Archive for the ‘Urban Renovation’ Category

MARGINALITY AND SEPARATISM

Friday, May 30th, 2008

On the other side of the coin is a view that argues that race is the most important category for human identity.

One major supporter of this view is Sang Hyun Lee, Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Asian American Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He calls this racial/cultural separatism “marginality.” The whole ideal of marginality relates to all minority groups–ethnic and racial who are experiencing some form of exclusion in a dominant culture. One’s marginality is understood as resistance from a minority group in a hierarchial relationship with another dominant group toward this dominant group. Likewise the nonmarginal/dominant group seeks to resist the marginal group’s entrance to the group and enjoyment of its privileges. Sang Lee sees this resistance as being inevitable.
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IGNORING RACISM

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Some white Americans argue that race is an irrelevant category. Americans make decisions according to class, gender, socio-economic standing–but not race. They say that race is an insignificant category. And, in the long run, worth ignoring. Many white Christians support this position. They argue that the only legitimate categories are “Christian” or “non-Christian.” To judge or to evaluate the efficacy of human relationships according to any other category–like race or class–is wrong.
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PATTERNS OF RACIAL ACCOMMODATION

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Slavery, confusion about race-mixing, Jim Crow laws, the Great Migration, the New Deal, the positive liberal state–they all conspired together to create a black fury that resides in many African-American hearts. White American Christianity often fanned the flames. Conversion introduced the slave to a gospel of freedom that contradicted the gospel of slavery. The egalitarian implications of Christian fellowship cooled white fervency toward the conversion of blacks.
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THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN URBAN EXPERIENCE – ENDURING RACISM: ETHNICITY AND CLASS FORMATION

Monday, May 26th, 2008

Did African-Americans form a class identity? In other words, did African-Americans grow angry with American society because they were poor or because they are black? African-Americans have never formed a class identity. In the 1920’s, in places like Chicago, white labor was still controlled by ethnic groups, and even though ethnicity was being challenged by mass culture, African-Americans remained isolated from the normal forces of class formation–industrialization and labor–because of racism. In fact, the only institutions that thrived in the African-American community were the segregated ones (like the church).
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THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN URBAN EXPERIENCE – THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN IN THE CITY

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Slaves were brought to America primarily as agricultural workers (in the South) and in the cities as laborers and house servants (in the North). After the American Revolution, the invention of the cotton gin increased the need for slaves. Before 1900 the African-American urban population grew very slowly, if at all, as European immigrants filled the need for unskilled labor. In the urban setting African-Americans were in competition with immigrants for jobs and opportunities. This competition explained why there was often friction between African-Americans and other urban immigrant groups for most of American history.
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THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN URBAN EXPERIENCE – INTRODUCTION

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

A new type of Negro is evolving-a city Negro. He is being evolved out of those strangely divergent elements of the general background. And this is a fact overlooked by those students of human behavior . . .In ten years, Negroes have been actually transported from one culture to another.
–Charles S. Johnson, 1925

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At Shaky Frank’s Corner – Part 2

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

East Liberty is a mean, ungenerous place to most. You have to be strong to survive and spirit filled to be victorious. We were both. And East Liberty felt good to me. Not because I want to move back–I do not. But I once prayed for this place, cried for this place. For a while, it was my Promised Land. A place where I put down my roots to eternity. It was my Shiloh. God waited for me in the coolness of the evening and I came.

Likewise this city, my city, Johnstown, PA, feels like home. I have prayed over its buildings, walked through its streets, cried for its children. It has been my Promised Land for five years. And I thank God for the time here.

I thank God for all that He has taught me since I entered the pastoral ministry over twenty-five years ago. He has always done what He has said that He will do. He is good. Really good. And so, so very faithful. He has always loved me and He continues to show me His love in so many ways.

At Shaky Frank’s Corner

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

Seven years of my life were spent in the East Liberty area of Pittsburgh because my old church is right around the corner. Other conference participants spoke of East Liberty with hushed scared voices. And it is foreboding. If anything, it is a more dangerous place than ever. Drug dealing is probably the most prosperous business in the area. Prostitution is openly practiced and gangs flaunt their colors on street corners.
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