Federal Court Strikes Down Washington State’s Felon Disfranchisement Law in Landmark Voting Rights Case

Federal Court Strikes Down Washington State’s Felon Disfranchisement Law in Landmark Voting Rights Case


Stripping felons of their voting rights for life is one of many ways whites systematically deny people of color  our full humanity.  Ultimately, self-government through voting is an institutional reflection of our shared belief that all people are equal.  No person or arbitrarily defined group of people has the natural right to rule over others.  When people strip felons, who are unfairly disproportionately people of color, of their right to vote, they are claiming that the voting public (disproportionately whites) is a more valuable form of human than those who cannot participate in the governing process. 

You may have noticed that Virginia's new Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, has declared April "Confederate History Month" and instituted a new literacy test for felons (again, disproportionately minority--especially African American in Virginia) who want to regain the "right-turned-privilege" to vote.  McDonnell's literacy test requires felons to submit an essay to him as part of voting rights reinstatement proceedings.  If the Governor approves of the essay, he may choose to reinstate voting rights.  Many other states have similar systems.  When I lived in Florida, the governor could arbitrarily restore or deny voting rights to felons (after their release) based on the governor's whim.  This is the kind of thing the 1965 Voting Rights Act is designed to prevent.   These practices are only allowed to go on because they disproportionately harm people of color and greatly increase whites' voting power. 

In Florida, if released felons were allowed to vote, Al Gore would have won the state in 2000.  Among many probable consequences, former felons' votes would mean that our military would likely be home safe, and thousands of Afghan, Iraqi, and American lives would not have been lost.  How ironic that the people society is supposedly punishing for their violent pasts would have given us peace instead of the violence President Bush did in our names!

These Wounds I Suffer in the House of My Friends: Church as Site of White Racism

Continuing the previous post, this week researchers at Baylor University published a study finding that people who were primed with Christian words (e.g. Jesus, Bible, faith, Christ) demonstrated more covert and overt racism against African Americans than people who were not primed with Christian words.  In other words, people who are thinking about American Christianity (or thinking through a Christian frame, the study speculates) feel and express more anti-Black racism than people who are not thinking about Christianity.  The ABP news service, with a quotation by one of the study's authors, sums up the point nicely:

The study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, found that people subliminally "primed" with Christian words reported more negative attitudes about African-Americans than those primed with neutral words.

"What's interesting about this study is that it shows some component of religion does lead to some negative evaluations of people based on race," said Wade Rowatt, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, who led the study. 

 According to Rowatt, there is something about American Christianity that leads to whites' anti-black racism.  Rather than preventing white on black racism, white Christianity actually leads to (i.e. activates, maybe even produces) racism.

The study only subliminally primed people with Christian words and measured the effect of that incredibly minuscule stimulus.  That they found any effect at all is remarkable!  In reality, people are not subliminally primed with singular Christian words; they are overwhelmed with Christian words and symbols.  Extrapolating from the study, each Christian stimulus primes people for anti-Black sentiment.  If people in short laboratory studies in which they "heard" only one Christian word exhibit increased anti-Black racism, how much greater is the effect when people have been in church!!!  Given the flood of Christian symbols around us--crosses, t-shirts with verses, people praying over their food, "blessings" when we sneeze--it is no wonder people of color face white racism everywhere, all the time.

Of course, the Church is not the only central purveyor of white racism.  But the study is important because it indicates two critical things: 1) in the United States, Christianity and white racism reinforce one another; and 2) churches are sites where whites do racial harm and amplify racism.  White churches are not sites of racial harmony; they are places where people of color are wounded in the houses of their white friends (see Zechariah 13:6, from which I drew this post's title).     


I have many thoughts on this subject, but I will save most of them for another time.  Suffice it to say here, the white Church has a lot of work to do if it hopes to succeed at the "racial reconciliation" project many churches have taken up over the last half century.  Having worshiped and served in predominantly white churches, I can give innumerable first hand accounts of the covert and overt racism the researchers found.  In one instance, a white evangelical with whom I was living actually said to me "if you were my slave, it would be fine." My experiences are not unique.  People of color who have taken the leap of faith to join white churches usually find those churches to be houses of racialized pain, and suffer many wounds as a result.  The book, Reconciliation Blues, has many accounts documenting that fact.

These Wounds I Suffered in the House of My Friends...

I credit my mother with the great majority of my Bible teaching.  She bought me my first Bible when I was 14 years old.  She drove me to Bible study for the 2 years following.  She taught me memory scriptures from my earliest days, and so beautifully sang gospel music that I still hum her songs to comfort my soul when it is troubled.  Mom gathered the family for Bible reading and prayer periodically.  She also called me to help pray through the family's toughest times.  My spirituality is mostly a reflection of hers.  Nevertheless, the two verses my father taught me reverberate in my mind as often as all the others.  One verse is about having to show yourself to be friendly if you hope to make friends.  The other is the subject of this entry. 

And one will say to him, "What are these wounds between your arms?" Then he will say, "Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."  --Zechariah 13:6

 Despite being raised in New Jersey, my father has a Southerner's gift for memorable phrases.  His sayings, like, "What they do with you, they'll do to you" have served me well.  His quotations of Zechariah 13:6 were given like an old country saying, and I have internalized its wisdom accordingly.  The context for Zechariah 13 is God's prophecy of a devastating military defeat for Judah, and the verse itself centers on a false prophet whom the Jews reject.  Again, I never learned the context for the verse.  In fact, I don't recall Dad ever giving a citation for it all--beyond it being in the Bible.  So, I've learned the scripture and used it as folk wisdom.  Even still, the word of the Lord is never void. 

We've all heard the saying, "you only hurt the ones you love."  Standing alone, Zechariah 13:6 pretty much means the same thing, but from the victim's perspective.  Paraphrased, "I am only hurt by the ones I love."  Through my many hours of therapy  :)  I almost exclusively talk about the "wounds I suffered in the house of my friends."  Though the events are years, even decades, old, I spend countless hours rehashing hurtful incidents--incidents that refuse my best efforts to bury them beyond my memory.  Usually, folks had no malice when they hurt me, but the wounds are so deep that I am still tending to them all these years later. 

The scripture speaks to that sentiment.  The wounds the false prophet bares are actually from his mother and father, who attempted to kill him because of what he spoke (Zech. 13:3).  Though no one tried to kill me, the wounds are so deep and obvious to everyone that it appears the wounds came from a murder attempt.  I'm sure everyone relates to that.  We all carry very deep wounds.   

The point being, the wounds we suffer in supposedly safe and nurturing places hurt the worst and mark us for years.  As Paul Simon said in "Graceland", "Everybody sees you're blown apart.  Everybody hears the wind blow."  Simon concludes by saying, "I'm going to Graceland."  My next post demonstrates why the metaphorical "Graceland," i.e. Heaven, represented by the Church, may not be a sanctuary for safety.  When it comes to race, white Churches apparently function as "the house of your friends." 

Minions

Here is an odd, but very respectful and pleasant, email exchange I had with an MLB reporter yesterday.  Of course, yesterday was MLB Opening Day!  While I was searching for a way to watch the games, I ran across an ad on MLB.tv for their video package.  [The corrected version is now posted.]  Our email exchange will make the issue obvious:

FYI: This is a quote from your story/ad for MLB.tv ("'Baseball's Everywhere' in 2010..."): "As always, the best way to get to know more about MLB.TV is to simply ask any of the minions who consume the National Pastime this way."  Assuming you don't mean to insult MLB fans by calling us "minions," you may want to correct your post. 

  I figured this was just a comical typo...To my surprise, the author replied...

I appreciate this email, Glenn. I have used that word occasionally over a 30-year media career and always thought of it as a synonym for "masses" for whatever reason. Not sure I'll be able to have that replaced in the MLB.TV story because we are engulfed in so much content amid the first week, but going forward I definitely will take this into account. Great call. Thanks.

He later added:

That is being changed now. Thanks again.

 This all made me chuckle a bit, until the thought crossed my mind...how long before the reporter's definition of minions as a synonym for "masses" becomes accurate?  How long before "masses" is synonymous with the dictionary definition of "minions":

min·ion /ˈmɪnyən/ Show Spelled[min-yuhn]       –noun

1.a servile follower or subordinate of a person in power.

 Given that no one has corrected the reporter on his use of the term during a "30 year career," perhaps we have already crossed over from masses to minions.  If we haven't yet, the Texas Board of Education is determined to finish the job.