I should be writing a sermon.
But, I must write this down to stop it from pacing through the hallways of my mind.
From the time I was a young adult, I have been troubled by the plight of American ghettos. They are mostly black, mostly urban. Why have I been bothered? I don’t know, except to say that God pointed my eyes that way. Why must Americans live in isolated cycles of poverty and moral decay?
And so, in my own small ways, I have endeavored to work towards a solution when I can. I have befriended victims (they are also perpetrators of crimes, to be fair) from both Compton, California to Newark, New Jersey. I have led them to the truth of Jesus and sought to be a part of their lives as much as a person not imbedded in their culture can.
On that note, I have also contributed finances to people who do imbed themselves in urban communities, enabling them to do the work that needs to be done. I have purposely immersed myself in communities that overtly placed white and black Christians together in order to do church, worship, life, and ministry.
I have read books. I have sought to understand. Most importantly, I have shared my life with real individuals, at times enduring the social discomforts and insecurities on both sides to get to the point where two actual men could be friends, individuals, true equals in the one relationship that best exudes equality: friendship.
So, what is the problem?
I know who I am. Yet white evangelicals, black evangelicals, and the dominant media culture at large, imply, or even express explicitly that I am a racist.
Why am I a racist?
Because I disagree with the causes of the problems that plague black communities.
Allow me to explain. I know that segregation led to the isolation that allowed two separate but unequal worlds to grow together in America. When MLK led this country to the solution, to the understanding that forgiveness, desegregation, and love was the way forward, he undid the root of the problem. He pointed out that all men were the same, and to be judged by the same standard. Some had good character. Some did not. Judge men by their character, their demeaner, their behavior, their allegiance to what is good. Do no judge by the color of skin.
MLK’s solution should have set us on the right path, but since his time many things have improved, --many have also declined. The black family has been decimated. Violent crime in the urban centers has grown most among blacks and towards blacks. Out of wedlock motherhood, unsafe living environments, unsafe schools, men without fathers filling prisons, drugs ravaging urban societies…why?
The answer I give is the one that seems obvious to me. Reasonable people looking at data, to my mind, should land in a similar place. The problem is the government policy created and maintained mostly, but not completely by democrat legislators, liberal administrators in schools and companies, and foolish judges. The problem in short, is the government and social structures that claim they are helping—systemic oppression? Absolutely.
The good feeling that came after MLK’s impact on America led to welfare. Whites access welfare in great numbers too, but only in certain pockets of the country are whites so isolated, as many blacks are in urban centers, that they do not get the benefits of suburban culture.
For black Americans, when food stamps, and public housing, and other entitlements were developed to save the urban black man, they found themselves receiving these government goodies while living in societies already cut off from the benefits of the suburban world. The government paid workers to go and knock on all the doors of all the people in the cities that qualified for aid. Of course, that meant mostly black neighborhood. The mostly white, but also black, activists and government social workers recruited blacks onto the government dole. On a moral crusade to save the black man –and to make themselves feel good about saving the black man—Democrats, black activists, and social workers welded the chains onto many Americans, each link of the chain stamped with the words, “We’re here to help.”
Black urban centers in the 1950’s were disadvantaged when compared to many other ares. But, they had some positive blocks to build on in the future. Most black children were born to married parents in the 1950’s, where most fathers had jobs, bought their own houses (even if they weren’t in suburban white areas), or paid their own rent. Most went to church. Most went to inferior schools, but inferior in money, not in good students. Black children could learn in safety, and many excelled. In the 1960s and 1970’s, as the impact of MLK’s good message took hold, most blacks saw their houses torn down and replaced with monstrous government towers, and the goodness of the white liberal and the black activist was on display. The self-respect, the path to self achievement was stolen from the black man, replaced with the insulting message: “You can’t do this, so we will help. Here’s your food stamps.” How many fine liberals walked away saying, “There. We fed and housed the poor?” And how many politicians in the democrat party said, “There. We have their vote now?” And how many black men were robbed of their self-respect and dignity by their white and black liberal saviors?
Correcting this error has proved impossible so far. To say, “We need to change this system of how we do government help,” leads to the immediate charge of racism. No one wants to be called racist, so they stop arguing. This cowardice from conservatives, combined with the vote-producing enslavement coveted by democrats has create the cycle we have today. More money won’t fix the schools. More money won’t change the hood. And what do we hear? “That’s because we need reparations.” More of the same solutions to the same problems? More like, “we need more gas for the fire.”
The racist system is the government treatment of blacks as those not able to stand on their own. The system is not mono-chromatic either. Many, many black leaders make their livings doing nothing for the black community except for claiming to be the saviors of the black community. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, to name the two most obvious examples. Since 1970s, both men have become very rich, and very famous. Both have contributed to the continuing cycle of division in the culture, while calling for funding the government destruction of black people. They both claim to be “reverend.” They will one day be judged for their deeds.
They are not alone. The evil of affirmative action has continually sent the message to black Americans –“Hey dude. You can’t do without us. The white folks are all keeping you down.” This only leads to more hatred and division between white and black, as often whites wonder if their boss, who is black, is there because he is qualified or because he is lucky enough to not be white. SAT’s are being eliminated in many schools, presumably because white people invented those tests to keep a brother down. This is foolish, of course, and disproven every time a person who is less than pale in skin color does well. So what is the message to society? Let’s lower the standards or else black people won’t be able to pass the test. That’s an evil message.
And now, the madness is in full flower. Whites are racist and don’t know it. And if they don’t like hearing that, it is proof of their inability to see a problem that is clear to black people (who have been trained to think themselves constantly victimized), and of their white fragility. And if they disagree more, then they are racists. And if they don’t become activists for the leftists then they are certainly racists because they are not anti-racists. And the madness goes on and on, while the money keeps being raised, enriching democrat party campaigns and making millionaires of black race-hustlers.
Meanwhile, back in the city, more black babies will be aborted in New York than are born this year. In Chicago, 700 black people will be murdered in the streets every year (not by cops, but by other blacks caught in the same pain-producing urban hell). Babies will be born without fathers more often than not in the hospitals of East Saint Louis. The prisons will be filled with black men. And no one in the Democrat party or the government will do a single thing to help –nor will Robin DeAngelo, Ibrahim Kindi, or the entire BLM movement. They will get rich –I mean, richer. They will scold stupid and guilty white people. They will create a society in a constant fight.
And while all this goes on, in Compton, a young man, like my friend (his name is Don, but he goes by D-loc, if he is even still alive) many years ago, will have a sister who is raped by his mom’s boyfriend tonight. But she is better off than most the sisters of his friends because she is not yet on drugs or selling her body. And he will go out in the streets and find his true “family,” the people who make him feel like a man, and they will be wearing blue (not for cops, either). And they will take him in. And he will feel like somebody, as he heads down a road free of family responsibility, free of gainful employment, free of the law, and filled with dead ends. And if he ever asks why this happened, a democrat or an activist will tell him, “A white man did this to you. It ain’t your responsibility.” Anger will build up in his heart as he thinks, “I figured as much.”
And do you know the only shot he has? It’s not from affirmative action. It’s not from food stamps nor public housing. It’s not more funding for the local war-zone called his public school, where even if he survives unscathed, nobody cares about his grades or the quality of his learning, they just pass him on. His slim hope—and it is slim— of living a satisfying life, and escaping that environment, will not be government or activists. His hope will be some brave white, black, or Mexican who reaches out to these refugees of the human race; perhaps in the city, or in the Juvenile hell they call California Youth Authority, like the one in Camarillo, with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Or he may be the Jesus freak white guy from the Midwest who moved into the hood, who walks the streets in the day gathering kids to see a puppet show about Jesus, or who walks the streets at night to give blankets to freezing drug addicts. Or it might be the black store-front preacher, who has little Bible education, and is unknown in the largest “black” churches (I hate the term black churches) in the land, but hangs out at the basketball hoops looking for to gain the ear of the young men there, and tell them of the God who saves. And that worker may get to him. He may be able to help. But no one else will. And that Christian who reaches out? He will be called the enemy of society, a phobic person, or perhaps even a racist. The system either ignores or hates the Christian who is there truly to help. And that person? That’s me. At least, it was me, when I lived in California. It was me, when I lived in South Carolina. It was me, when I lived in Jersey. It is the people in my church (I live in a rural area now), who weekly are in the jails, and rehabs centers, bringing the gospel to people of all colors, caught in cycles of government “help.” I am the racist. We are the racists.
Hey, did you hear? DeAngelo wrote another book. And, did you hear, if you are against CRT that’s a dog whistle for racism. Should have known. Did you hear? The woman who founded BLM just bought a mansion with the white folks? All the woke people understand, right?
The problems will never get solved by the woke world, by the woke Christians, or by the government. If there is any help at all, it will be us “racists” who keep loving people because they are people, regardless of the color of their skin.
Well, now that that is off my chest, I’m going to write a sermon now.
From Thomas Sowell: Nearly a hundred years of the supposed “legacy of slavery” found most black children [78%] being raised in two-parent families in 1960. But thirty years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent [66%]. Public housing projects in the first half of the 20th century were clean, safe places, where people slept outside on hot summer nights, when they were too poor to afford air conditioning. That was before admissions standards for public housing projects were lowered or abandoned, in the euphoria of liberal non-judgmental notions. And it was before the toxic message of victimhood was spread by liberals. We all know what hell holes public housing has become in our times. The same toxic message produced similar social results among lower-income people in England, despite an absence of a “legacy of slavery” there.
If we are to go by evidence of social retrogression, liberals have wreaked more havoc on blacks than the supposed “legacy of slavery” they talk about.
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