The Death Dance, the double whammy: from American oppression to American demonization.
Thesis Statement: White male oppressors have falsely , but successfully, blamed oppressed urban blacks for their high rates of unwed mothers and unmarried fathers, citing flawed character and culture as the primary cause.
Kathryn Edin, graduate of North Park University, former Harvard prof now at Johns Hopkins, a sociologist who specializes in urban poverty, has coauthored Promises I Keep: Why Poor Women put Motherhood before Marriage and Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work. Her latest coauthored book is Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City (2013).
In terms of her sociological research, Edin practices what John Perkins preaches and practices---relocation. She lives among the urban poor; her research clients become her friends; they are persons, not just sociological stats. In anthropological terms, she practices participation-observation and indepth interviews. Edin is the best of the best on urban poverty, urban marriage and family issues. She receives high praise from one of America's foremost experts on the urban ghetto, William Julius Wilson. Alex Kotlowitz correctly asserts: "Doing the Best I Can turns many of our assumptions about [urban] fatherhood on their heads."
Edin not only has done her own pioneering research, she has also read all the relevant literature covering the past 60 years, including Tally's Corner by the anthropologist Eliot Liebow about the 1960s street-corner men in Washington, DC. Liebow concluded that most black men wanted a successful marriage and family; they want to be a good bread-winner, fulfill the traditional role of husband and father, but because of lack of education and job skills, they could not get and hold a good job. A sense of constant failure was too shameful to live with so they split and lived on the streets.
In her Introduction, Edin traces the demonization of urban, mostly black, unmarried fathers. Conservative William Bennett rages: "It is unmarried fathers who are missing in record numbers, who impregnate women and selfishly flee. . . . who deserve our censure." Bill Cosby, President Obama, Former Senator Moynihan, Bill Moyers, President Reagan and Clinton and most Americans seem to agree. There is almost universal American censure of these unmarried fathers.
But the person who has done the most damage, the worst demonization, is the liberal Bill Moyers and his close friend, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1965, Moynihan wrote The Negro Family which sharply critiqued out-of-wedlock childbearing and the "complete breakdown" of the inner city black family. 20 years later, in 1986, Bill Moyers in a CBS Special Report "The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America" continued the theme. This was TV so its impact was much greater than the book. Edin states: "The Vanishing Family went on to win every major award in journalism. Those commenting publicly on the broadcast were nearly unanimous in their ready acceptance of Timothy McSeed as the archetype of unmarried fatherhood."
Black and white leaders, conservatives and liberals, seemingly everyone participated in the demonization, the verbal lynching of unmarried black fathers. "Only a lone correspondent from Canada's Globe and Mail offered a rebuttal, fuming that Timothy 'could have been cast by the Ku Klux Klan; you couldn't find a black American more perfectly calculated to arouse loathing, contempt and fear." Most sociologists did little to correct this demonization; statistics seem to confirm the half-truth; the damage had been done; the demonization was complete.
Missing from this one-sided view of black males is the story of death---physical, psychological and social death. 400 years of unending oppression which have profoundly damaged cultural values and social institutions such as marriage and family. Under slavery, marriages and families were broken up again and again. Under segregation and sharecropping (neoslavery), marriage and family were put under enormous stress. Today, in 2014, unjust mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap have continued the process. For Latinos, under President Obama's reign, there have been 2 million deportations, again fracturing the family.
Before we demonize black men, we should first demonize evil white men who created and maintained numerous systems of oppression from Indian genocide to slavery to segregation to mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap. Before we demonize black men, we first should demonize white Luthern pastors who over a 40 year period led 40 out of 44 Lutheran churches out of the city of Detroit. Before we demonize black men, we should first demonize white pastors in Mississippi who according to black Mississippian Lee Harper "allowed injustice to run deep and cloak itself well among those things that appeared just." White churches legitimated oppression.
Many black men have their flaws, but they are caught between the impossible evils of demonization and oppression. Note what slavery did to Hebrew slaves: "But when Moses delivered this message [I am going to rescue you from slavery], they didn't even hear him---they were that beaten down in spirit [broken, crushed in spirit] by the harsh slave conditions [the system of oppression]." Exodus 6:9, The Message.
The facts:
1. The demonic oppressor created the damaged and then dysfunctional oppressed.
2. In terms of the 20-1 racial wealth gap, the demonic oppressor is 20 times more evil than the damaged oppressed.
3. In terms of unjust mass incarceration in Iowa, the demonic oppressor is 10 times more evil than the damaged oppresed.
4. So the nation needs a 10 part documentary on The Demonic White Oppressors to follow the single documentary on the Vanishing Black Family.
The propaganda:
1. The good guys (white males) try to help the bad guys (black males) with welfare.
2. White is normal, good; black is flawed, demonic.
The historical facts:
1. Blacks have been oppressed and demonized for 400 years.
2. Whites have been the oppressors and the demonizers for 400 years.
3. The white American god is the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism.
This perverted American trinity is more fundamental to America than is liberal or conservative ideology so both conservatives and liberals demonize urban black males.
THE WHITE MALE DEMONIC OPPRESSORS CREATE PHYSICAL. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL DEATH AMONGST URBAN BLACKS.
Then the white demonic oppressors cleverly labeled the severely damaged/dysfunctional black oppressed as the demonic one; to get away from the dangerous damaged black community, the white demonic oppressors fled to the safety of the 'spiritual suburbs'. White churches joined the mass exodus; they did not stay to repair the damage.
The moral of the tragic story for biblical kingdom of God Christians:
1. Do not tolerate or in any way participate in the Death Dance sponsored by the American Trinity.
2. Do not allow biblical ignorance about oppression and justice to lead you to neglect justice and the love of God.
3. Be willing to leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets.
The Divine Dance: From Doing Justice to Experiencing Joy
The Death Dance is led by Pharisee type people who neglect justice and the love of God. The Divine Dance is led by kingdom of God people who do Jubilee justice in love. According to Pastor/Prophet/Pope Francis, kingdom of God type people should leave the security of the sanctuary and relocate among the suffering of the streets, among the damaged oppressed.
Conclusion:
Fellow Americanized Christians, when you choose which dance to join---The Death Dance or The Divine Dance---, be wary of following the 'biblical' Puritan example because they oppressed and demonized Native Americans. Also be wary of listening to advice from the founding fathers who followed the American Trinity.
Suggestions:
If you are not yet fully convinced of my thesis, I suggest that you read Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Some nuggets from the book:
1. "terrorizing black people with relentless physical and psychological violence."
2. "The pace and unrelenting nature of work broke many slaves psychologically as well as physically." Think Exodus 6:1-9.
3. Solomon Northup on his first whipping "My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell."
4. Northup describes the impact of the unbelievably severe whipping of Patsey: "Indeed, from that time forward she was not what she had been. The burden of a deep melancholy weighed heavily on her spirits. She no longer moved with that buoyant and elastic step---there was not that mirthful sparkle in her eyes that formerly distinguished her. The bounding vigor---the sprightly, laughter-loving spirit of her youth were gone. She fell into a mournful and desponding mood. . . ."
And you should read the Introduction of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander who wrote: "A human rights mightmare is occurring on our watch. . . . The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not---as many argue---just a symptom of poverty or poor choices [flawed character or culture], but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work [a redesigned system of oppression]."
The above explains why Edward Blum wrote the following about W.E.B. DuBois: "This spiritual rage touched every element of his career and was one of the defining features of his long and storied life." Would spiritual rage be much better than our current apathy?
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