Reflections on Projects for Black History Month

For the last two days of Black History Month, I was planning to blog about the chapter on civil rights in Joan Hoff’s Nixon Reconsidered.  But I changed my mind on that, for a variety of reasons.  For one, the chapter discusses African-American civil rights and also feminism, and I didn’t want to go off course more than I already have (since my blogging through Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights ended up discussing Native American and feminist issues, which are not exactly relevant to Black History Month).  Second, Hoff discusses African-American issues outside of her chapter on civil rights.  There is a solid chance that I will one day read Hoff’s entire book and blog through it, but I won’t be reading and blogging about any of it for the last two days of Black History Month.

Overall, I’m glad that I read and blogged through Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights this month.  I first saw the book at a public library a few years ago, but I did not have the time to read it then, since I was trying to concentrate on preparing for my comprehensive exams, and I already had enough books on my plate.  I was contemplating the possibility of reading and blogging about it during February, 2011, but I decided instead to read and blog about W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.  During earlier Black History Months, I was curious about the disagreement between those two African-American leaders, especially because it was often discussed in Roots: The Next Generation, which I watched for several Black History Months.  I also noticed that many African-American conservatives gravitated towards Booker T. Washington, whereas some African-American liberals preferred Du Bois (and this characterization is far from absolute).  I figured that I should read what these figures themselves had to say, before I read about Richard Nixon’s civil rights policies.

How did Kotlowski’s book compare with my expectations?  When I first saw the book in the library, I did not know if it would be enthralling or dry.  It turned out to be both.  I think that the book was enthralling when it discussed the complexity of Nixon—-how his rhetoric and personal attitudes were regressive and conservative, and yet many of his policies were progressive.  It was also enthralling when it discussed the personal reasons that Nixon had for opposing racism, as well as how Nixon boldly stood up to Southern states.  But, ironically, the book was also dry because of Nixon’s complexity, for it was hard to admire fully a President who waffled all over the place before he could arrive at a position, plus some of the discussion of policy was dry.  But the dryness is a huge part of why the book is a valuable resource, for a mark of solid research is that it acknowledges complexity and gets into detail, while meticulously documenting the details.  It’s good when a piece of non-fiction can have enthralling novelistic elements, and Kotlowski’s book did, to a certain extent.  But, in other areas, it did not because it’s ultimately not a novel, but a work of research.

I’m not sure what I’ll blog about tomorrow, the last day of Black History Month (since February 2012 has 29 days).  We’ll see, though.  Stay tuned!

2011 on My Blog and Other Blogs

Some bloggers I know have been listing their top posts for 2011, or their favorite posts from other blogs.  I’ll be doing something like that in this post.

My Blog

On my blog, my focus this year was largely on my reading for my comprehensive examinations in rabbinics and Hebrew Bible.  I like a lot of the posts that I wrote for that, especially the ones about John Van Seters’ work.  Van Seters, in my opinion, is not always the easiest author to read, but there was a sense of satisfaction that came to me when I took a look at some of his arguments and broke them down so I could understand them, and my process for doing that was blogging.  I am also glad that I got to write some posts that can be a source of information for anyone interested.  For instance, I had long heard that the camel was not a domestic animal in the time of Abraham and that Genesis is thus inaccurate on this issue, and I also knew about scholars who disagreed with that claim.  But I did not know what the evidence was, pro or con.  As a result, I did some research and I wrote a post about it: The Domestic Camel.

Also in 2011, I have done a weekly blog post on the Book of Psalms.  Before I got into this project, I was afraid that blogging through the Psalms would be rather boring, since many of the Psalms say the same sorts of things.  Well, so far, I have blogged about Psalms 1-57, and I’m not bored yet!  Each Psalm, in my opinion, has its own eccentricities.  There are hard verses, and interpreters have different views about what those verses mean.  The whole experience of researching the Psalms and their interpreters has been satisfying, and it’s gotten better with time.

Other posts have been a pleasure for me to write.  I have enjoyed reading about Second Temple and rabbinic views about the Torah, and whether or not Gentiles had to observe it.  I was glad to finally read Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois for Black History Month, since I heard about them on one of my favorite miniseries, Roots: The Next Generation, but I did not know precisely where they differed.  Women’s History Month was also good, for I learned about feminist and womanist Christology, as well as feminist constructions of history.  In the process, I have taken a look at my own theology and approach to the Scriptures—-Do I pick and choose what I will believe in the Bible, and, if so, what is my criteria?

Starting in 2011, I began to attend a Presbyterian Church (USA), which is walking distance from where I live.  I have appreciated the hospitality of the people there.  I think that blogging through my church’s Bible study on Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God helped me to get more out of it.  My favorite post from that experience was The Am Ha-Aretz, Sinners, and the Prodigal Son.

My blog has gained new readers and commenters this year, and I have appreciated their insights, as well as the insights of long-time readers.  I’d like to highlight one interaction that I had that taught me a valuable lesson.  In my post, Childs on the Covenant Code and Exodus 24, I said that Exodus 21:21 says that if a master beats his slave and the slave gets up after a day or two, then the master will not be punished.  I had long assumed that the law was saying that the master would not be punished if the slave survived the beating, but he would be punished if the slave died.  Paul D., however, brought to my attention translations that said that the law is saying something different: that the master is not punished if the slave lives for a few days and then dies.  I checked out the Hebrew, translations, the Septuagint, and Jewish and Christian commentaries and learned that there was a strong tradition that interprets the verse as Paul does, but there were a few that read it my way.  I guess my lesson there was that what I assume the text means is not necessarily what the text means, or the only way that the text can be interpreted.

I did not blog as much about entertainment as I have in previous years, but there were a few posts that were meaningful to me: my post on my favorite 15 Smallville episodes (which I posted on the day of the final episode), and my post on the Temple Grandin movie.  I also enjoyed writing about Terra Nova (see here).

Other Blogs

I read a lot of blog posts, but I did not always pay attention to who was writing them.  One controversy this year was over Rob Bell’s Love Wins, which has been accused of promoting universalism (the view that all will be saved in the end).  I really appreciated one post that I read (whose author I forget) that argued that there are different ways to interpret the Bible on this issue, which contradicts the claim of my conservative Christian friends that Rob Bell and his supporters were neglecting the plain words of Jesus and were preferring their own wishes instead.  I think that there are different ways to interpret passages in the Bible.  Universalists choose to take Paul’s statements about Christ saving all or reconciling all literally, and they harmonize what the Bible says about eternal punishment with that concept—-by noting that eternal punishment can be a temporary period of correction, since eternity in the Bible is not always forever and a Greek word for punishment can mean correction.  Other Christians, by contrast, believe that eternal punishment is literally eternal punishment, and so they harmonize the passages about God saving or reconciling all with that particular concept—-by saying that God is offering to reconcile all but that people still need to believe, that all does not necessarily mean every single person but rather people from every group, or that salvation does not always mean eternal salvation.  In my opinion, none of these groups is being unfaithful to the Bible.  They’re just prioritizing different things, and harmonizing other elements of Scripture with what they choose to prioritize.

I’ve learned of new blogs this year, which I really enjoy: JohnShore.com, Fallen From Grace, Think and Wonder. Wonder and Think…, Respectful Atheist, and The Screaming Kettle.  Some of these are from atheists, and some are from unconventional Christians.  I have appreciated their honesty and also their tactfulness, which sometimes coexists with their edginess.

I’d now like to highlight some of my favorite posts or series for this year:

Rachel Held Evans had some excellent posts in her “Ask A…” series.  Ask a Gay Christian, by Justin Lee, was my favorite, for Justin struck me as a person who recognized and respected that people (including himself) are in different places on their spiritual journeys, and so he did not look down on gay Christians who chose celibacy.  Justin Taylor’s post, Ask a Calvinist, was also good.  I did not expect to like it because I hate Calvinism and find a lot of Calvinists to be self-righteous and annoying.  But Taylor was quite judicious and tactful in his presentation.

From Rachel’s blog (see here), I learned about David Nilsen’s blog, and I really appreciated his series on teaching children about the Bible and his family’s reasons for leaving one church to search for another.

Finally, I have enjoyed some of Rodney Thomas’ posts.  His critique of William P. Young’s The Shack was excellent.  I liked it because I consider The Shack to be an overrated book, and it was interesting to see how the book actually reinforces stereotypes.  Rodney’s thanksgiving post was also good because it sought to transcend the usual patriotic and politically-correct narratives about that holiday.

I’ve enjoyed 2011, and I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Alienation

I’m continuing my way through Jacquelyn Grant’s White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus.  In my reading today, Dr. Grant talks about how white women participated in the struggle for the rights of African-Americans, one reason (among others) being that racism “propped up notions about White women and repression” (Dr. Grant cites Sara Evans for this statement).  I’m not entirely sure what this means, but I have a couple of guesses.  For one, the southern slave system—and even the white South after slavery—had a patriarchal attitude towards women.  Dr. Grant refers to how the term “southern lady” became an “obscene epithet” in the eyes of Southern white women who desired a change in sex roles (again, Sara Evans’ words).  I think of Olivia De Haviland’s character in Roots: The Next Generation, who said that white Southern women are treated like glass vases, set up over the fireplace to collect dust.  Second, white racists continually expressed their desire to protect white women from African-American men, and such an attitude was condescending and patronizing towards those white women (in addition to being hateful towards the African-American men).

But white women experienced sexism in the movement for racial equality.  They then fought for women’s rights.  And yet, according to Dr. Grant, African-American women remained in the movement for racial equality, even as there was racism within the women’s rights movement.  So there’s a lot of alienation.

“A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw”

In Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, I read chapter 10, “A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw.”

Three points stood out to me in today’s reading:

1.  Washington said that he had the students of Tuskegee build the school’s buildings.  Not only did this teach the students skills, but it also engendered in them respect for the buildings.  As Washington says, “Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the temptation of marring the looks of some building by leadpencil marks or by the cuts of a jack-knife, I have heard an old student remind him: ‘Don’t do that. That is our building. I helped put it up.’”

This reminds me of arguments for an “ownership society,” or claims by conservative environmentalists that privatizing land will result in a decline in water pollution and deforestation: if businesses own the land, then they’ll treat it better than if they’re using public property.  After all, if they own the land, they’ll have to replace the trees that they cut down.  And maybe they’ll want to make their property into a park that people would pay to visit.  Having a personal stake in something gives one a motivation to treat it better.  In the case of Tuskegee, the students had a sense of pride in the contribution that they made to building the school’s buildings.

2.  The students also made and sold bricks.  Eventually, white people in the South bought them, realizing that Tuskegee students made quality bricks.  From this experience, Booker T. Washington learned something about race relations:

“The making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to the relations of the two races in the South. Many white people who had had no contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks. They discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community. The making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighbourhood to begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding something to the wealth and comfort of the community. As the people of the neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with them; they traded with us and we with them. Our business interests became intermingled. We had something which they wanted; they had something which we wanted. This, in a large measure, helped to lay the foundation for the pleasant relations that have continued to exist between us and the white people in that section, and which now extend throughout the South.

“Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find that he has something to contribute to the well-being of the community into which he has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in a degree, it is indebted to him, and perhaps, to a certain extent, dependent upon him. In this way pleasant relations between the races have been stimulated.

“My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found. I have found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices. The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.”

That was Booker T. Washington’s view on race relations: that African-Americans should work hard, contribute to the wider community (which includes whites, African-Americans, and others), and earn the respect of whites.  In a way, this is the Will Palmer approach—to bring into the discussion Alex Haley’s grandfather, Will Palmer.  In Roots: The Next Generation, Will Palmer practically ran the lumberyard because its manager was a drunk, and that earned him the respect of the white establishment, who then gave Will the lumberyard.  Will had no intention of appeasing white society, however, for he said that he intended to make the lumberyard a success so that he’d owe the white man nothing!

Some may like Booker T. Washington’s approach, whereas others may view it as too idealistic.  Both sides probably have elements of truth, and situations may vary.

3.  Washington is still talking about the humble days of Tuskegee.  Washington said, “In fact in those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed because people seemed to have more faith in me than I had in myself.”  I admire Washington for continuing to try even when he didn’t have much faith in himself.  And I appreciate it when people have faith in me, when my faith in myself is lacking.  That motivates me.

Booker’s Search for a Silver Lining

In Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, I read Chapter 2, “Boyhood Days.”

Chapter 2 goes into an issue that we encountered in our discussion of Chapter 1: ancestry.  There are many African-Americans who feel a sense of loss about not knowing their family history, since their ancestors were ripped from their homes and taken to a foreign land (America), to be given new names, as well as the last names of their masters.  That’s why Malcolm X used the “X” rather than the slave-name that a master had given his ancestor, “Little”: he was saying that he did not know who he was, for he did not know from whom he came; white society had stolen that from him.  That’s why Alex Haley was so grateful that he knew from whom he descended—from the African, Kunta Kinte, who had a position of prominence in his tribe in Africa.

Washington says that one of the first things slaves did when they became free was to get new names.  They wanted to internalize their sense of freedom and independence from the plantation by giving themselves a new identity—which a new name brought them.  That was when Booker gave himself the last name of “Washington.”

But a big theme in this chapter concerns Booker’s attempt to compensate for his feelings of rootlessness—of not knowing who his ancestors were.  Basically, he tries to find a silver lining.  He wishes that he could have a noble ancestry, and he points out that being part of a long-lasting family of importance keeps white youths out of trouble, for they are concerned not only about disgracing themselves, but about disgracing their family as well.  Booker, by contrast, deals with a reality in which African-Americans are not even to expected to succeed.  (He says this.)  How can he maintain his self-respect and compensate for the loss that he feels at not knowing who he truly is?  Essentially, he settles with working hard, accomplishing important things, and establishing a legacy for his children in the process.

He looks at his mother, who was a good mother—even if he didn’t know much about his family outside of his mother and his siblings.  Although she was uneducated and did not see too many possibilities for her own advancement, she wanted her children to succeed, and so she encouraged Booker as he taught himself how to read.  When Booker was the only one in his school who did not have a hat, she made him one.  Booker admired her for not going into debt to buy him a hat, and he said that, although he has bought many hats in his years, he does not treasure them as much as the one that his mom made for him.  Then he goes on to say that the kids who made fun of his home-made hat are now poor or in the penitentiary!

As Booker tries to find a silver lining, he speculates that the hardship that African-Americans have experienced has made them into better people:

“In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reach the conclusion that often the Negro boy’s birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his task even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.”

This reminds me of what he said in Chapter 1: that slavery, while evil, ended up civilizing Africans.  So far, I don’t really see in Booker T. Washington’s autobiography the rants against injustice that I’ve encountered in the writings of Frederick Douglas, or W.E.B. Du Bois.  Rather, the approach I see is “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”  Plus, Booker believes that God has a plan.  He reminds me of Equiano, a slave whose narrative indeed criticized slavery, while also maintaining a sunny optimism.

Messiness

I started Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery by reading the preface and chapter 1, “A Slave Among Slaves.”

The preface was interesting because Washington said that he wrote the book in his spare time—”on board trains, or at hotels or railroad stations while I have been waiting for trains, or during the moments that I could spare from my work while at Tuskegee.”  He was a very busy man.  Could I write a book in my spare time—one that people would actually want to read (as Washington did)?  I’ve heard that Charles Dickens quickly wrote his Christmas Carol so he could make some money, for he was in a state of financial destitution.  Look at the success that was!  But I know of professors who need a grant in order to do the necessary research to write their books.  They may need more than spare time.  But, of course, they do research, whereas Washington was writing more from his experience, rather than books.  (That’s my understanding.)  The genres are different.  One requires more rigor than another.  And yet, both are important.

Chapter 1 is about Washington’s childhood in slavery.  He talks about how he knows nothing about the history of his family beyond his mother.  This was a point that I saw on Roots: The Next Generation, in which Alex Haley remarked that Malcolm X felt that there was a wall separating him from his past because he did not know anything about his ancestors—thus the name “X.”  Alex Haley, by contrast, was continually reminded by his family that he was descended from Kunta Kinte, as were the generations before him.  Personally, I don’t feel a loss of identity on account of my lack of knowledge about my family history.  I’m not sure why—if it’s because I’m self-centered, or individualistic.  At the end of Roots: The Next Generation, Alex Haley urged viewers to ask their parents, grandparents, and other relatives about their family history—for these relatives may not have told their stories because nobody asked them to do so.  And so I’m not the only one who doesn’t ask many questions about the history of my family.  But, as a result of Roots, people became interested in their own genealogies.

Were some African-Americans interested in their genealogy because they wanted to know of some reality for their race that was apart from the oppression and second-class status that they experienced in America?  Were they seeking some sense of connection precisely because they were strangers in a strange land?  Were they solidifying their own sense of humanity, in a world that regarded them as chattel, by looking to establish that they had an identify—within a family that had a history?  Both Roots and Booker T. Washington remark that slaves were esteemed as horses and mules by their white slaveowners.  Could the desire of the slaves and their descendants to know about their past—and their alienation from not knowing about it—be due to society’s dehumanization of them?

Overall, in Chapter 1 of Washington’s book, I get a sense of disorder.  According to Washington, African-American slaves did not eat together as a family, but they ate throughout the day from whatever scraps they could get.  Booker and his siblings did not sleep in beds for a long time.  Booker talks about an experience he had when he was a child and was walking a horse that had a sack of corn on its back, in order to take the corn to be ground.  When the sack fell, Booker was too small to put it back onto the horse, and so he had to wait for a passer-by who would help him out.  That meant that Booker came home really late!  Disorder!

There was a Civil War.  And in the midst of that, the African-Americans slaves had mixed feelings.  Even though they had no access to a newspaper, they closely followed the events of the war, hoping that the Union would win and that they would become free.  (A slave who went to the post office usually heard whites talking about the latest news, and he relayed that to the other slaves.)  And yet, they had a sense of affection for their masters.  They mourned when some white members of the family died in battle.  They eagerly protected the white women of the plantation when the men were away.  Even after the Civil War, many of the slaves remained in contact with their former masters, helping them when they wanted help.

Washington even expresses ambivalence about the institution of slavery in America.  He makes clear that he opposes it, and he talks about the brutal middle passage, in which Africans suffered on slave-ships.  And yet, he does not blame anyone for it.  He says that slavery became so entrenched in American society, that it was difficult to abolish it.  He also states that “when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.”  He then says that his purpose in saying that is not to justify slavery, but to show that God can work good out of a bad situation.

But he also acknowledges that slavery had a deleterious effect—on both whites and African-Americans.  Slavery lessened the value of manual labor in the eyes of white elites, and so they did not learn skills that would help them when they no longer had slaves.  And the slaves, because they didn’t have a great interest in the plantation, were not meticulous about its upkeep.  This reminded me of what W.E.B. Du Bois said in The Souls of Black Folk: that African-Americans lacked an incentive to work hard, and so there were some who chose not to do so.

But I’m intrigued by Washington’s point about divine providence working good out of bad.  There are times when I look back at my life and see some bad things, and yet there were some good effects that came out of them.  But were those bad things worth the good effects?  In some respects yes, and in some respects no.  One thing that makes bad “bad” is that it causes harm, which slavery did.  Does any silver lining justify that?  And if it does, then is slavery no longer “bad”?  And, if God can bring good out of bad, why wouldn’t God go all the way—by removing all bad consequences of a bad action?  But there is such a thing as cause and effect, for better and for worst, and God may not always (or even usually) choose to intervene in that.  But, hopefully, people can learn from their mistakes and do right in the future.

My last paragraph there was pretty messy, but Washington’s chapter itself had a degree of messiness, as well-written as it was!

“Of Booker T. Washington and Others”

In W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, I read the essay, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.”  To read it, see here.  It was from this essay that the character of Simon Haley in Roots: The Next Generation quoted—right when Booker T. Washington was about to come to speak at his college!

Essentially, Du Bois dislikes Booker T.’s approach of trying to promote the economic advancement of African-Americans, while purposefully neglecting the pursuit of their political equality and higher education, in order to appease white society.  Booker T. primarily sought the industrial education of African-Americans, which satisfied white society—happy that this was all that African-Americans wanted for themselves.  Du Bois not only finds Booker T.’s approach to be demeaning towards African-Americans—in that it seeks to exchange their dignity for their economic advancement—but he also doubts that African-Americans will be able to advance economically without political equality and higher education.  Without political equality, African-Americans will be ruled by people they did not choose—politicians who can undermine their rights to property as well as obviate their economic independence.  And, because African-Americans who had received a higher education were the ones who were behind industrial education, abandoning the higher education of African-Americans will cause industrial education to fall by the wayside as well.

There were other interesting parts of this essay.  First, Du Bois said that he could understand African-Americans being refused the right to vote if they are ignorant, but he states that racism is the cause of their degradation.  That’s why he supports schools for African-Americans.  Second, Du Bois speaks against African-Americans acting like all of white America is hostile to them, for that is not the case.

“Of Our Spiritual Strivings”

February is Black History Month, and, this February, time permitting, I will be blogging through two books: W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk (which is dated to 1903), and Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery. I’ve watched Roots: The Next Generation a bunch of times, and I even blogged through it for last Black History Month! On it, Alex Haley’s father, Simon, talked a lot about Dr. Du Bois. On the first episode that featured the character of Simon Haley, Booker T. Washington was about to speak at Simon’s college, and Simon idolized him, until he read Dr. Du Bois’ smashing criticism of Booker T. in The Souls of Black Folk! Last Black History Month, I blogged some about the differences between the two men’s approaches, drawing from encyclopedias and the Internet. This year, I want to gain a deeper appreciation for these controversial African-American leaders by blogging through their books.

Last night, I read the first essay in Dr. Du Bois’ book, which was entitled “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” In this essay, Dr. Du Bois talks about the alienation of African-Americans from white American society. They are denied the opportunities that are available to white Americans, and so African-Americans are on the outside looking in. White America also looks down on the culture of African-Americans. Dr. Du Bois likens African-Americans learning how to read to uncovering the mysteries of Jewish Kabbalah, and, while he acknowledges that the political process has a lot of corruption (among both conservatives and Carpetbaggers), he strongly believes that African-Americans should exercise the right to vote, for there are plenty of whites who want them to return to or remain in a position of subservience.

On page 16, Du Bois argues that African-Americans have something to contribute to America. He states:

“We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the simple oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?”

My impression here is that Du Bois stereotypes African-Americans as simple, whereas he presents whites as cynical. I personally don’t want to stereotype anyone. But I do want to appreciate the faith, the good-humor, the storytelling, and the emotional strength that has existed in African-American culture, albeit not in a manner that is patronizing or condescending (as the romantics viewed the “noble savage”). I personally can use more faith, good-humor, humility, storytelling, and emotional strength, for I get tired of the cynicism that is in so many parts of American society.

To read Dr. Du Bois essay, click here.

The Union’s Dark Side; Culture and the Bible; Ecology; Cutting Corners; Destiny; Philonic Midrash; Lena Horne

1. Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana’s Florida Parishes, 1810-1899, page 112:

Hoping to exploit the demoralized condition of the local residents and the few Confederate troops in the area, the Federals moved rapidly to apply irresistible pressure on the Florida parishes…During the summer of 1862, [Union General Thomas] Williams launched a series of probing raids into the interior to test Confederate strength and to intimidate the population…The raiders failed in their effort to capture any Confederate forces, but they did lay waste several plantations belonging to prominent Confederate sympathizers.  At each plantation all buildings and fences, excepting the slave quarters, were burned, the livestalk stolen, and ornamental trees cut down.  The commanding officer reported on the success of his endeavor: “I burnt every building on the estate of these once beautiful plantations, except such as were required to cover the negroes left behind…In fact I left nothing but the blackened chimneys as a monument to the folly and villainy of its guerrilla owner.”

Shows and movies that cover the Civil War tend to sympathize with the North, for slavery existed in the South, and slavery is considered to be wrong.  But, interestingly, these shows and movies are also honest about the brutality that Union soldiers inflicted on the South.  Mary Ingalls did a paper on this in the episode of Little House on the Prairie, the one with Frank and Jesse James, who gave Mary the Confederate side of the story.  In Alex Haley’s Queen, granted, the slaves are rejoicing when the Union forces are coming, for they believe that their time of liberation is nigh.  But the Union forces burn the plantation, and one Union soldier tries to force Queen to kiss him, and kills Queen’s grandfather when he tries to stop him.  Glory depicts Union forces wrecking havoc on a Southern town.   

Why do these shows and movies do this?  There are movies, such as the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which depict the Union soldiers as noble and benevolent liberators.  But why don’t many movies on the Civil War go this route?  Or, more accurately, these movies may present the Union soldiers as champions of the slaves (though Glory highlights notorious exceptions), but they acknowledge that the Union was far from saintly, for it could be heartless and self-serving.  Are these movies trying to be balanced, or seeking to appease their Southern viewers, or conveying the message that war is hell, for all involved? 

2. Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, page 50:

Secretary General:…You say Smith understands English.

Nelson:  Well, yes and no, Your Excellency.  He knows quite a number of words, but, as Mahmoud says, he doesn’t have any cultural context to hang the words on.  It can be rather confusing.

As I read this, I wondered how we can understand the Bible, which is in different languages and comes from cultures that are unlike ours.  We’re not in these cultures—or, let me say, we in the West are not.  Africans, Native-Americans, Arabs, some Jews, and others may understand the Bible better than Westerners do, for they overlap culturally with the environments that produced the Bible (in terms of their emphasis on community, or their tribalism, or other factors).  My impression is, however, that people in the West don’t need to understand the customs of biblical times to follow the stories in the Bible—at least on a certain level, for Westerners are familiar with stories—with characters, plots, etc.  In some cases, a knowledge of culture may help them out, or provide them with a deeper understanding of the Bible.  I think of the Sermon on the Mount, which appears more reasonable when we understand the culture behind it (see Michael Westmoreland-White’s A Biblical Case for Christian Pacifism: The Sermon on the Mount II).

3. Erhard Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part I with an Introduction to Cultic Poetry, page 155:

[In Psalm 36, i]n a striking ecological confession, God “helps man and beast” (v. 7c).

This isn’t overly surprising, since God preserved the animals on the ark.  Speaking of ecology, see Michael Westmoreland-White’s post, Of Oil, Eschatology and Creation Care. 

4. Richard Sarason, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Agriculture: A Study of Tractate Demai, page 161:

An [am ha-aretz] agent who is given general instructions to purchase produce from someone who is deemed trustworthy with regard to tithing is not believed, since to begin with we do not trust him, and we have no way of verifying his statement…But if we instruct him to purchase produce from a specific person, he is believed.  Since he knows that we can now contact that person to verify his statement, he will be careful to follow our instructions…

I guess this is saying that, if a meticulously observant Jew sends a lax Jew to purchase tithed produce, the meticulous one should tell the lax one to buy it from a specific person, so that the meticulous person can contact the seller to see if it’s tithed.  Or at least the threat of contacting the seller would frighten the lax Jew to buy tithed produce.  If the lax Jew is simply told to go to the market and buy some tithed produce, however, there’s no accountability.  The lax Jew could simply buy any produce—even when it’s untithed—and say that it’s tithed, and there’s no way of knowing if he’s telling the truth.  Maybe he wanted to get the task over with as soon as possible, so he didn’t worry about whether it was tithed or not. 

Here, the Mishnah has a “guilty until proven innocent” approach to the lax Jew, the am ha-aretz.  At other times, however, it assumes that the am ha-aretz wouldn’t deliberately cause his observant brother to stumble.  Maybe not, but there are times when people want to save time, get things done quickly, and cut corners.  For the Mishnah, that should be factored into the equation.   

5. Baruch Levine, Numbers 1-20, page 64:

Still another theme of note in the JE materials is the notion that God had prepared the Israelites for their future life in the Promised Land; that they brought their way of life with them.

I don’t entirely understand what this means.  Is this saying that the Israelites were shepherds and herders in the wilderness, and that prepared them to be such in the Promised Land?  Is it saying that God humbled the Israelites in the wilderness so that they’d remember where they came from in the Promised Land, rather than becoming spiritually proud?

This quote reminds me of an episode of the Dead Zone that I watched recently: “Destiny”.  Johnny Smith (played by Anthony Michael Hall) experienced an intensification of his latent psychic powers after he was in a coma for a few years.  His guardian, Rev. Gene Purdy (played by David Ogden Stiers), asks Johnny is he ever sees visions of ordinary things, such as people taking a nap or mowing the lawn.  Johnny replies “no”; rather, Johnny sees visions about events in the future that can help him to save people’s lives.  Rev. Purdy concludes that Johnny has a special mission from God, or fate, or whatever, for which Johnny has been prepared all of his life.

That’s an interesting thought.  Are we being prepared for a mission?  Are we learning compassion so that we can perform responsibilities in a morally conscious manner?  If so, what would we say about the people who died before they got to perform any great mission?  Or maybe their ordinary life of compassion was great, in its own way. 

6.  I read the Encyclopedia Judaica article on “Midrash”.  It tied Jewish midrash to Hellenistic exegesis of Homer, which I know a little bit about from my studies for my Greco-Roman Judaism comp.  Essentially, there were exegetes who viewed Homer as allegorical for the spiritual life.  They were like Philo, who did this with the Torah.  But was Philo a practitioner of midrash?  I usually don’t hear his hermeneutical approach classified as such.  Is there a difference between midrash and allegory?  Or is allegory a sub-species of midrash, which could possibly be defined as any approach to the biblical text that seeks to uncover hidden meaning underneath its literal surface?

7.  Lena Horne has passed away.  I know Lena Horne from three places.  First and second, she played herself on The Cosby Show and Sanford and Son.  Second, in Roots: The Next Generation, Alex Haley’s girlfriend laments that white society considers Lena Horne to be an attractive African-American woman because she has lighter skin—she looks white. 

The AP article about Lena Horne was interesting: Barrier-breaking jazz star Lena Horne dies at 92 – Yahoo! News.  Apparently, she herself was deeply disturbed by the existence of racial discrimination in the United States.  I especially appreciated the last line of the article: “I wouldn’t trade my life for anything,” she said, “because being black made me understand.”  Her experience as an African-American woman taught her to empathize with people in society who were victims of suffering and injustice, and she also learned to enjoy life rather than become consumed with bitterness.

Roots TNG 6-7, Corroborating Word-Of-Mouth, Baal and El

1.  For Black History Month today, I watched Episodes 6-7 of Roots: The Next Generation.  The subject I’ll be focusing on in this section is vocation, which also popped up in some of my academic readings.

Alex Haley wondered what he was going to do with his life.  Although his father, Simon, believed that education was the key to a black man’s success, Alex didn’t care for school.  Contrary to his dad’s wishes, he didn’t want to follow his father’s footsteps and get a Ph.D., then go on to become President of a black college.  His grandmother, Cynthia, told Alex that he didn’t have to become like his father, for he had to find his own way—what he felt he needed to do.  At the beginning of Episode 6, there was a recap of the previous episode, in which Alex’s mother, Bertha, told her son that Simon (unlike many people) had an important task in life and needed to see it through.  The same was true for Alex, but he didn’t know for some time what his task was.

Alex found in the Coast Guard during World War II that he had a talent for writing, for he wrote excellent love letters on behalf of his ship-mates, who were hoping to sweep their sweethearts off their feet.  After the Coast Guard, however, he learned that getting a writing career was a lot harder than it looked, and he experienced a lot of rejection.  But his boss, Commander Robert Munroe (played by Andy Griffith), told him to write about the things that he’s passionate about, such as the racial discrimination that he experienced as he searched for a hotel room for himself, his wife, and his baby.

Alex accomplished some important work, as he wrote the Autobiography of Malcom X as well as the story of his brother George, who went through law school and became a successful Republican politician (who, since then, has gone on to serve in Presidential Administrations).  But he felt that something was missing, that there was a larger reason for his being on earth.  He was inspired to see if there was corroboration for the stories that his elderly relatives told—about their descent from the African, Kunta Kinte.  But not only was he on a search for his family’s roots in order to understand where he came from.  He also wanted to give a voice to the unheard in American history—the African-Americans, who endured slavery and then went on to experience oppression and discrimination.

Vocation.  What’s my purpose in this life?  There have been times in my life when I’ve thought that I have some destiny—something important to accomplish.  But, as I watched Roots and its sequel, I saw that generations come and go, and not everyone becomes famous.  Most people don’t.  They just get through life, trying to survive, and hopefully enjoying the company of family and friends. 

Two of my academic readings today were (1.) Michael Stone’s “Ideal Figures and Social Context: Priest and Sage in the Early Second Temple Age,” which appeared in Ancient Israelite Religion, and (2.) H.I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity.  Stone talks some about Jesus ben Sirach’s comments on scribes.  For Jesus ben Sirach, manual labor is good, but a career studying the Torah is even better, for one can be edified therein as well as arrive at a position of status in society.  And Marrou refers to a third millennium B.C.E. Egyptian text in which “the scribe Akhtoy [is] trying to encourage his son Pepi to follow the thankless study of letters by painting a satirical picture of the thousand and one drawbacks there are in any kind of manual work, which he contrasts with the happy life of the scribe, and the nobility of his lofty vocation” (xv-xvi). 

Personally, at this time in my life, my fantasy is to work at a simple job that earns me enough money to survive, and to contribute to the world of ideas at night, through blogging, as I blog through what I read.  As far as my “larger purpose” is concerned, I’m not sure what that is at the moment.  Maybe I’ll learn as I keep on doing what I’m doing.

2.  In Psalms II: 51-100, I read Mitchell Dahood’s comments on Psalm 98.  Dahood calls it “A hymn praising Yahweh’s kingship…extolling him for his triumph over heathen gods both in primordial and in historical times, and foretelling his return to re-establish the universal reign of justice.”  In ancient Israelite religion, Yahweh had a lot of enemies, from the chaos that preceded creation to his historical enemies, such as Pharaoh and Sennacherib.  The ancient Israelites drew strength and hope from these stories, probably because they believed that they were passed down from generation to generation (Psalm 78), much like the story of Kunta Kinte in Roots. 

But is there independent historical corroboration?  Some people have questioned Alex Haley’s research.  Alex Haley’s thesis was that Kunta Kinte’s name was changed to Toby on the plantation, and Toby had Kizzy, who had Chicken George, etc.  But, as the wikipedia article on Alex Haley documents, some scholars have challenged that: 

According to Haley, Kunta Kinte was sold into slavery, where he was given the name Toby, and, while in the service of a slavemaster named John Waller, went on to have a daughter named Kizzy, Haley’s great-great-great grandmother. Haley also claimed to have identified the specific slave ship and the actual voyage on which Kunta Kinte was transported from Africa to North America in 1767.  However, genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills and historian Gary B. Mills revisited Haley’s research and concluded that those claims of Haley’s were false.^[7][8] According to the Millses, the slave named Toby who was owned by John Waller could be definitively shown to have been in North America as early as 1762. They further said that Toby died years prior to the supposed date of birth of Kizzy. There have also been suggestions that Kebba Kanji Fofana, the amateur griot in Jufureh, who, during Haley’s visit there, confirmed the tale of the disappearance of Kunta Kinte, had been coached to relate such a story.^[9][10].

Alex Haley may have an answer for these genealogists if he were alive today, but suppose his facts are off.  Does this matter?  On some level, “no,” for, even if some of the facts about his family were wrong, Alex Haley still portrayed what happened to African-Americans: being taken from their home in Africa, enslavement in America, challenges in post-slavery times, etc.  On the other hand, the miniseries tells us that a big part of his self-esteem and that of his family was their descent from Kunta Kinte, who was from a prominent family in Africa and sought freedom in America, even though it cost him his foot.  If that’s not true, then that’s a bummer.

Did God have to fight chaos at creation?  Did the Exodus literally happen?  Even if not, I hope that there’s some evidence in the world that God triumphs over evil, that evil does not have the last word—even if that evidence is anecdotal.

3.  I started Theodore Mullen’s The Assembly of the Gods.  On page 5, Mullen refers to “pre-exilic literature in Israel.”  I’ll be interested to see what he identifies as such, for, as we’ve seen, he dates the Pentateuch and the biblical historical writings to Israel’s exilic and post-exilic periods.  He may date some of the Hebrew Bible’s poetry to pre-exilic times.

I may have to rethink some of what I’ve said about El, Baal, and Yam.  According to Mullen, scholars who claim that Baal took El’s place as supreme God of the pantheon are wrong, for Baal merely took control of the cosmos after his defeat of the chaotic Yam (sea).  El still had his share of power as head of the pantheon, though, for “No major action could be undertaken in the pantheon without the explicit permission of the high god” (10).  On page 9, Mullen says that El supported Baal in his battles.  I’m not sure if that’s true about Baal’s battle with Yam, whom El sent to keep Baal in line—unless El changed his mind and supported Baal once Yam got out of hand.  Or maybe Mullen’s referring to Baal’s battle with Mot, death.  As I said in my post, The Dead, and the Rising, there were gods who helped Baal leave the Underworld, an extremely difficult task.

On pages 1-2, Mullen notes that God is called “El” in the Hebrew Bible and that there are no biblical polemics against El, whereas there are plenty against Baal.  Maybe the ancient Israelites believed in the same high god as their Canaanite and Phoenician neighbors.  Or maybe they didn’t make a big deal about El because El wasn’t widely worshipped, whereas Baal was (10).