My favorite sociologist on black Americans, on race relations, is Orlando Patterson who teaches at Harvard. His most recent book is The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, 2015. He is the author/editor of the 675 page tome assisted by 26 other scholars.
Patterson was born and educated in Jamaica and London in the fields of anthropology, economics and sociology; he is also widely read in history and psychology. Patterson is a multicultural person and a multidisciplinary scholar with a giant intellect. He is an expert on slavery worldwide and race relations in America. He has previously written The Ordeal of Integration, a positive read on the impact of the civil rights movement, and Rituals of Blood, a negative read on race relations. Patterson is not intiminated by either academic or political correctness. He can be a very heavy read at times, but his books are full of insights and wisdom. The following are a few gems from the Foreword:
"The past half century has witnessed remarkable changes in the conditions of African Americans and, more generally, the state of race relations in America. These changes, however, have created a paradoxical situation. The civil rights movement and subsequent policies aimed at socioeconomic reform have resulted in the largest group of middle-class and elite blacks in the world. . . . Yet the bottom fifth of the black population is among the poorest in the nation. . . . Blacks have a disproportionate impact on the nation's culture---both popular and elite---yet continue to struggle in the educational system and are severely underrepresented in its boom of scientific and high-end technology. Although legalized segregation has long been abolished, . . . the great majority of blacks still live in highly segregated, impoverished communities. It is a record of remarkable successes, mixed achievements, and major failures."
"Nowhere is this paradox more acutely exhibited than in the condition of black American youth, especially male youth. They are trapped in a seemingly intractable socioeconomic crisis, yet are among the most vibrant creators of popular culture in the nation and the world."
"What this paradox suggests is the need to explore the cultural life of black youth in order to deepen our understanding of their social plight as well as their extraordinary creativity."
Next some excerpts from the Conclusion; if you just read both the Foreword and the Conclusion, you will get the gist of the book:
"The chapters further demonstrate that disadvantaged black neighborhoods, like other urban neighborhoods of America, are actually socially and culturally variegated, consisting of at least three main groups (the inner-city middle-and lower-middle class, the working class [including the working poor], and the disconnected, the members of which observe one or more of four cultural configurations (adapted mainstream, black proletarian, street, and the hip-hop). . . . What is problematic for all who live in these neighborhoods is the street configuration of the disconnected minority, which is embraced by no more than a quarter of their populations, and often substantially less. . . . .the studies underscore that both culture and [social] structure matter in describing and understanding the lives of poor black youth."
"There is deep cultural continuity over time. For example, Robert Sampson shows in his chapter that neighborhoods inherit near-identical structural and cultural conditions decades later." The historical past haunts the sociological present."
"Fifthly, one of the most important things we have learned from this study is that segregation matters; it has colossal negative consequences, especially for poor black youth, . . . "
A paradox: "a radical transformation in Euro-American values on race, to the degree that young Euro-American are, arguably. the least racially prejudiced group of whites in the world; and, on the other hand, the extreme growth in inequality in America."
"In the final analysis, if the sociocultural problems that beset the lives of disadvantaged black American youth are to change, they will only come about through a combination of external and internal changes."
The last sentence from Orlando Patterson: "For a group that has contributed so much to the industry, civic life and culture of their great nation, African Americans and their youth deserve much better, from their government and economy and from themselves." And from Christian colleges, I would add.
All peoples, nations, and ethnic groups have a set of cultural values that are implemented through their social institutions. Some cultural values such as love and justice are good; other cultural values such as ethnocentrism and oppression are bad. Sometimes, far too often in a fallen world, good cultural values are misused and perverted to 'sanctify' social evils such as ethnocentrism and systems of oppression. Some examples of perversion: churches built upon slave dungeons; slave traders who were church members; Puritans who slaughtered Indians villages to eliminate "Canaanites" from the new Christian nation; Pharisees who zealously taught the Law but loved money and neglected justice; pious Iowa evangelicals who ignored or approved of the worst black-white incarceration ratio in the nation; Lincoln who freed the slaves but wanted to send inferior free blacks back to Africa (Why didn't he self-deport himself?); American missionaries to Haiti who emphasize voodoo but neglect to preach about 500 years of oppression.
Orlando Patterson is angry at the misuse and neglect of culture in academia. So he and his colleagues investigate how black youth survive and are even creative in a society that oppresses them in a number of ways. In America, we are skilled at blaming the victim (the dysfunctional culture of the oppressed), but we largely ignore the dysfunctional culture of the oppressors---the white supremacists. Compare and contrast two theories of poverty---Theory A and Theory B.
Theory A Theory B
1. Cultural values: rich, white, male supremacy 5. Inferior, poor, black males
example: founding fathers
2. Social institutions: political and economic 4. Government welfare
3. Systems of oppression: slavery, segregation, 3. Unqualified workers, mass incarceration,
mass incarceration family dysfunction
4. Segregation: communities, cultures of poverty 2. Culture of poverty
5. PTSD? Damaged individuals. 1. Dysfunctional individuals
Where (which theory and which level of which theory) should the church intervene? Which should be given highest priority by white churches? How should churches intervene?
Questions: Does theory A cause theory B? Does theory A describe how the damage is done and then theory B describes the dysfunction that follows? Does oppression damage precede individual and family dysfunction?
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