The New Jim Crow

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=10046

Pretty strong article. I had intended to attend this breakout right after the strong breakout right next door with Daniel Carro on Hispanic justice issues, but opted for another. Big mistake on my part.
Panelists made some pretty strong points.

SFox

[Jonathan]

[Stephen Fox]

Good questions.

Didn't say I had all the answers.

I am hoping Soaries, the National Baptist pastor and former Sec State in New Jersey, later a Bush appointee; who was on stellar panel at the Covenant will have the opportunity to address some of your concerns with Hugo Black's grandson at UBama later this fall.

I am working on it.
The conversation will continue.

I voted for Barack OBama this afternoon, all the while asking myself a version of your concerns as I was the only caucasion passnger on My Marta run after the session Friday afternoon.

To an extent I agree with you, after all the pontificating and the posturing, it comes down to daily exchanges of person to person level, and the stories that come from them and how they stack up with the parables of Jesus.

Sometimes my stories are in that flow, and other times they are not.

Jonathan; I am convinced and I hate to drop names again; but Noll, Balmer, Marsh and now David Gushee; I'm sorry but their conversation is enormously more substantial in these matters than the folks you have been left to justify in the SBC: Land, Mohler, etc.

Fox

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.furman.edu/press/pressarchive.cfm?ID=4131

Jonathan:

Almost immediately after that last post I came by Divine Coincidence upon my friend Echol Nix of the Furman Religion Department MLKing sermon at Dexter Avenue just a few short weeks ago.
I have had several conversations with Echol at Furman the last couple years. He told me how in High School in Montgomery he was the debating opponent of Eric Motley, the pride of Samford University and an acquaintance of Karl Rove as a Bush appointee in the White House.

Hoping to see Echol when Randall Balmer comes to Furman March 17.

Here is Echol's final poem I leave with you on this Historic Day:

The Apostle Paul made this same point in his address to Athenians, “From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the earth.” (Acts 17:26).



In 1961, Dr. King said: In a multi-racial society, no group can make it alone. Our destinies are tied together. And in a sense, all life is inter-related.” There are several senses in which Dr. King is right. Among these include: biophysical, social, economic, and national. He went further to say, “Life is not independent, it is interdependent.



If we can move beyond what divides us, and search for common ground we can better foster a vision of a genuine community which gives space to differences but also loyalty to basic human values such as honesty, compassion, faith, and justice. If we can commit to this vision, we can make this world, a better world for ourselves and for children.



The popular poem “Bridge Builder” comes to mind:



An old man, going a lone highway,

Came, at the evening, cold and gray,

To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

The sullen stream had no fears for him;

But he turned, when safe on the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,

"You are wasting strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day;

You never again will pass this way;

You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-

Why build a bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:

"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,

"There will come after me today,

[Young people] whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,

To [them] may a pitfall be. [They], too,

must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I’m building the bridge for [them]."

[ET]

(I was going to respond, but had to put the flamethrower back in the closet.)

Wish I could blame all the problems in my life on someone else's racist behavior or "privilege".

[William Thornton]

Ethics Occasionally trots out de la Torre for this kind of stuff. That the ABC denominational worker sniffs about America's 'racialized' society looks like white denominational self-flagellation to me. Ask any of them if the statistics were in order, would they pronounce 'racialism' as cured? No, of course not. Such would end the careers of the Lords of Poverty, Racism, and the Opressed.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Haruo]

Maybe William thinks ABC is a "white" denomination like, say, the SBC.

Leland