A Midday Muse- My Agnosticism and The Black Church
by Chitown Kev
I am an agnostic.
That’s easy enough to say and to understand since, from the Greek, it literally means “not-knowing” and has been used in reference to gods and religion.
I don’t know whether a god or gods exist.
Let me be a little more specific.
I have long doubted that there is a god and I am personally more on the atheist end of that spectrum.
I have many friends and acquaintances that do believe and ask for help from a god (or gods) . Those friends attribute their good fortune in life, in part, to their belief. I am in no position to dispute their claim. After all, I do believe that spiritual beliefs (and the theism that usually, though not always, goes with it) are a very, very personal relationship between one’s self and The Universe.
I suppose that I could be persuaded that there was (or is) an ultimate Creator who finished his/her/its’ work billions and billions of years ago but even in that scenario, I do not believe that such a being intervenes in my life and could care less that Tom Brady deflates his balls or that Richard Sherman will surely trash-talk this coming Sunday.
I suppose that makes me, in a word, a deist (although I dislike putting a word to it).
I do receive some enlightenment from my studies of Taoism and Buddhism. I also enjoy and learn much from reading a wide range of materials on Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) spirituality, including works by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton and black theologian James Cone.
So I’m not totally a heathen.
Now, of course, this makes me a very, very distinct minority within black communities and, sure enough, I have had my share of confrontations with believers and the “churched” and that includes family members.
And I have held a long-time resentment against The Black Church because of the way that many churches shunned black gay men during the worse of the AIDS crisis in the 1980’s. To be sure, many black churches acted no differently than white churches in that time and place but, to me, The Black Church violated an unwritten social contract, of sorts, within black communities that The Black Church is always a place where black people (and everyone else, for that matter) can come for acceptance, healing, and simply to feel good about themselves in a hostile world.
Lately, though, I’ve decided to lighten up a bit on my condemnation of The Black Church. And I think that I will continue to do so.
For one, resentment of any sort simply isn’t good for my mental and emotional health.
Secondly, The Black Church is still the primary place (at least as far as “bricks and mortar” are concerned) where black people (and others) can go for “acceptance, healing, and to feel good about themselves in a hostile world.”
I can’t think of a secular “integrated” institution within American society that offers that degree of safety or understanding. Not to black people.
And I am involved with a few institutions that do a very good job of providing a place of safety and understanding (including this blog community here at The Great Orange Satan).
Lastly, there is the pull-up that I received from Miss Denise ages ago (that I’m too lazy to track down).
I distinctly remember discussing my fondness for The Black Panthers (who were a little before my time) because they were a secular activist organization within black communities. I felt then (and feel now) that so much community organizing and activism within black communities happens within black churches. I think that it’s still true that not much in the way of activism and organizing can take place in black communities without the participation (or even the permission) of the churches.
Miss Denise tipped my comment but gave me a stern reminder; that many of the BPP leaders that I have come to admire were, after all, sons of preachers.
They were products, in part, of The Black Church.
Almost all black artists (whether they sing, write, draw, do comedy, or dance) are products, in large part, of The Black Church.
I am the product, in part, of The Black Church. And there is nothing that I can do about it.
Now that doesn't mean that I'm going to be stepping into a church anytime soon; I am as much of an agnostic as I ever was. In fact, I am more vocal about my atheism/agnosticism/deism than I ever have been.
Nor does it mean that I won't ever have arguments and even confrontations with the more religious and "churchified" members of black communities.
It does mean that I will no longer even attempt to deny the origin of so many of the ethical/moral opinions that swim around in my skull (and I can't convincingly deny it, anyway).
Because to deny those origins would be to severely "dis" those church elders and sisters who worked so hard to make sure that maybe, just maybe, I could become a fuller, better, human being in spite of being in a hostile world that continually tells me I am a nobody (at best) and offers me no safe haven.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Disagree with the title, but it does raise some important points. New York Times: De Blasio, Obama and a Flawed Vision of Liberalism.
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In the aftermath of Mr. de Blasio’s landslide victory in 2013, it was tempting to believe that he had pioneered a new style of progressive politics, one that built on President Obama’s coalition of African-Americans, Latinos and liberals. Whereas Mr. Obama twice lost white voters by double digits, Mr. de Blasio won them by a remarkable 11 points.
But instead of transcending the Obama coalition, Mr. de Blasio has become its prisoner.
In fact, Mr. de Blasio never had a chance of maintaining the 72 percent support that propelled him to Gracie Mansion. Running against a weak, underfunded Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic city inflated his margins. And subsequent events — from his ham-handed showdowns with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to his graceless defense of a discredited aide — have revealed his political instincts to be less than impeccable.
But the key factor is his worldview. From the get-go, Mr. de Blasio’s campaign fused two distinct strands of progressivism. The first was economic populism, not least his criticism that Michael R. Bloomberg had placed the interests of Wall Street and the wealthy above those of average New Yorkers.
The second was what some have called “identity group” liberalism, which appealed to black and Latino voters as blacks and Latinos, not on the basis of economic interests they shared with whites. The centerpiece of Mr. de Blasio’s identity-group agenda was his promise to win better treatment for minorities at the hands of the police.
The problem for Mr. de Blasio is that only the first approach has widespread appeal. In a poll Quinnipiac released shortly after his inauguration, almost 70 percent of voters backed the mayor’s proposed tax increase on families making over $500,000. Eighty-three percent were concerned about income inequality (though few listed it as their top concern). But only 48 percent of voters said that Mr. de Blasio would be able to ease the Police Department’s “stop and frisk” tactics without sacrificing public safety.
Once voters focused on the identity portion of Mr. de Blasio’s agenda, it was inevitable that his numbers would suffer. The only surprise is how quickly that happened. The same post-inauguration poll put Mr. de Blasio’s approval rating at 53 percent — 20 points below his election-night tally. A substantial number of voters had deserted the mayor only days into his term.
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Apparel company MyLocker and graffiti artist Antonio “Shades” Agee have collaborated on a nonprofit focused on bringing art to Detrot’s schools. The Root: A Detroit Collage: How a Graffiti Artist, Apparel Company and Nonprofit Are Helping to Keep Art in Schools.
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As Detroit continues to suffer from the scorching effects of bankruptcy, art—a cultural underpinning of the iconic town—remains strong, with artists, particularly urban artists, thriving amid the ashes.
And yet even as the urban art scene flourishes, the art curriculum in schools has all but smoldered out, leaving students with little or no hope of getting instruction in something they might want to do for a living.
But now some local companies and artists have made it their mission to give back to the community, and one art nonprofit is determined to see that students have an outlet.
Detroit-based custom-apparel company MyLocker and graffiti artist Antonio “Shades” Agee have partnered up with Art Road, the nonprofit seeing to ensure art instruction in Detroit public schools, to create “Inspired by Detroit: Shades,” a specially curated collection of Shades’ street-art images, which have been designed for apparel. A quarter of the sales will go directly to Art Road—which currently provides art classes to about 1,500 students in three Detroit public schools—to help further its mission.
Antonio “Shades” Agee holding up a student’s artwork
STEPHANIE BATTAGLIA
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Many fear Texas case could gut the landmark Fair Housing Act. Pro Publica: Supreme Court’s Latest Race Case: Housing Discrimination.
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This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up one of the most important civil rights cases of the last decade. If you’ve never heard of Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, you have company. The issue of housing segregation has never captivated the nation’s attention like affirmative action or voting rights.
But today, two days after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the court will hear arguments in the Texas case that many fear could gut the Fair Housing Act, the landmark 1968 law that was passed just days after King’s assassination.
“This case has as broad of a reach as anything the court has decided in the last 10 years,” said Myron Orfield, director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota Law School, because housing segregation is the foundation of racial inequality in the United States.
The case concerns whether the Fair Housing Act, which sought to end the longstanding segregation of America’s neighborhoods, should be read to only bar intentional discrimination. For four decades, federal courts have held that the law should be interpreted more broadly, ruling again and again that if the policies of governmental agencies, banks or private real estate companies unjustifiably perpetuate segregation, regardless of their intent, they could be found in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
All 11 of the federal circuit courts that have considered the question have seen it that way. As well, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency charged with administering the act, issued a regulation enshrining the principle in 2013.
The nation’s highest court does not typically intervene in cases unless there’s been disagreement in the lower courts. But this court has been determined to have its say on the housing issue and the legal theory that has come to be known as “disparate impact.”
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More stories from post racial America... Color Lines: Black Workers With Advanced Degrees, White Workers With B.A.’s Make Roughly the Same.
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You’ve heard of the racial wealth gap, the racial employment gap, and surely also about racial job callback disparities. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics offers an updated look at another dynamic of our racialized economy: the racial income gap.
As in: In 2014, while white workers 25 years or older with at least an undergrad degree took home median earnings of $1,219 per week, similarly aged and educated Latino workers made $1,007, and Asian workers made $1,328 per week. Black workers with at least a college degree, meanwhile, posted median earnings of $970 per week.
The racial income gap is so pronounced that black workers with an advanced degree made $1,149—roughly the same as white workers who had only a bachelor’s degree ($1,132).
Graph showing median weekly earnings of full-time workers, according to January 23, 2015 BLS data release Illustration: Bureau of Labor Statistics
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This is what it feels like to be one of the only black people in the audience while watching gripping black stories at the film festival. “Power to the people!” BuzzFeed: The Blackness Of This Year’s Sundance Movies Is At Odds With The Audience’s Whiteness.
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As a Sundance Film Festival newbie, the most striking thing to me so far — especially as someone who covers Black Hollywood — is that this year’s lineup offers a series of films that capture landmark black experiences and is serving them to a predominantly white audience.
These films speak directly to the lives of my fellow tribe members today and to the struggles that our parents and grandparents fought so hard to live through and overcome. It’s important for nonbrown viewers to witness the heartbreaking civil rights battles of singer Nina Simone, or the contemporary reality of being killed for being a black teen who blared loud music at a gas station, or the affecting footage of the valiant rise and heartbreaking fall of the Black Panther Party, all the more poignant considering its biggest supporters included a largely nonblack base.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Becune Point juts out to sea at the northwest tip of St. Lucia. It is open to the sea on three sides and looks out to Pigeon Island and the ghosts of St. Lucian history. Derek Walcott looked out at that expanse from Becune Point, from the house he purchased with proceeds from his Nobel Prize and pondered life on an oceanic scale; and then gave an account of the simultaneous unity and division created by the ocean and by human dealings with it.
But the ocean is a desert and the desert is an ocean and people have been swallowed by the sands of each. A caravan of suffering sailing shackled in the hold of a wind thrashed flotilla.
Becune Point
Stunned heat of noon. In shade, tan, silken cows
hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers.
Stamping their hooves from thirst, small horses drowse
or whinny for water. On parched, ochre headlands, daggers
of agave bristle in primordial defense,
like a cornered monster backed up against the sea.
A mongoose charges dry grass and fades through a fence
faster than an afterthought. Dust rises easily.
Haze of the Harmattan, Sahara dust, memory’s haze
from the dried well of Africa, the headland’s desert
or riders in swirling burnooses, mixed with the greys
of hills veiled in Impressionist light. We inherit
two worlds of associations, or references, drought
that we heighten into Delacroix’s North Africa,
veils, daggers, lances, herds the Harmattan brought
with a phantom inheritance, which the desperate seeker
of a well-spring staggers in the heat in search of—
heroic ancestors; the other that the dry season brings
is the gust of a European calendar, but it is the one love
that thirsts for confirmations in the circling rings
of the ground dove’s cooing on stones, in the acacia’s
thorns and the agave’s daggers, that they are all ours,
the white horsemen of the Sahara, India’s and Asia’s
plumed mongoose and crested palmtree, Benin and Pontoise.
We are history’s afterthought, as the mongoose races
ahead of its time; in drought we discover our shadows,
our origins that range from the most disparate places,
from the dugouts of Guinea to the Nile’s canted dhows.
II
The incredible blue with its bird-inviting cloud,
in which there are crumbling towers, banners and domes,
and the sliding Carthage of sunsets, the marble shroud
drawn over associations that are Greece’s and Rome’s
and rarely of Africa. They continue at sixty-seven
to echo in the corridors of the head, perspectives
of a corridor in the Vatican that led, not to heaven,
but to more paintings of heaven, ideas in lifted sieves
drained by satiety because great art can exhaust us,
and even the steadiest faith can be clogged by excess,
the self-assured Christs, the Madonnas’ inflexible postures
without the mess of motherhood. With this blue I bless
emptiness where these hills are barren of tributes
and the repetitions of power, our sky’s naive
ceiling without domes and spires, an earth whose roots
like the thorned acacia’s deepen my belief.
-- Derek Walcott