Posted December 4, 2009 by Charles
D.C. Councilman Michael Brown
I’m getting tired of hearing African American leaders toss the Three-Fifths Compromise into discussions about discrimination in America.
Yesterday on Laura Ingraham Washington, D.C. Councilman Michael Brown was on with a local bishop discussing a same-sex marriage initiative in the District. He views it as a civil rights issue. I (emphatically) do not. It’s definitely a rights issue, but not one about equality. We’re not talking about creating “marriage equity”, we’re talking about changing the definition of marriage, which has been the same since it started. As it is, everyone (including homosexuals) can marry whoever they want, as long as they are (1) of legal age, (2) not currently married to someone else, and (3) of the opposite gender. There are no rights being denied to anyone. This is an issue of creating rights, not restoring or honoring them. Anyway, that’s beside the point.
Brown, who is in favor of the initiative, based his whole argument on the civil rights issue, frequently mentioning drinking fountains, colored restrooms, and segregated schools. It was silly. I’m surprised he didn’t mention people getting firehoses and dogs turned on them. That’s really similar to a bumper sticker that says, “It’s not Adam and Steve.” (those stickers are also idiotic, BTW)
But at one point Laura was talking about the Constitution, and he says, “In the Constitution an African American is 3/5 of a person!” He was, of course, trying to argue that the constitution is not a good measuring stick for civil rights. He doesn’t seem to know much about the purpose of the compromise, or the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
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Posted April 13, 2009 by Charles
I’ve never liked self-segregation. When my parents went to parties they would seek out the black attendees and they would link on to each other, as though any minute someone would try to force them out and they’d have to fight for their right to stay. When we moved to a new city we’d meet all kinds of people that were kind and hospitable, but we wouldn’t go to anyone’s house for dinner. Unless of course we met nice black family. Then we’d drive an hour for dinner every week.
That’s why I never considered joining any of the African American student organizations during undergrad. Our grandparents, parents, and elder siblings spent decades trying to change society so that we don’ t have to be identified by race. Why choose it?
Aside from that, it seems inherently unfair that every group on a college campus except American whites can have their own organization. The administration at Mount Holyoke College, in Massachusetts, has taken a step – however small – toward changing that.
Mount Holyoke College, which has for many years had a voluntary program for minority students in advance of the general orientation, plans this year to start a special section at the same time, also voluntary, for white students from the United States. (There is also a mandatory pre-orientation for international students.)
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Posted November 27, 2008 by Charles
I’m not a sentimental guy, so I have no sentimental things to say about Thanksgiving. I’ve decided to let Lincoln handle it.
Here are three good posts from GetReligion:
1. Jonestown: Not the usual theocracy
You see, Jones was a minister in good standing of the Church of Christ (Disciples), an absolutely normal denomination at the heart of the liberal Protestant ecumenical establishment. He was an idealist on the left and, as everyone knows, this kind of theocratic, cultish behavior is supposed to take place on the theological right, not the left. That’s where the wackos reside. Correct?
Thus, there has always been a tendency to avoid in-depth discussions of what Jones believed, what he preached and how his idealistic, progressive congregation — one committed to racial equality, free health care and social justice — evolved into an armed camp of suicidal killers lined up at a vat of cyanide and fake fruit juice…
2. Slate: Back to the FOCA question
If you are looking for further evidence of the importance of this story, look no further than Slate.com, which is normally not where one goes to find insights into cultural conservatism. Consider Melinda Henneberger’s newsy essay “Lose-Lose on Abortion — Obama’s threat to Catholic hospitals and their very serious counterthreat.”[...]
Read on. This is a serious story. The Slate folks are on to something, daring to publish this.
3. Beliefs Behind Racism
The AP story is unfortunately brief. The main issue I had hoped that the article would address is what it hinted about regarding its racial rules being “shaped by culture instead of the Bible.”
The admission is revealing in many ways. Unfortunately, the AP doesn’t provide any context for that statement. What needs to be explained is the fact that many Americans for generations have believed in various versions of racial superiority. This belief was at least in part based on their interpretation of the Bible. This belief justified evils from segregation to racism.
Posted August 10, 2008 by Charles
Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark
I’m reading a long article in the NYT Magazine, so long that I may not finish it tonight – and I came across this from Cory Booker, the Mayor of Newark:
When I met last month with Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark who at 39 is already something of a national sensation, he told me that he had just finished reading, belatedly, Obama’s memoir “Dreams From My Father.” He said passages about Obama’s youth in Hawaii had reminded him of his own experience with subtle racism in the affluent, mostly white suburb of Harrington Park, N.J. “You know, what it’s like growing up every single day and having people ask to touch your hair because they’ve never seen hair like that,” Booker said. “To have the entire class laugh and giggle when somebody pronounces ‘Niger’ as ‘nigger.’ The constant bombardment of that kind of thing really affects your spirit, and it’s every single day. Like when people want to come back from a vacation and compare their tan to yours and joke about being black.”
I had this discussion with my wife a couple of weeks ago when a friend of ours made a big deal about not understanding how I comb my hair. I was pretty angry about it later and she didn’t understand why. I had trouble explaining it to her, because she couldn’t step into it.
In school I dealt with it because, well kids are stupid – I was too. But I didn’t think I’d have to deal with a 23 year old going on (and on) like that. It’s hard to keep my mind right sometimes.
Posted June 3, 2008 by Charles
Barack Obama isn’t black. It’s time to drop the charade.
I thought we had moved beyond the “one-drop rule“. But it seems that a man with one African parent, and one white American parent is still considered black in white America, and embraced by black America as a favored son. The problem is, he isn’t black.
I’m not saying this to exclude him from anything, I don’t care if he targets black Americans in his campaign or if he rides the wave all the way to shore. I’m not really included in black America, anyway, so it’s of no consequence to me. But what does bother me is that by calling him black, half his family is considered basically incidental.
Calling my son “black” means my wife and her ancestry are not a part of him. It means his family tree is split down the center. Haven’t we moved past this?
So, Barack Obama is not the first black candidate from a major party in the general. He may be the first non-white, the first mulatto, or the first…well, I ran out…but he is as much white, as he is black. That is all.
