New Systems of Oppression

The Puritans used violence against Native Americans, slaughtering whole villages, men, women and children.  This established a PATTERN of violence in American history---near genocide---for three centuries.  WASP's used violence against Afro American slaves for centuries.  Through violence, we "annexed" half of Mexican territory.  We have used military forces to dominate the Caribbean islands and Central American countries many times.  And there is the unwarranted use of violence against Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Haiti has a similar violent history beginning with the imperial/colonial Spanish, French and Americans.  This set a PATTERN for endless internal violence by Haitian leaders making democratic rule nearly impossible.  Most historical accounts of Haiti emphasize the external violence against Haiti---hundreds of years of oppression.  But there is also the internal violence highlighted by historian Girard.  Both external and internal violence have created what Orlando Patterson calls social death.

Both the U.S. and Haiti have alternated between freedom and oppression, seldom freedom and justice.  The British colonists who settled America practiced ruthless brutality against the Irish shortly before they came to the U.S.  Along with their Bibles, they brought generous amounts of ethnocentrism and oppression which they soon used against American Indians; they even called them "Irish."  The founding fathers violently obtained freedom from British domination, but internally, they did not establish justice for all; they did not "under God" provide "liberty and justice for all," for the poor, women, Native Americans and African Americans.

It took a violent Civil War to free the slaves, but Lincoln/Congress did not follow freedom with justice so soon neoslavery (segregation, sharecropping, incarceration and prison work gangs) became the new system of oppression.  Then the civil rights movement regained freedom for oppressed blacks, but the American church did not aggressively pursue justice so in the 1980s mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap replaced segregation as the new system of oppression.

American capitalism was a two-edged sword---marvelously productive, but often oppressive in the process.  There was enough respect for the Constitution, for law and order, that a climate of political stability was created; this created an environment for economic growth.

Haiti gained its freedom violently; political and economic violence then became a part of its history.  The oppressors changed faces, but the pattern was not one of justice.  Haiti has never consistently blended freedom and justice; even Aristide, who had the possibility of blending freedom with justice, soon resorted to abusive political power and the pursuit of money.

Neither the American church nor the Haitian church preaches and practices the gospel of kingdom of God justice.  Freedom without justice becomes hollow and shallow, often overcome by corrupt power and economic oppression.  There is a desperate need for a NT theology of society, a kingdom of God society, a beloved community built upon reconciliation and justice.

Neoslavery II and Social Death (Slavery and Social Death, by Orlando Patterson)

12 Years a Slave; 407 years of Slavery.

12 years a slave (1841-1853); 407 years of slavery (1607-2014) [preslavery, slavery, neoslavery I, neoslavery II].  Preslavery---indentured servants who came over on slave ships to Virginia; slavery---1660-1865; neoslavery I [segregation, sharecropping, incarceration, prison work gangs]. roughly (1865-1968); neoslavery II, (1980-2014).

Neoslavery II and Social Death

The term neoslavery was coined by scholars to describe the period of oppression that followed the abolition of legal slavery; this was a period of roughly 100 years sometimes called Jim Crow, the period of segregation, sharecropping, etc.

Neoslavery II (to my knowledge, no scholar has used this term yet) is applied to the period of unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males and to the massive racial wealth gap (20-1, white households over black; 17-1, white households over Latino).  Michelle Alexander argues in her book, The New Jim Crow, that in America we do not end systems of oppression; we merely redesign them.  She does not use the term neoslavery II, but she endorses the concept.  Alexander could have subtitled her book The New Jim Crow: Neoslavery II.

Orlando Patterson in his book Slavery and Social Death, a world-wide and cross-cultural study of slavery, uses the term social death to describe the enormous damage that slavery does to a society, a culture.  Nothing, including basic social institutions such as marriage and family, is allowed to function normally; cultural and social dysfunction is the norm.  When slave are sold, families are broken; when illegals are deported, families are torn apart.  Neoslavery II in the form of mass incarceration and the wealth gap also breaks up and impoverishes families on a large scale; in addition, communities and schools are deeply impacted.

A suggestion.  Take advantage of 12 Years a Slave winning the Oscar; organize a Sunday School class or a church and go see this movie together.  Then come back and discuss the movie as a group, or build a Sunday School class around the biblical teaching on ethnocentrism, oppression and justice [Luke 4:18 on oppression and Luke 4:25-30 on ethnocentrism.]  Have half of your class read The New Jim Crow and the other half read The Hidden Cost of Being African American [the racial wealth gap].

Biblical Depth of White American Evangelicalism

Yesterday, I sent some quotations from Spencer Perkins---his report on a trip to South Africa in 1989, prior to Mandela's release from prison.  My rereading provoked some anger, some deep disappointment about the biblical depth of white American evangelicalism.

Some of the closest disciples of John Perkins seem to be highlighting the message of reconciliation, but, in comparison, minimizing justice.  They have a good NT theology of reconciliation, but the lack a NT theology of justice.  So even in 2014, evangelicals still have a long ways to go in spite of hundreds of Christian colleges, universities and seminaries.  What's wrong?  Are we stuck in the Middle Ages?

In modern America, Tim Keller and Ken Wytsma are two of the best white writers on justice; but strangely, judged by their books, they seem to be unaware of the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males, and the unjust massive racial wealth gap swirling around them in society.  Michelle Alexander asserts that in America, contrary to what we are usually taught, as a nation we really don't destroy systems of oppression; we merely redesign them.  Slavery was replaced by neoslavery---segregation, sharecropping, incarceration.  Legal segregation was replaced by mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap.  Mass incarceration, prison, is close to slavery; the racial wealth gap is close to sharecropping with low wages and poverty.

In the midst of all this, evangelicals still don't have an adequate NT theology of social evil---ethnocentrism and oppression.  Nor do they have a NT theology of justice---love, reconciliation, Jubilee justice, shalom, all related to the Spirit-filled church and the kingdom of God.

Any volunteers?

Economic Inequality: Political and Economic Oppression

Recently both Pope Francis and President Obama have vigorously spoken out against economic inequality.  Pope Francis identified corporate/financial capitalism as our current system of oppression using phrases such as unfettered capitalism, idolatry of money and deified markets.  President Obama called economic inequality the defining issue of our time.

I prefer the phrase political and economic oppression over economic inequality.  This phrase captures the essence of a plutocracy---rule by the rich who have taken over our democracy.  If a person understand that biblically oppression means the cruel and unjust exercise of power and authority (what oppression IS).  What does oppression DO to a people---it crushes them, humiliates them, treats people like animals; it also impoverishes, enslaves and kills human beings created in the image of God.

And tragedy of tragedies, we far too often have to add religious oppression to political and economic oppression.  Just as in Jesus' day when a religio-politico-economic elite ran the temple as a "den of robbers," so today in modern America much of the religious establishment either actively supports oppressive American corporate/financial capitalism or it tolerates it or only weakly opposes it.  Lacking a comprehensive socioeconomic theology of society, we are easily seduced by American materialism and don't know what to do about it.

In 1987, I wrote a book entitled Sociotheology; chapter 12 charted the beginnings of a biblical economics.  The following comes my self-published book:

There seems to be an endless debate over which economic system is more Christian---capitalism or socialism.  Each is regarded by the other as a great evil visited upon the earth.  Unfortunately neither landlord agricultural capitalism not state controlled, collective agriculture, neither industrial, corporate capitalism nor state-run, industrial socialism as they are commonly practiced in our world today come close to following scriptural principles.  Baptizing either capitalism or socialism with a few scripture verses will not make either Christian.  Greed and power have corrupted both economic systems almost beyond repair.  Each is essentially a secular system.

Jacques Ellul, author of Money and Power, a French sociologist and Christian ethicist, is not enamored with either capitalism or socialism.  Both fall short of kingdom of God principles.  Ellul states:

Capitalism has progressively subordinated all of life---individual and collective---to money. . . .  One by one the state, the legal system, art and the churches have submitted to the power of money. . . . One of the results of capitalism . . . is the subservience of being to having.

In a socialist society, individuals . . . remain entirely submitted to production.  The economy is the basis of their lives.  This is precisely the source of real alienation--not the subservience of being to personal having, but the subservience of being . . . to collective having.

Old Testament

We need to go back to the basics; we need a fresh look at the Scriptures.  Fortunately, we have a person who has done his scriptural homework who can guide us.  Christopher J.H. Wright (Ph.D., Cambridge), has written two masterpieces, an article and a book, on old Testament social ethics.  The article is "The Ethical Relevance of Israel as a Society," published in Transformation, an evangelical journal on social ethics.  The book is entitled An Eye for An Eye: The Place of Old Testament Ethics Today.  Both the article and the book cover much the same material, but the article delves in greater detail on some socioeconomic aspects of Israeli society.  Though Wright does not use the term. I call these masterpieces, sociotheology.  In my judgment, sociotheology can give us the setting and guidelines for a just economic system.

To be continued

Redesigning (vs. eliminating) Systems of Oppression

In my last email essay, I referred to The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander; she excelled in the legal/judicial aspects of mass incarceration and in making historical comparisons.  She noted that we really don't eliminate systems of oppression; we only redesign them.  We move from slavery to legal segregation to mass incarceration.

Bruce Western (Punishment and Inequality in America) excels in sociological analysis and in tying mass incarceration and economic inequality together.  Alexander and Western complement each other.  Next some quotations from Western's final chapter entitled "Conclusions."

* In the last decades of the twentieth century [and up to 2013], mass imprisonment became a fact of American life.  The deep involvement of poor black men in the criminal justice system became normal.  Those drawn into the net of the penal system live differently from the rest of us.  Employment is more insecure, wages are lower.  Families are disrupted as incarceration separates children from their fathers and breaks up couples.  Pervasive incarceration and its effects on economic opportunity and family life have given the penal system a central role in the lives of the urban poor.

* By taking vast numbers of poorly educated young men out of the labor market, economic statistics on wages and employment were artificially improved. . . . The criminal justice system tightly grips the low-wage labor market, hiding inequality behind prison walls and deepening the disadvantage of ex-prisoners after release.

* One in ten young black children had a father in prison or jail by the end of the 1990s.

* Although originally conceived to control the crime and disorder of the inner cities, mass imprisonment has become part of the problem, preventing the full integration of poor urban communities into the American social fabric.

* Here I draw two conclusions.  First, that mass imprisonment has significantly sealed the social immobility of poor blacks.  Second, if we view the effects of the prison boom in the context of causes, mass imprisonment has significantly subtracted from the gains to African American citizenship hard won by the civil rights movement.

* In political campaigns and media portrayals, criminal offenders were regularly personified by poor young black men [leaving the deep impression that such men were inherently a problem].  The racial stain, unlike poverty or school failure, was an unfading deficiency beyond the reach of government reform.

* Through its effects on work and families, incarceration redirects the life course onto a road of lasting disadvantage.  Inspired by beliefs about its permanent inferiority, mass imprisonment cemented the distress of the black underclass.

* What about the future of mass imprisonment?  My analysis suggests it will remain a feature of the regulation of urban poverty in America.  Although increasingly expensive and perhaps a little obsolete in a time of low crime rates, mass imprisonment is likely to be preserved by the political and economic forces that created it.

Now some of my (Noble) observations:  The abolitionits and Emancipation Proclamation---good; the civil rights movement and the abolition of legal segregation--good; the Army and its integrated Afro-Anglo culture---good.  Good, but not biblically good enough.  None of the above identified and addressed American oppression and ethnocentrism, as Jesus did in Luke 4, or to put it another  way, the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism.

The Army was ahead of the American church, but a fully biblical church would have been ahead of the Army.  The church should have preached and practiced the kingdom of God gospel (to be spelled out in greater detail in coming essays) long before the Army established the Afro-Anglo culture.  The kingdom of God culture goes deeper than the Afro-Anglo culture.

When the British, Puritan colonists packed their suitcases to come to America, along with their Bibles they also packed generous portions of ethnocentrism and oppression which the British had just perfected in a brutal military campaign against the Irish who, by the way, were of the same race.  After arriving in America, the Puritans were soon using their ethnocentrism and oppression against Native Americans, setting in place a genocidal pattern that continued for several hundred years all across the American continent.

American WASPs have never ceased, right up to 2013, this lavish use of ethnocentrism and oppression.  The American church, especially white evangelicals, has largely been silent, seldom preached about these social evils which Jesus specifically addressed at the beginning of His ministry (Luke).

Thomas Hanks (God So Loved the Third World: The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression) provides this scholarly observation; a Hebrew scholar, Hanks asserts that there are 555 references to oppression in the OT (the whole semantic field):

Anyone who has read much in the theological classics (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Berkouwer et. al.) will recognize that the theme of oppression has received little or no attention there.  One might think that the Bible says little about oppression.  Furthermore, one searches in vain for the theme in Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the like.  However, when we strike the rock of a complete Bible concordance, to our great surprise we hit a gusher of texts and terms that deal with oppression.  In short, we find a basic structural category of biblical theology.

Hebrew roots commonly translated in English as oppression have meanings such as : crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill. 

After Hanks book was published (1983 in English, originally printed in Spanish), the revised ISBE did include an significant entry on oppression, but, unfortunately, nothing on oppression in the NT.  We need an urgent effort to create a comprehensive theology of oppression; we can't skip lightly over to oppression and quickly rush to justice.

Jesus called the Jewish temple a "den of robbers," or paraphrased "a system of oppression."  The temple had an immense impact on all of Jewish society in Palestine; it had not only religious impact, but also large political, economic, and social impact.  There was also serious oppression in the agricultural sector (James 5) and widows and orphans were oppressed (James 1).  Then, of course, there was Roman oppression, but, bad as it was at times, Jesus never mentioned Roman oppression; He concentrated on the oppression within, not from without.

Oppression permeated Palestine society; we must remember the extent of oppression as we think about Jesus statement (Luke 4:18) that He had come "to release the oppressed"   And we must remember that again and again he entered the temple and confronted the oppressors there on their own turf.

To be continued as I discuss in some detail what the kingdom of God answer to the above issue should be in future essays

Counter Trends

More on the complex cross-currents and counter-currents in American society.  In my last email, I discussed Army integration and Orlando Patterson's optimistic report on racial progress over the last 50 years.  Reconciliation, community rebuilding and social justice are higher goals than integration, but Patterson, Moskos and Butler inform us that integration can be an important part of the mix.

There is another good news story, a sociological miracle if you will, mostly recently documented by John Perkins and Wayne Gordon in their two books, Leadership Revolution: Developing the Vision and Practice of Freedom and Justice (2012); also Making Neighborhoods Whole: A Handbook for Christian Community Development (2013).  Beginning in Mississippi in the 1960s, CCD has blossomed and spread across the country (CCDA) into hundreds of poor communities---rebuilding them with love and commitment.  John Perkins has told his story and the larger CCD story in 14 books that he has authored, co-authored or edited.

Since my retirement in 1994, for about 20 years I volunteered at the Perkins Center in West Jackson where VOCM has been doing community development since the 1970s, working with youth, rehabbing houses, etc.  An important and sustained effort, but an objective analysis would have to admit that West Jackson has deteriorated faster than VOCM could rebuild it.  Why?

Now we transition to the bad news, to the worst of times, as we examine the exploding racial wealth gap and the exploding mass incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males.  These powerful negative cross-currents in American society exist as the same time as the three good news stories we have previously mentioned.

In the 1990s, a few scholars documented these counter-trends;  Jerome Miller (Search and Destroy) first called attention to the racial profiling behind mass incarceration and the damage being done in the Black community; Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro documented the racial wealth gap (Black Wealth/White Wealth); Kevin Phillips gave us the inside story on the growing gap between rich and poor during the Reagan revolution in his book The Politics of Rich and Poor.  The racial wealth gap story has been updated by Thomas Shapiro (2004) in his book The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality.  See the Brandeis University for Assets and Social Policy for the latest information on the racial wealth gap. The tragic mass incarceration story has been updated by numerous scholars; I will call attention to two of the most recent books, both reflecting excellent scholarship and writing clarity; I call them both masterpieces.  First, The New Jim Crow by the Black lawyer, Michelle Alexander (2010).  Second, Punishment and Inequality in America by white sociologist, Bruce Western (2006).

To summarize The New Jim Crow, I created the following fact sheet:

* The U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison population; obviously something is terribly wrong, gross overuse of the prison system; the church and the public health department should be handling most drug problems, not the prison system.

* The Current War on Drugs began in 1982 so it has been going on tied with racial profiling for 31 years.

* Once you are labeled a felon, the old [Jim Crow] forms of discrimination---employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of right to vote, denial of food stamps . . . are suddenly legal.

* 31 million persons have been arrested for drug offenses since 1982; four out five arrests were for drug possession.

* Marijuana possession accounted for 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.

* Black, Whites and Hispanics traffic in illegal drugs equally; about 6 percent of each ethnic population use illegal drugs.

* By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans were behind bars, on probation or on parole.

* The nationwide incarceration ratio between Blacks and Whites is roughly 25-1.  In some states such as Iowa and Minnesota, it is around 50-1.  In Iowa, around 2% of the population is Afro Americans; 24% of the prison population is Afro American.

* In major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and thus are subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives.

* These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society.  If there is a permanent undercaste, is there also a permanent oppressor class?  If so, who is it?

* If law enforcement as aggressively targeted young white males for drug offenses as they do Blacks and Latinos, the prison population would explode five-fold almost overnight.

* "A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch."  What should the Christian church be doing about it?  God, through Amos 5:24 (The Message), declared "I want justice---oceans of it."

Society, Culture, and Integration

All of us, including scholars and geniuses, including sociologists, have, at best, a partial understanding of society and culture.  All of us see through a glass darkly.  Our partial understanding, our half-truths, mislead as often as they enlighten.  Humility is better than pontificating.  The cross-currents permeating our society are complex and confusing.  This essay will try to make this point.

Society-culture is complex and multifaceted.  A society as large and multifaceted as the U.S. can never be adequately analyzed and described by one scholarly study.  One scholar can study only one segment of society; so it will take several studies to even begin to capture the cross-currents, even counter-currents, that exist at the same time in a society.  Even the following four books only begin the process:  All That We Can Be:  Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way by sociologists Charles Moskos and John Butler (1996); The Ordeal of Integration:  Progress and Resentment in America's Racial Crisis by historical sociologist Orlando Paterson (1997); The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality by sociologist Thomas Shapiro (2004); The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by lawyer Michelle Alexander (2010).

In some circles, integration is a bad word.  Some say that integration has been tried and it has failed to bring about harmonious racial or ethnic relations.  Two books suggest that the funeral for integration may have been premature.  All That We Can Be argues that the U.S. Army has been astoundingly successful in promoting integration within its ranks.  The Army is so highly integrated that Moskos and Butler talk of an Afro-Anglo culture permeating all aspects of Army life.  They describe Afro-Anglo culture as a multiracial uniculture that blends the British heritage with the Afro "moral vision, rhetoric, literature, music, and a distinctive Protestant Christianity."

In the 1970s, the Army was plagued by racial strife and conflict, so much so that its viability as a functioning fighting unit was threatened,  In this time of crisis, Army leadership made some bold decisions, and over a period of about 20 years these decisions and actions led to a sociological miracle.  The Army made improved ethnic relations a high priority.  The hired the best experts to design their program, and they did not skimp on the resources devoted to implement the program.  It was a serious and extensive effort, not just high-sounding rhetoric.  What was the result?  Moskos and Butler describe the Army this way:

It is an organization unmatched in its level of racial integration . . . . unmatched in its broad record of black achievement.  It is a world in which the Afro-American heritage is part and parcel of the institutional culture.  It is the only place in American life where whites are routinely bossed around by blacks.

After an extensive discussion of the many ramifications of such an effort at integration, the authors turn to this important question:  Can the successful Army experience be duplicated in civilian society?  The authors answer a resounding, YES!!  The basic principles are transferable (if there is the will to do so); they list and discuss 12 principles on how to do it.  In a major appendix, they urge that the nation commit itself to replicating the Army success in a National Service program for its young men and women.

The Christian church should humbly sit at the feet of the U.S. Army and learn how to operationalize love and respect for fellow ethnic human beings.  Strangely, a military unit that trains people to kill has also trained potential killers how to treat others as equal human beings.  The church which supposedly trains people how to love, not kill, has, for the most part, a record of failure in the area of ethnic harmony and reconciliation.  Tragically, apart from token integration, most of the Christian American church remains highly segregated.

Orlando Patterson, in his book The Ordeal of Integration, also argues that, in spite of an enormous rhetoric to the contrary, integration has been reasonably successful in civilian society.  Not as successful as the Army, of course, but still successful enough to be called a sociological miracle if seen from both a historical and a crosscultural perspective.

For example, the 1940 poverty rate among Afro-Americans was probably around 80 percent, but in the mid-nineties it was 29 percent.  This means that 70 percent of Afro-Americans live above the poverty line.  We hear much about the underclass---the poorest of the poor and a very serious problem.  Yet, according to Paterson, they make up only 3 percent of the total Afro-American population---900,000 out of 34,000,000.  Patterson describes the 70 percent of the population as follows:

hard-working, disproportionately God-fearing, law-abiding group of people who share the same dreams as their fellow citizens, love and cherish the land of their birth with equal fervor, contribute to its cultural, military, and political glory and global triumph out of all proportion to their numbers, and, to every dispassionate observer, are, in their values, habits, ideals, and ways of living, among the most 'American' of Americans.

Patterson also argues that Afro-Americans have moved "from a condition of mass illiteracy fifty years ago" to "median years of schooling and college completion rates higher than those of most European nations."  He also cites data to the effect that Euro-American ethnic attitudes have improved markedly.

If progress has been so significant, why so much negative rhetoric?  Many people do not have a 50 year perspective and therefore do not know how much progress has been made.  And many serious problems do remain.  Patterson describes the present situation as the best of times and the worst of times.  During this time the rate of interracial marriage is increasing; 12 percent of all new marriages by Afro-Americans in 1993 were to Euro-Americans.  A generation ago the rate was about 1 percent.

To be continued. . . .