Sorry, it took me a while to get back to this thread. (Good thing I have special powers to open it again.)
As a non-minority, I don’t know the answer to the second question.
As to the first question, I think we support the Church’s work in urban renewal, in providing safety nets and social support networks for black families, in supporting black businesses, and in education initiatives (charter schools, after-school programs, teen career mentorship programs) with our money, our volunteer time, and for some of us, our vocation.
I taught in two different public schools. The first was in a large city in VA and was 55% black students, 25% white. It was a completely dysfunctional school even though on paper it was a “blue ribbon school.” A large number of the white students were from military families or a middle-class neighborhood. A large percentage of the black students were bused in for an arts and dance magnet program from the lowest socio-economic areas of the city. I won’t get into the details, but teaching there was a traumatic experience for me. It was so stressful and I worked so hard that I developed stomach problems and lost 35 pounds, had chronic migraines, anxiety attacks, and symptoms of depression. When people say “We just need more dedicated teachers in city schools and that will fix everything,” I get hives. Walk a mile in those inner-city school teacher shoes. There are so many systemic issues with our urban education system when students come from poverty, and when drugs, gangs, and sex trafficking are family businesses, and when their peer and adult role models are by and large terrible influences.
The second school was in suburban Chicago and was 70% black, 20% white. In this school many of the black students and white students were children of middle and upper-middle class professionals with college educations. But a good portion of the white students were from a trailer park, and some of the black students were from section 8 housing. But in almost every class, the best student was a black student, most of the student government and team captains and club presidents were black. The black kids from the lower socio-economic homes had very positive peer role models and I wrote lots of recommendation letters for black kids who were going to be the first of their family to go to college and quite a few for black kids who were third generation Ivy League applicants. Although this school did a great job providing opportunities and academic support for kids who did not come from privileged backgrounds, there was a critical mass of minority kids who came to the school predisposed to succeed and they brought the “at risk” kids up with them.
I guess my point in all of this is that I don’t think we can fix a lot of the issues that keep minority kids from academic opportunities from the outside. But we can come alongside black communities and churches where there is momentum and initiative and we can be as supportive as possible.
Thanks for reopening the thread. Its appropriate because we are contemplating race. I wanted to explain some of how I have been processing on this.
As some people know, my father recently died. It was sudden and unexpected. I’ve become acquainted the work of grief, and part of this work was very public. The week my father died, I did three Veritas Forums.
The thing about funerals and grief is that they are public, and they invite us into the truth of something that is ultimately unfixable. We do not grieve as if the work of grief will undo death. There is something irrevocable and final about death, from our human point of view. Our only hope in it is that Jesus has power to overcome it and promises the same. Still, even with this hope, we grieve the loss of that person’s presence among us.
The fact that we cannot fix death, is all the more reason to enter into grief. The effort to remember and honor the person who died is humanizing. The fact, also, that we will see them again, does not mitigate the loss. Grief is an honest and humanzing response to death. It also changes us, reordering our world and integrating into our identity.
The goal of grief is not get through it as quickly as possible, but to enter into it fully. To live with it as new reality. It is not always sadness, but it a truthfulness and engagement with the reality of loss.
Death is something that thrusts us unwillingly into grief. Injustice, especially racial injustice, might invite us to willingly choose to enter into grief. Yes, we can and should do what we can to mitigate and understand and reverse it. However, there are things that have been lost that cannot be recovered.
An honest account of our moment, it seems, requires us to willing enter the truth of grief. The fact that this crooked reality cannot be made straight is all the more reason to grieve. This is not the world as it is mean to be. The fact that we do not know how to fix it, and we are too late to have fixed it for past generations, is all the more reason to grieve.
So, as I have been engaging this issue, and talking to students, two patterns have emerged, I wanted to put out there.
First, It seems that scientifically talented african american students often face a decision between pursuing a career in medicine or science. That is a major siphon point, where a very large percentage chose to enter medicine. To be clear, black students are underrepresented in medicine. However, the situation is much worse in science because choose medicine over science. Why? They reported a high responsibility to serve directly their communities of origin. There is sense of responsibility; and a recognition of that they do not go back to medically serve the black community, maybe no one will.
I grieve this as an unfair burden placed upon black students in science, which is direct consequence of ongoing segregation. It is an injurious burden, which prevents them from entering the cathedral, because they know that very few non-black physicians will choose to serve the black community. The black community, after all, is not their family.
Second, many mention the anti-religious ethos of science, alongside the absence of role models. Elaine Ecklund has published on this, and did not detect a statistically significant effect for blacks, but did for hispanics (I wonder if that could just be because of low numbers). However, at least some report that there is discomfort in being a double minority: a believer in an anti-belief context, on top of being a ethnic minority. There is much less effort to engage black students on their scientific/theology integration questions too (and they are often similar, and they are often different). So many of their struggles are not as much a culture war (as is in say AIG), but a lonely journey without places or communities or books to process many of the questions that arise.
For me, I think one response is to grieve the neglect we have had for their journey. When ASA and BioLogos (and myself in the past) have discussed engaging the Church on science, we usually imagine some version of white fundamentalism/evangelicalism as the Church. This is just not tenable for me any more. I am ashamed that so thoroughly ignored a large portion of the Church that they became invisible to me. As for me, I had forgotten that they were my family too.
One Response I Request
For those of us in ASA or in BioLogos or any other group like this, I do think that there is something we should do. I am sure there is no easy solution. However, I think we should be unsettled by the neglect of those outside white fundamentalism/evangelicalism. I would that our discontent would grow.
I would hope that we would grieve this publicly, and ask these groups to consider the concerns fo the black church too, to invite them to the table, to hear their stories, and to answer their questions too.
It is legal to integrate. This world, in this sense is desegregated, however we need to engage the more difficult task of integration now. To live as one family, instead of believing that their concerns are not ours. I know, also, that this is not always a product of direct racism. In a way, this is just the world we inherited, from the same generation that assassinated MLK 50 years ago. They created a world shaped by injustice, but so effective from insulating us from seeing the depths of our fall well.
I hope that we could enter into a truthful grief, and find a better way.
I really resonate with this. But an important question for people who are going to make their life work being present in these places where injustice reigns, is how do we deal when we are not just talking about “a season of grief” or a “moment of mourning”?
I currently work with a poor, racially oppressed people group in an area of the world where the level of criminal impunity is one of the highest in the world. There is no justice here. One thing I struggle with personally is how to maintain an attitude of empathy, solidarity, and grief indefinitely. When someone dies we go through our stages of grief and we eventually come to a place of new normal where we come to terms with our loss and move on to some extent. But in these racial injustice and poverty contexts that are so fraught with conflict, prejudice, hatred, and flat out wickedness, how do we ever move on from our grief at what goes on? What does it look like when there is no new life after the death, just death upon death upon death? How do you live perpetually in constant empathetic suffering?
I think there is a part of the Christian calling to take up our crosses that involves taking on other peoples’ pain, just like Jesus did. But Jesus did not stay on the cross, there was eventually a victory. I often wish I saw more victory.
One practical thing we can all do is support black professionals when we have a choice. I intentionally made sure all of my OB-GYNs were black women or all black practices (I had three different ones because my insurance changed and then my favorite one moved back to her community of origin, just like you said) My reasoning was that these women had probably worked much harder than their white male peers to make it through med school. They were all excellent doctors. When we lived near Chicago, I also used to drive an extra ten minutes and do my grocery shopping in an all black neighborhood. That way my money was supporting their community in some small way. I hired a young black woman when I needed a babysitter. My kids went to a racially diverse pre-school. I think there are lots of small ways like this that non-minority people can be proactive in dismantling segregation in their own personal lives, and they aren’t some kind of radical activism.
Thank you for this. People pay lip service to teachers, but the truth is shown by the value that society places upon the job, which is next to nothing. I can’t tell you how many times my own students asked, “Mr. Johnson, why are you here? You could be anywhere doing anything. Why are you here?”
Since we’re talking specifically about gifted students, there are a couple of things you have to take into consideration. Typically, gifted students have an over-developed sense of fairness, and they tend to favor service-oriented careers, such as medicine, teaching, counseling, social work, etc. The way that this often plays out with gifted minority students is anger at the lack of opportunity and discrimination in many career fields, and a desire to make a difference in their community. You are swimming against two strong psychological currents that steer potential scientists in other directions.
Then, you have the problem of academic achievement vs. social acceptance. We all remember middle school and high school. I don’t have to cite statistics that high intelligence is not the route to popularity at that age. Gifted students often hide their “giftedness” to fit in. This is especially true of minority students, where standard English is “talking white” and being a traitor to the “hood,” where being called “friendly” is an insult, and where being “hard” is a much more useful survival skill than being smart.
I pulled this out of another thread because it illustrates one source of the problem in science education at the university level. This isn’t a criticism of you specifically, but of the system. As you point out, teaching at the highest levels is really a system of apprenticeship. The “best and brightest” are singled out and mentored, while the rest must fend for themselves.
This sounds fine on paper, but it causes two problems for minority students from disadvantaged backgrounds. First, it recognizes present achievement, not future potential. Many minority students come from schools that did not prepare them for the academic rigors of university, and even when they do get “up to speed” with everyone else, they still take years to become confident in that environment. Second, in choosing whom to “mentor,” professors will tend to pick those like themselves. This is not overt racism, but it is a fact of life. As long as this is the method used to train our top research scientists, you probably won’t see a lot of change in the make-up of “the academy” anytime soon.
You hope I get booted off the forum? I hope you are open to different views, including peer reviewed evidence showing racial differences. If it feels politically incorrect doesn’t mean it isn’t true. More than anything pretending races are interchangeable is extremely dangerous.
The bible is littered with ethnic warring. History in general is littered with corpses as a result of racial tension and conflict. Increasing diversity leads to lower social trust, less democracy, and less freedom. It is happening in the US already. Even churches are mostly segregated. Why? People are tribal by nature. Blood is thicker than water. Good fences make good neighbors. Birds of a feather flock together.
But, that doesn’t imply Christianity is wrong. God wants different people’s to use their own cultures and worship Him.
Science is not racist. Let’s have a look. Peer reviewed evidence for IQ differences between races:
Christians need to throw off the veil of pretense and start acknowledging races are equal but different. God knows this. Just like there are different dog breeds. There are different races. This is not “racism.”
SAT scores show differences in abilities between for example Blacks (who speak English as a first language) and Chinese (many who speak English as a second or third language.
Race affects crime.
[misleading graphic about black on white crime removed by moderator]
I actually believe most Christians agree with me, but they are paranoid as being labelled a “racist” for bucking the norms in belief. Let’s not let political correctness undermine the growth of Christianity, for ALL peoples.
Because people are broken and sinful and fall short of God’s ideal, not because there is anything inherently dangerous or wrong with “diversity.”
Not teachings of Christianity, by the way.
Dog breeds and human races are a terrible analogy. There is no genetic basis for human races; they are a social construct.
Sources are important. Rushton 1995? Really? Please come join 21st century science.
This article links intelligence and genes not intelligence and race. There can be more genetic variation between individuals of the same racial group than there is between individuals from different racial groups. Because race is a social construct, not a genetic reality.
Many black children speak non-standard dialects of English which have significantly different grammatical and phonological rules. I failed an African-American Vernacular English grammar test in grad school. Standard English is indeed their “second language.” Plus, the SAT is not an intelligence test, it is a scholastic aptitude test. Plenty of other factors besides intelligence play into a specific culture’s definition of scholastic aptitude, not to mention the many factors that contribute to test-taking proficiency.
And just so we’re clear … your admonition is aimed at something that RH posted above and not the Tim Wise link in your response, right? I only ask because I have learned a lot listening to Mr. Wise and have a lot of respect for what he says. So if somebody has problems with him, I’d like to know about it.
Yes. I had originally left the graphic up, but then decided to remove it. The article discusses how statistics are manipulated to create the offensive graphic which was removed. I added a line to clarify.
Fact: To fairly poll “most Christians” you would end up with far more Africans and Latinos in your sample than white American evangelicals.
I seriously doubt you considered this demographic fact before you made the statement accusing them of holding racist, badly-informed opinions.
Heresy derives from a Greek word that means “to split.” It was adopted in early Christianity to describe those who would use inflammatory teaching to divide the body of Christ.
On this basis, some of the statements you have made in this forum could reasonably be described as heretical. Your statements have grievously wounded the body of Christ, and in so doing have grieved the Savior to whom the body belongs.
I am praying for the light of Christ to shine forth in your heart.
So what do you do with the fact that one of the central themes of the New Testament (especially in the ministry of Paul, but throughout) is bringing together Jews and Gentiles in one common body of Christ, which was reflected throughout the New Testament era in diverse local house churches? A large portion of the New Testament is dedicated to promoting the goodness of this sort of diversity-in-unity. I imagine that if writing the New Testament had been up to you, you wouldn’t have chosen to write it this way…
At one time I suggested that BioLogos take on the task of countering the Darwinian view of Survival of the Fittest which is not scientific, but has been used to justify racism, wittingly and unwittingly. As I remember I was soundly rebuffed.
BioLogos has repeatedly denounced Social Darwinism and all forms of eugenics as unscientific and wrong. You are just going to have to get over the fact that no official BioLogos spokesperson is going to wholeheartedly endorse your particular idiosyncratic view that sees immorality and lack of scientific merit in the concept of “survival of the fittest”. Sorry.
I am not asking anyone to whole heartedly endorse anything that is unscientific. Nor do I suggest that it condemn anything that is not immoral.
What I am suggesting that BioLogos consider the proposal, which means to look at the evidence behind it and give a reasoned response. Rhetoric is not reason.