Natalie Burris

Mutiny! Or, what can pirates teach us?

London-based teacher and writer Kester Brewin recently released a quirky little gem of a book, called Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates, and How They Can Save Us. In only 165 pages, Brewin fits in medieval fiefdom, the colonization of the so-called "New World," Marxism, modern-day Somali pirates, copyright law, punk music, Jungian psychology, and Greek mythology. I didn't always agree with Brewin's take on the world, but his creativity and ability to translate sweeping topics into more easily understandable prose was impressive. 

Today, pirates have turned into a kitschy birthday party theme, but Brewin notes that an actual 18th-century pirate would be "shocked at the way in which his rebellion and revolt against and oppressive and wealth-hungry Empire had been castrated into spineless, meaningless nursery pap." 

The first mid-Atlantic pirates emerged in the 18th century in response to European monarchies' monopoly that blocked access to the "riches of the New World to any but the most privileged," and Brewin argues that pirates, in any shape or form, emerge at any time when economies become "blocked." Sailors who were forced to work for a pittance, then cast aside when they became disabled by the very work the monarchs charged them to do, joined forces to wreak havoc on the monarchies' work, threatening the imperial order. As a result, sailors-turned-pirates created egalitarian communities that offered fair wages and didn't simply cast aside the disabled or "other".

Piracy arises when a structure becomes unjust, "because it has taken something that should be the 'common property' of all people and locked it behind a pay-wall," and "refuses to share the spoils of wealth with those who have laboured so hard to create it." Pirates offer an alternative that speaks to our desire, our "human ache," for justice. Pirates threaten those in power, petrifying them, "because the laws that they have so carefully constructed to keep everyone in their right place fall utterly flat." And those who don't choose mutiny? Perhaps they believe the "narrative of their oppressors: that remaining law-abiding and dutiful would see them rewarded in heaven."   

What can pirates teach us about following Jesus? Brewin argues that we must play pirate to religion. Pirates are heroes who break the law, because "the law needs breaking if it is to be remade more justly." Jesus was, according to the law of his day,

a revolutionary heretic who was quite rightly prosecuted by religious authorities. The law had been broken, and law-breakers needed to face punishment if society was to hold together. But, quite explicitly, Jesus broke Jewish law in order to expose the fact that Jewish law was, in the hands of the Pharisees, broken.

The early church can be viewed as a community who declared mutiny against the religious powers, departing from Jewish orthodoxy. Early Christians entered the heretical waters of a faith that shared all things in common. But, Christianity transformed into the "religion of empire, and quickly settled in the easy throne of fattened calves, of comfortable robes and jewelry."

Brewin challenges us to ask: "what would it mean now to play pirate with the life that I have in the culture I am a part of, among the community I live in and within the power structures and working practices that I am embedded in?"

I don't agree with Brewin's characterization of the "New World," as it ignores and erases the existence of native peoples. Along those same lines, Brewin occasionally praised the U.S. "Founding Fathers," who in reality only played pirate on behalf of white, male landowners against the English. Overall, however, Mutiny! is a creative, dense little book that may spur you to mutiny, to "unblock" power structures, and to seek a more equitable way. 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

Should the government promote family values? Whose family values?

In response to Republican presidential candidates' rhetoric, I'm sharing portions of a paper I wrote last semester.  Here are part 1, part 2, and part 3.

We've seen that slaveowners promoted slave marriage when convenient for whites, and post-bellum freed slaves were encouraged to marry so as to not burden white taxpayers. 

Current government marriage programs tied to welfare benefits, along with politicians who use family-values rhetoric, are no different from this early, hypocritical marriage promotion.  These programs and rhetoric have undertones of so-called “civilization” of certain “unruly” populations, and in reality, fail to benefit families of color.

Beginning with 1996's welfare reform, marriage initiatives promoted by conservative politicians at the national level pledged to assist single-parent poor families, ideally lifting them out of poverty.¹ The statistics were on their side: non-marital families tend to be worse off economically than families headed by married couples.²  Children in single-parent families fare poorer in several areas than do children raised by married couples.³ 

In 2003, Congress authorized $750 million, in conjunction with welfare programs, for “healthy marriage promotion” and fatherhood initiatives.⁴  The Bush administration heavily supported these programs.

One program, for which I personally recruited in 2006 and 2007, offered workshops for married and unmarried low-income couples expecting a child.  The workshops provided relationship skills, conflict resolution, and budgeting advice.  Each couple was also assigned a case manager. 

The couples received incentives for attending the workshops, receiving “bucks” which they could “spend” on diapers, clothing, and other items for their baby.  A fatherhood specialist worked with fathers-to-be on specific areas, such as employment, which, hearkening back to the post-bellum era, supports the notion that a gainfully-employed husband and father will keep his family off welfare.

While on its face, this program appeared to benefit couples who struggle financially, I eventually began to question whether millions of federal dollars should be directed toward personal relationship skills.  One description of an unmarried couple on public aid stated:

Anthony and Pam don't need love; they have it. They need health care, a supportive environment for treatment, food, and shelter. At some point, the government decided to start teaching people to find love and marriage instead of providing them with things they need.⁵

Marriage promotion programs have turned out to be ineffective in improving relationships.  The results of such well-meaning programs are dismal.  The divorce rate did not change and marriage rates did not increase.⁶  Meanwhile, poverty persists.  Efforts by a majority white government to impose a certain moral code are detrimental to society and to individuals.  Taxpayer funds are used to support efforts that patronize adults, working under the assumption that marriage is a cure-all for our social ills. 

Because of disproportionate incarceration rates, domestic violence, substance abuse, and other effects of living in a system that often impedes upward mobility, marriage simply cannot serve as a cure-all.

As we've also seen with welfare's history, marriage promotion programs are merely a more explicit form of imposing a white normative view of the "traditional" family: a married heterosexual couple with biological children, without any regard to economic and racial factors.  One marriage program went so far as to refuse benefits if the wife's children were not biologically the husband's.⁷

On the surface, policymakers of all stripes should be in favor of supporting healthy relationships, but such support does not necessarily have to exclude families who do not fit the norm.  A couple can be involved in a healthy relationship even without marriage or when some children are not biologically both spouse’s.  Government programs that funnel large sums of money toward marriage-only solutions erase alternative, equally viable forms of family, depleting resources that could be used elsewhere.

I see a contradiction with family-values rhetoric.  Many Republicans and Christians claim the church, rather than government, should be the one to help the poor.  These folks argue that government should stay out of providing social services, and don't want to see their tax dollars used for such purposes.  But when it comes to "values," many conservatives do not have a problem with government promoting a certain family model using millions of dollars in federal funds.  

Which one is it?  If you want government to stay out of the church's role in caring for the poor, wouldn't you also want government to step aside so the church can foster healthy relationships, including marriage and fatherhood?

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¹ Julia M. Fisher, Marriage Promotion Policies and the Working Poor: A Match Made in Heaven?, 25 B.C. Third World L.J. 475, 477 (2005).

² Vivian Hamilton, Will Marriage Promotion Work? 11 J. Gender Race & Just. 1, 1 (Fall 2007).

³ Id.

⁴ Id. at 2.

⁵ Aly Parker, Can’t Buy Me Love: Funding Marriage Promotion Versus Listening to Real Needs in Breaking the Cycle of Poverty, 18 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 493, 494 (Spring 2009).

⁶ Id. at 495.

⁷ Id. at 497. 

Graphic source

"That's a lot of code": conservative rhetoric on welfare

 

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In response to Republican presidential hopefuls' rhetoric, I'm posting portions of a paper I wrote last semester.  Here are parts one and two.

Like slavery, welfare's history informs "family values" rhetoric.  While conservatives promote family values, their policies ultimately help few low-income families of color and employ racialized rhetoric.  One initial goal of federal housing programs, for instance, was to encourage morality in families.  

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (“TANF”) favors heterosexual married couples.  Marriage promotion as welfare policy is a modern reincarnation of the “civilization” of “unruly” slaves.¹  Just as slave marriage was promoted at masters’ convenience, marriage was used post-bellum to privatize freed blacks’ economic mobility, minimizing government responsibility. 

Post-emancipation, states used marriage as a so-called “civilization” tool, which forced African-Americans to conform to white family constructs and which regulated black behaviors.  Some slaveowners had disregarded slave families, but now whites suddenly wanted black couples to marry—only within their race.  With black husbands working, there would ostensibly be no need for black women and children to seek government assistance.  This assumption persists today: if black women and children were part of a traditional family, welfare demand would decrease.  

Modern aid for women with children began in the 1920’s, but only for women deemed "deserving."  Participants were 96% white and 3% black.²  Under the 1935 New Deal “Aid to Dependent Children,” the first formal welfare program, white widows were considered most entitled to support, while immigrants, unmarried women, and women of color were reluctantly included.  In 1937, 85% of recipients were white women, while 13% were black women.³  

Women of color now comprise the majority of those on welfare.  Thus, a stereotype of the typical welfare recipient emerged: “a lazy, promiscuous black woman who lives in luxury at taxpayers’ expense.”⁴

Melissa Harris Perry, on the Colbert Report, recently discussed stereotypes of black women, one of which is a "Jezebel."  This stereotype, around since the antebellum area, is similar to the welfare queen and pigeonholes black women as sexually promiscuous, having children with several different fathers.  Meanwhile, a thrice-married white man runs for president nearly with impunity.

With the majority of welfare recipients no longer white, whites' sympathy level has dropped.  States with larger minority populations on welfare impose harsher restrictions.⁵  And using law to promote an ideal of family, similar to post-bellum attempts, has produced a racialized discourse hostile to unmarried black parents.  Debates especially portray women of color as bad mothers, just as in the antebellum period. 

Although 33.3% of TANF recipients are black, 31% white, and 28.8% Hispanic, the image of a “welfare queen” is a black single mother.  No longer focused on “worthy" white widows, TANF discourse casts judgment onto unmarried black women who allegedly won't work and “won’t use birth control.⁶

Candidates rail against those supposedly unwilling to work with a wink, knowing whites are in on the shared understanding of whom is really being referenced.  (see Gingrich's "really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have nobody around them who works" in the above video).

Rather than prophetically critique it, many U.S. white evangelicals buy into this code-speak hook, line, and sinker.  Evangelicals view lack of personal responsibility as the reason black single mothers use TANF.  Grace, in an excellent series on race and gender, discussed some telling data from Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's Divided by Faith.  White evangelicals blame racial disparity on poor choices, such as "having too many children."  Emerson writes:

In their use of these cultural reasons [for racial inequality], white conservative Protestants do not mean patterns of behavior rooted in values (e.g., blacks have many children because they highly value large families), but rather that blacks are making poor choices (e.g., black individuals do not exercise responsibility in child-bearing, faith, or speech).

---

¹ Angela Onwuachi-Willig, The Return of the Ring: Welfare Reform's Marriage Cure as the Revival of Post-Bellum Control, 93 Cal. L. Rev. 1647, 1653 (2005).

² Id.

³ Id.

⁴ Madeline Howard, Subsidized Housing Policy: Defining the Family, 22 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 97, 124-5 (2007).

⁵ Elena Christine Acevedo, The Latina Paradox: Cultural Barriers to the Equitable Receipt of Welfare Services under Modern Welfare Reform, 20 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 199, 208 (2005).

⁶ Martha L. Fineman, Images of Mothers in Poverty Discourses, 1991 Duke L.J. 274, 282 (1991).

Photo credit

White evangelicals, welfare, and racially-coded rhetoric

With Newt Gingrich's recent win in the South Carolina Republican primary, many are discussing the role family-focused evangelicals played in the victory of a candidate who has been married three times and has reportedly committed adultery.  Evangelicals comprised two-thirds of primary voters, and Gingrich won 44% of their votes.  At least 98% of these voters were white.  

Gingrich ran an ad in South Carolina, the first Southern state to hold a primary this season, featuring his exchange with debate moderator Juan Williams.  Williams had asked about Gingrich's repeated references to President Obama as the "food stamp president."  Gingrich has also made disparaging statements about poor children, remarking they have no work ethic.

Critics call this type of rhetoric racially coded:

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that the new racism entails individuals saying and doing things that perpetuate racial stereotypes and inequalities, but they do so in such a way that the offender is able to deny being explicitly racist.  One of the many types of new racist strategies Bonilla-Silva highlights is the use of racially charged code speak, or using indirect racial rhetoric and semantic moves to express an ideology that serves to reinforce white dominance over minorities.

I wrote a paper last semester that explored racially-coded language in "family values" and welfare-reform discourse, much of which is perpetuated by another Republican presidential hopeful, Rick Santorum.  

Santorum built his political career on promoting "family values" as the answer to social ills.  To move people off welfare, government must encourage the formation of families headed by heterosexual married couples.  Santorum authored the 1996 welfare reform act, which created Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ("TANF"), limited how long participants could rely on TANF, and capped funding.  The act also restricted food stamp eligibility.

Many conservative politicians and talking heads use coded "family values" rhetoric to rail against black low-income families (especially mothers, i.e. Reagan's infamous "welfare queens") and rally the white voting troops.  

Gingrich may owe his newfound success to dubbing Obama the food stamp president, as many white conservatives see the rise in welfare recipients as a moral failure and a threat to society.  If we would "get back" to the work ethic and family values on which our country was founded, we would see less poor, inner-city (read: black) families rely on government aid.

In light of GOP presidential candidates' disturbing racist rhetoric, and especially given many evangelicals' response to this rhetoric, I will share parts of my paper over the next few weeks.  

Much ink has been spilled recently over the African-American family (see Ralph Richard Banks' controversial book Is Marriage for White People?).  But I do not dare speak to or at black U.S. Americans who earn lower incomes or who are not in a "traditional" two-parent family.  

Rather, I'm interested in how the political discourse on family values and welfare has ugly undertones, often supported by white evangelicals.  Fred Clark at Slacktivist pointed out that Richard Land, "ethics czar" of the Southern Baptist Convention, defended Gingrich, accusing the NAACP of being too sensitive. Land even uttered the phrase “off the liberal plantation and out of the liberal barrio.” 

But aside from racially-coded language, the statistics, among all races, are intriguing.  Over the last 50 years, the number of married adults in the U.S. decreased by 20%.¹  Thirty-two percent of black adults are married, compared to 56% of whites.  Birth statistics tell the same story: the number of births to unmarried women in the U.S. rose from 5% in 1960 to 41% in 2008.  Among white mothers, 29% were unmarried in 2008, while 72% of black mothers and 53% of Hispanic-American mothers were single.  

Conservatives are not exaggerating numbers to incite panic about crumbling "family values."  But, using racially-coded language and blaming only people of color are too often hallmarks of some political and religious leaders' discourse.  This is why I'm interested in pulling back the curtain on such rhetoric.

---

¹All statistics are from the Pew Research Center, Pew Social & Demographic Trends, The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families, November 18, 2010.  

Graphic source

"What is most important for democracy is...that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands"

I started classes this week, one of which is Wills and Trusts.  My textbook has some interesting statistics and quotes about the passage of wealth from generation to generation.  Note this edition was published in 2009, well before any catchphrases about the 1% were coined.  

The baby boom generation inherited, between 1987 and 2011, $6.8 trillion:

Much of this wealth was built by their parents between the late 1940's and the late 1960's when real wages and savings rates were higher and housing costs were considerably lower.  [...]  Of course not all will benefit equally, or at all.  The richest one percent will divide one-third of the worth of estates, each inheritance per estate receiving an average of $6 million; the next richest nine percent will divide another third for an average inheritance of about $396,000.  Much of this wealth will be property.¹

Four of the top 10 spots in Forbes' list of 400 richest U.S. Americans belong to relatives of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, while 3 of the top 20 slots are held by Forrest Mars' family.  Mars invented M&M's candy.  

The concentration of wealth in the U.S. decreased sharply from 1929 to the 1940's, leveling off until the 1970's. However, the 1980's saw a sharp rise in the share of wealth held by the richest U.S. Americans.  By 2004, the richest 1% owned 34.3% of family wealth, and the top 10% owned an astonishing 71.2% of family wealth.  Many wealthy people are wealthy simply by virtue of being born.

The textbook offers a quote by philosopher Robert Nozick, who said this "sticks out as a special kind of unearned benefit that produces unequal opportunities."  And Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:

What is the most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands.  In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

We now enjoy less economic mobility in the U.S., and a recent study has suggested that conflict between rich and poor has surpassed even racism and nativism as a source of tension.  While many become rich simply by being born, 45 million others rely on food stamps to keep their family fed.

This is why I will be so intrigued with the 2012 presidential election.  Mitt Romney has warned against "a bitter politics of envy" in discussions about wealth inequality.  Romney even prefers to discuss questions about the distribution of wealth "in quiet rooms." 

My textbook authors imply that our system, with its entrenchment of wealth passed from generation to generation within privileged families, is a danger to democracy and equal opportunity.  An alternative to the U.S. system of passing wealth strictly within families is to require part or all of one's wealth upon death to be returned to society.  I use the word "returned" because no one becomes wealthy without help from society - take Wal-Mart for example.  It drives down wages by billions of dollars, so its employees have to rely on public aid.  Perhaps 4 of those top 10 richest U.S. Americans should thank the U.S. taxpayer for subsidizing the wages of their company's employees, thus helping the Walton's accumulate massive wealth.  Or am I simply being envious of their wealth?

I wonder if we've reached the breaking point, and discussions about wealth and inequality will bust out of those quiet rooms... 

________

¹Dukeminier, Sitkoff, and Lindren, Wills, Trusts, and Estates, 18 (2009, 8th Edition).

The "bad" part of town

I have a friend who's very concerned about sending her children to one of the school districts in our suburb.  While her children are not yet school-aged, my friend and her husband may sell their home and rent in a neighboring affluent suburb so they can send their children to a different school.  

While the raw numbers may show one school district has better test scores than another, occasionally I get the vibe from some white friends, who are otherwise kind, thoughtful people, that they do not want their children attending a lower-income school located in a higher-crime neighborhood with a majority of-color population.

My husband's kids attend schools in the very same school district from which my friend and her husband are attempting desperately to flee.  And shortly after my husband and I were married, we looked for a new apartment as the rent increase at our current place was too high.  We lived in the neighboring affluent suburb, and could really only afford to move to our current suburb, which in some parts has an "urban" feel and shares many of the same issues as "urban" areas.  

While looking for a new place, I would ask my husband, "Is this a 'bad' part of town?"  He would get offended, and (always keeping my privilege in check) would remind me that our closest friends--and his kids--live in this area.  I maintained my innocence.  I just didn't want to live in an area with high crime! 

It wasn't until I learned some nice (white) church ladies were afraid to volunteer at my stepdaughter's elementary school that I realized how offensive it is to label an entire geographic or demographic swath as "bad."  

I hang out with friends here, our kids play here - and you say it's too dangerous for you to come here and minister to elementary schoolkids and their families?  Combined with the implications of some white friends taking great measures to move out of our school district, I've realized that using these labels ignores the humanity of residents of lower-income, higher-crime areas.  More than the humanity - I've realized I disparage the image of God with which we're all endowed.

What does it really mean to use the word "bad" in reference to a neighborhood?  What does it mean to assume you would never send your children to school with the children in these neighborhoods, forking over money for private school or simply leaving altogether?  We have decided to keep the kids in public school, hoping to maintain a redemptive presence, somehow.  This is not to say our decision won't change or to cast judgment on those who make different decisions.  Yes, even my friend who is pulling out all the stops to get out of our district.  I simply take issue with the underlying implication that it's acceptable to write off a group of people as bad.

Having actually lived in a "bad" neighborhood for four years now, I suppose I dropped the word "bad" from my vocabulary in terms of entire parts of town or school districts.  What was once what I would ignorantly label a "scary" neighborhood is, I've realized, where children and families and churchgoers and image-bearers live.  So, this privileged white person has learned to think twice before I wrinkle my nose and make a remark about a bad part of town...

The clearest and most forceful teaching in the Bible

I already discussed Chapter 6 of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible, but wanted to dedicate a whole post to one part of the chapter that was challenging and convicting:

[I]t seems as if believers—myself included—distract themselves with the more obscure, speculative, and cryptic issues related to scripture precisely in order to avoid having to face and act on the parts that are very clear and directive. Why address the main issues when one can mess around with peripheral details? It is like a kid fixating all day on exactly how much to shut his bedroom closet door to obscure the mess in his room that his mother told him in no uncertain terms to clean. Wanting and trying to know what we evidently don’t need to know is a great way to avoid having to deal with other, more basic things that we already quite clearly know but prefer to avoid, delay, or ignore.

[...]

...the vast majority of American Christians ignore one of the most pervasive, clear, straightforward, obvious, and simple commandments in scripture: to give away their money generously. [...] The vast majority of American Christians—who in fact are the wealthiest believers in all of history and the world today—give away relatively little of their money to the church or other worthy causes. Some give nothing at all. Yet the Bible simply could not be more persistently clear and forceful in teaching that what we do with our money and possessions is of major spiritual significance, that God commands his people to give and share their money and possessions generously, and that those who are selfish and stingy with their money and possessions will be judged by God. Giving money away is not rocket science. Nearly all ordinary people can do it. Yet only a minority of American Christians does so faithfully.

Why then do so many Christians get so invested in figuring out the intricacies of various biblical and theological matters about which the Bible is not entirely clear when they already don’t and won’t obey scripture on the very clear and simple matter of being generous with money and possessions? How are such believers to expect God to work to deepen their faith and knowledge of spiritual matters when they simply refuse to do what scripture has already made painfully plain and necessary? 

(bold emphasis added).  I'm glad Smith reminds us of this point.  I love to debate about theology, church practice, and politics, but too often I let the most clear and simple command Jesus gave us get lost in the shuffle.  

A hungry person does not care whether I am a Calvinist or Arminian.  A person who has more month than paycheck could give a rat's ass whether I'm a biblicist or a post-conservative Christological-hermeneutic-supporting Barthian student of the Bible (whew!).  

I don't think Smith is advocating anti-intellectualism here, but it's healthy to keep quibbles over such-and-such verse or doctrine in perspective.    

Photo credit

Churches and the history of white suburbia...

The always-challenging Efrem Smith recently pointed out the "missional" movement's whiteness:

[T]he missional church conversation is mainly a European-American conversation and to this degree is presented as if the European-American Church is the pioneer of missional ministry in the [U.S.]. I also have an issue with the lack of focus on issues of justice and racial righteousness that is avoided in much of the missional conversation. But, what is really troubling, is that the Black Church and the Urban Church in the [U.S.] is ignored as the true pioneering and Christ-centered forces behind a historic and present model of the Missional Church. Ignoring these church models makes it seem as if an emerging generation of European-American evangelicals discovered a missional approach to ministry through theologians such as Bishop Leslie Newbigin.

A main reason for ignoring black churches is white evangelicals' complicated, uncomfortable history with their black neighbors.  We don't come to a historically-neutral table, even if many white evangelicals claim "It's not my fault, I'm not a racist!  I wasn't alive in the 1950's and '60's!"  

The circumstances behind the creation of the white suburban middle class shouldn't be ignored if white suburban Christians want to be missional.  And, once white suburban Christian realize they should partner with Christians of color rather than exclusively with whites, the suburbs' history still can't remain unacknowledged.

The mass migration from urban areas between the mid-1950's and the 1970's was largely fueled by white privilege, economic injustices, and institutional racism.  As a white suburban Christian myself, I wish more of us acknowledged the ugly past that formed our residential and worship communities.

Anecdotally, I know many white families moved from "the city" to the mostly white town I grew up in when city schools were de-segregated.  White parents did not want their children attending schools with black children, so part of my town's growth was fueled by racist responses to integration. 

On a broader scale, only the economically privileged had the wherewithal to move to suburbs.  Initially, living in suburbia necessarily meant commuting back to the city for work, so an automobile was a must.  And newly-constructed highways cut into urban neighborhoods, whose residents lacked political connections to fight the construction.  Such an imposition "was a traumatic and oppressive event for the people uprooted by the highway's swath."¹  I've discussed the conspiracy behind the beginnings of our "car culture," which suburbia depends on. 

Suburbia wasn't only fueled by injustices, but it perpetuated racial and economic inequality.  Racially restrictive covenants in deeds prohibited white buyers from renting or selling to blacks, which made many suburban areas racially homogeneous and kept many blacks from pursuing the economic mobility that whites enjoyed.

What does the church have to do with the history of the suburbs?  Willow Creek, Saddleback, and countless less prominent churches saw corresponding growth by virtue of their suburban location.  This growth, and megachurches' later influence in evangelicaldom, is not neutral.  

When many well-meaning suburban churches approach the "inner-city" or their low-income suburban neighbors to minister to them, many use simplistic, individual-level solutions that ignore the very reasons behind poverty.  

There's nothing wrong with feeding the homeless, conducting toy drives, or renovating a blighted home, but I would love to see recognition of past harmful structural forces.  Maybe then the church can creatively come up with solutions beyond the individual level.  I like what Shane Claiborne describes here - while still an individual-level response, it allowed a suburban congregation to serve inner-city folks in a dignity-preserving way.  Smith himself provided suggestions yesterday for churches seeking to be missional. 

Also, it's disingenuous to benefit from suburban growth--growth fueled by institutional racism--to enjoy the benefits of participating in an economically-successful Christian movement, and then to turn around and expect our black fellow Christians to simply start over with a clean slate.  

It seems disingenuous to expect to effectively evangelize or serve low-income populations and/or people of color while ignoring the privilege from which white suburbanites benefit.

It seems odd, too, that it rarely occurs to white suburban churches, when they want to focus on the Gospel's economic-justice facets, to partner with black churches, even though black churches have been articulating these facets for years.  (I recognize white suburbanites and black Christians are not monolithic, but use these designations for the sake of critiquing evangelicalism's general historical naivete and homogeneity).

Listening to and joining with a marginalized group, which has often articulated the justice-seeking heart of the Gospel better than white evangelicalism has done, is an important step in addressing historical and current injustices.  It will be more crucial as suburbs become less racially and economically homogeneous.  The poverty rate in the suburbs is on the rise, so the traditional urban-suburban divide is fading.  

Rather than moving even further out to the exurbs or simply shuttering their doors, it would be exciting if white suburban churches acknowledged they benefited from a history of racial and economic injustice.  It would also be exciting if these churches determined not to repeat past mistakes, and resolved to face present-day changes in the suburbs head on.  

___________________

¹ Kevin Douglas Kuswa, Suburbifcation, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine, 3 J. L. Society 31, 45 (2002).

Photo credit - 1st photo (Map of Chicago. Red dots = white population, blue dots = black population)

Photo credit - 2nd photo

Is a white girl worth more than a black girl? Chicago-area news outlets think so

In a very affluent Chicago suburb, a fourteen-year-old white girl was recently killed when she walked in on an intruder in her home.  The man who allegedly stabbed her is a black south-side Chicagoan.  I don't watch local TV news, but both the Tribune and the Sun-Times newspapers have reported extensively on this murder.  

My heart goes out to the young girl's family, as their grief must be gut-wrenching.  My critique of the news media's bias against people of color is not meant to minimize this family's pain.  However, I'm amazed at how much attention the murder of a suburban, affluent white girl has received, as compared to the murders of black young women that occur on Chicago's south side.

Although the suburban murder occurred on October 27, one angle of the incident is reported almost daily, and enjoys a front-page online link.  There were detailed reports about the funeral, the victim's tennis team rallying to honor their teammate, and the neighborhood's efforts to strengthen its watch program.  Weeks later, the Tribune has analyzed the suspect's mental health history.

I understand that a murder in a wealthy suburb is an unusual thing, and that the news outlets are reporting more prominently because they know these stories will garner more pageviews and TV viewers.  But I found several other equally-unusual and heartbreaking stories about young black women who have been killed, and aside from the initial news report, it seems there is no follow up on their murders.

In one instance, a pregnant teen begged for her life before being shot in the head.  In another, a six-year-old girl was shot while at a sleepover, even though the house was on a peacful block of its south-side neighborhood.  With yet another, we just get a cursory report of a seventeen-year-old girl being shot in the chest, with no other details.  If these victims would have been white residents of wealthier neighborhoods, I wonder how differently the media would have reported on these tragic events.

Rarely do we get follow-up reports on the memorial service, the community's grief, the victim's classmates, or the suspect's past when a person of color is murdered.  Simply looking at the news reports sends the message that an affluent white young woman's life is more valuable than a low-income, black young woman's.  The white girl's death is presented with many dimensions, as it affects her family and community, while the black girls' deaths are one-dimensional.  

The white young woman's death also appears to be more personalized.  In one report about the suburban girl's murder, a (presumably white?) policeman remarked he imagined he was searching for his own daughter's murderer.  There are no such sentiments expressed in articles about the young black women.  

Sadly, just as prosecutors are more likely to seek a death sentence when the victim is white, as opposed to a person of color, I suppose other parts of our society--both media outlets and their audience--find a white person's murder more noteworthy.  Any thoughts?

The church's call to struggle against white privilege

They [African-Americans] don’t want to work. . . . You go downtown and you see some of these apartments, low-income housing. It’s trash. I mean, they don’t care and then they complain. Well, get off your duffer and do something. Make a better life for yourself. Clean up your house, pick up your trash, get some kind of job. (a white evangelical on p. 102, Divided by Faith).

This semester, I've been introduced to critical race theory ("CRT"), which proposes, as Jim-Crow-era racism is gone, that whites have replaced it with subtle justifications of our structural dominance.

Implicit in the definition of a good, civic-minded American is conforming to white culture (yet remember whiteness and all racial categories are social constructs).  

Whiteness is the norm - taken for granted, invisible, maintained through whites' economic dominance.  Success and the status quo are conflated with whiteness.  This is why some whites ask, "Where is white history month?" in response to black history month, unaware every month celebrates white history and culture.  Or, why only "non-accented" "standard" English is acceptable in politics or the workplace.

Hiddenness and dominance mean whites promote individual solutions.  Are you poor?  Work harder!  Don't have children you can't provide for!  These solutions are color-blind and seem obvious to whites, so whites perceive disadvantaged people as not conforming to "simple" solutions.  Whites assume everyone has equal opportunity to succeed.  This is just one aspect of CRT - it has been applied to law, education, and more.

Because I want racial reconciliation in the church, I was thrilled to discover a CRT analysis of Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's Divided by Faith: Critical Whiteness Theories and the Evangelical "Race Problem:" Extending Emerson and Smith's Divided by Faith.  Eric Tranby and Douglass Hartmann argue that understanding evangelicalism's race problem allows a better understanding of America's race problem. 

Divided by Faith proposed white evangelicals are not more racist; rather, they hold more tightly to individualism and anti-structuralism.  White evangelicals strictly apply meritocratic principles. Although evangelicals believe in equal opportunity for all, they can't see one's plight could be determined by anything other than merit and hard work.  Such merit-based, individualist views demonstrate white evangelicals and non-evangelical white Americans "ladle from the same kettle” (342).

With CRT, Tranby and Hartmann find white evangelicals' individualism more harmful, not only because it ignores structures, but also because it allows whites to justify the status quo (Id.).  Evangelical and non-evangelical whites make the very cultural practices that privilege whites over others seem natural (Id.).  

White evangelicals' beliefs make marginalization of people of color seem normal, and they become blind to the racism lurking underneath.  These invisible cultural norms impede meaningful change.  Whites have no idea white behavior marginalizes people of color.

CRT shows the U.S. church's failure to be a subversive, countercultural, privilege-destructing presence.  Rather than unmasking and repenting of it, the church often reinforces white privilege.  Because white evangelicals' attitudes are no different from white Americans', the church has not thoughtfully critiqued what politicians and other cultural forces tell us.

In applying CRT to Christians' racial attitudes, I wondered if I'm uncritically accepting CRT without using Scripture to develop a response to racial injustice.  However, I do think Scripture addresses the racism lurking under the surface, and commands a response to it.  Ephesians 6:12 calls Christians to struggle against authorities and spiritual evil forces.  And Colossians 1:16-20 says:

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

We've relegated this struggle to nebulous demons or to what some feel is persecution of Christians.  However, what if the invisible privilege that white Christians unwittingly accept means we're called to struggle against far more complex and hidden powers? 

Brian J. Walsh and Syliva C. Keesmaat, in Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, say Greek words like throne, dominion, and power signify not only spiritual things, but "what Walter Wink calls the 'legitimations, sanctions, and permissions that undergird the everday exercise of power'" (Id.).  Walsh and Keesmaat assert these verses refer to the "very shape of life in the empire" and "dynamics of daily life" (92).

White Christians take for granted our privilege and exert it as an "everday exercise of power,"  failing to recognize its effects on people of color.  Perhaps invisible white dominance, reinforced through the status quo, is a power that Scripture commands us to confront, which has also been reconciled through Christ.

The above Divided by Faith quote illustrates the church has done little to confront harmful beliefs that African-Americans "don't want to work."  Also, when common white evangelical solutions only entail "getting off your duffer and doing something," perhaps we've failed to struggle against hidden forces of white privilege.

Any thoughts?  What would confronting the power of white privilege look like in practice?

Photo Credit (Whose flesh color is the ad referring to...?)