Category: Religion and racism

Trump, Wright, the Media and Hatred

When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, the media played, over and over, two sound bites of the candidate’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright. In one he said, in the context of the sermon which he was preaching, “God bless America? No, no, no, God damn America…”, using the Biblical text from Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is a book of laws.  In it, there are a slew of laws and the expectation that God’s people will be obedient. Throughout the book, the writers list requirements of God’s people, and infractions that will get people and nations in trouble. They, the people and/or their nation, will be “cursed” if they do not obey the Lord. The word “cursed” comes from the Latin “damnare” which means “to inflict a loss,” or “to condemn.” To be so damned, or cursed, usually means that a person or nation is a sinner, guilty of being disobedient. Those who are disobedient stand the possibility of being condemned by God; in the New Testament, that would mean some people get to heaven, others don’t. Jesus’ statement that “not everybody who says “Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven” seems to point to the reality that some of us are “condemned” or “damned” because we are not doing God’s will.

In these chapters of Deuteronomy, the writer says that people will be cursed for some very specific things: people who lead blind people astray, people who dishonor their parents,and people who engage in sexual improprieties are “cursed,”  but as mentioned,  God, Yahweh, wants all of the laws followed. Among the things that God apparently detests:

If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master. Let him live among you wherever he likes and whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him. (Deut. 23:15)

Do not charge your brother interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interests. You may charge a foreigner interest but not a brother Israelite… (Deut. 23:19)

At the end of every seven years, you must cancel debts. (Deut. 15:1)

There should be no poor among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. (Deut. 15:4) (italics mine). Citing the ways in which the United States has oppressed people here and all over the world, Wright took to the Bible to remind us that we will be cursed for not doing God’s will.

Wright was referring to a very specific directive which came straight from the Hebrew scriptures; his  was a Biblical argument, not a hateful barrage of words.

Trump, however, who says, by the way, that he is a Christian, has been nothing but hateful in his rhetoric – speaking against Mexicans, Muslims, women, and anyone who dares cross him, and the media has been sluggish in highlighting that he is spewing hatred; this same media which skewered Wright is not playing the Donald Trump diatribes repeatedly over their airwaves.

What is that about?

The media is, instead, giving Trump more and more air time. It seems not to mettle them at all that Trump’s words are rousing the racists from their dens.Most of what Trump does is verbally attack people who dare say anything he feels like is an attack on him – and any time one says anything in opposition to Trump, he says it is an attack. Trump comes back with insults and put-downs. He gives very little specific policies that he would implement if elected president.

Isn’t that hate? Isn’t Trump a bully, perhaps hiding his insecurities with this hateful, racist bravado?

What Wright did was let people know that a nation which calls itself Christian but which is not doing God’s will, is in trouble. With its history of oppressing others, Wright preached, America is in trouble. It stands to be “cursed” by a God who demands justice and righteousness.

But Wright was “damned” by the media and much of America, while Trump gets a free pass.  This man who is so rich has spent barely a penny of his own money in getting his message out. The media seems to giggle when he issues yet another one of his hateful statements.

So, “hatred” is OK if a rich white man is the perpetrator? It really doesn’t matter that Trump has put down Mexicans, immigrants and women? (Interestingly, he has said very little publicly about black people.) White nationalist David Duke says that Trump speaks “a lot more radically than I do.” (http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/white-nationalist-leader-david-duke-trump-sounds-even-more-radical-than-i-do/)

The ex-KKK leader also said that Trump understands “the real sentiment of America.” This, coming from a man whose personal and public positions on who is worthy of dignity and freedom and who is not, is troubling. The KKK’s history of hatred needs no help here. (http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/ex-kkk-leader-david-duke-backs-donald-trump-he-understands-the-real-sentiment-of-america/)

Does anyone see the difference? Trump is getting a free pass to incite racists who have long been lying dormant, ready to strike. Trump’s words are giving them permission to rise up and be bold in their hatred of so much … And the media seems more than willing to be complicit in the plan.

Wright, on the other hand, pleaded for people of God who knew God’s word to stand up and fight for justice, to remind this nation of God’s blessings for obedience …and curses (damnation) for disobedience.

I hate to put Wright’s name in the same essay that has the names of Donald Trump and David Duke, but the difference in the way Trump and Wright have been treated by the media is stark. The media sought to destroy Barack Obama by playing soundbites that it knew would feed into the dormant racists and others. The sound of an “angry black man” was threatening.  Political strategists knew it and used it. It’s called politics.

But that same media is letting Trump say truly hateful things and continue to give him free air time to spread is hatred. The media is being masterful in manipulating a particular demographic. The media is playing the race card, the white supremacist card, and the fear card… They are not trying to destroy Trump. They like him. Wright bothered them and so he had to go.

I don’t like hockey much but I have heard from hockey junkies that the game is OK but the fights are exciting. I have heard them say that they go to see the fights because they are fun to watch.

It seems like, feels like, Trump and his base are a hockey team, fighting with anyone who dares cross him and them, not on policy issues but on personal, hateful, racist, sexist, and religious issues.

A candid observation …

Police an Uneducated Lot

I have struggled for a while, trying to “explain” what I have long observed: the vast majority of police officers are young, white men…with little more than a high school education.

Not only that. Many of them come from all-white environments; many have never known a black person before they come onto their respective police forces. All they have are the myths about black people that were begun long ago and which are perpetuated by their families, their churches, the media.

They come onto the force thinking black people are just bad.

And because they know few, if any, black people, they come on the force afraid. Black people are an “unknown” that they have been taught should be feared.

Honestly, I think that’s where the impulse to shoot first and ask questions later comes from. White people in general in this nation have been taught that black people are bad; that’s called “criminalization.” And they have been taught, albeit subliminally in many cases, that black people are less than human. That’s called “dehumanization.”

But there is something about our law enforcement system that has been ignored: these young guys (and women) have very little education. They are not made to take sociology or psychology. They are not made to study the history of police relations with minorities. They are not required to be licensed, like a psychologist or doctor or teacher.

They simply go to the police academy. They go through a kind of basic training. They are physically fit, yes. But they are lacking in social skills. They are not taught about the neighborhoods into which they will venture. They are made physically fit; they pass the qualifying exam, then are given a badge and a gun. They are given permission to kill. And they do, largely because they are afraid.

They DO put their lives in jeopardy, but they put the lives of black, brown and poor people into jeopardy as well. They do not know us, black people. They do not know how our parents have struggled to make a living – much like their parents did. They do not know, do not believe, that black people have “family values.” They just know what they have been taught: that black people, especially black men, are bad news.

Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel, a popular and widely studied Western philosopher and theologian, wrote something that made my spirit roll up. He wrote: “It is the essential principle of slavery that man has not yet attained self-consciousness of his freedom, and consequently sinks down to a mere Thing – an object of no value. Among Negroes moral sentiments are weak or, more strictly, non-existent.” (The Philosophy of History). 

Black people were not humans; they were things, and he, a person who theologians and teachers and preachers would turn for knowledge, would write much that supported the notion that black people were inhuman. He wrote, “What signify these races to us? Who cares particularly for the Negro, or Hottentot or the Kaffir – Destined by the nature of their race to run, like animals, a certain limited course of existence, it matters little how their extinction is brought about.”

How in the world can the white race, burdened as it is by such racist underpinnings, be expected to rise above that – except that they be educated? The history is there. We are not taught it in school, but it is there. It is undeniable. It is there, in black and white, stories of how white people have systematically, and with government and law enforcement support,  decimated, killed and harassed black people in this nation. To our credit, we have not given up …but the struggle has been immense.

What would be the difference in police departments if the new recruits HAD to take sociology, psychology, history? What would be the difference in their behavior as they learned the critical difference between myth and reality? I would bet that for some, the fear would be abated. At the worst, they would go into black communities armed not only with guns…but with knowledge. The mere presence of black people might not terrify them so much. They might listen …and not attack, as they are so often wont to do.

Education does something to one’s spirit. It sucks up ignorance and makes room for growth. It opens eyes and provides answers to questions we didn’t even know we had.

Police officers, young white boys just out of high school, need to be educated.

A candid observation …