I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. In my childhood and youth, my part of town was, like the rest of the "Rust Belt", a manufacturing powerhouse and the home of industries such as TRW, Fisher Body, Lincoln Electric, and Euclid Trucks. Before I was 20-years-old, I had worked in three warehouses and a factory. If you don't recognize any of those names, it's because you never owned a credit card, flew in an airplane, owned or otherwise rode in a General Motors vehicle, passed by a construction site, or welded. Okay, I'll give you that last one.
Cleveland also had a near 50/50 racial population. Yes, there were some Hispanics, mostly from Puerto Rico, and some Asians, but that was a very small population in those days. The city was run by whites and blacks; and, as in cities such as Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, the two racial groups abided with one another more easily than in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.
Cleveland had the first black mayor, Carl Stokes, of a major American city. Whites and blacks voted for him. JFK's leading campaigner in the 1960 presidential election was Carl's brother, Louis, who would become a long-serving congressman. As a kid I knew the music of Jimmy Smith, Sun Ra, and The Rev. James Cleveland. Kids from other places in the USA dug The Archies; I could not get enough James Brown. I would listen to the Cavs play on the radio and then stay tuned to hear the sermons from the First Baptist Church.
I had black schoolmates, work colleagues, and friends. My first real job was as a teacher in an inner city high school where I taught in classrooms that represented the city's demographic. In the days before I had to be conscious of my diet and general fitness, I loved neckbone and collards. My parents would often take in kids from disadvantaged homes, both black and white. Such was the dinner table in my house. At another time in my life, my colleagues and I were told that "We wear blue and green; we bleed red. That's all."
Imagine my surprise when I came to Connecticut to work and live and found myself in parishes and towns that not only had no black members or residents, but where people had never had a black friend; had never been in a black family's house as a guest, had never sat on crates with other whites and blacks during a lunch break and laughed about common experiences.
Imagine being in Connecticut and realizing that an ordained colleague didn't know what a "West Indian" was, or that senior clergy, including those serving on committees to address racial concerns, didn't know the difference between a West Indian, Afro-American, or Ethiopian; and who attempted to address the disparate concerns of those groups as if they were monolithic. Why were these the people in charge? Was it solely because they "felt" concern, even though they had no active history of actually addressing concern? Was this why, in the company of liberal-minded whites, I always felt as if the goal of diocesan racial programs and multiple clergy visits to Africa was to make everyone embrace white values and perspectives; to become, in the words of a black colleague, "little whites"?
Yet these were the people who designed the Episcopal Church's world view in racial matters. This may, I guess, be the reason that the titular head of the Anglican Communion is a white man who was selected over the Ugandan-born Archbishop of York. This, despite the fact that our world-wide church is predominantly black.
I'm guessing this is also why many of my white colleagues treat the current President of the United States as if he is the near-messiah, which seems terribly unfair to him. Since they have never had any black friends or been in a black house except, perhaps, for the exercise of ministry, Barack Obama is the black friend they never had. I suspect, and I may be wrong, that it may alleviate any secret fears on their part that they are racist. That Obama sticker on a car bumper is like one of those ancient pardons issued from the Vatican.
So, the comments I came across on the weblog quoted from and linked to below resonated, to say the least. I had read the Slate article that's referenced, and, like most articles in Slate, it sounded like something one would hear at a meeting of white clergy: Well-intended, inexperienced, pseudo-intellectual, and naive.
But I also invite you to read the following, which is shorter than the Slate piece, offered by a law professor from Madison, Wisconsin:
Here's a HuffPo piece that had him going on about how he has no black friends, even though he's totally liberal and lives in NYC. He's "never even been inside a black person's house." So that's his background. Why he's the person to declare and explain the failure of affirmative action and to propose a solution, I do not know. Does Slate know? Obviously, Slate's publishing the article boosts Colby's stature as an expert on this topic. It's why I'm reading Colby's piece. But I can see the reasons why Slate would publish this. It knows its readers are mostly white liberals, and it's easy to guess that they're susceptible to the narcissistic question: Where are my black friends? (Obama counts as one friend, but he's always so busy.)
Read both pieces, if you have the time and inclination. They both have valid points that are in need of some consideration.