Natalie Burris

Systems, privilege, and the "Top 200 Church Blogs" list

The Church Relevance blog recently compiled a list of the "Top 200 Church Blogs," which raised concerns over the overwhelmingly white, straight, and male nature of the list. The mechanics behind the creation of the rankings are a great illustration of systems and privilege. 

Critical race theory does an excellent job of exposing racism in social systems and groups. This field's most basic tenet is that race is an integral part of social organizations, and racism is an  institutionalized, ingrained feature of social systems. Critical race theory holds that everyone in a social system furthers that system through social practices, reproducing the power and prestige of the system. Those with the most power and prestige are the most privileged, which means they have the most advantage over others, even if this advantage was passed down through generations. (For more on privilege, check out Dianna Anderson's great series, starting here.)

Systems (including religious, legal, and academic systems--and even the blogosphere) tend to be affected by inertia. Most systems, by their very design, are resistant to changes to their usual state. This means it is exceedingly difficult to push against the norms inside the system. The system itself does the work for the privileged individual.

With discrimination, for example, an institution can be raced and gendered in ways in which the institution appears to be race- and gender-neutral, but in reality is dominated almost exclusively by white men or other groups who enjoy privilege. The system works in such a way that the institution discriminates on behalf of its individual members against women, LGBTQ people, and people of color, while favoring white, straight men. The individuals themselves do not have to be racist or sexist in order to perpetuate inequality. In fact, most participants in a system would vehemently deny that they intend to focus exclusively on white, straight men. They are nice people for crying out loud!

For instance, when Kent Shaffer at Church Relevance describes his efforts to compile a list of "top 200 church blogs," he points to seemingly objective measures, such as Alexa Rank and Google Page Rank. While Shaffer acknowledges that his criteria are flawed and subjective, the mechanics behind creating the list reveal that those who have power and prestige will continue to have power and prestige. The "system" reinforces, reproduces, and perpetuates itself, the "system" here being networking and influence of white, straight, Christian men. Claiming to look at the blog-world in a purportedly "neutral" way, using traffic and subscription numbers, masks the fact that one group of people holds the most power and prestige in Christian blogging. One does not have to be a blatant racist, sexist, or homophobe to create a list consisting almost exclusively of white, straight, Christian men - the system works it out for you.

To fight this inertia, I hope one realization that results from rankings like these is that people with the most power and prestige must make a conscious effort to ensure that the voices of women, LGBTQ people, and people of color are heard. If you are a white, straight, Christian man, please take a look at the blogs you read and the people you follow on Twitter. Do they look like you? Take a look at the books you read on theology and ministry. Do their authors look like you? If so, would you be willing to join with me and fight the inertia?

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Privilege and silence of white "beyond evangelicals"

Encouraging things are happening within U.S. evangelicalism.  No longer solely aligned with Religious Right politicians, six-day creationists, anti-gay movements, and other conservative-leaning groups, many evangelicals are questioning the status quo.  We're concerned about the environment and poverty, and have moved away from a premilennial dispensationalism that disregards the now.  Rather than dish out condemnation, we've learned to be more willing to extend grace.  

Various labels describe these movements: emergent, missional, progressive.  Frank Viola chose the name "beyond evangelical."  I'm conflating several different strains here, but the general direction has been away from the evangelicalism that emerged in opposition to modernism.

While these developments are encouraging, I've noticed most progressive evangelicals are no different from their predecessors when it comes to race.  The heavy-hitters in these movements are white, and the privilege that comes with being white remains even in the new evangelical streams.

Efrem Smith often points this out, and I've shared how evangelicalism's growth was spurred by corresponding growth of white suburbia and its racist underpinnings.  If you follow Anthony Bradley on Twitter, he also provides great critiques of evangelicalism's whiteness, and Lisa Sharon Harper discusses the black-white divide here.

What most determines what progressive evangelicals believe or what they feel worth promoting is not their faith.  The dividing line is actually race.  

A great illustration of this color line is the death penalty.  Attorneys have meticulously researched the psychology behind jury selection.  Researchers have found that "similar religious beliefs can lead to completely opposite policy preferences among respondents of different racial backgrounds." Black evangelicals are more inclined to oppose the death penalty than white evangelicals, who are more likely to support it.¹ 

Although it's fair to say that most of these new kinds of white evangelicals have reconsidered their stance on the death penalty, to have a more consistent pro-life ethic, another illustration of the color line between white evangelicals, including the more progessive ones, and Christians of color is happening right now.  

Natalie Burris ‏ @natalieburris

Such a color line in my timeline re: Trayvon Martin. Who do you think is tweeting about his murder, who do you think has made barely a peep?

Yes, Twitter is anecdotal and unscientific.  But the radio silence from white evangelicals - even the more progressive ones - is disappointing.  White evangelicals yield a lot of influence, politically, economically, and in the media, enjoying massive amounts of privilege.  Invisible Children's recent "Kony 2012" campaign demonstrated that earnest, well-meaning, young evangelicals are capable of spurring world leaders to action and causing 100 million hits on a YouTube video.

 

But when the uproar over the murder of a black child, Trayvon Martin, goes viral, most white evangelicals are silent.  Despite adhering to a religion that came from the margins, many white evangelicals' privilege keeps them silent.  White evangelicals are oblivious to the invisible knapsack of privilege they carry around.  Most don't have to worry if their children will be shot when returning from the corner store.  Most don't even have to think about race itself.

Whiteness is neutral, the air they breathe.  White evangelicals can remain oblivious to the injustices that people of color face in the U.S.

Sadly, their whiteness, rather than their faith, is what informs their thinking.  Here's another take on the color line:

Blacks [...] support the death penalty less than any other major social group (about fifty-eight percent in the 1998 election survey), largely because they are keenly aware of the way in which capital sentencing values the lives of black victims and offenders less than those of their white counterparts.  More white conservative Christians would be likely to appreciate this flaw at the heart of the system if they interacted more with their black brothers and sisters. 

[...]

[M]any black leaders are skeptical of [white evangelicals' efforts to add black members to their churches]. In their view, such contacts have gone on for years, are largely symbolic, and have not increased white suburban evangelicals' concern about the situation of racial minorities or the needs of the inner cities.  Black leaders remark that whites want to form individual friendships with blacks, but that they balk at confronting social and political issues such as inequality in the economy and racism in the criminal justice system.²

Trayvon Martin's murder is a major issue in the African-American community.  It must hurt deeply to see a group as influential as white evangelicals not take initiative to spread the word, despite taking very energetic initiative recently to "make Kony famous."

White "beyond evangelicals:" if you haven't tweeted, blogged, signed a petition, or otherwise promoted the unjust circumstances surrounding Trayvon Martin's murder, I'm interested to know why.  As you can tell from the absence here on my blog, I've been busy, so I understand many simply don't have time to react to every current event.  But many are online all day, and many have smartphones.  

I also have a broader question: do you know any people of color?  If not, why not?  Do you actively make efforts to read or listen to perspectives from Christians of color?  If not, why not?

I'm curious about the general silence from my fellow white Christians with regard to Trayvon Martin. This silence should give us pause.  Let's examine whether our whiteness is the most important factor in our lives, rather than our faith in a subversive Christ.  And to white evangelicals who push against the status quo: let's keep pushing.

____________________

¹ Melynda J. Price, Performing Discretion or Performing Discrimination: Race, Ritual, and Peremptory Challenges in Capital Jury Selection. 15 Mich. J. Race & L. 57, 87-8 (Fall 2009).

² Thomas C. Berg, Religious Conservative and the Death Penalty. 9 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 31, 58 (2000).

Wheaton problems, evangelical problems

It wasn't until my senior year at Wheaton, in 2005, that my friends and I signed up for Facebook.  "Status updates" weren't yet an option.  Twitter wasn't even launched until after I graduated from Wheaton.  This means that my peers and I didn't have an instant social media forum to share our opinions.

Even in our oh-so-ancient pre-Twitter era, we still found a way to communicate, converse, and share opinions on campus, but I bet the advent of smartphones and easily-accessible social media has dramatically changed how information flows in such a tight-knit community.  One such change is students tweeting during chapel services, using the #chapeltweets hashtag.

Each February, usually in honor of black history month, Wheaton has a chapel dubbed "Rhythm and Praise," in which students (of all backgrounds, but the majority are black) lead a "gospel-style" worship service.  Keep in mind that the college is overwhelmingly white, with very few students of color.  Last Friday, some white students sent out a series of racially insensitive and derisive tweets during this particular chapel.  Noah Toly, an urban studies professor and director of the Urban Studies Program, summarized the tweets here.

My heart is heavy for the students who led worship that day.  I can't imagine how painful it must be to know that your fellow Christians take your worship style lightly, or wish for a return to business-as-usual. 

As I'm no longer on campus, I don't want to portray the events incorrectly.  However, I did want to comment on many white students' and alumni's responses I've seen online.  What may seem like an isolated incident at a Christian college reveals, to me, a bigger issue within white evangelicalism as a whole.  One white professor thinks we should be quiet about the incident, because "talking it out" sometimes piles on to the hurt.  One presumably white alum sees nothing wrong with stating a preference toward "traditional" worship styles.

White evangelicals have a complicated, uncomfortable history with our black neighbors, and we don't come to a historically-neutral table.  Christian Smith has asked believers to "stop excluding, dismissing, discounting, and ignoring other Christians" who don't belong to their own "in-group."  Speaking of in-groups, many white evangelicals have created an "insider" culture, with our own unwritten grammar of conduct and nuances of cultural idiom.  

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a preference for a European or white U.S. American style of worship.  But when we white evangelicals convince ourselves that our worship services, music, preaching style, and other aspects of church life are simply "neutral" or "traditional," we effectively shut out Christians of color, even if excluding others is not our intent.  When Christians of color point out how hurtful it can be to "joke around" about a particular worship style--even when the comment was made with no harm intended--a defensive response only makes the wound grow deeper.  

Anthropology professor Brian Howell, who was extremely influential during my own time at Wheaton, explains that a seemingly neutral statement or preference can still perpetuate hurtful racism, even if the person who makes such a statement or has such a preference isn't a racist:

When someone listens to gospel music and declares it "disorganized," (true example from #chapeltweets), he may just be intending to say that he doesn't know where to look; there's a lot going on; he is confused. At the level of intention and reference, nothing racial there. But indexically there are some layers here. Mind you, the performance in question did not involve people forgetting the lyrics, bumping into each other, or not knowing who should step up to the mic. At that level it was orderly. But it was more complex than some other (European based) forms of music. To call it "disorderly" is to make a comparison. To what? To "orderly" worship. To "normal" worship. To "white" worship. 

On a broader scale, I wonder what white evangelicals could learn from this teachable moment.  Perhaps we could realize that worship styles and church services are not race-neutral.  Worship and the theology that underlies it are rooted in a specific context, which includes race.  White evangelicals may not think our views about church or worship have a racial influence. We instead consider them race-neutral.  Only allowing space or only legitimizing white, suburban, middle-class preferences, then, can speak volumes. 

When it comes to worship, one of the most vulnerable times in the practice of one's faith, perhaps we should unpack our preferences and question our assumptions, as Dr. Howell mentioned.  What seems completely natural to one group of believers may have a different meaning for another.  At the foot of the cross, why would we make value judgments or insist that one's preferences are somehow neutral?  

What was there all along...

The next section in Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible deals with "A Historically Growing Grasp of the Meaning of the Gospel."  It provides a helpful tool for thinking about a closed canon.  Smith writes: "[T]he Christian church’s historically progressive understanding and working out of the meaning and implications of the gospel as mediated to us through scripture has never in church history been complete and is not now complete."  

The common evangelical belief is that the New Testament provides all we need to know theologically, and modeled how believers work out the gospel in a "particular sociohistorial context.  This does not mean the New Testament authors "understood and worked out all the long-term implications of the gospel for theological knowledge, human life, and society."  Later generations continued to develop the authors' theology in new ways.  It took over 350 years "to work out orthodox, catholic, christological, and trinitarian doctrines, which most evangelicals still affirm as theologically nonnegotiable today." I loved his description of this process, "theological wrangling."

"What was embryonic in scripture needed to develop and grow into a more mature theological expression of what was there all along."  Smith argues the New Testament authors had simply not "worked out the full implications" of the truth they so cherished, but which later generations of Christians have formulated.

Slavery is a prime example of this "unfolding."  The New Testament authors did not work out the gospel's moral implications for slavery.  This has caused many to reject Christianity, which is understandable.  I believe the doctrine of inerrancy keeps this stumbling block in place, ossifying what is supposed to be inchoate.  

Smith notes early Christians were, "like all humans, limited in time, place, and range of vision." For them, slavery was an unalterable fact of life.  The Gospel merely meant slaves should submit to their masters and masters should treat their slaves well.  But, the Gospel started planting seeds, "in the form of the then-radical idea that slaves and masters were equals and brothers in Christ."

For all Christians to unequivocally understand that the Gospel means the end of slavery took time and struggle--wrangling.  Today, all Christians look back and clearly know the truths of the Bible unfold in such a way that slavery is wrong.  The denouncement of slavery was not itself a teaching found anywhere other than in embryonic forms in the New Testament. But eventually all Christians grasped this truth by fleshing out the Gospel's ramifications.  Smith explains: 

[T]he total meaning of the gospel did not land on the apostles’ doorsteps the day after Pentecost, like a cognitive FedEx package containing everything the church would ever need to know, think, and believe until Jesus returns in glory. The apostles understood and preached the truth of salvation in Jesus Christ. But they did not know and teach the fullness of the many implications of that truth for doctrine, relationships, and society. That was a task given to subsequent generations of believers across church history.

He later describes this process as a "slow but ultimately revolutionary leavening of the gospel in human life," not overtly prescribed but nevertheless a valid result of New Testament teachings.  

Smith's use of slavery as an example, to me, highlights the necessity of decolonizing our faith.  Of course there were those who knew from the start that slavery was unequivocally wrong - slaves themselves!  And I'm wary of describing the process as slow.  Just as Martin Luther King Jr. warned against white moderates' desire to take the civil rights movement more slowly, I wouldn't want the gradual, historical unfolding of the Gospel to sanction a delay in ensuring the liberty for all at the foot of the cross.

But back to Smith - he cites a litany of verses to support this premise (in a...biblicist sort of way), but his point remains that evangelicals only apply the "working out" and "growing" verses individualistically. Rather than strictly personal spiritual growth, what if these verses addressed the church's collective understanding of the Gospel?  What if truth itself is developing, unfolding, and dynamic, like a mustard seed, or yeast spreading through rising dough?

Pervasive interpretive pluralism frames the Bible as the complete and final teachings on all subjects.  But let God-fearing, Bible-believing Southern Christians in the nineteenth-century U.S. remind us: failure to grasp a historically progressive understanding of Scripture results in support for one of the ugliest times in human and American history, undergirded by what appears to be the Bible's defense of slavery.  

If a developing, dynamic truth sounds uncomfortably close to postmodernism, most of us would acknowledge that denouncing slavery didn't require a radical postmodern turn away from "objective truth."  I still believe truth has roots, but perhaps we've got to keep watering seeds and wrangling, careful not to let the Gospel fossilize.  Or perhaps we should be more careful not to let our understanding of the Gospel ossify, lest we fail to see what was there all along.

Myopia now...empty pews later

Scot McKnight shared an observation yesterday from historian David Hempton about the evangelical awakening, an 18th-century movement that formed the basis for modern evangelicalism in the U.S. and the U.K. 

One of the prominent features Hempton noted about this awakening is that  “… most surveys have shown that the majority of the rank-and-file was female. … One does not have to burrow very deeply into the archives of Evangelical awakenings to detect the ubiquitous influence of ‘pious women’ over siblings, husbands, children, parents and friends..."

This observation stood in great contrast to Slacktivist's post, also from yesterday, about People Who Don't Listen to Women, specifically John Piper and the U.S. Catholic bishops:

[O]ne big problem with not listening to women is that there are several billion of them not to listen to. If you choose to ignore them, they may return the favor, but only for so long as you’re not actively harming them. Once your ignorance leads to harm, they’re likely to remind you, forcefully, that they do in fact exist and that they don’t in fact have to take your abuse.

[...]

A long history of not listening won’t be easy to overcome. And much of what the bishops are about to hear will be silence. The silence of empty pews. The silence of the empty spaces left behind by the women who used to belong to their churches.

Those women will leave because they’ve been told one too many times that they’re not wanted there. They’re listening, and they hear exactly what the bishops are telling them.

I agree - evangelicals and Catholics who marginalize women may soon find emptier pews.  But I would extend this even further.  Just as women revitalized the church in the 18th century, people of color in the U.S. and the global south are the next wave of Christianity.  Those who see no value in listening to minorities (and soon-to-be majorities) will be...left behind.

Eugene Cho explains:

Our nation is moving rapidly towards racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity, and American Christianity is bearing witness to these dramatic changes. Workplaces, congregations, conferences, and readerships are all changing to reflect this reality, but Christian leaders are lagging behind in attaining the cultural intelligence they need in order to navigate through this multi-cultural reality.

The old guard would prefer not only white women to remain silent, but also women and men of color. The whiteness of many movements who in fact speak out against the likes of Piper and the U.S. Catholic bishops demonstrates that a low "cultural IQ," as Cho calls it, is pervasive in many wings of the church.  I couldn't help but think of Andrew Walls' The Missionary Movement in Christian History, where he writes:

The exponential growth of the Christian faith in the African continent in the past century or so seems to me to raise the question whether this massive encounter with a new body of thought and network of relationships may not be as determinative of the future shape of Christianity as was the encounter with the Greek world. (xviii) 

Perhaps if we only read, interact with, and agree to learn from North American and Western European men, we're missing out on an influential and historical movement, and may soon find that our myopic behavior translates into empty pews.  Walls later discusses the difference between reading the Bible in Zulu in South Africa versus reading it in a "comfortable bourgeois congregation [who] meets in some Western suburbia" (15).  It makes me wonder if we would gain another perspective in our debates here in the global North about biblicism or gender roles, for example.  

Walls points out that "[t]heology in the Third World will be, as theology at all creative times has always been, about doing things, about things that deeply affect the lives of numbers of people" (10).  

Guardians of patriarchy and a white status quo, as well as those who work to keep women of faith from having access to health care: your theology deeply affects the lives of all women and of all people of color.  You may be winning the "culture war" now, but a church that continually marginalizes people based on their gender and race, either implicitly or explicitly, de facto or intentionally, will struggle to see another "great awakening." 

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. 

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"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

What does U.S. slavery have to do with white evangelicals and political rhetoric?

This post is part of a paper I'm sharing as a result of disturbing, racially-coded rhetoric used by Republican presidential hopefuls.

Although many politicians uphold family values as a cure to social problems and see the decline of family as a moral failure, such discourse privileges the European-American hegemonic definition of family.  I've previously defined hegemony, which is a dominant group enforcing its norms against others.

The traditional ideal of family, which many politicians want to impose, is a sole heterosexual married couple and their biological children.  Ideally, the husband is the main wage-earner, who earns enough to allow his wife to at least dedicate more time to childrearing, even if she also works. 

Welfare policy and its surrounding rhetoric rely on the above definition of family.  Traditional "family values" discourse is racialized, even without explicitly using racist language.

The white hegemonic notion of family has been simultaneously held from, used, and imposed onto black families both throughout history and today.  This type of family is held out as a cure-all for social problems, and many African-Americans’ failure to conform is viewed by white religious and political conservatives as a moral shortcoming.

Slavery and the historical development of welfare have served up racially-charged, damaging rhetoric.  Slavery began the systematic degradation of black families and the distortion of many whites' perceptions of blacks.

The disruptions and distortions began as soon as European-Americans brought African slaves to U.S. soil.  Early historians already blamed failure to form families on slaves' alleged character deficiencies.¹ 

(Note there is no singular definition of the antebellum slave family.  Whites’ systematic denigration of slave families should not detract from complex family structures in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and other West African countries, commonly exploited by slave traders.  West African family models were communal and child-centered, and many did not look like "traditional" white U.S. families.)

Slaves were thrown into a system with no concern for family relationships, a system rife with double standards.  Family formation was allowed when convenient for slaveowners, but prohibited when considered a threat. 

The biological tie of a slave mother and slave father to their child was critical in conferring slave status, yet when white male slaveowners had children with slaves, this familial tie was downplayed.  No matter who fathered the child, she would be a slave if born to a slave mother.  To preserve white supremacy, slaveowners reinforced the socially-constructed racial caste system by emphasizing a clear demarcation between black and white.

In the antebellum South, some slaveowners encouraged marriage to ensure loyalty, while also portraying themselves as moral, benevolent masters.  But, a marriage could be dissolved at the master’s whim, or by a sale of one or both spouses.  In fact, a slaveowner’s desire to have his women slaves provide slave offspring would result in forcing women to live with various men at different times.  Monogamy—much less marriage—was not many slaveowners’ concern.  

Another systematic denigration is that black women were left out of the definition of a “good mother.”  Slave mothers were continually forced to perform backbreaking labor, so the era's dominant mindset, which emphasized women as nurturing, stay-at-home mothers, rendered slave mothers aberrant.²  

Slaveowners maintained racially-based slavery, but at a cost: relatives were ripped apart, and slaves were often prohibited from establishing families.  “Family” was an empty concept, allowed and simultaneously prohibited in paradoxical ways when convenient for whites. 

What do the rhetoric and hypocrisy surrounding slave marriage and family have to do with white evangelicals today?  This history informs the current "family values" rhetoric.  In my next post, I'll share the political rhetoric that reared its ugly head once welfare recipients moved largely from "deserving" white widows, veterans, and Depression-era families with temporary setbacks, to predominantly single mothers of color.  

A discussion of this rhetoric can't be done unless we acknowledge the hypocrisy (of many "devout Christian" slaveowners) and systematic degradation of black families as a result of slavery.  

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¹ Damian Alan Pargas, Boundaries and Opportunities: Comparing Slave Family Formation in the Antebellum South, 33 Journal of Family History 316-345, 316 (2008). 

² Adrien Katherine Wing, Laura Weselmann, Transcending Traditional Notions of Mothering: The Need for Critical Race Feminist Praxis, 3 J. Gender Race & Just. 257, 273 (1999).

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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.

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

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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...