a rap.  And that would have been more of a story than the actual sex tape itself!

  • Young black males who don’t give a damn. If my face was ever shown committing any sexual acts, I could still walk around with my head held high (not just because of obvious reasons, lol), but because I knew I was about to walk into an airtight lawsuit: I would NEVER agree to be filmed with anyone, at least not until I’m married (lol).  As I said before, people who show their face on Xtube is a constant amazement to me. These people run a serious risk when it comes to background searches for certain jobs.  Seriously, don’t expect to work for the federal government, they can easily track your IP address and it’s a wrap after that.

    But, these young men I’m sure agreed to this without giving it a second thought.  I’m sure some of this was just general immaturity; money was involved and your in college, that’s a no-brainer.  But they did it because they were males.  Our kind can get away with that and not be maligned for it, but those girls–Twitter lit up last night labeling them as all kind of “slores” and “hoes” and “sluts” etc. and no one really criticized the young men who were clearly a part of this.  It just showed that these young black men didn’t give a damn about the reputation of these girls. They didn’t give a damn, they just did it.

    And to every young black male that thinks what they did was really okay, just imagine if that was your baby sister.

So in case your wondering, yes, I just totally “uppity Negro-ed” a trending topic on Twitter, and gave my intellectual opinion on the FAMU Sex Tape.

Ten points for me!

And for the life of me, when at the end (yes, I watched ALL 46 minutes and 35 seconds of it) I don’t know which was worse: that there was actually a part two to this tape or that homeboy was really eating some Guthrie’s fried chicken while getting slurped up by three other females.

FRIED CHICKEN?!?!?!?!?!??!

Then he holla’d out “I love FAMU” which was bleeped out!

JEEZ!

And if you’re just so interested, here’s the link.  I mean, it’s totally graphic, so it’s def NSFW, but it’s a sex tape, DUH!

Thoughts, comments, rebuttals, reactions.  Hit me up.

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