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Sunday, August 31, 2014

Reverse bigotry


I'll comment on this:
During the last week, some genuinely concerned people have admonished me about what they perceive to be an unhealthy bias against police officers. They have with good intention taken the position that those in authority should have our trust and support. I’ve had a running conversation with at least four officers or former officers concerned that I’m spreading distrust of them and their mates. They think it’s better if people with a public platform of any size would encourage trust for officers.
I’ve benefitted from these exchanges, if for no other reason than it demonstrates once again the very different lives African Americans and White Americans live in the same country. For my white interlocutors, the thought of not trusting the police never crosses their mind. It’s the right thing to do. It’s basic civics.
Ah, yes, because white Americans automatically think we should trust and support those in authority. White libertarians, Tea Partiers, and/or conservatives vest implicit trust in the ATF (e.g. Ruby Ridge), IRS (e.g. Lois Lerner), HHS (e.g. Kathleen Sebelius), DOJ (e.g. Janet Reno, Eric Holder), VA, TSA, EPA, NSA, NLRB, &c. 
Funny how Thabiti stereotypes white Americans. Isn't there a word for that? Prejudice?  
The idea that African Americans have lived in a police state in the United States may be something new to White readers of this post. That, again, just shows how different the lived experiences have been.
Notice he makes a gratuitous assumption about what white Americans allegedly don't know, then faults them for his own imputation. 
For nearly all of African-American life in the U.S., the police force has been the local arm of white supremacy and oppression. Ask yourself, How does white supremacy, racism and oppression get enforced for centuries even in cities and places where African Americans were the majority? How was it possible to enforce slave codes and Jim Crow segregation? What local means of power did the state exercise to “keep Blacks in their place”?
Was Jim Crow nation wide? After Reconstruction, didn't many Southern blacks move north (e.g. Chicago, New York, Detroit, Philadelphia) to put Jim Crow behind them? 
Since the late 1600s up to the end of official desegregation, the official local means for enforcing white supremacy was the police.
That’s been an everyday truth for most of African-American experience. It’s a truth passed down at dinner tables between mothers who love their sons and sons wanting to play with toy guns or imagine one day being officers. It’s a truth recounted in history books—not the official books of public schools, but the books African Americans have worked to write in order to remember their names and tell their stories first person. It’s an experience that shapes generations. So the moments when little boys and girls daydream with their parents about what to become when they grow up intersects the story of an entire people. Like waters flowing from oceans into rivers, the moving memories and sediments get passed along until they puddle up in some lake and there grow with each wave that enters. Memory is long. The memory of hurt longer.
Well, that's the problem. He's not describing the firsthand experience of contemporary black Americans. Today's black teenager doesn't remember going through that, because he didn't. Or his parents. Thabiti is talking about a story that's passed down from one generation to the next. 
And you may be asking at this point, “How long?” How long will the remembrance of past injustices dog the steps of inter-ethnic peace and progress?
Notice the key phrase: "the remembrance of past injustices." Frankly, social commentators like Thabiti are shortchanging blacks by trapping them in a now nonexistent past. A psychological prison. Not physical bars, but invisible bars. That holds them back. Fosters a defeatist mentality. 
First, how long do you think it takes a police system and a justice system to exorcise the poison of officially-sanctioned racial animosity? How long do you think it takes people and systems to move from embraced and open racism to something resembling a true content-of-character, love-believes-all-things heart?
What about when the Jim Crow generation retires? It only takes one or two generations to have a compete turnover in police departments or the judiciary. 
Are all the racists and the racist sentiments of a police force with hundreds of years of practice gone in one generation? Have all the attitudes and practices that made forceful subjugation of African Americans possible disappeared in a couple of decades?
But our police officers work in a system. And systems don’t change overnight. Systems have a way of molding the behavior and attitudes of the best of people. That’s true of every system, and it’s no less true of law enforcement. It’s true even when you put a black man in a blue uniform. They find themselves acting out prejudices or facing the prejudices inside the force. The invisible hand of systemic prejudice is always at work on everyone in the system.
Notice how he personifies the "system," as if that's is a long-lived human being. 

8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Although unfortunate and disappointing, it's nevertheless been instructive to witness Thabiti's latent racism rise to the surface for all to see through his recent spate of posts. It's helpful in many ways:

    It helps people make informed decisions about sitting under his teaching, whether in person or in print. 

    It helps fellow Christians see where he needs prayer, as well as the formerly private - but now very public - sins for which he needs to be called to repentance. 

    It's also a providential example of a second-order good that has flowed from the debacle and media circus in Ferguson (revealing his spiritual need, and giving those close to him an opportunity to serve him and the Lord by ministering to his need).

    God still brings beauty from ashes. I pray for the loving correction, humble repentance, spiritual healing and gracious restoration of brother Anyabwile who has sadly become a factious, divisive race-baiter who seemimgly has been blinded by the lies and deceptions of the spirit of the age.

    Yet through the process of restoration Thabiti can demonstrate to his son Titus, as well as those whom he shepherds, how a Christian pastor ought to deal with indwelling sin by humbling himself before the mighty hand of the Lord.

    I don't fault Thabiti for being a racist and harboring racist inclinations since this is one of the default positions in our fallen state, however I do fault him for stubbornly holding to, and attempting to justify, his continued sin as though it were a virtue.

    A Christian pastor is supposed to be a mouthpiece for God for the building up, edification, and equipping of the church. Thabiti needs to be reminded of his duty, and be returned to his post.

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    1. Amen CR. In the past I had benefited from Thabiti's teaching. I am saddened by where he has decided to go. He just keeps digging a hole post after post.

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  3. Also, why doesn't Thabiti lessen his fixation on the past and focus more on the present? Why not point the finger less at white people and more on the black community itself?

    For starters, there are many prominent black persons in positions of power and influence over public policy. Numero uno is the POTUS.

    Given Obama is in charge of the executive branch of the federal gov't, and given Obama is not at all shy about using (indeed many would say abusing) his power and authority, can't we ask, if anyone is to blame for the present woes, why not blame Obama and his administration? Why hasn't Obama done more for the black community over his tenure thus far?

    After all, he's the guy in charge of it all, or at least carries significant enough influence to improve things, no?

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  4. Triablogue has been a sharp critic of black writers such as Thabiti Anyabwile and Leon Brown. I think, then, it would be fair and intellectually honest for the writers of this blog to present a clear statement of their position vis-à-vis the condition of race in America and the church.

    Does Triablogue believe that racially based discrimination no longer exists in America and perhaps that it is all in the minds of Anyabwile and Brown? That blacks face no racially based discrimination or mistreatment in services (such as restaurants, hotels, or other businesses), housing, or employment? That their experiences with and their treatment by law enforcement are no different from the average black man? If yes, how do you know? How do you know that blacks are not treated in ways that are even unapparent or invisible to the perpetrator?

    Is it possible that Anyabwile and Brown are describing real experiences, but that they use references and terms that have a very different meaning and connotation to the black ear than the white ear? That perhaps “Jim Crow” to the white ear is something dead that happened long ago. But, to the black ear, it is a term has come to transcend not just certain laws in the 20th century, but continuing struggles in society?

    Perhaps you are talking past each other because you are not speaking the same language or understanding the same thing with the words you employ.

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    1. "Does Triablogue believe that racially based discrimination no longer exists in America and perhaps that it is all in the minds of Anyabwile and Brown?"

      When has Triablogue ever claimed this?

      "That blacks face no racially based discrimination or mistreatment in services (such as restaurants, hotels, or other businesses), housing, or employment? That their experiences with and their treatment by law enforcement are no different from the average black man?"

      I'd say yes blacks face racial discrimination. Although I'd quickly add there's racial discrimination for other minorities and for whites as well.

      I'd also say the degree or extent of racial discrimination is different for different people-groups as well as individuals. However, since all you asked about was racial discrimination as a type or kind of discrimination, then that's as much as I need to say for now, I guess.

      I have no particular love for the police, but just on a practical note I think it'd help if certain individuals (of any race or ethnicity) stopped dressing and behaving like thugs though.

      "how do you know? How do you know that blacks are not treated in ways that are even unapparent or invisible to the perpetrator?"

      One way I "know" (for whatever that's even worth) is because I have black family members.

      Besides, not all blacks are necessarily perfectly united on Ferguson and related issues.

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    2. Here are the types of words that ought to employed in the church, note how little they resonate with the recent words of brother Anyabwile:

      Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. - Col. 3:11

      And:

      For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Gal. 3:27-28

      And again:

      so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

      Paul is no theological rube, or backwater hick, he clearly understands that there *are* distinctions and differences among the Body of Christ. He knows there *are* actually Greeks, Jews, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythians, slaves, free, male, female, etc. Paul isn't denying reality, what he's saying - with Apostolic authority - is that's what you *were*, that's what you've *been*, but now, behold! All things are new, you are a new creature in Christ, put off the old and put on the new, you've been adopted into the family of God, act like it, live like it, find your identity in Him.

      Biblical Christianity is the only cure for the soul-sickness of fallen man's inherent racism. There are exactly two races in the world that are of any consequence - the fallen race of men who are by nature in Adam, and the redeemed race of men who are by grace in Christ. These corruptible bodies of dust - black, brown, red, yellow, or white - are as the grass of the field, the flower quickly fading, a vapor of mist. When Christian men are focusing on the opposite of that which the Scriptures teach ought to be the focus, and make much of that which the Scriptures make little, then there's an obvious spiritual problem at hand. In fact it's as obvious as the color of our skin, but it's much more than skin deep.

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    3. ACS Smitth

      "Triablogue has been a sharp critic of black writers such as Thabiti Anyabwile and Leon Brown."

      To be precise, I've been a sharp critic. Triablogue is bigger than me.

      "I think, then, it would be fair and intellectually honest for the writers of this blog to present a clear statement of their position vis-à-vis the condition of race in America and the church."

      The condition of which race? Whites? Blacks? Cuban-Americans? Mexican-Americans? Chinese-Americans? Koreans? Laotians? East Indians?

      And where? Northern California? Southern California? Texas? New Orleans? Miami-Dade? Chicago? Philadephia? Atlanta? Seattle?

      "Does Triablogue believe that racially based discrimination no longer exists in America and perhaps that it is all in the minds of Anyabwile and Brown?"

      Let's see. There's prima facie evidence that colleges discriminating against Asian applicants:

      http://www.thecrimson.com/admissions/article/2014/4/30/asian-american-admissions-discrimination/

      http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-asian-quota-in-the-ivy-league/discrimination-is-obvious

      http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-asian-quota-in-the-ivy-league/statistics-indicate-an-ivy-league-asian-quota

      http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1441993/asian-americans-furious-proposal-allowing-colleges-choose-students-race

      "That blacks face no racially based discrimination or mistreatment in services (such as restaurants, hotels, or other businesses), housing, or employment?"

      Since that's illegal, are you alleging a pattern of discrimination, or isolated events?

      "That their experiences with and their treatment by law enforcement are no different from the average black man?"

      You mean, like Washington DC, with its majority black police force?

      Or what about the LAPD, where white officers are in the minority?

      "If yes, how do you know? How do you know that blacks are not treated in ways that are even unapparent or invisible to the perpetrator?"

      You've phrased your question in unfalsifiable terms, like asking if I can disprove the existence of invisible pink unicorns.

      "Is it possible that Anyabwile and Brown are describing real experiences…"

      According to census bureau stats, the current US population hovers around 316 million. Are you referring to a statistically discernible/significant phenomenon?

      "That perhaps 'Jim Crow' to the white ear is something dead that happened long ago. But, to the black ear, it is a term has come to transcend not just certain laws in the 20th century, but continuing struggles in society?"

      Thabiti isn't distinguishing the past from present.

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