Friday, March 9, 2012

If it is a Boy, Kill Him - The Black Male in Ameria



Do they not go astray who devise evil?   Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:22, 31, 32, 34)

Urban League report focuses on the Black male

'Empowering Black men to reach their full potential is the most serious economic and civil rights challenge we face today. Ensuring their future is critical, not just for the African American community, but for the prosperity, health, and well-being of the entire American family.'

NUL President Marc H. Morial


“The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives . . . . ‘When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live (Exodus 1:15-15.)’”  This was Pharaoh’s edict to the Hebrew midwives.  We must pay careful attention to this passage.  Verses 9 and 10 tell us that the problem was that Pharaoh saw that “there were too many of them (Hebrews) and that they were “numerous and becoming more powerful.”  He cautioned his advisors, “Let us deal shrewdly with them (1:10).”

He thought he had the perfect plan.  The goal was not simply to eliminate the boys.  THE GOAL WAS TO WEAKEN THE PEOPLE.  It was to make them weak.  It was to decrease their numbers.  Seeing those who were supposed to bring and nurture life, act instead to destroy it is a real psychological blow to any community.  The first strategy was to get them to do the killing for him.  It may at first have seemed very arrogant and foolish of him to expect Hebrew midwives to kill Hebrew boys, but Pharaoh understood something about human nature. 

First, those who were to nurture life were being forced to serve as immediate witnesses to the genocide.  How many drugged-out mothers have succumbed to the pain of seeing the genocide and victimization of a white supremacist society over the hopes, dreams, futures and very physical safety of their offspring?

In the nations of the Third Reich, when poor Jews started disappearing, those with means could still buy a little food, a little freedom, and a little delay.  The Jews who became guards in the ghettos, and those who supported them, actually came to believe that the massive program of “relocation” (extermination) did not include them.   

Desperate people will easily resort to desperate denials and fantasies in the face of seeming overwhelming power and influence.  Oppressed people, especially those whose faith perspective is limited by their conception of material comfort, too often become the “Indian Scouts” for the colonial cavalry that will eventually annihilate them.  Then those who have had some meager benefit or “funding” from the rich and powerful are often all too ready to preserve their “privileged status” by doing “whatever it takes” to satisfy their benefactors.

The Black African American middle class community understands that many of even the most “progressive and enlightened” among whites in America (and their immigrant American clones and wannabees) have no use for them.  These people love to “help poor blacks,” to conduct mission trips to poor black communities and poor black nations.  They love to wring their hands about what they call “black-on-black” violence.  They sit in Universities and whip out statistics and write papers on all the remedial things they need to devise (of course with themselves in leadership) to save the next generation of “African Americans.”

Yet they won’t step foot in a church, join a club, a lounge, or a nightclub, shop at a grocery store, live in a neighborhood or a send their children to a school where black middle class are in the majority.  Many do not know famous black authors, inventors or significant historical contributions made by blacks.  Many, in spite of numerous advanced degrees have never read a Black author of any kind.  They do not like living and working in situations where Blacks are their “equal,” but prefer to take on the roll of beneficent paternalistic saviors to poor blacks.  They also work hard to pit poor Blacks against middle class Blacks.  They seek to create a false consciousness among poor and middle class Blacks about each other.  Through construct, myth and theory they seek to help all understand how the Black middle class are distant and look down on them, all the while ignoring the fact that these so-called “Poor Blacks” are the brothers, sisters, cousins—and often children of Black middle class families.  Hence we saw television programs in the 70s like the “White Shadow” and “Webster,” and the media still spends an inordinate amount of space and time focusing on that one white teacher or principal who needs to be commended for just doing the job they were paid to do in a “predominantly Black/Latino” school or community center.

Nevertheless, the attempt to destroy the Black middle class and its growth by destabilizing black communities, black households, black economy and black families is working.  The criminal “just-us” system in America has been most effective in carrying out genocide against Black (middle class and poor and underclass) America.  Below are a few illustrations and statistics worth repeating:

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - The prospects are bleak. Genocide is no exaggeration.  Incarceration, AIDS, unemployment and the school drop-out rate are all problems challenging Black people in America—Black males in particular—and according to this year’s annual report released Apr. 17 by the National Urban League (NUL) entitled “The State of Black America: Portrait of the Black Male,” these problems represent the most serious social crisis occurring in the United States today.

“A quarter of all Black Americans live below the federal poverty level, a poverty rate about twice the national rate,” Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) writes in the report’s foreword. “In some cities, more than half of all Black boys do not finish high school, and by the time they are in their 30s, almost six in ten Black high school dropouts will have spent time in prison.”

The bad statistics concerning Black men go on and on. Half of all Black men in their 20s are unemployed, and more young Black men are in prison than in college.

“Empowering Black men to reach their full potential is the most serious economic and civil rights challenge we face today,” NUL President Marc H. Morial told reporters at the National Press Club. 

“Ensuring their future is critical, not just for the African American community, but for the prosperity, health, and well-being of the entire American family.”

Black males are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as White males, and nearly seven times more likely to be incarcerated, with their average jail sentences 10 months longer than those of White men. In addition, Black males between the ages of 15 and 34 are nine times more likely than Whites to be killed by firearms, and nearly eight times as likely to have AIDS.

As a solution to the problems, the report recommends universal early-childhood education; all-male schools which emphasize mentoring programs and longer class hours; more “second chance” programs for dropouts and former offenders; a restoration of the Summer Jobs Program; and an effort to convince children that education pays dividends later in life.

The NUL report bears witness to the condition of the Black man and the conspiracy to destroy Black males. Some have argued that the conspiracy to destroy the Black male is a “theory,” however, the scripture of the Bible gives proof of the reality of a plan to destroy the male child.

During the time of Moses, the Pharaoh of that day issued a decree to destroy all of the male children of Israel, as well as during the time of the birth of Jesus, when King Herod issued a decree to kill all of the boy babies to stop the birth of The Messiah.

The conspiracy and plan to target the Black male is best expressed in the Bible in Exodus 1:10, wherein Pharaoh states “Come let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and join onto our enemy and come against us in war.”

Although the NUL report stated there are solutions, but they don’t operate on a large enough scale, the report, however, fails to reflect the decades of work and admired results achieved by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Min. Farrakhan toured the country, alerting young Black men to a planned genocide against them by the U.S. government through his “Stop the Killing” tour.
This series of lectures was aimed at informing the community, and young Black men in particular, of the government’s plan to target young Black men for destruction. It was also during this period that Min. Farrakhan worked with youth gangs to help promote peace, and with rappers in the hip hop community to help decrease conflict.

In the mid-1990s, Min. Farrakhan launched another national tour entitled “Men Only Meetings” where he again alerted Black males of the government’s plan to promote a negative image of the Black man in the U.S. and in the world as a “menace to society.” This image, according to Min. Farrakhan, was largely promoted through movies and other negative imagery to set up the Black male for destruction.

It was during these series of men only meetings that Min. Farrakhan spoke of A Million-Man March that he began to mobilize for in 1995. The Million Man March was the most successful mobilization of Black men in U.S. history, when more than two million men rallied on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1995.

Growing out of the Million Man March, more Black men voted in the 1996 election than had ever voted before, and tens of thousands of Black children were adopted by families headed by Black males.

“We must close the jobs gap. We must close the education gap. We must close the high school graduation gap. But I suggest to you, that we’ve got to close—as Senator Obama says in his foreword—the empathy gap. We’ve got to close the gap of concern in this nation today,” said Mr. Morial.

  Explanations of black juvenile homicides in the 1980s that focus on the “super-predator” theory have no basis in fact. Justice Department data show that the entire rise in such homicides for the period 1984-1994 was related to firearms, as has been the decline in homicides beginning in 1995. Thus, the lethality of young offenders increased by having access to guns, rather than there being a new “breed” of young killers. Further, if the 15-19-year olds who were committing violent crimes in the late 1980s were actually“super-predators,” then they should have displayed these tendencies in the early 1980s as well, when they were in the 10-14 age range. Data for this period, though, show no indication of that (FBI-3, Crime in the United States, 1996, 1997).

This therefore lends support to the explanation that the greater availability of firearms, much of it related to the drug trade, was the primary source of the increase in violence.  Criminologist Alfred Blumstein has conducted prominent analyses of the overall racial composition of the prison population. In an examination of the 1991 state prison population, he concluded that 76% of the higher black rate of imprisonment could be accounted for by higher rates of arrest for serious offenses. While this held true for most crimes, the critical exception in this regard was drug offenses, which will be detailed further below. The remaining 24% of disparity might be explained by criminal histories, racial bias, or other factors.

Offenses by blacks are more likely to lead to arrest than those of whites. While the self reported involvement of adolescent males represents a 3:2 black/white differential, the arrest ratio is 4:1.

While there are no dramatic differences in the degree to which blacks and whites become involved in offending at some point, blacks are nearly twice as likely to continue offending into their twenties. The key variable in this regard is the adoption of adult roles. Thus, among young adults who are employed or living in a stable relationship there are no significant differences in the persistence of offending by race.

Research on sentencing in a number of jurisdictions has concluded that disparity based on race does in fact occur. One of the more sophisticated such studies examined case processing and sentencing outcomes for persons arrested for a felony offense in New York State for the years 1990-92.  Controlling for factors including prior criminal history, gender and county, the researchers found that for the more serious offenses, there was relatively little difference in sentencing, although it was estimated that 300 black and Hispanic offenders who received prison terms would not have had they been white.

For property offenses and misdemeanors, though, minorities were considerably more likely to receive jail terms.

Sources:
(Charles Pulaski, and George Woodworth, “Comparative Review of Death Sentences: An Empirical Study of the Georgia Experience,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 74 (fall 1983): 661-753.

Stephen Klein, Joan Petersilia, and Susan Turner, “Race and Imprisonment Decisions in California,” Science,
(February 16, 1990).

John Hagan and Ruth D. Peterson, “Criminal Inequality in America: Patterns and Consequences,” in John Hagan and Ruth D. Peterson, Crime and Inequality, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 28.

The key issue in this regard appears to lie in the use of discretion by the courts when sentencing offenders. Violent offenders, regardless of their race or ethnicity, are quite likely to be sentenced to prison.

But for less serious offenders where there is an option, but no obligation, to sentence an offender to prison, prosecutors and judges are making decisions in each case about whether an offender will receive six months in jail, for example, or be required to enter a treatment program and make restitution to a victim.

It would be a mistake simply to attribute the results of such studies to prosecutorial and judicial racist beliefs; in some jurisdictions a significant number of prosecutors and judges are minorities prosecuting and sentencing other minorities to terms of incarceration. The results instead may reflect the degree to which offenders bring different sets of resources with them to the court system. For example, do white offenders have greater access to private defense attorneys who can devote more time to their cases to try to convince prosecutors and judges that a jail or prison term is not warranted? Do they have greater access to expert psychiatric testimony or can they afford to subsidize placement in a substance abuse treatment program? Or, is unconscious racism at play: do whites speak in a language and manner that is more comfortable to the decision makers in the courtroom?

These questions have important implications for developing remedies for the racial disparities that are so prominent in the criminal justice system. While some might advocate that a solution to minority over-representation in the prison system would be to sentence more white offenders to prison, such an approach would be extremely costly and would not alleviate any of the harms suffered by minority communities.

The alternative approach is to examine the factors that enable white, or middle class, offenders to be sentenced to non-prison terms more frequently and to replicate those conditions for low-income people. For example, if middle class offenders have greater access to drug treatment resources, courts and communities could expand such services to make them accessible to a broader range of offenders. Additionally, greater resources could be devoted to indigent defense services, a proposal to which Attorney General Janet Reno has frequently called attention.

Since 1980, the “war on drugs” has been the most significant factor contributing to the rise of prison and jail populations. Drug policies have also had a disproportionate impact on African Americans and have exacerbated the racial disparities that already existed within the criminal justice system.* This has come about in two ways: first, drug offenses overall have increased as a proportion of the criminal justice population and, second, the proportion of African Americans among drug offenders has been increasing (James F. Nelson, Disparities in Processing Felony Arrests in New York State, 1990-92, Albany, N.Y.: Division of Criminal Justice Services, 1995).

From 1980 to 1995, drug arrests nationally nearly tripled from 581,000 to 1,476,000, thus bringing nearly a million additional drug cases to the court system each year. Over the course of this period, drug cases came to be treated much more harshly. Primarily as a result of mandatory sentencing policies adopted by all fifty states and the federal government, convicted drug offenders are now far more likely to be sentenced to prison than in the past. Justice Department data reveal that the chances of a drug arrestee being sentenced to prison rose by 447% between 1980 and 1992. 
Taken from
:
The Crisis of the Young African American Male and the Criminal Justice System
Marc Mauer, Assistant Director
The Sentencing Project
Prepared for U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
April 15-16, 1999
Washington, D.C.

_____________________________________

The Hebrew midwives did not follow Pharaoh’s orders.  They knew this wasn’t about the survival of one gender over the other.  They did not allow their enemy’s agendas like “war between the sexes” and “feminists verses male chauvinists” to define their struggle and neither must Black African American, Brown and White Latino American, and yes-Asian American people. 
The Hebrew midwives demonstrated that they were as capable as the King of Egypt when it came to being crafty and shrewd in order to insure their people’s survival.  The Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson often says, “No one will save us, for us, but us.”  What the National Urban League and Minister Louis Farrakhan are doing and proposing is just one step in one right direction need to be taken.   But meanwhile the attempt to kill, to incarcerate, to disenfranchise, to mis-educate, to eliminate black boys and also brown boys continues.  Notwithstanding all the test tubes, invitro fertilization techniques, it takes the whole village, not one sex, one type, one class or one cultural competency, to make a community prosperous, strong and thriving.  
Stop the killing of our children!!


Saturday, March 3, 2012

Ask and Expect . . . the Impossible.

Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it he found nothing on it but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again (Mark 11:12-14a).”

In verse 21 of this same chapter we discover that the fig tree Jesus pronounced a curse upon had withered. Jesus response seems even more difficult to understand than his initial action, “Have faith in God, I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain,“Go throw yourself into the sea’ and it does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him (11:22-23).”

First, he was teaching his disciples that faith gives us the authority to have expectations about life. We are to have faith to the degree that we learn to ASK AND EXPECT the IMPOSSIBLE. Human hunger required the fig tree to have some figs on it. It did not matter that “It was not the season for figs.” It was not fulfilling its function as a tree, and the need outweighed the fact that it was not the season for figs.

Too often that is the excuse we have for refusing to pray, for refusing to meditate, for refusing to believe that God can heal, give success, give control over things and situations that are obstacles, answer our prayers for ourselves and our loved ones, and empower us to make a difference in the world.

We use the excuse, “It’s not time yet. I have not accomplished enough. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough education. We don’t have enough members. We are not ready yet to move in that direction. The timing is bad—this is just impossible for now. It is just impossible. God expects too much. The Bible expects too much. We must be practical and learn to face reality.”

Jesus had just entered Jerusalem on a colt. People had thrown down Palm branches and their cloaks for him to rid over, hailing him with the words, “Hosanna—Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David.” They were waiting for David. They were waiting for a messiah. They were waiting for a hero—a champion—for someone to come and rescue them from Rome, from trouble, from oppression.

But Jesus knew that they already had the power to rescue themselves. They already had the freedom in their souls to shake off Roman bondage. They already had the ability to rise above Rome. They did not need to sell each other out, to betray each other, to cow-tow, to bow down to Caesar—notwithstanding his military and political might—as if he were God. They did not need to wait for a messiah or anyone else to bring hope to the Jews who found themselves overwhelmed in every sense by one of the mightiest military empires in history. They were guilty of perpetuating their own oppression, their own suffering, by refusing to wholly trust God who was with them, to act and move and rescue them in spite of overwhelming “non-seasonal” odds.

So Jesus reacted to this idolatry on the part of his people and his disciples by cursing a fig tree that had no figs. No. It was not the season for figs, but that didn’t make a difference. Jesus hunger demanded a miracle. The hunger of the world for meaning and hope and love demands a miracle. The people of God are charged with exercising and carrying out miracles in the world, notwithstanding its powerful forces of evil.

So many will enter sanctuaries Sunday that are like the fig tree. Too many churches, temples, synagogues and mosques act as if they have no responsibility to speak out against injustice. They preach and teach a watered-down, faithless apostasy that honors human beings and their systems over the almighty sovereign God. They worship the “golden calf” of the rich and powerful and remain silent in the face of a suffering humanity. They excuse themselves by celebrating their own perceived weakness and powerlessness. They also placate the masses by teaching and preaching that it is not the right time-what faith calls for is impractical and they need to be good practical persons.

The disciples of Jesus knew better. The writer of Hebrews reminded the people, that faith speaks of a certain day—and concludes, NOW is that Day. NOW is God’s accepted time for us to believe, to act, to receive miracles and demonstrate the miraculous power that God made available to us before the beginning of time. NOW is the time of deliverance. NOW is the time for us to fully commit in faith to action and living that will make a difference. It matters not how impossible, how improbable, or what odds seem against us. HAVE FAITH IN GOD. It is this exercise of faith that qualifies us to live. Without it we are disqualified as servants of the most high God and certainly not persons of any kind of faith.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with surging. . . . Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:1-3, 10).”

Monday, February 27, 2012

The injustice of the racialization of the crack epidemic

One-Year Bible, 2/27-"The wicked lie in wait for the righteous, seeking their very lives; but the Lord will not leave them in their power or let them be condemned when brought to trial (Psalm 37:31-33)."

Yesterday I viewed this video, and was disturbed to be reminded of the large number of African and Hispanic American young adults who languish in our prisons because of unfair drug sentencing 100-1 (crack verses powered cocaine violations). It is even more unjust because it was the Reagan contras (Ollie North has a TV program where he is unapologetic) under the CIA, then led by George H. W. Bush. that facilitated the entry of cocaine into Southern California in the early 1980s and which in turn fueled the crack epidemic.

Nevertheless, the Psalmist reminds us that we must not give up--we must not become discouraged. We must work to bring President Obama's revised 13-1 sentencing formula-(thanks for your valiant attempt to rectify the injustice Mr. President) sentencing down to 1-1. The racialization of the crack epidemic was also a strong factor in this sentencing and war on black and Hispanic youth also facilitated and funded by the two President's mentioned, to justify mass incarcerations of black youth.

The Lord will be with us in the court room, on the streets, in the Congress in the State House and on the internet as we seek to rectify this injustice and bring these young failed business men and women out of the criminal "just-us" system to lead productive lives. They will need OUR-(THIS MEANS EVERYONE) guidance and support as they use their business skills to build meaningful legal enterprises.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

God's Word on the Immigration Issue in America

One-Year Bible, 2/26/12 – “When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:33.34).”

It should come as no surprise that this commandment is the second one in Leviticus 19 that admonishes, “You will love . . . as you love yourself.” Jesus said of verse 19:18 that it was the second greatest commandment on which hung “all of the Law and the Prophets.” If that is so, we can infer that this is the third greatest commandment. Not only does God expect us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but to love the alien, those who are foreign, those who are DIFFERENT who live among us as ourselves.

This is not an easy command, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. There is nothing easy about absorbing and assimilating the God-consciousness, the unconditional LOVE that leads to Life. It is certainly a challenge to the renewal that is required of all of us. We are comfortable with the familiar—that includes people who look like us, love like us, speak like us, eat like us, drink like us, walk like us, drive like us, work like us, play like us, etc. But the renewal of our soul-life requires us to MOVE BEYOND our “US.”

No one is immune from the bigotry associated with chauvinism, elitism, heterosexism, nationalism, nativism, racism, sexism and xenophobia. Those who are different too often become the scapegoats for our anger and frustration as we seek to carve out a place of peace and prosperity for ourselves in an ever-competitive, compassion-less, selfish society.

Ironically these bigoted behaviors and mindsets find strong expression in the United States of America, a nation settled by persons from many lands, cultures, languages, folkways and mores alien to each other. In fact, the original native inhabitants have virtually disappeared as a result of physical and social genocide by the end of the 20th Century.

America is truly a nation of immigrants, or aliens. If any nation is to celebrate differences, and to treat all people equally while doing so, America should be the one place where God’s dictum to Moses is held up as a primary value. Equality of opportunity and equality of treatment, including treatment under the law, must be the guiding principle we use as we learn the true meaning of “land of the free.” May our borders and exclusionary fortress-like thinking crumble as we grow into the perfection that God's undeserving love offers us as a people.

DFG

Monday, February 20, 2012

Profits Trump People . . . Again

One-Year Bible, 2/20/12
“The demons begged Jesus, ‘Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.’ He gave them permission and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this . . . . When the people came out to Jesus they saw, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons sitting there, dressed in his right mind. . . . Then the people plead with Jesus to leave their region (Mark 5:12-17).”

Reading this you might say not much has changed. Jesus had entered the beautiful hillsides of the Gerasenes on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. It is a beautiful region of verdant hills not unlike Northern California. It was a very prosperous multicultural community, hence the herding of pigs—an unclean animal in the eyes of Jesus and his disciples.

Now Jesus had healed a man whose demented, tortured condition was well known. This man, a “cutter”, once so insane that he could not be subdued, was now in his right mind. Did they congratulate Jesus for finally curing the man of his extreme mental “dis-ease?” Did they celebrate the positive outcome? Were they encouraged that others who struggled with similar serious conditions might be relieved? No.

Their concern was the loss of profit--that they had lost the pigs, not that a man had been healed and returned to the community as a productive, happy and healthy citizen. The challenge that Jesus faced concerning human greed and disregard for human well-being continues to confront us as people of faith and people of good will. Will you stand against communities, leaders, political strategies programs and public policies that place profits before people?

Happy President’s Day