SPLIT-LEVEL CHRISTIANITY by Fr.Jaime Bulatao,S.J. (1966) - Part 1 of 2 [UPDATED]

"Many Filipinos are what I call Sunday-religious, that is they go to church every Sunday, take in confession and communion, but the rest of the week they bribe and do corrupt deeds..."
- Dr. Pura Santillan-Castrence

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3/26/2014

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Hi All,

It's been eons ago when I first read this enlightening essay on "split-level" Christianity by Fr. Jaime Bulatao, S.J.. Given the interest on Filipino ethical/moral values, I am posting it here.

Fast forward today, I find that the given situational samples in the essay were quite "simple" and "mild." In fact, I find them almost laughable compared to the excessiveness and gravity that characterize "split-leveling" in current times. Anyway, the bottom line is that "split-leveling" by a self-proclaimed Christian is to be unChristian (vis-a-vis what I understand as being Christian from my years of Roman Catholic upbringing).

As to the Roman Catholic Church in our homeland, it is amusing (at best) to wonder why the Catholic Church, despite its dominant influence in the homeland, seems to have failed to instill what it always claim to develop: "the whole person."

Given the prevailing social conditions in our so-called only Christian country in Asia, they only demonstrate that the church, despite its proclamation of being the "church of/for the Poor," has consistently and continually failed in its mission to teach and lead the Filipino Christians to live up according to Catholic social teachings.

• Has our Catholic Church in the homeland been stressing something else rather than addressing our present social realities, of our illiterate, ignorant and impoverished majority?
• How come Filipino Catholicism is more concerned about its religious liturgy and tradition and personal piety than its proclaimed concern/message of social justice? Such attitude and behavior have only made our homeland Christianity an effective and efficient nurturer of hypocrisy among its hierarchy and followers.

I would qualify however that there are Christians, i.e. more specifically evangelical Protestants (Calvinist variety), who can not be expected to care/act about social teachings or social justice issues since their essential belief system does not put value on social works; for Calvinists: "salvation" depended SOLELY on absolute faith in Jesus (i.e. good works do not count).

Here's Fr. Bulatao's essay, though written forty years ago but, still very relevant in gaining knowledge and understanding of our Filipino selves and maybe even lead to changes to better ourselves in terms of acting for social justice -- not towards empty religiosity-- and a better homeland society for most native Filipinos, if not all, and the future generations.  

(essay posted in two parts).



NOTES: 

1. I think and believe that ethics and morality do not necessarily emanate only out of having a religion or being a believer in a God (Christian God as traditionally or Biblically understood). There are many atheists, agnostics, pagans, non-Christians and what have you who are more ethical, moral and act for social justice than those who are supposedly religious Christians of various shades: Catholics, mainline Protestants, Pentecostals or Evangelicals.
2. This post addresses actually touches the issue of culture, i.e. our native Filipino culture. As we know, it is imperative that we obtain a deep awareness of our native history and society/culture; our society --through our home, church and school, etc.--  which embed in the subconscious Filipino mind within each of us a culture, our native society's worldview: the source of our values, attitudes and behaviors- which has been formed by a complex mix of geography, still primitive/traditional economic relations, religion, and long, divisive colonial history, etc.
3. Here our native culture is looked at just from the religious point of view. Frankly, I see this point of view as limited/inadequate, based on what I have alluded to regarding source in the preceding paragraph. I will go back, try a broader and deeper look into the issue of our native Filipino culture, i.e. cultural aspects which I see as obstacles to national development sometime later.

- Bert, 9/18/2013

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SPLIT-LEVEL CHRISTIANITY

The following story invariably provokes a good deal of laughter from a Filipino audience:

"A mother superior of a convent was once given a talented parrot as a gift, which she received and showed off to the other nuns. she pulled the parrot's right leg and the parrot, with downcast eyes, began to recite the Our father to the end. She then pulled its left leg and, just as devoutly, it recited the whole of the Hail Mary. at this juncture one of the young nuns thought to herself what would happen if she pulled both legs simultaneously. So she went up to the parrot and both of its legs hard. Immediately the parrot cried,"Putres, madadapa ako!" ("Damn, you'll make me fall!")

The laughter that greets the cry of the all-too-human parrot stems in great part from the aptness with which it reflects the culture at large: the special behavior which people show in the presence of society, authority figures, and the occasional breakthrough of one's spontaneous self. Lumamabas ang katotohanan. (The truth will out"). 

Furthermore, the story is linking the foreign language with a formalized type of behavior and untranslatable native tongue with one's spontaneous reactions reflect too the double set of automatisms of the Filipino: his behavior as conditioned by formal schooling and as conditioned by home influences, where the conditioning links are provided by one's native tongue.

The existence of two set of learned reflexes side by side seems to be a valid phenomenon worth investigating. For want of a better term we can provisionally give it the name "split-level Christianity." While this phenomenon may also be found in other parts of the world, the Philippines with its history of simultaneous colonization and Christianization by an outside power seems to lend it a special home.

Description

Split-level Christianity may be described as the coexistence within the same person of two or more thought-and-behavior systems which are inconsistent with each other. The image is of two apartments at different levels, each of which contains a family, one rarely talking tho the other.

So it is with the split-leveled person; at one level he professes allegiance to ideas, attitudes and ways of behaving which are mainly borrowed from the Christian West, at another level he holds convictions which are more properly his "own" ways of living and believing which were handed down from his ancestors, which do not always find their way into an explicit philosophical system, but nevertheless now and then flow into action.

Perhaps from another point of view, they may be described as two value systems, differing from each other in explicitation, one more abstract than the other, one of them coming to the fore under certain circumstances and receding to the background at other times. An example is the following incident, faithfully recorded by a participant-observer:

A group of alumni, sixteen years after graduating from a catholic high school, meet together one evening at a private home for a class reunion. Present at their reunion are two priests, their former teachers. The evening passes pleasantly, amid fond recollections of schooldays. At about 2230 hrs an offer is made to send the two priests by car back to the school. After the two priests left, the group transfers to Pasay to a certain nightclub of ill repute. Almost everyone goes along and a number end up with prostitutes. There is much joking about the fact that the wives think them "safe" in a class reunion.

Quite noticeable in this recorded incident is the allegiance to the school and to its authority figures. On the other hand, there is also an allegiance to what the culture considers to be the right thing to do for men when they find themselves together away from their wives. This second set of principles is accepted as a part of the talagang ganyan ways which are part of "reality."

A few more examples are given to illustrate this phenomenon of split-leveling:
1. a priest and a justice of the Supreme court enter a businessman's restaurant in the ermita district of manila, and sit down for lunch. Upon their entrance, the club entertainer stops singing and waits impatiently until they finish lunch. When they leave she resumes her naughty singing:
"Gusto kong humilig Sa tabi ng pu- Sa tabi ng pu- Sa tabi ng punong kawayan, etc."
(The Split" reverence for the priest and the justice versus "vulgar" signing.)

A Peace Corps girl, rooming with a Filipina at a local university, notices the following phenomenon. Her roommate on Sundays goes to a local church which has a big sign prohibiting sleeveless dresses. However, every night she brings pornographic literature with her, which she reads under a blanket before going to sleep. (The Split: submission to very restrictive rules on dress versus pornographic "inner life.")

3. A foreign priest steps into a public bus. A woman respectfully makes a room for him on the seat beside her.Immediately nasty remarks in the vernacular circulate about the bus. The priest, not knowing the vernacular, is not affected. (The Split: external reverence for the priest versus hostile attitudes towards him. Note the authority figure's "cultural deafness.'')

4. In a research seminar in a normal school, the students learn the latest methods in statistics which make for the utmost accuracy in the handling of data. they then apply what they have learned to actual research which they hope to publish in the school journal. To the teacher's consternation he discovers that his students, instead of actually gathering empirical data, have been making up numbers, to which they then apply the most modern statistical techniques. (The Split: scientific technical proficiency versus absence of scientific spirit in the search for truth.)

5. A policeman in the downtown district of Manila goes fairly regularly to mass and considers himself a catholic. nevertheless, he collects "tong'' from the small stores in the district as protection money. he feels he has a right to it because he their protector against gangsters. (The Split; the modern Catholic principles of justice versus a feudal attitude that the lord may tax those whom he protects.)

6. The Civil Liberties Union is a group dedicated to democracy, especially to academic freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. When a bill was presented to congress making compulsory the reading of the NOLI and the FILI (books which hurt the religious feelings of a large number of Catholics , the civil Liberties Union lead a rally in favor of the bill. (The Split: allegiance to the "Western" view of academic freedom and freedom of religion versus a conviction of the rightness of authoritarian approaches in education.)

7. In a catholic College for girls, the students in a group discussion discover that they do much cheating in class, but that most of the cheating occurs during examinations in ethics class.
(The Split: a highly refined conceptual system of ethics versus the compulsions arising from cultural expectations of high marks.)

8. An AB graduate (cum laude) from a Catholic Boys' College marries immediately after college, and takes up residence in Negros. Every time he comes to Manila he seeks out other women. Once, suspecting his wife of unfaithfulness, he hits her with his fist and drives her out of the house. When charged with inconsistency he says:"I was never serious about those other women. My wife has no right to go out with another man." When asked to reconcile the double standard with principles learned in school ("Thou shalt not commit adultery.") he answers: "it's just human weakness. In Negros every hacendero has a querida. Some have several." (The Split: catholic rules regarding marriage versus cultural norms.)


Conviction of Fitness

Often, the following of the second set of principles is rationalized as "human weakness," "ako'y tao lamang." But split-level Christianity is quite a different phenomenon from that human weakness which presupposes an allegiance to only one set of principles and, simultaneously, a temptation to diverge from those principles. hence human weakness still involves a sense of guilt a discomfort with oneself for loss of integrity.

But split-leveling involves the absence of a sense of guilt, or the presence of only a very minimal amount. There is a conviction "in one's gut" that the thing one has done, while something to be shielded from society's gaze like defecation or urination, is nevertheless not wrong. This sense of fitness while noticeable in the examples given above is brought out clearly in a case study by Dr. Jocano (1964) regarding the drinking habit of the Christians of Malitbog in the province of Aklan, where the Christians look on drinking as an "adult game," a thing which adults do in their playtime after work. In fact, drinking is seen as necessary for work. A parishioner is quoted here:

"Look at it this way. I will not say that these "vices" are right. You, as a pastor, an educated man, know that. But to us here in Malitbog, i do not think these things are vices nor are they as bad as you have described them. these are part of what you are supposed to do when you become grown-up. when we were young, our parents admonished us not to drink tuba or any liquor from the Chinese store. These are drinks of adults, we were told. we were supposed to drink soft-drinks and water. 

But now that we are adults, I do not see any reason why we should not drink tuba. Moreover, let us be practical. If I want my field plowed and I offer no tuba or liquor, who will come up to help me? None. Furthermore  if drinking tuba or liquor is bad, why does not the government prohibit the sale of these liquors? because there is no prohibition, then this is not bad. The government is not stupid.

Let us take cockfighting. This is, according to you, a vice; a form of gambling. But doesn't San Pedro bring along with him a cock? he must have been playing cockfighting too --and look at him now, he is a saint. Let us be serious. when we were small boys, we played hole-ins, balinsay(jacks) and blowing rubber-bands  what would you think of us if you see us adults still playing hole-ins or blowing rubber-bands  

You see, what i am trying to say, pastor  is this: each age has its own games --cockfighting and cards are adult games. each occasion has its own social requirements. To have your field plowed you have to offer tuba or liquor or no one comes to help you. Do you understand, pastor?"

There is a conviction that drinking, even though inconsistent with the Christian teaching, is nevertheless right.

Because of this sense of the rightness of both systems, the inconsistency, while at times noticed, is not felt keenly. Thus the Christians of Malitbog believe firmly in spirits and enkantus, and in the baylan (witch doctor) who has power with them.

(Roman Catholic saints) are conceived in Malitbog to have been elevated to their present status because they possess powers similar to those of the enkantus and that they could be manipulated for personal gains....many of the details of knowledge of powers and how an individual can avail himself of their powers...are known to specialists...the priests....On the other hand, knowledge concerning the enkantus and other environmental spirits are known to another group of specialists...the baylan or mediums.

We have two theological systems, side by side, the Christian and the pagan exisitng within one man.


Unconscious Conflict

Thus one characteristic of the split-level type of Christianity is the conviction of the fitness of each of two objectively inconsistent thought-and-behavior systems. A second characteristic is the fact that the inconsistency itself is either not perceived at all, or is pushed into the rear portions of consciousness. at the most, it is taken for granted and simply "forgotten." 

Thus the feeling of inconsistency does not arise. neither is there a feeling of hypocrisy. consequently, there is no particular drive to make one system conform to the other either by a change in behavior or by the elaboration of a conceptual system, of somehow reconciling both. Both systems are left to coexist without disturbance and without guilt.

There are however, special cases in whom the unconscious has become conscious. Usually of the better-educated class, they are quite aware of the inconsistency between their philosophical system and their actual way of life. nevertheless, they use their superior awareness deliberately to manipulate their environment. These are politicians, modern Machiavellians, who allow themselves to be photographed in church receiving Holy Communion while at the same time they are blackmailing some business firm into making "political contributions" to them. One may debate whether to apply such individuals the name "split-level Christians" or not call them Christians at all.

Nevertheless, in most cases, the inconsistency remains unconscious or only semi-conscious, so that the individual within himself remains at peace with himself. The only possible source of upset is when the authority figure should "discover'' the existence of the split. Such a piercing through of the masking surface level is capable of arousing hiya to an intense degree, a calamity which must be avoided at all costs. accordingly, there arises a third characteristic of the split-level, namely, a need to keep the authority figure at a distance.


Distance making

This mechanism of defense against hiya consists of removing the self as far as possible from the gaze of the person in authority, since, as representative of Christian level, he might blame and criticize the ego for consisting with another level. hence the attempt is made figuratively and, at times, literally to push the authority figures as far away from oneself as possible. In the examples given above, the priests are sent home early by the alumni who look forward to a night on the town. 

The naughty singer waits impatiently for the justice and the priest to leave the dining club before resuming her singing. The girl reading the pornographic books hides under the blanket from her peace corps roommate. The drink-loving citizens of Malitbog try to keep the teetolating Protestant minister from intruding into their lives, and upon failure, to do so return to Roman cartholicism, as can be read in the following account from Dr. Jocano:

"And why did you re-embrace Roman Catholicism?" I asked.

"I am not satisfied with what took place after I was converted to the Protestant Church. I mean with the church activities. it demanded so much of my time --anybody's time for that matter. I really can not keep up with the restrictions and teaching of the church!. How about Roman Catholicism?"

"Oh the priest does not have so many restrictions. he lets you alone, that is, to do what you like. he does not come here often and tell "don't do that," "don't do this" and so on. he does not live here, you know. But the pastor? he keeps coming to your house calling your attention to whatever you do. Sometimes it is embarrassing because the neighbors talk. They know what you have done because the pastor preaches about them during Sundays."

From the above account one can see how the catholic priest is preferred to the protestant minister precisely because he is at a distance from these people who love their evening tuba.

One can see the same distance-making trend in the insistence, especially in the provinces, that the priest should stay in the convento and not mix with the people. A priest who visits his parishioners is bound to arouse talk. Sometimes the interdiction affects not only the social visits but even "official" visits in the exercise of ministry. parishioners are often left to die without the last sacraments because of the in-congruence within peoples' minds of the picture of a priest entering their own home.

This distance making need is socio-syntonic that even the priests themselves and the bishops enjoin their own separation from the people, usually for ascetic or moral "reasons." Distance is the socially accepted thing, and is the actual social effect whether the conscious reason is "reverence for priests," "self-protection," "prayer" or anything else.

Dynamics

It may be interesting to enter into the dynamics of this situation and study the forces that bring about such an unconscious splitting of the ethical psyche. Where do the two levels come from? What keeps them apart? What keeps their in-congruence unconscious? Such questions obviously call for speculation and hypothesis formation.


Sources of Content

A study of the two levels may bring out the following analysis. the top or surface level is the more "Christian" part. it is made up of rules and beliefs picked up in school or in church. In large part it is conceptualized, or at least verbalized, usually in a foreign language like English, Spanish or Latin. Much of it is learned by rote, from the catechism or from books. It is the side which is presented to the authority figure in much the same way as a conductor plate in a condenser presents its positive charge on its surface to another conductor plate bearing negative charges.

The lower or deeper level is made up of the rules, beliefs, attitudes and action tendencies which are more common in the environment, which are picked up at home and in the street rather than at school. A large part of it is never verbalized, but acts as a sort of unspoken philosophy, spontaneously flowing into action when the occasion calls it forth and the inhibitory forces are removed. Thus in Malitbog the beliefs are drinking is an adult game spontaneously found expression in the evening when work was done and as long as the priest was away.

to be continued....next is Part 2 of 2, Click -->  Split-level Christianity, Part 2 of 2 

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Hi All,

The below link will show a short list of my past posts (out of 540 posts so far) which I consider as basic topics about us native (indio)/ Malay Filipinos. This link/listing, which may later expand, will always be presented at the bottom of each future post.  Just point-and-click at each listed item to open and read. 

Thank you for reading and sharing with others, especially those in our homeland.

- Bert

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"Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual; the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country." - Karl Kraus, 1874-1936.

"We shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know..." – SOCRATES

“In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their WISDOM and UNWISDOM; we have to say, Like People like Government. “ - Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881, Scottish Philosopher, Author

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"Beware of the yeast of Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops." (Luke 12, NRSV)

Barack Obama's Speech On Race - March 18, 2008

Barack Obama’s Speech on Race - Transcript
NYTIMES, March 18, 2008

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a
band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html?em&ex=1206158400&en=8b


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It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world
The controversy over Obama's pastor has put black anger in the spotlight.
By Erin Aubry Kaplan, March 19, 2008

I'm mad. Let me qualify that -- I'm black and mad.

The mad I'm talking about I inherited from generations of black people before me. I learned early in life that this mad is not curable (not yet) but that I could manage it. But sometimes I get flare-ups of anger that defy management.

I've been having such moments as Barack Obama has publicly rebuked remarks made by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Wright has been vilified for excerpts of sermons in which he's said some fairly outlandish things (that "we" -- America -- started AIDS), and he has also denounced the U.S. for what he calls racist and imperialist tendencies, like imprisoning people of color and throwing away the key and uncritically supporting Israel. One repeatedly shown clip ended with a blistering alternative to the traditional speech-ending "God bless America": "God damn America!"

That sort of language was immediately condemned as hate speech, unpatriotic and certainly unbefitting the avowed spiritual leader of a presidential candidate on the brink of a historical racial breakthrough. Wright was called dangerous, extremist, a black nationalist crank from the 1960s who had no place in the political landscape today. Even after Obama's profound, nuanced speech Tuesday, in which he made clear his differences with Wright, he's still being pressured to do more to concede the point.

Watching all this unfold, my blood started boiling. What I think Wright's critics really don't like is the fact that he is mad. Although I don't necessarily share all of his analyses or his stridency, I recognize his rage as a general anger about the conditions of black Americans, who he says still deal constantly with racism. This is exactly what most other black people I know believe. Unlike Wright in the pulpit, most of us don't come off nakedly angry -- we'd never survive that way, emotionally or otherwise.

But what for us is ever present nonetheless strikes white people as outrageous. Nothing makes them more skittish than realizing that there are angry black people in their midst -- and an angry black man is most alarming of all, especially one running for president.

Obama rebuked Wright, in part, because he knew their association was in mortal danger of morphing him into just another angry black man a la Nat Turner, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan (whom Obama detractors have already attempted to conflate with Obama). Whatever salient points these men made have been entirely eclipsed by the fact that they were just too mad for comfort.

Strange, when you consider that we live in a culture that thrives on vituperation institutionalized by conservative talk radio -- guys such as Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus are paid to be mad. But, of course, white anger is seen as fundamentally reasoned and righteous, and Americans have an almost limitless capacity to forgive it when it isn't.

Imus was kicked off the airwaves for a racial insult he made against black women last May, but he was back at the mike in six months' time; Limbaugh's many transgressions hardly raise an eyebrow, including taunting Obama as "Barack, the magic Negro," a parody of "Puff, the Magic Dragon." William Buckley was eulogized as a genteel genius a few weeks ago, his sanctioning of Jim Crow laws in the South in the 1950s written off as a forgettable faux pas. Buckley's real genius was dressing up white anger in the guise of intellect.

Black anger is never seen as intellectual in nature, merely primal, and black public figures therefore have no such latitude (unless, of course, they're in the conservative camp already, in which case they can rail to their heart's content).

There are exceptions. Martin Luther King Jr. is lauded now as a paragon of peace and disciplined black leadership, but it's useful to remember that he was mad most of the time. The famous let-freedom-ring tremulousness in his preaching voice reflected not simply emotion or patriotic fervor but frustration. It's also useful to remember that toward the end of King's life, his unrelenting social analysis was not met with much enthusiasm; even his supporters called him radical and out of touch. But that hardly deterred him.

Obama addressed black anger head-on Tuesday: He said it was not always productive. But the anger is real, he continued. "It cannot be wished away."

It's that kind of risky honesty that Obama has skillfully channeled into a broader movement of discontent and hope in 2008.

If we can keep our racial neuroses in check, it is that kind of honesty that just might transform us all.

Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing editor to Opinion.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kaplan19mar19,0,5576363.story?track=ntothtml

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Beyond America’s Original Sin
By ROGER COHEN, NYTIMES, March 20, 2008

There are things you come to believe and things you carry in your blood. In my case, having spent part of my childhood in apartheid South Africa, I bear my measure of shame.

As a child, experience is wordless but no less powerful for that. How vast, how shimmering, was Muizenberg beach, near Cape Town, with all that glistening white skin spread across the golden sand!

The scrawny blacks were elsewhere, swimming off the rocks in a filthy harbor, and I watched from my grandfather’s house and I wondered.

Once, a black nanny took me out across the road to a parapet above a rail track beside that harbor. “You wouldn’t want me to drop you,” she said.

The fear I felt lingered. I returned recently to measure how far I would have fallen. In memory, the abyss plunged 100 feet. Reality revealed a drop of 10. That discrepancy measures a child’s panic.
A “For Sale” sign was up on what had been the family house. I inquired if I might visit and received a surly rebuff. But not before I glimpsed the mountain behind where my father hiked and where I feared the snakes among the thorn bushes.

Fear, shadowy as the sharks beyond the nets at Muizenberg, was never quite absent from our sunlit African sojourns. My own was formed of disorientation: I was not quite of the system because my parents had emigrated from Johannesburg to London. So, on return visits, I wandered into blacks-only public toilet or sat on a blacks-only bench.

Blacks only — and I was white. Apartheid entered my consciousness as a kind of self-humiliation. The black women who bathed me as an infant touched my skin, but their world was untouchable.
Only later did a cruel system come into focus. I see white men, gin and tonics on their breath, red meat on their plates, beneath the jacarandas of Johannesburg, sneering at the impossibility of desiring a black woman.

A racial divide, once lived, dwells in the deepest parts of the psyche. This is what was captured by Barack Obama’s pitch-perfect speech on race. Slavery was indeed America’s “original sin.” Of course, “the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” lives on in forms of African-American humiliation and anger that smolder in ways incommunicable to whites.

Segregation placed American blacks in the U.S. equivalent of that filthy African harbor.
It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black “anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

Progress, since the Civil Rights Movement, or since apartheid, has assuaged the wounds of race but not closed them. To carry my part of shame is also to carry a clue to the vortexes of rancor for which Obama has uncovered words.

I understand the rage of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, however abhorrent its expression at times. I admire Obama for saying: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”

Honesty feels heady right now. For seven years, we have lived with the arid, us-against-them formulas of Bush’s menial mind, with the result that the nuanced exploration of America’s hardest subject is almost giddying. Can it be that a human being, like Wright, or like Obama’s grandmother, is actually inhabited by ambiguities? Can an inquiring mind actually explore the half-shades of truth?

Yes. It. Can.

The unimaginable South African transition that Nelson Mandela made possible is a reminder that leadership matters. Words matter. The clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years.

Hillary Clinton said in January that: “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” Wrong. America’s had its fill of the prosaic.

The unthinkable can come to pass. When I was a teenager, my relatives advised me to enjoy the swimming pools of Johannesburg because “next year they will be red with blood.”

But the inevitable bloodbath never came. Mandela walked out of prison and sought reconciliation, not revenge. Later Mandela would say: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Like countless others, I came to America because possibility is broader here than in Europe’s narrower confines. Perhaps it’s my African “original sin,” but when Obama says he “will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible,” I feel fear slipping away, like a shadow receding before the still riveting idea that “out of many we are truly one.”

Blog: www.iht.com/passages

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/opinion/20cohen.html?th&emc=th