Last week, the Press of Atlantic City published a front page article Black South Jersey preachers seek to provide hope during turbulent time. Click This Link For Full Article:
It interviewed three preachers in Atlantic County. They were Rev. Marion McLaurin of Mt Zion Baptist Church in Pleasantville, Rev. Thelma Witherspoon of Westminster Christian Worship Center in Atlantic City and Rev. Collins A. Days Sr.,of Second Baptist Church in Atlantic City.
McLauren lamented the loss of Kamela Harris in last November’s Presidential Election.
“The Mainland/Pleasantville branch of the NAACP had already reserved buses for the Jan. 20 inauguration in the hopes that Harris would win”, he said.
Witherspoon said many of her church members were excited for Harris’ candidacy.
“I pushed for everyone to vote,” said Witherspoon. “I attended two Harris rallies in the Liacouras Center at Temple University in Philadelphia. Early exit polls from The Washington Post showed 78% of Black men and 92% of Black women voted for Harris”.
Days said his congregants were crushed and stunned that former President Trump had gained enough votes to win in the electoral college so quickly.
“They went into a bout of depression for a while. Some congregation members stopped watching the news for a time. A lot of people are still processing it.”
McLaurin said “Some Mount Zion Baptist members were devastated.”
All three noted that during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, African American churches provided their members emotional, moral, physical and spiritual support. They said they and their churches have a role to play during a time when it seems there is an effort to roll back gains made in previous generations.
“Whenever the political climate appears not to be standing on the word of God, the African American or Baptist church has been a source of resiliency, faith and justice, McLaurin said.“The Black church has always stood on the word of God.”
However, according to Charles Murray, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and’60s did not bring gains to most Black Americans. It instead increased poverty, crime, dependence and misery.
Vincent Lloyd, suggested that Black elites, including many Black preachers, did not serve God or their communities. They instead served themselves.
Details, links, and videos are posted below.
It is worth mentioning that two of the preachers quoted in the Press of Atlantic City article are also Democratic Party politicians. Rev. Thelma Witherspoon is on the Township Committee member of suburban Hamilton Township (Mays Landing) and a former Atlantic County Commissioner (formerly Freeholder). Rev. Days is a Democratic Party candidate for Atlantic County Commissioner in District 1.
Click This Link For Short Version of John Stossel Interview With Charles Murray: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1G8K8WY6iD/
According to Charles Murray, most social welfare programs in America tend to increase poverty rather than decrease it. That is because they reward short-sighted behavior that makes it difficult, if not impossible to escape poverty in the long term.
Murray wrote that the government’s power to resolve social problems is very limited. Many of its programs to reduce poverty made it worse. They also created today’s permanent underclass.
Most government policies meant to address poverty are also inconsistent with the our Constitution and American principles of liberty. They weaken the spirit of independence and self-reliance upon which families and communities depend.
See Also the February 21 post by Vincent Lloyd in Unherd: The civil-rights movement failed – UnHerd
“It’s worth returning to a provocative set of questions posed by the black writer Harold Cruse in his 1967 book Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. “What if separate but equal contained a good idea, a better idea than advocating for racial integration above all else? Shouldn’t black activism focus on building the capacity of black communities, rather than looking to open up opportunities for the black elite?”
“According to Cruse. . . the problem with the civil-rights consensus was that it advanced the interests of the black professional class over and against those of the black masses.
“Middle-class professionals, black or white, push their particular material interests in the name of universal ideals. In the case of black professionals, the earnestness — and thus the self-dealing — are doubly intensified. They serve at the leisure of the white middle class, which, in turn, serves those in the commanding heights of economy and society. As a result, there are very few public voices advancing the genuine interests of poor and working-class black people.
“Whether or not a few more blacks are admitted to elite universities or the boardroom matters far less than ensuring that everyone has access to a safe place to live, sufficient food, playgrounds for children, and dignified work. Yet middle-class, integrationist black politics cashiered these communal goods in the bargain of more and better university placements and corporate jobs for themselves.
“The black middle class obfuscated the difference between morality and politics to advance its own interests.”
“Policing social boundaries between the races is immoral. However, that doesn’t mean breaking down those boundaries ought to be the top political priority. The the priority should be the needs of poor and working-class black people. This requires strengthening local communities economically, politically, and culturally.
“Cruse advocated for boycotts of businesses that were not based in his community, and he urged that businesses in his community shift to cooperative ownership. He argued for community-controlled initiatives to combat violence and drugs, with a leading role for cultural and religious organisations, not least the black church.
“Cruse saw the development of community-owned media as an important complement to the new institutions of grassroots democracy he envisioned, like community planning boards.
“Yet throughout the Eighties, Nineties, and Aughts, black politics trended in the opposite direction from the one Cruse advocated. Multiculturalism reigned, and race politics was largely captured by the black professional-managerial class, including the public intellectuals who laundered that class’s narrow interests with pseudo-sophisticated affirmations of black identity and culture. The corporate ideal of “diversity” was used to legitimize existing power structures: you haven’t received a meaningful raise in a generation, but take solace, your CEO is now black. The minute policing of ordinary language substituted for material reforms.
“Instead of experimenting with innovative ways for local communities to address the problems they faced, corporations, governments, and, especially, universities hired multicultural managers who knew how to parrot the slogans of black justice movements without threatening the interests of their employers. Amazon led corporate America’s BLM advocacy — even as the mega-retailer terminated a black employee, Christian Smalls, who had sought to organise his fellow warehouse workers on Staten Island, with the company’s general counsel describing Smalls as “not smart or articulate” in an internal memo.
“It isn’t hard to see why there would be growing scepticism among black voters of liberal leadership, even as black voters know all too well the continuing effects of racism. As for the alternative? Moral outrage at this or that affront to “our democracy” voiced by the chattering classes — norms created by and for the wealthy and white — rings hollow among the black masses.
“What does this history tell us about our present moment? The multicultural model for managing racial diversity was attacked from the Left during the Obama presidency but temporarily resuscitated by the liberal capture of BLM energy. Now an enfeebled multiculturalism is being attacked from the Right, and its prognosis is grim. From the perspective of the black poor and working class, a dramatic shift in elite discourse creates severe vulnerability, but it also opens new opportunities to put forward a vision of justice that centres the black masses. . .
“Professional-class aspiration, corporate “diversity”, top-down multiculturalism — all have failed us.”
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