Well, I’m definitely going to be gone for a few days this week, and the week of July 6th, but I will share about the place my work is leaving for tomorrow. It’s this place called Creation.
Out in the middle of nowhere.
On a farm.
Yeah….this should be fun.
I looked at the schedule of who was supposed to be playing for the event, and who had been scheduled as speakers….DUH…not ONE single black person. So, out of approximately 100,000 or more white people, there will be some small chocolate brown spot looking around like “Wtf?!?!?”
And you all KNOW how I am about music, particularly me and my Jesus music, so to go here and have to listen to Christian rock and heavy metal is DEFINITELY going to be a change. Now, I can get with Christian worship music, but um, this heavy metal…doubt it.
Obama also can’t seem to get away from things controversial to the church, seeing as how he’s drawn the ire of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson who accused Obama of having a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Bible. Obama apparently had said sometime last year in a speech that passing laws based on Leviticus, whereas there are passages that say eating shellfish is a sin, or that slavery is okay and mandated by Yahweh, were in fact wrong. However juxtaposed to that of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5) that some lawmakers would barely pass muster.
Somehow, Dobson, made this an issue about abortion.
Apparently this 18 minute blast against Obama that Dobson has is planned to air today on someone’s radio station around this country.
I just fail to see how some people take one issue and make it the counterpoint for all other issues. Or maybe it’s just my pro-choice stance on abortion particularly that just really gets me going. I love it when I hear black preachers go off on the pro-life, conservatives because usually they’ll say “How can you say you’re pro-life before the baby is born, but the minute the child is born there is no funding for local healthcare clinics, zero to no money for adoption agencies, no universal healthcare to prolong it’s life…”
It just all seems kind of hypocritical in the worse kind of way. At least when this uppity Negro spouts his own liberal theologies and philosophies, I’m not being hypocritical. And if I am, usually I stand corrected and make adjustments where necessary. But not these blowhards like Rod Parsely, John Hagee, and God disturb his soul Jerry Falwell.
This whole idea of doing a missions trip to the inner city has been bugging me for some time. I’m really kind of itching to take my Gen. Req. of Missiology when I get back to school in the fall so that I can get some sort of handle on what it means to do missions as far as the church is considered. I just think that its interesting that missions trips are ALWAYS done in a linear fashion: the rich usually give to the poor. Most times missions are based on material possessions as well.
When I talk to my co-workers they speak of their various “mission trips” to South Africa or Southeast DC (I REALLY have a problem with that) and they particularly speak of the wells that they are helping to fund in various communities on the African continent, and just how wonderful in spirit the people are in Africa.
EDITORS NOTE: Africa is not a country, it is a continent. Each country in Africa has a different set of rules and regulations and cultural nuances and whatnot.
Well, I went to Ghana when I graduated 8th grade, so I’m going to leave the whole “Africa missions trip” to someone who may be more qualified. However, I will say as someone who grew up in the city, I’m getting more and more peeved everyday when I hear my co-workers throw around “urban youth” and “inner-city kids” and I’m just going to be blunt like my friend was when I mentioned it to him; it irks me that I have been reduced to the suburban code word for “the black and brown folk.”
I don’t think its me being delusional, but I’m quite sure that I am the “blackest” or shall I say, negrified, person my co-workers have met in quite some time, if ever. Like I keep on pushing the card trying to have a conversation about Jeremiah Wright, but they NEVER take the bait. I had said it was the fact that they don’t listen to the news (I mean these are the same people who have never heard of Meet the Press or Tim Russert), but my mother said it’s probably because they don’t want to hear what I have to say on the issue.
I mean, I played the Youtube clip of Grandpa Simpson parodying Jeremiah Wright in church, and two of my co-workers in the room said NOTHING.
Anywayz, back on topic…
I didn’t know I needed to be missionized to since in the back of their minds, I’m an “inner city kid” who climbed up. Even if they say they’d never think of me as that, in the recesses of their mind, or as Freud would say, in their Id, I am that black kid from the inner city who needed to be missionized. Or else, to them I’m the exact opposite; they can’t wrap their mind around me being from the city since a) they hired me or b) because I speak so well (just ask Obama about that one) c) because I have so many life experiences.
It’s a challenge nonetheless.
I look forward to reporting back to my readers about how this whole Creation crap (lol) went when I get back. Full of four days and three nights of camping, around people who don’t shower, and sleeping in tents.
And gawwwwd, I hope it doesn’t rain…you know what the smell will be like….
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 
Keep it uppity while gaining the experience and insight that will grow you spiritually and allow you to learn first hand of other cultural and even opposing worldviews. It seems that wisdom follows understanding. Simply put–you can’t teach what you don’t know, and you can’t lead where you can’t go.
In my opinion, stereotypical inferences do not appear to advance mutual respect in most social situations. Because innocent and/or ignorant insults are casually dropped as conventional wisdom, it is not okay to return the disrespect by countering with equally potential stereotypical insults. Ignorance, unfortunately, can be contagious.
It is acceptable to raise racial stereotypes during a mutually agreed upon discussion and deconstruction of stereotypical language and behavior.
Uppity is as uppity does…
I love how everyone is supposed to LOVE rap, hip-hop and R&B, yet heavy metal is considered a joke to most African Americans. I guess they just don’t understand how difficult and strenuous it is to play that type of music on the guitar or drums. It’s derived from classical music with added distortion and power/bar-chords. Not the fake crap that’s in most R&B & hip-hop with synthetic drums, fake guitars and lame lyrics talking about the same 3 topics: drugs, sex and money.
To GADDORM:
As a musician, I have never deemed heavy metal (grunge metal, black metal etc.) as NON-music as others may. It is simply that it doesn’t appeal to me.
By the same token, I think you’re oversimplifying what it means to make beats in the studio, or to pull a band together when R&B and hip-hop artists perform live. Seeing as how I’ve now been to concert fest where heavy metal and rock were played (artists such as Switchfoot, The David Crowder Band, Pillars, Inhale/Exhale, Flyleaf) the complete antithesis of that which I normally listen to, I would encourage you to do the same if you haven’t already.
I definitely do take offense to calling the styling of modern R&B, hip hop and rap as “fake crap.”
Furthermore, could you enlighten me as to what it is that heavy metal artists sing about that’s so grand as to trump the “same 3 topics” that you listed above? Seeing as how that’s gross misstatement and shows evidence of your ignorance to that which is hip hop, rap and R&B, I would definitely encourage you to listen to the lyrics of artists such as Common, Kanye West, Nas, Mos Def, The Roots, KRS-One, Tupac and digest what the lyrics are saying.
JLL