A belated introduction to an article on Obam's faith-based initiative:

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Maybe Obama actually means it: Faith Based

The case against the supposed political motivation of Obama's "tack to the right" in his speech outlining his plan to expand government funding to faith-based charities (PDF) is an even easier slam dunk. It annoys me what it says about how little the almost entirely white journalism establishment understands about black Americans that they think that the first credible black Presidential candidate would only shovel money to churches for political reasons. This is one area where black history and white history are diametrically opposed. First, the relevant white history: even the most religious white colonists who first came to America, the Puritans who made up over 80% of all the non-natives in America by 1640, came here fleeing from a church. From two of them, actually: the Catholic Church, and the Church of England. They had fought a war in England against the imposition of state-sponsored Catholicism. They took one look at what state-sponsorship was doing to their own Protestant faith and its ministers, and came here opposed, at least initially, to that, too. Stamped in the DNA of white America is a deep and abiding suspicion of organized religion. Even the most pious fundamentalist assures himself (delusionally, in many cases) that he, not some clergyman, let alone some government-supported clergyman, is his own highest moral authority after God and the Bible. For crying out loud, white American Catholics believe that, and that's 100% opposed to stated Catholic doctrine.


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But Senator Obama's proposal is neither proof that he's a right-wing Democrat in disguise, nor a dishonest attempt to portray himself as more moderate than he is, nor a liberal plot to advance the homosexual agenda. How do I know this? Occam's Razor. It is far, far simpler to believe that he is just that much of a believer in the black church, like nearly every educated black man in America. Remember that different black-versus-white historical experience I mentioned earlier? Let me finish that thought. Because, you see, black Americans' ancestors didn't come here fleeing any kind of church; they were captured by enemy tribes back in Africa and sold to white plantation owners as slaves. Those plantation owners lived in constant fear of organized revolt by their slaves; the term "monomania" was originally coined by southern plantation owners, for whom this "obsession" that black slaves had with getting free, their unwillingness to accept their fate, was seen as a mental sickness. But the one organization that black slaves were allowed, the one time they were allowed to gather under their own authority without white overseers, was in church on Sunday morning. At the time of emancipation, all black leaders in America were ministers, except for a tiny handful up north. And under the Jim Crow laws that were enacted to keep "freed" slaves enslaved in practice, and in the face of substantial barriers of institutionalized racism in education and hiring, it stayed true for another hundred years. Virtually the only black college graduates were seminary graduates in the American Methodist Episcopal and American Baptist churches; until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, practically the only good-paying job for black Americans was pastor of an AME or a Baptist church. As a result, up through 1964, the pastorate was a highly coveted job, one that without almost any exceptions attracted the best of the best, the brightest of the brightest. There have even been some black intellectuals who've complained about one of the unwanted side effects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act being that the black church lost its monopoly on intellectual and moral authority, and a few of them blame that at least as much as they blame racist economics for the high rates of single parenthood in black America.


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EDIT: In which Fengi does some masterful filleting of this article here

So this commentary will be struck:
This kind of thing is the reason why facile and easy condemnations of religion when applied to minorities somply do not work. Because, for the most part, these condemnation are rooted in the white experience and history, and the fact is that MINORITIES HAVE HAD DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES WITH RELIGION. And this fact is something that so many people have SO MUCH TROUBLE understanding, for some strange reason. Now, I hate the faith-based initiative. I am from the school where I simply do not want churches in charge of gov't money. Yes, some of them do some exceptional work, but some of them have been right pains in the asses. But at the same time I would love for criticsm of this idea to be nuanced, taking into account the different circumstances and histories of the new players on the block. Cause no matter what many white liberals think, THERE ARE DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES AND HISTORIES OF AMERICA. Therefore, people's worldviews are gonna be different.

Comments

[oh-annalouise.livejournal.com]

I hopefully will post a more substantive comment later...but thank fucking god somebody is saying this.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Really? It seems to me most of Fox News is making pseudo-logical arguments that Barack Obama will be more loyal to black churches than America as president.

Here's the conclusion of Brad's post: "So given that difference in how white Americans and black Americans feel about their churches, if you thought that America's first black President wasn't going to funnel money any which way he can to the African Methodist Episcopal church, and probably the American Baptist Church, and conceivably even smaller black denominations like the Nation of Islam, by any means possible, whether you or I or any white person likes it or not?"

Yes that's right, Obama may seem like other social conservative Democrats, but in reality he will FUNNEL MONEY ANY WAY HE CAN to his religion because that's Just How Black People Are about their church. Unlike white Catholics, who are willing to defy doctrine to place themselves above clergy. Black people can't possibly do that, given their history.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Hmm. It came across to me that he was saying that different decisions are made based on different histories, not that he was questioning Obama's or black America's patriotism. So is my little blurb underneath the article wrong?

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry but how is asserting "he just plain likes and respects the black churches that much and wants them to be richer whatever it takes" not repeating the idea Obama has more loyalty to his religion to his country?

Brad is saying Obama is different from all other politician who had policies which trusted religious social service organizations with government funding. Brad is saying that Obama is not like Bill Clinton who campaigned on charitable choice legislation which was the basis of Bush's faith based initiative.

No, he's saying Obama is proposing these ideas because "wants them [Black Churches] to be richer whatever it takes". How is this any different than what is said about Jews?

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I see what you are saying. Didn't know that about Bill Clinton either. See this kind of analysis is what I wish that bloody media would engage in, cause damn that would be eye-opening and one would be able to understand what the hell is going on helps one to make decision much more sensibly.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Funny how Brad's psuedointellectual rumination reaches the same conclusion as Fox News racists: "So given that difference in how white Americans and black Americans feel about their churches, if you thought that America's first black President wasn't going to funnel money any which way he can to the African Methodist Episcopal church, and probably the American Baptist Church, and conceivably even smaller black denominations like the Nation of Islam, by any means possible, whether you or I or any white person likes it or not?" Ah, so Obama's RACE means he is inherently predisposed to favor black churches ANY WAY HE CAN, a thoughtless reflex, if you will, which overrides his own stated positions on the constitution. Um, how is this not utterly racist "Black Manchurian Candidate" bullshit?

It not only repeats the present day smears but repeats the canards uttered by "thoughtful" bigots about JFK being loyal to the pope. But I guess that didn't count because, as Brad points out, WHITE Catholics were raised in a tradition of independence. Unlike those poor traumatized black people.

I don't mind "what if" think pieces and I enjoy spinning theories using dubious half-remembered knowledge...but not when this mental exercise hides it's flaws and pretends to be some deeper insight "They" lack.

Brad often uses incorrectly recalled or fabricated ideas in his bloviation and truthy generalizations. For example: "the term "monomania" was originally coined by southern plantation owners". No, the term was coined by Etienne Esquirol in his book Mental Maladies; a Treatise on Insanity. Brad is probably thinking of is drapetomania which is indeed a racist pseudoscience word.

If one makes the arrogant statement: "It annoys me what it says about how little the almost entirely white journalism establishment understands about black Americans" then spouting ill researched hot air and facile generalizations makes one worse than the lazy and racist media one dismissed.

Like this: "It is far, far simpler to believe that he is just that much of a believer in the black church, like nearly every educated black man in America." Ah yes, no educated black man has ever questioned the church or been actively non-religious and apparently The Nation of Islam doesn't count at all.

"At the time of emancipation, all black leaders in America were ministers, except for a tiny handful up north." I'd like to see the magic history book he's using. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Hiram Revels, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey, Sojourner Truth et. al. would be interested to know they don't count. And "until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, practically the only good-paying job for black Americans was pastor of an AME or a Baptist church." Why yes, there were no economic opportunities which drew black populations to the industrial north had nothing to do with it, nor do Pullman Porters count, etc.

I'd argue Brad shows a major failure in understanding when he misreads the church status as safer than secular locations with creating a loyalty among African Americans which is any greater or lesser than white devotion.

I'd also like to him to name at least one of these "black intellectuals who've complained about one of the unwanted side effects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act being that the black church lost its monopoly on intellectual and moral authority" because sounding plausible isn't enough.

Brad seems on better ground when he writes about his own past and the reasons Southern Baptists had to be suspicious of government involvement. Except, of course, he seems to presume black churches would have reason for a different view - ignoring how the infamous Rev. Wright sermon used by Fox News was called Confusing God and Government

I might even go as far to assert Brad is a typical white guy who can't be bothered to investigate his thesis because he confuses entitlement with actually doing the work.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I'd also point to this quote from a somewhat better random think piece, "The 10 Biggest Myths About Black History":

In American history, as in American life, Black Americans are invisible presences. They are not seen, not because of their absence but because of the presence of a myth that prepares and requires their absence. The myth of absence, which expresses this idea and intention, operates not by misinterpretation and slander but by silence and exclusion. By simply not mentioning certain realities and by removing Black actors from scenes in which they played supporting and sometimes starring roles, the manipulators of the myth change the color of the past and control perceptions and acts in the present. It is not accident, therefore, that the dominant images of popular history, the images of Minutemen, Pilgrims, Cowboys and Soldiers in Blue, are white images. But these images, which are the staples of mass media, are selections from a multicolored whole which included both Black and White Actors. And to grasp the American experience in its fullness, we have to remember that Blacks were present and acting at almost every major event in American history. They were the bridge in Concord and on Bunker Hill in Boston. They were at Valley Forge with Washington and at Appomattox with Grant. And they are the keys to an understanding of Thomas Jefferson and Monticello and Abraham Lincoln and Gettysburg. Neither the Civil War nor Reconstruction can be understood without reference to the missing images. For it is the Black presence or, to be more precise, the presence of Black actors which explains the Old South and the New South and the urban North. One can go further and say that a precise understanding of the Old West would necessarily include Black images. For although TV and the movies have managed somehow to overlook them, Black cowboys rode and wrangled in the West. They were at Abilene and Dodge City and Cheyenne. They fought with and against Billy the Kid. And if the Black cowboys and soldiers and Minutemen are invisible today, it is not because they were absent in the past; it is because men and women have manipulated the images of the past in order to make their descendants invisible in the present.

By repeating this myth of absence in his piece, Hicks ends up buying into the same racist assertion that blacks can't be good patriots - reached through a liberal reductionism of complex attitudes about citizenship which inadvertently repeat arguments for denying them it.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Nice repudiation, this. May I ask you to maybe crosspost to atheismandrace post on the subject? Do you know of any books or aticles that really get to the nub of Black America and its relationship with Christianity?

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I'm still digging into this - so far I've just found discussions encouraging people to change to the Nation of Islam, which is not the same as questioning religion's role in civil rights.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I do know of Black Freethinkers, some of them are referenced in Susan Jacoby's book "Freethinkers" some of them in Norm Allen's stuff. I also have another book that I am finding incredibly difficult to read.. and I seem to have misplaced the damn thing...

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Found the Book: African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Sociocultural Dynamics of Faith (History of African-American Religions) by MICHAEL LACKEY.

[cobecat.livejournal.com]

Hm. Also, I'd submit that the history of white relations to religion isn't nearly as clear-cut as this makes it seem. Sure, the Puritans were escaping from religious persecution, but no sooner did they set down in Plymouth than they were legislating their own religion as the One True one. Mary Dyer, hanged in 1660 for preaching Quaker beliefs in Boston, is a good example.