"The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration"

1.  REQUIRED READING

"The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration," by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, October, 2015.  Coates is the author of two other excellent articles in The Atlantic, one of which is entitled "The Case for Reparations."

Coates and Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling The New Jim Crow, are high quality thinkers and writers.  Both analyze with great historical and sociological precision.  Both authors have a deep understanding of American systems of oppression.  Alexander is a Christian; Coates is an atheist.  Both are black; neither writes from a specific biblical perspective.

Coates' 24 page article is full of gems of insight and wisdom.

Throughout American history, whites have engaged in an unending drumbeat of of supposed black inferiority and black criminality---a perfect diversion from white ethnocentrism and Anglo oppression.  Whites have misused the law and the criminal justice system to enforce their racial profiling.  So, in reality, whites are the immoral ones, the criminals par excellence, often with God's 'approval'.

Only a godless people would engage in Indian genocide, African enslavement and the theft of half of Mexico's land.  Only a godless people would engage in widespread injustice and then try to hide their social evil under a veneer of superficial justice.  Only a godless people would misuse religion to cover their diabolic evils.

Biblical justice releases the oppressed, sets things right, makes things right.  White Americans, especially white churches, must repent, restitute and repair; or face divine judgment.

To provide some biblical perspective that neither Coates nor Alexander give, I suggest reading the following Scriptures:

1.  The Messianic passages from Isaiah:  9:6-7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42"1-4; 61:1-4.
2.  Mt. 3:1 and Mark 1:7    Repent.
3.  Luke 4:18-30   Ethnocentrism and oppression; justice and reconciliation.
4.  Acts 1:1-8
5.  Acts 8:12; also 28:23 & 31.
6.  Romans 14:17 NEB  "The kingdom of God is justice."
7.  Mt. 6:33 (NEB)  "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice."