Uppity Updates

25 Aug

Seeing as how I have a “day job” now, I’ve noticed my posts have gotten farther and farther between–monthly almost.  But nonetheless, I’m still here in the blogosphere and you can check out my comments on some other famous blogs that I visit pretty regularly.  That being said a lot has happened in the month since I’ve last posted, so here’s a rundown on the latest current events with the usual uppity twist to them.

Obama and the Debt-Ceiling Crisis

Quickly stated, Mr. Obama acted as he always has: slowly, yet deliberately.  That’s half the reason why he won the nomination in June 2008 because we believed in his ability to be a bit more calculated in his approach to politics.  With recent blog topics and op-ed pieces throwing out the question of Democratic buyers remorse with regards to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the question is moot.  Neither had any presidential experience and Clinton still has none, I think to ask such a question opens up the topic to too many “what ifs” and nothing is concrete.  To ponder seriously is to fall into the trap of “the grass is greener on the other side” myth that really does nothing to help the current situation.

Nonetheless, there is a liberal fatigue that is sweeping the nation, so much so that former D-NY Rep. Anthony Weiner’s seat is actually being contested by a GOP candidate–seriously so.  I would encourage people to not miss the forest for the trees.  Even if someone is elected who’s a GOP (the trees), I wouldn’t worry about the 2012 election (the forest) for a district that has historically been Democratic and the people aren’t changing that much in the long haul.

What I do think the White House has done a bad job of is getting the word out about Obama’s fiscal responsibility.  The Congressional Budget Office clearly can show that just in the two years Obama has been in office that we’ve seen reduced spending in comparison to the Reagan/Bush I years and Bush II administration with a drastically reduced spending in the future.  Part of this reduction is because of the predicted withdrawal from our wars overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.  While Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security have been the proverbial third rails of politics since the mid-20th century, the issue of the mountains of money shelled out to fund these wars has been almost mum from the White House to the GOP and to all other talking heads.

Simply stated, the wars are driving us to the poorhouse–and quickly.

Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann and the GOP Presidential Contenders

Rick Perry

I still say Mitt Romney is the best hope for the GOP up against Obama come 2012 given the trajectory we’re headed.

Seeing as how I don’t have a glimpse into the future, I don’t know how well or how terrible the economy is going to fair in the next 12 months or so, but if unemployment numbers stabilize and don’t uptick, a GOP candidate can still come in and Obama would lose the White House.  It’ll be a tough sell if jobs numbers begin to go up and unemployment starts ticking down; all Obama needs is a solid full 1% drop close enough to the election time when the jobs gains are close enough in the voters minds.  I will admit this: if unemployment drops to 8.1% or hell, even a nice 7.8% by December, and it hovers between 7.5-8.0% for all of calendar year 2012 during campaign season, this country would still elect a GOP candidate who ran on the promise to bring unemployment down further.

The problem with Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann is that they’re not center enough.  The religious right that elected the likes of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush aren’t in existence the same way.  I think its safe to say the country has ticked a bit left to center (evidenced by Obama’s election), but the far right has dug in their heels in a way we haven’t seen before in this country–just look at the Tea Party.  While they have candidates in office across the country, most of them are in state representive or House of Representative offices and in highly conservative districts that haven’t seen liberal Democrat elected in decades if ever.  The districts that switched from Democratice to Tea Party GOP in 2010 were districts that have historically flip-flopped and had a mostly evenly divided electorate anyway so to believe anything otherwise is pretty much smoke and mirrors.

As of this moment, I don’t think the Tea Party has enough collective capital with the U.S. population to garner a national election.  Considering how Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell’s campaigns in Nevada and Delaware for U.S. Senate so gloriously imploded upon themselves as major Tea Party candidates, I’m really not convinced about the campaign of Michelle Bachmann and even a Tea Party support candidate of Rick Perry.

Black Racial Sensitivity and the Nivea Ad

Honestly, I don’t think there’s much ado about nothing.

For me to call something racist, I have to first understand what’s the intent.  If anything, the ad is weird before it’s racist–or prejudiced or bigoted.  Why there’s a cut off head in the guy’s hand is a mystery to me.  And seeing as how Nivea has a series of ads with random people holding random heads, I think we’re being hasty in judgment in calling the ad racist.

There’s a nuanced discussion we need to be having when it comes to discussing “post-racial America.”  One of which is whether or not post-racial is really where we need to be headed.  One of the initial problems with this concept is that it advocates the “melting pot” theory over the “gumbo pot.”  A melting pot speaks toward us moving toward a homogenous texture irrespective of race, religion, thought and everything else that makes one culture unique.  A gumbo pot on the other hand takes uniquely different items, mixes it together to form a unique taste, but the shrimp is still the shrimp, the andouille sausage is still the andouille sausage and the chicken is still the chicken.  The roux forms and acts as the substance that blends all flavor to produce a new taste and holds all of the disparate parts together.

When I speak of us moving toward a post-racial America, I am speaking of reconcilliation.  There must be a day in human history where we can “study war no more” and discover our similarities and celebrate our differences.  Do I think this Nivea ad is holding us back or moving us forward?  I don’t think it’s doing either quite frankly.  But just as Jay-Z and Kanye pulled the clip from “Blades of Glory” on their track “Niggas in Paris” where Chaz Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy are having the discussion about “My Humps” song being used and Chaz says “because it’s provocative,” I think such a phrase is appropriate here.  Just as Jay-Z and Kanye give an explanation for some of their imagery, the same holds true for this ad–it’s provocative.

London Riots and U.S. Flash Mobs

Riot police patrol the streets in Tottenham, north London as trouble flared after members of the community took to the streets. Photo: PA

Let me be clear from the beginning, I do not condone violence as an appropriate means of offense and protest.  That being said, I’m still at a loss for what was going on with the London riots.  For the life of me, I cannot rationalize violent acts throughout a municipality as a means of public protest.  Does this mean that I side with the British officials that are wantonly calling the looters as “thugs” and miscrients of the lowest kind?  No, I do not.  Rather, I am more interested in trying to move said protests toward relevant revolution.

There’s a difference between a revolt and a revolution.  Revolutions are interested in the long term and usually are a series of events that lead a point in history and result in structural and fundamental social change.  Revolts on the other hand result in short term gains for a small section of a populace and possibly can result in negative gains.  This is not to say that either aren’t birthed out of the same oppressive conditions that need to be changed, but the question protesters must always ask is what is the ultimate result.

I had a conversation with a colleague when I pressed the matter saying how can the London rioters loot their own neighborhoods for the sake of material spoils whilst knowing that eventually it was going to settle down?  He responded that the acquisition of material possessions was a mimicry of the oppressor; getting the same things that the ones who they claimed to be oppressing them possessed.  I thought it was a keen observation.  Why are we, the underclass and oppressed, struggling for the same things that the oppressor owns?  For me, the question of struggle is are we moving toward reconciliation or simply vying for the formerly oppressed to now be the oppressor.

What spurred the flash mobs in American cities as of late, namely Philadelphia, was the result of oppression American style.  Much like in London, police brutality brings out the masses to riot.  One need not go to the Watts Riots or the King Riots or even the Rodney King Riots, but think back to the Cincinatti race riots of 2001 or the Benton Harbor, Mich. race riots of 2003 all spurred from police brutality cases.  The problem that I have with the governmental response in both London and Philadelphia is that it’s the same oppressive rhetoric that helped create the atmosphere for teh rioters to riot.  Yes, order needs to be restored as soon as possible, but labeling the protesters as anything less than concerned citizens worthy of being reasoned with is a recipe for disaster.

Check the clip below [particularly from minute 9:00 and forward]:

Notwithstanding the black church culture, the image of the black preacher and all that went into this moment, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter choosing to focus on many of the aesthetics of young black teens and hearkening back to an era that has long been passed and using tactics that are outdated and outmoded for an iPod and social networking society, one is dead in the water.  Just last Sunday, I was talking to some of the young male students where I work and was asking why some of the incoming freshman males were standing outside of the chapel rather than waiting inside.  They responded that young black men don’t like church, I asked why, they said “We don’t like being talked at.”

That’s what’s happening.

We’re talking at the youth and certainly are keeping the marginalized marginalized for the sake of our own selfish sensibilities.  As humans and fellow citizens we have a responsibility to ourselves to live in harmony with one another.  No one group, young or old, rich or poor should be subjected the way many of these demographics are.

And these are my uppity updates.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Romanticized Victimhood of Black Women and “The Help”

22 Aug

Emma Stone (left) and Viola Davis (right) star in "The Help"

I was able to see “The Help” back in July for a pre-screen and even after sitting on the front row and watching the grossly distorted images courtesy of looking up vertical to a 30 foot screen, I walked away surprised at what I saw.  I was happy to watch a movie that told the stories of black and white women, side-by-side and across generational lines–I haven’t seen a movie like that.  For each main character from Aibleen and Minnie to Skeeter and her mother; Hilly juxtaposed to Celia Foote’s character and even the story of Constantine–all characters showed development from the beginning to the end of the movie.   I was expecting a movie similar to that of the “Dangerous Minds” or “Freedom Writers” that portrays the liberal whites as making a difference in the lives of the poor black and Latino children and ends with a storybook ending and usually throws in the death, by a bullet, of one of the children.

However, black women across the blogosphere didn’t see it that way.

Blog upon blog of black women prior to the movie’s release had begun the rants against “The Help.”  Some were coherent and others not so much.  Famous bloggers said they weren’t going to read the book or see the movie and gave their reasons why. I was left reading whole articles about why someone wasn’t going to see it based on what I felt were bad assumptions–prejudices if you will.  Perhaps because I saw the movie already I knew that much of what people were allegedly having a problem with as far as the concept of the movie was somewhat incorrect.

I think the promotion of the story was a bit misleading, probably for the sake of a white American audience.  But let’s be honest, this movie wasn’t intended to be a movie specifically for black audiences or a movie that didn’t really care whether blacks attended or not.  Fact of the matter is, blacks as a demographic are not a driving force when it comes to box office sales.  That being said, I think some of the beauty of the movie was lost in the marketing and promotion of it.

Nevertheless, black people–not just black women–as the opening weekend drew nigh became more and more critical of a movie that hadn’t even been seen and by most people who hadn’t read the book.

From the likes of Melissa Harris-Perry to other black female bloggers nationwide, this was still an incorrect image in which to portray black women.  This was still the same image of black women as subservient and unempowered that got many people bringing up the image of “mammy” and decrying the fact that Minny went on about fried chicken through the entire movie.   Some even found the pie-eating story unrealistic.  Harris-Perry tweeted that she thought the violence meted upon one of the other minor characters was the only realistic part of the movie.  Which left me asking So black women only identify with violence?

For the sake of this blog, I’m talking about black women, but I think at times this is true of blacks in general. [Yes, I'm aware I'm stepping into some murky territory here.]  I don’t say this often, but I do think there is a romanticized view of violence and victimhood that blacks collectively suffer from.  Collective suffering comes from systematic and collective oppression; we were uniformly oppressed in this country therefore we uniformly have some amount of suffering as a result.  What results is a “my oppression was worse than your oppression” matrix that groups contextually operate.

The tenor of the conversation that I’m reading about and hearing about surrounding “The Help” is that it doesn’t paint a realistic image of black women domestics in the South.  For Harris-Perry to identify with the violent part the most was highly disturbing to me.  Seriously, it got my attention; it was a tweet that stood out from the crowd amongst her others.  This leaves me wondering what is the view of historical black women or even historical blackness at that time.  The subtext that I read is that experiencing lynchings were an everyday occurrence in any given community, that everyone suffered from Night Riders from the KKK, that every black domestic faced sexual threats from the patriarchal white males in their households and that it was all really just that bad. News flash:

Black folks eat fried chicken.

Black folks are fat and eat fried chicken.

And watermelon.

Oh, and we clap our hands on the 2 and 4 beat in church as well.

I am not at all trying to minimize the historical oppression and struggle of blacks in a Jim Crow South, but I think far too many of us are succumbing to looking at history through too contemporary of a lens.  Based on just the stories out of my own family, the level of unempowerment that blacks faced on a day-to-day basis was serious and social conditioning was real.  It’s as though we’re ashamed of the image of black women that doesn’t show them being a triumphant and metaphorical Celie from “The Color Purple.”  The silent struggle of Aibleen resonated with me much more than the towering images of black womanhood such as Fannie Lou Hamer.   Hamer went to bat and was an outlier amongst thousands of unnamed black women who never mustered the courage to speak up, and on behalf those that had sacrificed their lives and their womanhood when they did.

And….if it wasn’t for some courageous white people, the modern Civil Rights movement wouldn’t have been what it was: a revolutionary movement.  A revolution happens in slow, incremental changes, not all at once.  Yes, there are watershed moments that make it in the history books, but the annals of history tell of countless stories full of unnamed men and women who used their own smaller acts of resistance against a system that they were unaware was unjust in the future hope of generations yet to come.  The Civil Rights movement in this country began when the African slave woman decided to pee in massa’s morning coffee back in 1621, it did not start with Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat in 1955 and end one decade later with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Ella Baker

Is this a story worth telling by a black woman?  I answer with a resounding yes.  Would I pay money to go see it?  Yes I would, and I’d buy and support the book.  Am I entitled to my opinion of how black men are portrayed in the book?  Of course.  That’s one of the issues in the movie, the only image of a black man in the movie was a totally faceless one and that of an abusive one.  But, I resolved that in my mind because the movie made men in general take a back seat–this was a story about what it meant to be a woman–white or black–in the Jim Crow era South.

Seeing as how this was historical fiction, there was some basis for truth in this story.  I think this was the case of William Styron’sThe Confessions of Nat Turner revisted: black folks, particularly black women, were just incensed that this wasn’t a story told by a black woman.  While I discount people’s opinions of the book or the movie who have neither read nor seen it, I think many of those that read it or saw it had unrealistic expectations of the movie.  It seemed as though the likes of Harris-Perry were expecting this movie to be “The Color Purple Redux” with heavy elements of “Eyes on the Prize” documentary infused into it.

I think even if the bloggers who had issue with movie went to go see it, they’d be so jaded and be able to offer an opinion without severe bias attached to the judging process.

That’s it.  I just wanted to join the chorus of rants on this topic as well.  It’s officially dead and buried for me.  #ontothenextone

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Tags: ,

Jumping The Broom: Understanding Sex and Marriage as Religious and Cultural Oppression

19 Jul

Yesterday I read an article at TheFreshXpress from another blogger who goes by the name DCDistrictDiva (her award winning blog is “The Dithering of a District Diva“) on the topic of sex and marriage.  The article was entitled “Twisted: Why God’s ‘No Marriage, No Sex’ Rule is for Protection and Pleasure, Not Punishment.”   I began reading and I probably figured where the article was going, but I figured in all fairness to read it in it’s entirety before I passed judgment.  By the second paragraph, however, she had begun quoting numerous scriptures to support her point.  Anyone who knows me knows that I shy away from using Bible verses to support a point because of the general assertion from the quoter that by doing so, it effectively ends the conversation.

I plodded through the article reading numerous assertions about premarital sex supported by various scriptures hopping from the New Testament back to the Old Testament and then back to the New Testament.  I trudged through notions about marriage and what it meant to have sex in the context of marriage and what it didn’t mean and doctrines of sin all asserting a particular theology.  In short, I disagreed with just about every thing that the author had to say on the topic.  I viewed the article as incorporating bad exegesis of the biblical documents to support a patriarchal and Victorian view of sex in marriage.

This doesn’t make the author a bad person, just makes her someone who I disagree with–vehemently I might add.

Blacks are still relatively conservative on the issue of sex in general and subsequently marriage.  The idea of a couple, one man and one woman, meeting, then courting, then getting engaged, then married, then having sex–for the first time–still acts as the both preferred method of moving toward marriage, sex, then children and also acts as that archetypical view of what life is supposed to be; a fairytale storybook image if you will.  I really don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that image, but to suggest that any deviation from that plan is immoral or in fact a sin poses a problem to my sensibilities in the year 2011.

Using the vantage point of my U.S. citizenship as a background and understanding the progression of the Abrahamic religious tradition as it diverged into Christianity, I would like to take a moment to try and debunk some of these contemporary myths that we have about marriage in the context of the black community.

One of my main issues with how we’re framing our marriage talk in this 21st century is our insistence on using the biblical text to support our beliefs.  Personally, I want to know why do we primarily take our cue for understanding sex and marriage from a brother who lived and died nearly 2,000 years ago?  Yes, I’m talking about Paul.  Even in writing his treatise on sex and marriage in 1 Corinthians, Paul is speaking in first person (I, Paul) and even went through the process of taking God out of the process as if to say this is what I think, not a mandate from God.  Not to mention Paul thought Jesus was coming back in his lifetime!  I certainly think that such a perceived life trajectory would affect one’s lifestyle.

Honestly, would you abstain from sex if you thought Jesus was coming back in November?

The concept of sex in a 1st century world from which Paul was writing had no concept of STDs the way we do, there were no contraceptives that were in widespread use aside from the withdrawal method (pull out).  Marriage was certainly seen through the eyes of patriarchy with the woman as property, everything she may have owned became the husbands and in fact her livelihood was directly connected to how her husband would treat her.  Paul wrote his understanding of sex and marriage operating from the Septuagint (LXX) which included the Hebrew Bible and other historical and theological documents found in the Apocrypha.  I’m not saying that what Paul had to say is just flat out wrong, but I am saying that what he had to say may not necessarily be appropriate to our own modern day settings.

What I found more problematic in DCDistrictDiva’s blog was how she understood the passages in Jeremiah that imaged the tribal god Yahweh as a husband and the tribal nation of Israel as a bride.  This has been a troubling image for many scholars in the more recent years of the theological academy.  As views shifted on feminist theology and how we view women in the Bible juxtaposed to how we view women in our culture (remember through the eyes of American citizenship), such an image of Yahweh (God) as a husband and Israel as the bride or wife is just seething with patriarchy and heteronormative ideals.  To that end, such an image is troubling at the least.  This isn’t an unfamiliar image, however.  In other books of the Old Testament’s minor prophets, such as Ezekiel, we see this “married couple” operating as well.

DCDistrictDiva used a Jeremiah 2:23-24 passage to support her concept of marriage, but the passage images the woman as a) a sexual object b) a wild animal and c) as someone to have the husband’s will imposed on the woman.  Aside from viewing God as a man and summarily a husband, there are passages where the husband/God is in fact abusive to the woman.  The woman in another passage that DistrictDiva quotes views the woman as a prostitute in Jeremiah 3:2.  For me, these passages have absolutely nothing to do with the institution of marriage, be they in the 7th century B.C.E. or the 21st century C.E.  Contextually, those passages had to do with the nation of Israel and their dallying with other gods from other tribal nations and their assimilation into the culture of the their captives.  [Seeing as how chronologically previous passages in the biblical timeline say that Yahweh "delivered them into captivity' {one helluva phrase right?} how does someone get mad when the oppressed assimilate into the culture of the oppressor--but that's another blog post.]  This was not a Hebraic commentary on marriage.   For that, one needs to go back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Again, these passages I think harp on the very, very traditional understanding of marriage.

And what do I mean by “traditional understanding of marriage”?

By traditional marriage, as understood by most U.S. residents, it is this very Victorian construct of familial life.  The male is the father and husband and the head and the one wife and children are subservient.  For the record, this is a departure from the thousands of years of Hebrew culture that many people want to conflate into the biblical understanding of marriage.  With examples of Abraham marrying his half sister; the Jacob, Leah and Rachel love triangle; David who had a man killed just to marry the woman and certainly with Solomon and his many wives or Hosea marrying “a wife of whoredom” all as famous examples, somehow we theologize those examples.  Many find some reason to say God didn’t support Solomon’s many wives thus it led to his downfall.

In Hebraic culture, I doubt people were running to the county courthouse to get legal documentation to say that they were married.  At least according to the biblical writings, it wasn’t even the ceremony that declared one married but it was the arrangement and agreement of both families (negotiated by the patriarchs) and the act of sex that constituted a marriage.  Even by the 1st century C.E., Jewish culture still for the most operated on that same idea even in the midst of Roman occupation.  Fast forward to our African American context, African slaves and descendants of African slaves weren’t running to the county courthouse either to justify and satisfy wedding requirements.  The tradition of “jumping the broom” was one way of signifying marriage and it added to the festive and cermonial atmosphere.  Marriage in slave communities and even after the Civil War was about the merging of two families–not about a piece of paper.

Now, the process of going before a pastor is synonymous with going before God and the marriage license acts the official thing that makes one married.  If God is omnipotent and omniscient as Christins like to profess, wouldn’t God have already ordained the marriage prior to showing up before a Justice of the Peace or an ordained pastor?  Such an understanding seems to hold God subject to a legal document: God doesn’t ordain the union of one man and one woman until a county official signs it and places a seal on it.

Whatever the case may be, I think Christians have to acknowledge that marriage as we know it has changed over time.

Certainly in the black community.

Too often we like to use the fact that people aren’t getting married like they used to and those who do get married are succumbing to high divorce rates under the metanarrative titled so ominously “The Downfall of the Black Family.”  Sociologists have traced roots back to the infamous Moynihan Report and even back to antebellum days in the United States.  Whatever the case is, we have no problem talking about The Downfall of the Black Family which of course leads to The Downfall of the Black Community.

As if to say all is bad.

Yeah, I’ve written posts that we’ve reached critical mass in any number of social, political and economic matters and that we need to declare a state of emergency and that we need to be outraged–yes, that is true in many respects, but we can’t offer a simple fix to what I consider to be a complex problem.  We’re not going to solve black family situations by young black couples suddenly marrying one another.  Will it help?  Well, maybe, but I certainly don’t think it would hurt the problem.  The problem with DistrictDiva’s approach and what many others do when it comes to this topic is offer what seems to be a clear cut solution to a varied, multi-layered and highly complex issue that we’re facing.

First of all, not every black person in America is Christian.  The argument she preposed suggests that everyone should follow said precepts about marriage and sex because it’s what the Bible says.  Not to mention there are a fair number of black Muslims, Jews, Black Hebrew Israelites, Buddhists and other religions, faiths and non-faith persons who have had their own AHA! moment when it came to understanding spirituality and religion.

Secondly, not every black person is heterosexual.  Her approach, as with many others in black religious culture, only operate in the “one male, one female” context.  With the LGBT movement growing every day, seeing the passage of gay marriages in the state of NY, this is going to be an ever increasing issue that the black religious culture is going to have to contend with.  While some gay blacks still voice concern over their unique issues–being gay and black (with gay black men and gay black women having differing concerns)–I still believe it’s just a matter of time before many of these concerns are going to be more and more laid at the feet of the old guard of the black religious community; no longer ignoring the issue.

Thirdly, not every person is going to get married.  I really just think it’s ludicrous to accept that” sex feels so good, but you can only enjoy it if you’re married” idea.  Usually when I ask what do we say to single persons on this issue, the other person somehow dodges the issue.  Frankly because most people don’t want to imagine someone going their whole life without experiencing the joys the sex have to offer.

Fourthly, and finally, I think to make premarital sex so forbidden results in fetishizing it.  When we tell hormone laden and perpetually horny adolescent teenagers to not have sex and that abstinence is your only option, not only do they want to do it all the more, when they do it and realize that God didn’t strike them down, we have a much bigger problem on hand than what shows up at the surface.  The same for many adults.  Time and time again, we do these so-called “sinful” acts and the punishment we were taught to expect never shows up.  Sure people catch an STD here and there, or even get pregnant, but given the medicine for most STDs and given adoption and even dare-say abortion as relatively viable options for a pregnent woman, the concept of hellfire and brimstone somehow gets pushed to the back burner.

So as opposed to the black religious culture pushing sexual responsibility, they teach abstinence.  Of course most public schools offer a sex education course because they’re aware of increasing STD numbers in younger and younger students and they’re aware of the pregnancy rate amongst teens and how school districts are increasingly having to accomodate pregnant teens and their children.  They see the problem and are attempting to do something about it.  The black churches see the problem, but because of what “the Bible says” we ignore it.

As I conclude, I’m not advocating that everyone go out and start a’whoring and galvanting naked throughout the countryside, but I am directly challenging what the biblical scriptures say about marriage throughout the years and I’m unapologetically defiant against the lens through which we like to understand sex and marriage.  The patriarchal and heternomative lens does nothing more than allow us as blacks to oppress other segments of our own community–in the name of God.

Stay tuned for some more issues around “Jumping the Broom.”

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Tags: , , , ,

How The West Was Won: Violence in the American Wild, Wild West

20 Jun

 

A little known factoid about me is that I like modern Westerns.

I don’t know what it is about them, but I do.  Personally I blame the “Back to the Future” trilogy.  That was a movie my parents had taped for me, only had part two and part three, but I watched them on repeat.  The third installment took place in the first week of September the year 1888 in the fictional Hill County, California.  It used all the stereotypes from the old Clint Eastwood movies with women wearing the frilly petticoats and dresses, the men all carrying six shooter pistols, fraught with saloons, blacksmiths, steam locomotives–something straight out of a Hollywood set.

I’ll admit, my intricate knowledge of the frontier is a bit slacking, that is to say that I’m not a scholar of this part of American history, however most Americans have become scholars in the Hollywood narrative of the American west.  My love for westerns, I think came from my liking of the computer game “The Oregon Trail.”  I remember the original game that my parents had on their Packard Bell 386 that you had to access the game from the C-prompt in DOS after you logged out of the Windows 3.1 version.  I remember the oxen dying and morbidly living through the virtual death of family members you named as they died from cholera and dysentery along the side of the 2,000+ mile trail.

I grew older and movies like “Back to the Future III,” “Tombstone” and “Young Guns” and even the comical “Cherokee Kid” and”Wild, Wild, West” were movies that I liked–the modern Westerns.  The remake of “3:10 to Yuma” was the movie that made me pause and think this out however.  The remake of “3:10 to Yuma” was a reaction more toward railroad barons and the expansion of America than the typical cowboys and Indians concept we have of when we think of Westerns.  Then I looked back at all of the Westerns that I had come to enjoy over my short years and I realized that for the most part Indians were non-existent in these movies.

Out of the movies that are a part of my modern Western viewing memory, only one short scene in “Back to the Future III” shows any aggression on behalf of tribal Indians.  In the other movies, Indian portrayal is that of some pseudo-assimilated male who is shown as a skilled warrior who doesn’t have a speaking role.  If an tribal woman is shown in the movie, she’s usually portrayed as some mystic or exotic beauty that transfixes the lead character and becomes some type of romantic interest for the movie.

Like I said, I’m not a historian, but somehow these staid plot lines seem like Hollywood machinations.

What bothers me about this is the gross romanticizing that gets done in this movies.  It’s one thing to portray this fictional historical account about “how the West was won” with regards to American settlers on tribal territories and the reverse barbarianism of whites against Native Americans, but even the false depictions of everyday life have begun to irritate me.

Now I was the geek that watched the episodes of “1900 House” and “Frontier House” set in 1883 Montana on PBS (and yes, I remember seeing Oprah with no makeup when she and Gayle did a guest appearance on “Colonial House”), and trust me, the life was NOT glamorous.  The people were dirty all the time, there was no indoor plumbing, life was hard even on a good day and sicknesses were a constant threat.  So when I watch these movies and see these people in pristine clothing that looks tailor made (as it is a costume), no one exerting more energy than what it takes to saddle a horse and draw a pistol or a knife, I find myself rolling my eyes.  To see these women, as portrayed in “Tombstone” living the grand life of ease and even wearing makeup–by golly, they had makeup out in Tombstone, Arizona that readily available?  Color me surprised.

But, I’m not a historical expert on this.

It teeters into the realm of revisionist history.  I think even the most conservative historians would have to admit that Hollywood has romanticized the view of the “wild, wild, West” to the point of pure fiction.  What personally irritates me is this glorification of Americanity through violence.  The West, as we know it, was “won” through violence.  For as much hard work, endurance and perseverance settlers and homesteaders who emigrated west put into establishing towns and settlements, they were occupying previously inhabited land.  I guess the glory of the slayings of tribal Indians doesn’t go over well in Hollywood.

No wonder we haven’t seen a modern Western movie about the Battle of  Little Bighorn, huh?  Portraying the might of the American military as losers just isn’t a story worth telling for Hollywood.

I had a friend in high school, the son the Polish immigrants to Chicago and a Poland native himself evidenced with a last name full of hard consonantal clusters say in our 12th grade AP U.S. History class that if it wasn’t for the settlers that we’d all be living in teepees.  I think that’s when I stood up and knocked over my chair incredulous that he felt comfortable enough to say that out loud, let alone that this was a belief of his.  And others in the class just seemed a bit indifferent to the statement.  So if the son of Polish immigrants felt this way, one had bought into the American story so wholly as his own, what about the rest of us?

"Manifest Destiny"

Without question, history is written by the victors.  In this case the victors are white, heterosexual males.  The “cowboy” depiction is one of those Alpha-male images that Americans easily identify with.  It’s a defined ruggedness that is equated with the epitome of maleness.  From images of the Marlboro Man wearing the large Stetson to George W. Bush making covert cowboy references with regards to our foreign policy on terrorism and Osama bin Laden.  Such images and rhetoric respectively conjure sensibilities that are familiar and uniquely American.

What I’m having issues with is that a) how we have seemingly revised the history of the American west post-Civil War until 1900 and b) how comfortable we are with “West being won” through means of terroristic violence.

The acts of terrorism on behalf of railroad barons, US military and the pop-up haphazard local law enforcement from local territories toward tribal Indians was merely one small step away from being categorized as a successful genocide.  The calculated and wanton extermination of Indians is absolutely repulsive.  I guess it’s not a hard stretch because of the infuse of theology into the equation.  The historical concept of “manifest Destiny” is just as much of a theological mindset as it was a domestic policy concept.   There was the belief that the American settlers had been ordained by God to inhabit the land.

This isn’t an unfamiliar biblical concept.

The Israelites were sanctioned by God to inhabit the “land of the giants,” which was Canaan and they had God-specified orders to kill everyone and everything.  I’m not making this up–go read the first eight chapters of the Book of Joshua.  We so readily identify with the victors of the story that we rarely if ever see things from the side of the victims of the story.  Honestly, can you imagine Canada saying that God told them to begin inhabiting the city of Jericho Detroit, just on the other side of the river Jordan Detroit and the U.S. would be okay with it?

I was spurred to write this story after seeing the following trailer.

I can only imagine what this plot will hold for us.  No doubt the name of the town is going to have some apocalyptic end-of-the-world terror infused in it and I’d bet money that somehow the cowboys and Indians are going to unite powers in order to defeat the aliens–yet again, history isn’t being told.  I guess when you throw aliens into the story line all bets are off on sticking to historical facts.  To that end, I guess I can concede a bit.  But I wonder will the film fall into the “us vs. them” dichotomy, but still reserving Americanity as superior and therefore “us” is better and will prevail.  I mean, I can hardly see a Hollywood moving diverting from that path; why would we image “them” as better than “us”?

But if the movie goes that way, the aliens being superior–obviously when it comes to technology–then what does that say about cowboys versus Indians?  Does it not admit that belligerent and hegemonic behavior is abhorrent?  Essentially it does, but no doubt the underlying message will still be that America is the best.  No doubt the cowboys of the movie will prevail based on their grit, their endurance, perseverance and their strong belief in American values (whatever those are) thus showing that the alien and Indian narrative are subordinate to theirs.

Is it wrong that the nomenclature of “alien” in the midst of our ongoing domestic immigration policies with ethnic Mexicans is a bit too ironic for me to not laugh at loud?

On another note, why are imaging manliness with a name that refers to men as a “boy”?

Just asking.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Tags: , , ,

The Death of Life

15 Jun

Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, 11, shot and killed in 1994 after having shot and killed a local neighborhood girl.

This following sermonette was brought about by a story I stumbled across on the web about a mother in Chicago receiving the high school diploma of her slain son.  Her son was killed on the sidewalk after walking up to a group of three young men.  No arrests have been made.  I read the story and was disturbed by the rosy picture of the slain son.  The story reports he wanted to go to college and how happy and jovial he was as a person, but somehow I felt it was only a half image.  I’m not trying to pathologize young black men, but if a brother walks up to three people on a street, apparently there’s some familiarity–meaning he probably knew his killer.

The code of silence of the community keeps this violence happening.

We stand by and say nothing. We peer out of our windows and say nothing.  We see injustice and we don’t bat an eye.  Why? Because we may be the next dead body found in our homes or the street?  We very well may be.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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

“The Death of Life”
Ecclesiastes 2:16-17

For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;
the days have already come when both have been forgotten.
Like the fool, the wise too must die!
So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.
All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

It has become commonplace in the context of our community too see t-shirts airbrushed and stamped with the view of the sky and a sunburst in the background and pictures of a young black male in various casual and posed shots.  At the bottom is their name, a nickname in quotes and all too familiar two words “sunrise” and “sunset” with two anno domini years placed beneath it.  It has become an all too familiar occurrence to log onto Facebook and run across a status update that refers to the death of a young person; to come across a memorial photo with a name and the phrase “gone to soon” and the ubiquitous “rest in peace” tag.

Death remains a mystery to all of us in the room, but it’s a final mystery.  The reality and finite qualities of death always grab our attention, pulling us from life, tapping us on the shoulder and reminding us of its existence.  However, it has become too common a moment when death does not gently tap us on the shoulder reminding us, but knocks us out with a heavy blow laying us flat on our backs.  It is here and it is real.

Dealing with the death our young people is common in the inner city black community.  We have gotten accustomed to Death as a part of Life.  Yes, while all people succumb to that ultimate statistic—ten out of ten people die—we ought not recognize Death as the norm to Life.  The death of Life ought not be normal in our community. When recognize the death of Life as normal, then life is seen as abnormal.

When Life becomes abnormal, it’s not unusual for our young black men to have kids at age sixteen and seventeen because they expect death by age 25.  If we have moved to point in our collective and communal consciousness that the lives of young black men beyond the age of 25 is abnormal, it should come to no shock that the young black women of our community are promoting manhood by age five. Telling a five year old to “Be a man” and to “Man up” and not show any emotions is considered normal, because by age 13, they will be considered middle age in a community that accepts the death of Life as just the way it is.

If we have moved to a place in our black communities where complacency has set in like dry rot in an old house, permeating the essence of our conscience, then we have already lost the battle.  If the death of the lives of our young black men is Life itself, we have conceded our consciousness over to the enemy at the gates.

One would think that we would tire of seeing “sunrise” and “sunset” dates differing no more than 25 years for our beloved Pookie. One would think that we would tire of seeing Facebook memorial pages dedicated to our black brothers, dead before 25…but we don’t.  One would think that we would grow weary of hearing preachers eulogize slain brothers repeating the bankrupt and hollow phrase “heaven must have needed an angel”…but we don’t.  The people who make airbrushed t-shirts with the computer generated images shouldn’t be making any money in our communities—there should be no need for such forms of memorializing.

It is a problem when Death defines the context of a community.  No longer do we measure time by kindergarten promotions, baby dedications, weddings, eighth grade and high school graduations, senior proms, but we measure them by distances between shootings, deaths and funerals.  When optimism moves to pessimism and pessimism moves to cynicism and cynicism moves to nihilism, we have experienced the death of Life.  When a community experiences the death of Life, God becomes an afterthought.

The title of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Masoretic text is “Qoheleth” and has been translated as “The Speaker” or even “The Preacher.” Some even understand it as “The Voice.” From whatever point of view one understands it, I think the sentiments and emotions that are voiced in these two verses speak to where many of us in the black community see ourselves.  This concept of nihilism, this belief in nothing beyond you yourself, is not a new concept; it is as old as the world is young.

However, the redemption of this nihilism is what is at issue.  What a sad state of affairs to be living waiting on Death.  A false bravado that “I ain’t afraid of nothing” including Death is a false hope in the known certainty of the unknown character of Death.  Tempting Death with your lived experience does not a man make.

For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered. Might as well make your mark on the world you say; all of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind you may reason.  Well, I’m not here to preach Jesus and have you give your hand to the preacher and give your heart to God.  I’m not here to tell you that if you get S-A-V-E-D you’ll be S-A-F-E from hell. My job is to not offer you Christ and then suddenly you’ll change your ways.  My assignment is to offer you the chance of Life.

I want to offer a chance at a life that moves from nihilism and enters into a new wonder and consciousness of you and of God.  Now if that consciousness comes through Jesus, then so be it.  But if it doesn’t, I won’t lose any sleep over it.  But I be  damned—the name of Jesus— if I am okay with seeing any more violence begetting more violence that results in one more black man being killed.

We are not allowed to be okay with seeing teddy bear and candle memorials on street corners with rain faded posters and Mylar balloons listing in the

Angel Brown holds tight to the diploma awarded her son, Isaiah Carter, at Manley Career Academy High School's graduation Sunday. Carter was killed this past November. 6/12/11 (Heather Charles, Tribune photo)

afternoon sun.  We do not have the privilege to be okay with seeing single black mothers accept  high school diplomas on behalf of their murdered child cradling a posthumous award as the last accomplishment of the fruit of their womb.  We do not have the authority to accept t-shirts and FB page memorials of our slain youth as normal ways of Life.  We are not given divine permission to be okay with news stories and funeral sermons that act as if the deceased and their relatives and all friends present are removed from corporate responsibility for the death of the one laid out in the casket.

When will we as a community move from grief to action?  We’ve become inured to the pain of death and unable to recognize and accept the joys of Life.  In too many of our communities, our pessimism about our children making it is really shrouded nihilism.  If we already don’t believe that our children are going to make it past 25, what’s the point of preparing them for a life past that age.  If a post-25 year black male life is a foreign concept, one that is filled with vast blankness, it’s no  wonder that we are okay with the death of Life as we see it.

This myopic inability to see Life outside of the context of death is supposed to be saved for those to succumb to natural causes.  At the morgue the coroner and medical examiner have hundreds of reasons to choose for cause of death.  One of the simplest is “natural causes.”  But too often in our community, we see “death by gunshot wound” as a natural cause. Recognizing death through murder as a natural cause, and even going out like a man, we have ceded control of our own lives resulting in death having the final say over our Life.

But I stand here today and decree and declare in the name of the One who sent me that Death will not have the final say over  Life as long as there is breath in my body. As you eat, live, breath, move and have your being about you; every moment and every second of every day you have another chance to live.  Every moment, you have one more chance to say to hell with Death and say yes to Life. You are empowered to do things different; you are empowered to stay in school and be somebody. As a community we are empowered to say to hell with the statistics, to hell with nay-sayers and the haters, to hell with the system hell-bent on keeping us left behind, to hell with the people who choose Death over Life.

You shall live and NOT die!

If Paul can say “O death, where is thy sting; O grave where is your victory” I can say that this is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it—I CHOOSE LIFE.  To hell with the killings, to hell with the murders, to hell with nihilism, to hell with pessimism and to hell Death.  And no I’m not using “hell” as some colloquial cussin’ but hell as a eschatological and imaginative destination and hell as an existential reality.  The things that cause Death in our community, we need to confront them, stand in its face say Get the hell out of our Life, you are no longer welcome here.  I dare each and every one of you to make up in your mind to speak the Death of Death and proclaim the joys of Life.

If Death no longer has its sting then we can put a new song in our heart, receive the joy of the Lord—this joy that I have, the  world didn’t give it and the Lord can’t take it away.  If the grave no longer has it’s victory, then I can say “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is my strength.” If Death no longer has the final say, then I can say with an assured voice weeping may  endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning light.

Tags: , , , ,

For Black Religious Intellectuals Who Considered Suicide When The Foolishness Was Too Much

8 Jun

Black America paid close attention last fall when New Birth Missionary Baptist Church pastor Bishop Eddie Long was accused of sexual impropriety and misconduct.  Four young men were launching a civil case against Long for misconduct during their teenage years under the tutelage of Long as members of New Birth.  Suddenly picture text messages surfaced that Long had allegedly sent to these young men, and sordid stories of Long financially supporting one of these young men, and then cutting them off began to surface.  Long stood defiantly in his pulpit the next Sunday after the civil suit was filed and said that he was going to fight to the end; he compared himself to David fighting Goliath that he had “five rocks, and [hadn't] thrown one yet.”

He was preparing for a fight, and from all accounts his congregation was with him.

For almost two days, black Twitter was all abuzz with Eddie Long puns, lampooning his hairpieces and his trademark muscle shirts.  People automatically considered him guilty to saying that we should “cover” him.  I did a blog piece back then about the various categories persons seemed to fall in with regards to how they felt toward Long.  The point was, however, that everyone had an opinion.  But who didn’t?  It was a story that was covered by CNN leading to news anchor Don Lemon admitting on air his previous sexual abuse as a child, and it, yet again, propelled the mysterious and labyrinthian institution that is the Black Church into America’s living room.

And that’s when things got murky.

The last time America had been treated to seeing a black preacher hailing from a megachurch battling a national image, it was Jeremiah Wright’s homiletical treatises that famously included “goddamn America” and other strategically spliced soundbytes from previous sermons.  Not to mention Wright gave a full out press conference that mainstream media pounced on like a pack of rabid wolves after live prey.  Nonetheless, America’s image of the black preacher, the black church as individual churches and as a institutional behemoth, and more importantly for the purposes of this article, the image of black megachurches, was all put on display and America gave a failing grade for all categories.

Not only did America give our formerly esteemed institutions a failing grade, so did we, in the black community.

In an odd admixture of Baby Boomers and Generation X’ers, in the black community, they have contributed to this post-Soul, post Hip-hop pluralistic concept of “spiritual, but not religious” section of the black community.  These persons, reject “church” and “churchiness” in most forms.  This 35 and younger crowd, predominantly, very much enjoys engaging in the postmodern and post-critical thought that our pluralistic society offers.  This generation questions foundations, allows truth to be relative often times in the hope of searching out new truths.

I too, am a part of this culture.

This generation claims spirituality over religion in an attempt to seek the purity of the divine without the logical contradictions that organized religion offers.  This generation holds dear to them the quote from Mahatma Gandhi that “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians” as a pinnacle of their belief in spirituality over religion. However, as this article attempts to argue, what boggles my mind is relatively traditional and often times inaccurate image that this generation has towards the Black Church and black churches.

I recently rediscovered Kelefah Sanneh’s article that originally was published in The New Yorker back in 2008 entitles “Project Trinity: The Perilous Mission of Obama’s Church.”  Just from his telling of his experience at a Good Friday Seven Last Words service, he writes about it as a novel experience and as an outsider.  While one is entitled to one’s opinion, as I offer mine, it seems as though Sanneh’s ignorance of the black church religious experience was sorely lacking.  Contextualizing his background of being born in Birmingham, England (not Alabama) and being raised in New England, and being the son of mixed racial heritage, his view point certainly offers a unique spin on the topic.

A unique spin, however, does not make up for ignorance.  While I certainly am appreciative of Sanneh for his literary offering, I think his piece though intellectual it is, is indicative of the multifaceted problem we face when it comes to the black religious community.  There are commoners offering up an opinion based on misconceptions and willful ignorance and persons who know better and have exhibited higher levels of cognitive processing and still fall into the same trap of being willfully ignorant.

It doesn’t surprise me though.  The image of the black preacher has been caricatured for an entire generation.  This post-______ generation who does not have a cultural and collective memory of a tangible civil rights struggle, neither boasts of having an image of the Black Church nor the black preacher venerated.  Sure those venerations were probably uncalled for in specific instances, but from Arsenio Hall’s image of Reverend Brown in “Coming to America”; Bernie Mac’s image of the preacher in “Friday”; James Brown in “The Blues Brothers” complete with the ubiquitous “church scene” to boot and even to the image of Rev. Rollo Goodlove in “Boondocks” there are more mainstream images of the black preacher as coon, buffoon, bamboozled, a black male Buck who’s a womanizer, a charlatan, a pimp and a myriad of other negative images.  These images are what we think of black male stereotypes that we project onto our black male preachers.

There is a segment of those in the black community who have allowed their preconceived notions and perceptions of the Black Church and black churches to automatically dictate their response to anything having to do with black people and religious life in this country.  Granted I have had the privilege of going to seminary and going to a seminary that allowed me to purposely intermingle with different denominations stemming from different religious reformations, most people are ignorant of other denominations and I dare say ignorant of their own!  This ignorance has turned into arrogance with some when they speak vehemently about topics that they think they know something about and don’t.

Less than 24 hours prior to the publishing of this post, a YouTube profile posted a recent clip of Pastor Creflo Dollar alluding to Long’s settlement and members in a Sunday, June 5, 2011 worship service.  The clip is below.

 

[the clip was removed drat!]

Aside from the YouTuber’s commentary in the pop-up bubbles on the screen, I stumbled upon a Twitter feed that completely and unapologetically castigated megachurches.  Just in general.  No qualifiers.  She now has a public problem with all megachurches.

Just like that.

Now yes, Eddie Long and Creflo Dollar do not help the image of black preachers, black churches nor black megachurches, but I still have to ask, to what level of critical thinking are we using here to have this discussion?  Let me first be transparent and say that when I posted that clip on my Facebook profile page that I publicly compared an imaginary demise of Creflo Dollar to the murder of Osama bin Laden; the ending of life is never pleasant, particularly in cases of murder, but I would not shed a tear over the riddance of their rhetoric.  Granted on a spectrum bin Laden’s rhetoric was not just hateful and vengeful, but injurious to the body as well.  However, Dollar’s rhetoric is injurious to the collective consciousness of black America’s psyche.  As cooler heads prevail, I’m sure what I had to say wasn’t the most constructive, but my own bombastic rhetoric was only checked by one of nine separate commenters.  Which let me know that out of persons willing to comment, only one felt strongly enough to disagree with what I had to say.  Therefore, others shared in my, what was then, righteous indignation.

What I saw on social networking sites and what I observe and listen to when I tune into mainstream media when it comes to issues concerning the black religious community is a lack of depth and a willing ignorance of most topics.  The perception of black churches falls neatly into the traditional church of one’s grandparent or a megachurch where the pastor is taking all the money from mindless bots who sit in the pews every week.  Again, as with the caricatured image of the black preacher being prevalent, it’s no wonder that the image of the black church is shaped by what one sees on television.

If one turns on the Word Network, that channel that tends to carry more black preachers with predominantly black congregations, you’d see pastors, preachers and churches that present a somewhat monolithic image to the untrained eye.  For the most part these are congregations that qualify as megachurches (scientifically designated as having more than 2,000 members on a role) and their worship style and doctrinal beliefs fall into the neo-Pentecostal tradition.  These are mostly men.  Many of whom are attractive men at that.  Many of whom sport designer clothes from suits to lavish robes and some wear jewelry meant to appear expensive whether it is or not.

The average black religious viewer irrespective of income strata or educational accumulation wouldn’t be able to tell the doctrinal and worship difference between seeing Jamal-Harrison Bryant who is AME over that of Apostle R.D. Henton and his Holiness beliefs.  They might see generational differences and other functional differences, but certainly not begin to parse the differences that certainly exist.  The average viewer is merely listening to certain catchphrases and a rather basic and non-intellectual theology that requires a basic fourth-grade level of cognitive skills.

The sad thing is that now when we speak of the “black church” and make reference to a black preacher, we conjure up an image in our heads as though every black church is properly and appropriately situated in a megachurch setting.  [Usually I take that moment in a conversation with my peers to point out that the average church in America is between 150-200 persons and this number includes Joel Olsteen's Lakewood Church and St. Matthew's AME Chapel in Nowheresville, Georgia with three persons on the role.]  This meta-narrative of the this image is so dominant that most people don’t challenge it in the midst of conversation; it’s as though it’s a given.

I watched Obery Hendricks, author of The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted, attempt to discuss Black Liberation Theology and Rev. Timothy MacDonald, a local Atlanta pastor and friend of Jeremiah Wright both attempt and fail miserably at discussing the nuanced nature of the Black Church on “The O’Reilly Factor” back in 2008.  Of course I understood what they were talking about, but the rest of America didn’t and apparently neither did a sizeable portion of the black community–both religious and non religious.

Simply put, we cannot afford to be ignorant of the things that directly affect our community.

Seeing as how blacks are a demographic in this country that associates themselves overwhelmingly with the Christian faith tradition, let’s do ourselves and our sisters and brothers a favor and actually take the time out to be aware of what we’re talking about.  Just because a preacher is found in a YouTube clip spouting all types of foolishness that you do not understand, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are preaching.  If we learned nothing else from the Jeremiah Wright situation, we should learn that we ought not jump to conclusions with soundbytes from preachers.

While I am an unashamed apologist for the institutional Black Church and the many other newer traditions that the institutional Black Church has birthed from the neo-Pentecostal tradition to other forms of emergent worship that have become subsumed under the idea of the Black Church, please believe am not an apologist for Dollar’s comments.  Even in their entirety, such statements are homiletically irresponsibly and morally reprehensible as far as I’m concerned.  If Jesus was quoted as saying that “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea,” then I don’t think I’m too far off in being repulsed by the emetic and wretched sentiments that Dollar was putting forth.

In an appeal to black intelligentsia (yes, the same one that I eulogized some weeks back), and certainly with an emphasis on a black intellectual religious community, I appeal to logic and an inner sense to hold one’s self intellectually accountable for the thoughts and rhetoric that we utter.  When we publish tweets, write blogs, leave comments after an article, write a book and certainly when one speaks from the pulpit, you are influencing the consciousness of the listener!  I cannot stress enough how imperative it is that we do a better job.  Seriously, members of the black religious community feel that they have the trump card to any and all discussions and argument by saying “My preacher said…” as though that effectively should end any further discussion.  That couldn’t be farther from the truth.  Although many feel that by uttering “The Bible says…” should seal the deal, neither statement does anything to foster intellectual thinking.

As members of a post-_________ (fill in the blank) generation that has owned the concept of being “spiritual, but not religious” that feels free to question any and all things and dare declare the death of God, how have we failed to question our own perceptions of religion and ask is it truly a fair perception.  If we fail to be fair to others in the human struggle, are we not crippling ourselves?  Being a self avowed Christian Universalist with humanist leanings, I do myself no good if I castigate my atheist brother and sister.  Religious Christianity would say we’re ultimately connected through Christ, but I say we’re connected through our humanity.  If we don’t expect better from ourselves, what good does it do to complain and expect better from others?

Sad to say, I’m somewhat regarding some clergy as lost causes when it comes to expecting better.  Today Creflo Dollar joined that group.

Keep it uppity and truthfully radical, JLL

Watch Ye Therefore…The End Is Near!

20 May

In light of the foolatry that has ensued behind the idea that the rapture is going to happen on May 21, 2011 (one of which where an atheist in Tennessee is watching the pets of those expected to get “caught up” and is NOT giving refunds come Sunday morning), I thought I’d add to the #EndTimesMusic.

Enjoy!

Tags: , ,

The Rage of Black Academia: Melissa Harris-Perry and Cornel West, A Collegiate Conundrum

19 May

It would have been nice if Dr. Cornel West never made the personal comments on Obama, but it was an interview by Chris Hedges of Truthdig.com entitled “The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic” and questions were asked to which West answered.  It does seem petty on West’s part, but honestly, we all have an outsiders view on the relationship between West and Obama.  Clearly West felt that he had enough of a personal relationship to feel betrayed by Obama.  I’m more interested in why he felt betrayed beyond just getting his feelings hurt.  For such an answer, I turn to the latter part of the interview where West discusses policy.

It’s abundant West’s political self-identification as a Democratic Socialist.  By his staunch advocating for the poor and his new rhetoric against the “plutocrats and oligarchs” we see that West is in favor of much more socialist programs.  I think West’s betrayal came when he felt that Obama was giving more audience to the status quo and mainline advisors and economic policymakers–and not him.  Mind you, if I had shown up on stage with Obama while he was campaigning 65 times, I would have at least expected some inauguration tickets or a return phone call as well.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry’s response to West was childish and way beneath her standing as a public scholar and intellectual.  She even accused West of undermining Obama’s candidacy in 2008 because of West’s outward criticism of him.  But she’s long since had a problem with West and Tavis Smiley from back in 2008, and she’s been a water-carrier for Obama.  Generally, I don’t hear her addressing Obama’s criticisms, but I hear her offering accomplishments on Obama’s behalf in order to combat criticisms.  That’s fine, but to act as if Obama’s sh*t don’t stink is delusional at best and conciliatory to a fault at worse.

And understanding where Harris-Perry (formerly Harris-Lacewell) is coming from goes back to 2008 when she wrote the article “Who Died and Made Tavis King?” where she criticized Tavis Smiley (who we later found out endorsed Hillary Clinton prior to the Democratic National Convention) for being mad that Barack Obama didn’t attend the State of the Black Union that year.  I think her later criticisms of Smiley and later West are disingenous because prior to 2008, most of Black Academia were tripping over each other to get a seat on that stage.  By the same token, as an electorate we must hold our elected officials accountable.  When Harris-Perry in more recent memory lambasted Smiley and West for a comment about the “Machiavellian politics” of Obama, it was clear there was no love lost between the Harris-Perry and the two.

Harris-Perry’s support of Obama reminds me of the strange relationship seen in [black] churches with an authoritarian pastor.  The hope is for a benevolent dictatory, but dictator nonetheless.  One who we support in public and mildly criticize behind closed doors.  I am reminded of a quote from Ricky Jones’ What’s Wrong With Obamamania?  Black America, Black Leadership and the Death of Political Imagination published prior to Obama’s victory.  Jones says of the Black Church that

The black community, maybe more than any other, is affectively linked to churches and their pastors to the degree that criticism of either (no matter how rational) is often viewed as nothing short of an attack on God…Unfortunately, black ministers (be they emancipators or collaborators in oppression) are often protected from secular intellectual confrontation by the almost certain ire of their flocks, which is heaped upon any critic who questions their leaders’ decisions and/or motivations.”

If we supposed Obama as a pastor, and the black community, steeped in an ecclesiastical leadership mindset, as the congregation of a church, then we’d see some stark parallels.  For many of us, anything that was seen as a detriment or a derailment to Obama as a candidate or as president was to be handled in house and as to not air dirty laundry.

As for Harris-Perry I can’t help but mention the tripe she spewed on Twitter comparing West’s criticisms to Donald Trump focusing entirely on the personal sensibilities of West and then said both of them had bad hair.  I thought it was telling when after her piece on TheNation.com was published that her fellow colleague Dr. Eddie Glaude tweeted that he couldn’t take her seriously anymore.  Certainly that was hyperbole on his part and a kneejerk reaction to her article and her tweets I’m sure, but it did speak a deeper level of critical thought that we lack in this country at times.

My major problem that I saw with the fallout was Black Twitter (yes, it does exist) and the Black Blogosphere’s innate inability to choose the provocative over the substantive thus choosing the path of least resistance.  It was easier to talk about West being full of himself by seemingly lauding over the hotel worker who got inauguration tickets and he didn’t rather than discuss the effect of Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geitner controlling economic policy that disadvantages and ignores the poor, pays mere lip service to the middle class and protects the rights of big business and the rich in this country.  Certainly West’s comment of Obama being afraid of a “free black man” added another level of complexity to the issue.

Was West playing the race card?  Yes he was, but knowing West, it wasn’t without merit for the sake of being sensational and covering up hurt feelings.  Yes, Obama is black by all accounts, but he did have a white mother and white grandparents who were much more fundamental in his upbringing.  West said that Obama “feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want.”  Certainly that’s a damning statement, but does it negate it’s veracity?  There’s very little color in the persons that Obama has surrounded himself by.  I don’t think that this is a nod toward wanting Obama to be the President of Black America as it is criticizing Obama for continuing business as usual–something that he more or less campaigned against.

West brings up the touchy issue of ontological blackness.  Is it a nice and politically correct subject to talk about?  No.  Not by a long stretch.  But by us not talking about it doesn’t make the issue vanish into thin air.  It’s my opinion West brought it up in this instance because of what he observed: who Obama has surrounded himself with and how he was raised.  These are fair and equal criteria that would be apropos for me, my parents, and West himself: we are products of the matrices from which we have experienced in our lives.  That is to say, Obama’s Euro-American and international upbringing is just as important to his ontology as I am the product of a mother who was a part of the Great Migration and a father who was born and raised in rural Acadiana here in Louisiana.  I’m not convinced that West is expecting Obama to be apologetic from whence he came so much so as he wants Obama to be cognizant of it, to let Obama knows that he knows and also to bring a wider knowledge to the masses about this.

Michael Eric Dyson termed it as one being intentionally black, incidentally black and accidentally black.  West, is clearly and unapologetically, intentionally black.  Obama obviously made the decision to be intentionally black as well–he married Michelle.  But Obama has the privilege of being incidentally black when it suits him.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But I think this proves bad for the likes of West when it disadvantages the poor citizenry at the expense of protecting the rights of the few and rich.

Above all, West and Harris-Perry just have different political outlooks.  I’m a bit shocked that as learned as both of them are that neither of them took the time to acknowledge their different politcal vantage points.  West is a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist.  So am I, for the most part.  I believe in the process of the many electing a few for the sake of governance, but I also believe that the goverment should provide some basic services for all of it’s citizens–clear emphasis on all.  I think it would be safe to label Harris-Perry, based on what I know of her from her former blog “The Kitchen Table” and her articles and essays over the years, her commentary on MSNBC and her tweets that she’s a Democratic Populist.   To me this means she’s much more interested in ideas and policy that effect the majority of the people positively.  This doesn’t mean that I believe she’s in favor of the status quo, but such a political situation isn’t as iconoclastic as what West was presenting.

Cornel West, goes the path of the iconoclasts before him: political and social alienation.  This was evidenced in the May 17th interview on the Ed Schultz show on MSNBC where Ed was more or less scratching his head at West’s comments.  And naturally so, you can’t explain ontological blackness in 60 seconds or less to a national audience.  When Harris-Perry came on, Ed was found nodding his head much more and smiling in agreeance with what she had to say.  Below is the clip in case you missed it:

Despite my Twitter rants and my satirically alleging that “Harris-Perry had a #lovejones for Barack Obama,” I respect and validate Harris-Perry’s opinion on this issue.  It’s just that I think she chose to highlight the provocative over the substantive issues, and for that, as a community and as citizens of this country, we’ve got to do better.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

P.S. Happy 86th Birthday to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and better known as Malcolm X.  May your #revolutionary spirit lives on my brother.

Tags: , , ,

The Unnatural Politics and Religion of Natural Disasters

12 May

A man takes a picture of a flooded mobile home park as floodwaters slowly rise in Memphis, Tenn., May 8. (Eric Thayer / Reuters)

This was a post I had been planning to write for some time after some of the major natural disasters we had seen in the news.  It probably began around the Haitian earthquake, but I’m sure my mind was more focused on the horrendous theology of Pat Robertson and his comments surrounding a deal with the devil to overthrow the French in the Haitian Revolution.  I remembered I thought about it again following the Japan earthquake and tsunami, but between work and another topic on the subject I wanted to address, this topic didn’t get published.  However, as I am directly affected by the Mississippi River floods of 2011, I can’t help but write about it this time.

In the wake of the Tornado Outbreak of 2011 and the immediacy of the Mississippi river spring floods, the United States is a bit full at the moment when it comes to natural disaster.  The Japan earthquake, tsunami and now nuclear disaster is well within reaching distance to recall the images of the walls of water coming into harbors and overtaking the streets.  We remember the images of a coach at the University of Alabama filming a massive EF4 tornado rip asunder structure after structure in Tuscaloosa, Alabama only to be replaced by images of houses submerged in West Memphis, Arkansas and farmers watching their crops disappear under a toxic soup of river water on Missouri farmland.

Even though we often times see the good in people after the events occur, it seems that before and during the events we see the horrible marriage of politics and religion manifest themselves in ways that are simply inexcusable.  Although I’m not an ethicist, I will try and parse the ethics of this situation.

Politically speaking, we hear and see local politicians from mayors, city council members, state representatives all the way up to governors pitted against each other all clamoring for attention from the federal government when it comes to what monies to be released after the event occurs and what to do before it occurs.  In Missouri and Illinois it was the difference between flooding 100,000+ acres of farmland for the sake of protecting tiny, yet historic Cairo, Illinois.  Cairo, who’s boom years have long since been behind them is mostly black and mostly poor.  The decision was made to bomb the levees and flood the farmland on the Missouri side of the river and Cairo was spared.  Now farmers have to contend with fields that are covered in river waste and garbage possibly polluting the land for the next season or two.

A river levee is blown up at Caernarvon, Louisiana during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. SOURCE: US Army Corps of Engineers

I personally felt in that case, from my armchair perspective that authorities should have just let nature take its course and hope the levees hold.  Cairo was in no more immediate danger than anyone else in the region.  However, in such cases, citizens want something to be done even if it has zero effect or even an adverse affect on someone else.  This was experienced when famously the levee at Caernavon, Louisiana was dynamited below New Orleans on the river in the landmark Mississippi River Flood of 1927; New Orleans wasn’t in imminent threat, but something was done even though it flooded St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes that were wholly rural and poor.

We see the same anxiety with residents of Baton Rouge and New Orleans in the present.  Baton Rouge’s mayor is advocating strongly for the opening of the Morganza Spillway above the city to flood the Atchafalaya river basin* to take pressure off of levees in his city.  There’s no regard for the people of those lower parishes; we’re more worried about big city infrastructure and revenues than those who have less resources in the first place.

The politics of this go back long before floodwaters flowed down the the river to the zoning and the establishment of homes and business in flood plains.  The land was cheap so naturally less upwardly mobile persons were able to settle it.  What I noticed while watching the scenes of the flooding in West Memphis, Ark. and across the river in Memphis, Tenn. that all of the faces of the metropolitan residents experiencing floods were majority black faces.  Certainly the fact that both cities have a majority black population increases that likelihood, it still shows the income and subsequent race gap that still exists.  It is easier for us to disadvantage those who have less means of recovery after a natural disaster than those who would have the insurance and the money and other resources to recover.

This is nothing new.

In the aftermath of the Flood of 1927, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover made promises to blacks with regards to recovery, but failed to deliver.  How he promised versus how he handled the situation spurred another wave of blacks to move north in the Great Migration and his failure to deliver on promises resulted in blacks shifting party alliance to the Democratic Party and voting for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election (not to mention a little thing called the Great Depression).  We see this yet again here in these floods where the faces of victims are oftenblacks with lesser resources than their white counterparts.

If I could push the envelope, I would say that has even less to do with race than it does have to do with how our society deals with the economically disadvantaged.  The well-to-do family cares nothing about persons living in a flood plain regardless of skin color just as long as their well-being and lifestyle isn’t affected.  We do nor say anything on behalf of the poor people of the country, we only pay lip-service to the middle class meanwhile protecting the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Old River Control Structure at the juncture of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers

The creation of human made structures to control river flow and spillway flood plains places supernatural power on something that is indeed natural thus giving humanity the false assumption of controlling the supernatural.  If the human fashioned structures weren’t in place, no one would be living in these floodplains in the first place.  If that was the case, the ethical dilemma of flooding out rural residents versus urban dwellers wouldn’t be up for questioning.

Religiously speaking, we can count on the nut jobs to claim any type of divine retribution.  We heard it with Hurricane Katrina, we heard it with Haiti and we can open up our Bibles to Genesis 19 and read about an egotistical deity who not only destroys two entire cities, but goes and turns someone to a pillar of salt just because it’s within their power to do so.  Usually when instances like this happen (and even when it comes to government sanctioned assassinations on foreign soil of terrorists), we run to the seemingly black and white Old Testament that gives us prescribed and proscribed understandings of justice from supernatural sources.  Employing the basic understanding of the sovereignty of divinity, either God caused it or God allowed it to happen.  That leaves us humans wrestling for an explanation of the seemingly unexplainable.  Using a New Testament scripture outside of Revelation might leave you with more questions than answers, so back to the Old Testament we go.

The Old Testament widely uses the dichotomy of cause and effect to get across the idea of retributive justice.  We see it in “you shall reap what you sow” and “eye for an eye” versus “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  This concept of justice is what we see in western society where everything is supposed to fit into a one-size-fits-all box from our legal system to how we’re supposed to do politics and even religion as a whole.  When it comes to religion we act as though if some malady came upon you, it was because you failed to please God. [Even as I wrote that last sentence I almost wrote "it was because you failed to please the gods" borrowing from the idea that in Greek and Roman mythology sacrifices and behaviors were to be done to please the pantheon of gods.  I think such a parallel is a damning critique against the foolishness of western religion at times.]  

Frankly, I’m tired of hearing fools on Facebook or Twitter in their update status use a natural disaster as a moment to point toward God and further alienate non-Christians from associating themselves with a sentient being that would cause such utter pain on their own alleged creation.  The blind trust and authorative emphasis placed on the biblical scripture, especially rape has been used to justify rape, sexual harrassment, misogyny, gender inequalities, racism and religious intolerance.  It’s certainly time we question our purpose for which we use the Bible to explain supernatural occurences: are we using them to support a myopic view of justice or are we using it to uplift those who are experiencing hardship.

This line of reasoning proves problematic for me because not only are victims hearing this theological agenda preached directly or subversively in their ecclesiastical settings, but it eventually becomes internalized.  I’d suppose that there are hundreds of flood victims who have gotten to this point in their lives and are asking themselves “What did I do to deserve this?” and trying to figure out “where they went wrong” with their relationship with God to allow this to happen.  Even in the understanding of the sovereignty of God and the allowing of an event to happen, deep down we’ll still say God caused to happen somehow and some way.  Victims are left feeling guilty wondering what do they need to do in the future to prevent it from happening again or even to successive generations. 

This internalized oppression, as I see it, does nothing to strengthen communal bonds with other people and does nothing for the already broken spirit.  I’m not advocating that persons brought this on themselves in the traditional sense of “you reap what you sow” but certainly, when you live by a river, you will become a victim of circumstances because one year, it will flood.  Same with persons who live in the midwest who deal with tornadoes or Californians who deal with earthquakes or those on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts who have to encounter hurricanes, it simply is what it is.

A towboat pushes barges down the flood-swollen Mississippi River south of Memphis, May 9. (Danny Johnston / AP)

Religion and politics failure to equip a person’s consciousness to deal with the vicissitudes of natural disasters, both good and bad has resulted in a society that operates out of harmony with the world we inhabit.  We now have added super- to the phrase “natural disasters.”  We act as though there’s something else at play than just the natural ebb and flow of seasons.  No longer does the Mississippi river naturally flood as it did thousands of years ago, but is corralled by levees.  The incredulity of humanity to act so privileged as if this is not supposed to happen stands as a monument to our own arrogance.  These events should be humbling moments, reminding us not just of our mortality, but also of our status as creatures of this terrestrial ball: there are some things that are out of our control.

Rather than feeling powerless going forward, we should be empowered to not make the same mistakes as we did before.  Instead politics allow us to rebuild bigger and better in the same places as a testament to our wanton hubris and religion allows us to go in and conquer the land, then guilt ourselves and question our relationship with the deity if something terrible from nature befalls us.

My word of advice, after placing on the hat of ethicist today, is that we should learn to live in harmony with the natural that surrounds us.  Nature is indeed supernatural in an of itself, much like we are too!  While yes the after effects are devastating and disruptive to our everyday lives I think we should find an inner resolve to seek the inner divine and inner peace that will help us endure the hardship.  As humans, we were designed to endure pain.  It doesn’t make it easier, but our survival is a testament that it takes a lot to break the human spirit.  Even if we emerge on the other side with our bodies bruised and our material accumulations taken away, we still have our minds and each other.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Possible avulsion track of the Mississippi River through the Atchafalaya Channel.

* The Old River Structure is built at the juncture between the Red River of Louisiana and the Mississippi River. It is a diversionary waterway that keeps 70% of volume down the current meander of the Mississippi River channel and 30% down the Atchafalaya (pronounced as ‘ah-CHAF-fah-Lie-ah’) River, a distributary of the Mississippi River.  It was noticed as early as 1900 that volume flow was ticking upward from 13% to 34% following the 1973 floods where the Mississippi almost changed channels and began diverting through the Atchafalaya basin rather than it’s current course. 

Naturally, this would pose a serious economic threat to both Baton Rouge and New Orleans ports.

Tags: , , , ,

Donald Trump Asks to see Jesus’ Birth Certificate and Why He is a Racist

27 Apr

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 92 other followers