My Family and the BBQ Place

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A few weeks ago, my extended family took a little vacation together in southern Kentucky.  We had met in a small town and the decision was made to go out to eat together at a local BBQ place on the outskirts of town.  It looked interesting.  It was a low-lying wood structure painted in bright orange and black with a gravel parking lot.   You know what I mean — the type of place that probably had some unique local flavor, in both the food and the atmosphere.

As my brother’s family pulled into the BBQ joint, my twelve year-old niece turned to her mother and said, “Mom, you do know we’re black, don’t you?”

Oh.  I should point out that my brother married an African-American woman and has three bi-racial daughters.

My niece was half-joking and half-serious.  But because of her race, she felt a bit uncomfortable about entering this unknown place.  And I can’t say I blame her.  If you were black, would you have second thoughts about entering a local eatery in a small town in southern Kentucky?

As it turned out, they ate at the place and there was no problem, other than a few strange stares.

It is a very small incident, but it illustrates a couple of subtle but complicated dimensions to the way race works in our culture.

First of all, this little incident exemplifies one kind of white privilege.  My nieces and my sister-in-law automatically have to go through a series of calculations in a situation like this:  Am I going to be welcome? Am I going to be treated differently because of how people perceive me?  How should I respond if I am?  There are very few places where I, as a white person in America, have to make those calculations.  My sister-in-law, and nieces, (and brother, by association) have to make those kinds of calculations fairly regularly.

This particular incident isn’t exactly a question of great injustice.  There was not a question of the denial of economic opportunity, or whether rights would be violated, or whether my relatives would face violence, though the unknown can produce anxieties about such things.  But it does mean that it can be difficult for person of color to feel fully at ease in many places in American society.

However, it still raises questions of injustice.  If blacks still have to make calculations about how they will be treated (and due to the experiences they have, many and perhaps most African-Americans still do have to make these calculations), then we still have serious racial issues to face and address in our society.  Beyond being uncomfortable in restaurants, there are still complicated racial questions about how hiring processes, law enforcement, housing patterns, and a host of other issues that we still need to face and figure out.

There is yet another rather complicated issue here that pertains to all of us.  Should we try to be color-blind?  Is that the best way to resolve these issues?

Here is how it usually plays out (it seems to me) in my extended family:  most of the time we are color-blind. My sister-in-law is black.  My nieces are mixed-race.  My adopted sister (born in Korea) is Asian-American.  The rest of us are white.  We get together for holidays, vacations and other family events and we don’t think much about race.  We largely see each individual as unique people that we love.  We talk about what we do at our different places of work or school.  We see personality quirks.  We know what kinds of things each person likes for Christmas gifts.  We know what kinds of flaws we all tend to be guilty of.  We tell funny stories about each other at birthday celebrations.

The color-blind ideal, right?

Hmm.  Here is the problem:  in our color-blind way of thinking, those of us who are white sometimes forget the calculations that other members of the family have to make.  So, we gather for vacation and we need to eat.  Somebody says, “Hey, let’s try out that very interesting-looking BBQ joint,” and most of the rest of us agree, because we are not used to considering whether or not we will be welcome at an unknown place like this.  And as several of our family cars pull into the gravel parking lot, only one vehicle contains somebody who is asking, “You do know we are black, don’t you?”  The rest of us have forgotten.

Being color-blind, however, can also mean we have a blind spot.  We fail to consider how things might look while standing in somebody else’s shoes.

Now, I don’t know how things would have played out differently if we considered race at that moment.  It is quite likely that if somebody had asked the black members of the family if they would enjoy eating there, my sister-in-law would have said, “Hey, it’s OK, let’s try it out,” because she is used to these calculations and she’s tough.   Or maybe she would want the rest of us to be comfortable and happy.  But we never found out how she would have reacted because we were behaving in our usually color-blind way.

I would have more faith in the color-blind ideal if all Americans knew and loved one another to the extent that members of my family know and love one another.  But the reality?  It is only possible to know, on this level, a small minority of people we come in contact with on a regular basis.  Furthermore, love takes work, even with people we know very well.  Even if they believe in the color-blind ideal, I just don’t trust people to uphold it simply because it is a good idea.  Shoot, I don’t trust myself on this matter.

What do you know about this guy? Nothing. But your mind will guess a few things....

What do you know about this guy? Nothing. But your mind will guess a few things….

On top of that, as my cognitive psychologist friend tells me, our brains are hard-wired to organize the world into categories.  So we distinguish among mammals and trees and birds.  We make distinctions among genres of music, TV shows and sports.  As we drive down the road, we unconsciously note the difference among stop signs, stoplights and billboards.  We assume certain things about people who are enthusiastic about NASCAR, or yoga, or Star Trek, or hedge funds.  It doesn’t mean we get it right, but our brains have to organize the world into categories, or the world will just be a mass of chaos to us.

....and do the same with these folks.

….and do the same with these folks.

It is unavoidable.  My friend Linda told me that a couple of decades ago, when she was living in New Orleans, her 2 or 3 year-old son asked her why all garbage men were black.  It was an innocent question that illustrates the point:  from the earliest stages of our lives humans make categories and connections to try to figure out the world.

Our culture has spent the last five centuries organizing people according to race.  Those categories are not going to go away easily, or any time soon.  We live with those categories and associations on a conscious and unconscious level.  Picture a wide-receiver.  Picture a CEO.  Now try to do it without race as a category.  You are probably able to picture either one as white or black, but I’m willing to bet that a black man popped up first in your mind for the wide-receiver and a white man popped up for the CEO.  And you probably didn’t think about a female for either.  Or a Latino.

So the color-blind goal?  If being color-blind makes it easier for us to ignore our blind spots, then we need to find a different way.

 

What Bill O’Reilly Ought to Argue

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I hesitate to make suggestions for anybody (liberal or conservative) who appear on TV news shows.  Why encourage them?  That format usually promotes oversimplification and rarely encourages deeper understanding.

But I have a suggestion for conservatives.  And liberals, actually.

I argued in an earlier post that Bill O’Reilly doesn’t really understand what white privilege is.  He doesn’t get that he actually has benefited from being white, even if he grew up somewhat poor. And I have to confess that I found it hard to find any of Bill O’Reilly’s comments that I agreed with in his segment, aside from the fact that he probably does get sun-burned if he is out too long in the sun in Hawaii.

However, I think there is a valid objection to be made by some people who are critical of the idea of privilege.  On the O’Reilly segment, Stuart Varney argued that you don’t right wrongs by “guilting” the present.  Varney oversimplifies a complex issue, (see, there it is – oversimplification as a TV news epidemic), but I think he is correct that the concept of “privilege” is sometimes (often?) presented in such a way that feeling guilty is the only response whites can make. In other words, privilege is often framed as a situation that stems solely from past injustices.

Have you given thanks for the good that was built up in our society through the agonizing work done by schoolchildren (and their teachers) in generations past?

A shout-out to schoolchildren (and their teachers) in generations past: Thanks.

 

But that, also, is an oversimplification.  It is true that much of the privilege I enjoy as a white person is a result of past injustices.  But much is also the result of the efforts of people in the past who have worked against injustice or who have worked to empower non-elites.  I am not descended from an elite or aristocratic family lineage (how many of us in the U.S. are, actually?) but I have benefited from an education that was not conditioned on my family’s wealth or status.  This is thanks to the efforts of many Puritans, Yankees and other Americans from the past who worked to ensure the all ordinary children would receive an education.

I am also privileged because there are principles embedded in the Bill of Rights that have allowed my ancestors and me to flourish. We only need to examine how the poor are abused by the rich and powerful in places like Peru, the Philippines, India, and Kenya (just to name a few somewhat random nations) to help us to appreciate the privilege we enjoy of a law enforcement and legal system that does not only work primarily for the interests of the rich and powerful.  So, even though the founders and many after them upheld systems of injustice that reinforced the privileges of white males (slavery, patriarchy), they also promoted principles checked and limited what the most powerful in our society can do.  Later generations built on those systems, and I’m thankful for those efforts to establish justice.

I am also privileged because I was born into a stable (though imperfect) family, with parents who, among other things, instructed me in ethical principles, filled my life with books, instilled in me habits of self-denial, and sent me to church to encounter God.   That took a lot of hard work on their part, and I did not always learn my lessons well. (See: Failure to Properly Respect Others or Adequately Apologize for Sins Committed in the Great Dodgeball Uprising of 1972).  However, I know that many people are born into family situations in which they did not receive as many blessings as I did growing up. I could name more.

The point is that influences on my life as disparate as public education, a working legal system, and a stable family were all given to me, through no fault, action or decision on my own part.  Those are privileges I have been given, due to the good and just things done by people in the past. I have been granted a position of privilege that is based both on terrible injustices and admirable work for good done by many people in the past.

It is important we understand both sides of this coin.  And we can’t fully understand both sides of this coin if we do not deeply engage history.  (Yes, this is a shameless plug for history, but only because I’m right).  In the O’Reilly segment, Stuart Varney saw it is a problem that we were “always looking to the past.”  His solution, presumably, is to forget the past when it comes to issues of race.  This is an extremely bad suggestion (for any issue, actually).

My guess is, though, Varney would be quite happy if we looked at America’s past to note its accomplishments.  Many conservatives fall into this tendency — to describe American society today by lauding past accomplishments and downplaying its injustices.

Many liberals, however, fall into the opposite tendency — to describe American society today by highlighting past injustices, while downplaying its accomplishments.

A fully formed sense of history will deeply engage both sides.  This means we need to take part in careful discussions in which we listen carefully to issues, respect those with whom we disagree, and search for illumination rather than ammunition.

Perhaps we can start that process by turning off TV news shows.

Surprise:  More Evidence that College Does Not Really Cost More Than It Did Two Decades Ago

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(I have another post coming on “privilege,” but first, this news about college costs.)

Staggering student debt from college……is mostly a myth.

What?  Hasn’t a college education (especially at private colleges) become outrageously expensive in recent years?

Not really.  What actually may be going on is that our our culture has bought into perceptions that just aren’t accurate.

If you care about the Christian faith, you should care about this.  Many Christian colleges (and non-Christian private colleges) are facing financial challenges because fewer students are going to these kinds of colleges.  I think that a major factor here (although I don’t have hard evidence for this) is that many Christian students and parents are steering away from Christian colleges because they believe the financial costs have become unbearable. So, the thinking often goes, better to go to a public university or a community college.  College grads going to a private institution will be drowning in debt for years,   Right?

Wrong — at least for the majority of students.

I’ve supplied evidence on this issue before, but now we have more.  The problem is that anecdotes and simple images (the story of the college grad with $80,000 dollars of debt, for instance) gets lots of media play and the hard evidence does not.  The Brookings Institute has released a study showing that the Staggering Student Debt cliche is actually a perception that has taken on the status of myth.  They don’t phrase it quite like that, but that is the upshot.

If you don’t want to read the whole article, here are a few highlights:

— Average tuition at private colleges (non-profit private colleges, that is) has not increased any faster than inflation over the past decade, once you consider financial aid.  (My commentary:  the standard tuition price you see really does not tell you how much you will pay.  You have to receive a financial aid package to know what you will actually pay. It’s dumb, but that’s how the system works).

— Tuition really has increased at public institutions, by more than fifty percent.

— The amount of income the average grad has to devote to student debt is about the same today as it was in 1992 and it is actually lower than it was in 1998.  How can that be?  Average student debt has actually risen in the past two decades, but so has the average income of college grads.

Ha, ha, this is funny. But do you think we do better in trusting a cartoon or a evidence from the Brookings Institute?

Ha, ha, this is funny. But do you think we do better in trusting a cartoon or a evidence from the Brookings Institute?

— Large student debts are uncommon.  58% of all grads have less than $10,000 worth of college debt.  Those with Staggering College Debt are outliers — only 7% have more than $50,000.

— Students from financially well-off families are paying more for college.  Students from middle and lower income families are not.

— The real problem comes for those students who drop out of college without a degree.  Their debt has doubled over the last decade.

My thoughts:

1) Compare student debt to the average debt from buying a new car, and suddenly the costs of college do not look as scary.  Consider this:  last year the average amount Americans borrowed to buy a car was $27,000.  But most grads have student loan debts of less than $10,000.  We Americans are going into much more debt for new cars than for college!  Where is all the hand-wringing about the staggering load of our car debts?  A college education is a much better investment, even if you only thinking in crass economic terms.

2) Students need to stay in college and see it through.  For some students, that is a real challenge, for a variety of reasons.  It is a challenge for those of us in higher education who are trying to help them persevere.

3)   Secular colleges and universities present a particular kind of education, framed by secular assumptions, questions and goals.  This can be helpful, though it does not often require students to think about important questions in life.  Christian colleges do more.  They frame their education by the assumptions, questions and goals of the Christian faith.  That is a different kind of education.  It is not interchangeable with the kind of education you get at a public education.

So if you know of a Christian who is considering college, bring up the issue of misperceptions about student debt.  And raise the question about what a Christian education does differently than a secular education.

 

 

 

The Great Dodgeball Uprising of 1972 and the Contentious Idea of “Privilege”

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And now, a couple of more difficult and complicated questions about the Great Dodgeball Uprising of 1972 (see my earlier post for all the violent details.)

Was I guilty?  Was I neutral?

I’m not talking about my angry ripping down of Sharon Osowski’s sign.  That’s easy.  Yes, I was guilty of several crimes and sins there.

No, I mean before that impulse swept over me.  At the moment when I walked back into the classroom in a state of Dodgeball Bliss, when I first saw those girls chanting about how it was all unfair.  At that moment, was I guilty of anything?  Was I neutral?

Yes.  No. Yes.

In one sense, I was not guilty of causing the Dodgeball Injustice to Girls.  I was only doing what Mr. Bacon told me to do.  I was following the rules.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I would not have minded if the girls came down and played dodgeball with us.  I mean, come on, it was dodgeball.

But I snapped when Sharon Osowski marched toward my table because it seemed that she was saying I was somehow at fault and I was just doing what Mr. Bacon told us to do.

In that way, I was not guilty.  But here is the problem that I now understand:  I wasn’t neutral.  I got to play dodgeball and Sharon Osowski did not.  It wasn’t from any fault, action or decision of my own — and it wasn’t through any fault, action or decision of the girls — but the fact remains that we boys got to play dodgeball and the girls did not.

What do we say, when one group of people, through no fault, action or decision of their own, benefits from the way society is arranged and another group, through no fault, action or decision of their own, does not benefit?  “That’s life?” “That’s discrimination?”  “Life isn’t fair?”  “That’s injustice?”

For a number of years now, some pointy-headed intellectual types have been using a term in their writings and in higher education to describe this situation.  They call it “privilege.”

images

Ammunition or Illumination? You decide!

And a few weeks ago, this concept flew around the airwaves and internet more widely after Bill O’Reilly came out with a segment on Fox News in which he criticized the idea — at least in terms of how it was used in a Harvard first-year orientation program.  Of course, in this context, it quickly became quite political. And it gets tougher to think clearly about it when people are turning to ammunition rather than illumination.

(You can see the clip here.  I could not find the original segment on the Fox News website, so this link is attached to some snarky political commentary).

So I’m going to try to search for some illumination here.  I’ll say at the outset that I think Bill O’Reilly is incorrect about many things on this issue.  But I should also say he might have a point in another way.

First, I think I understand Bill O’Reilly’s emotional reaction, though I think it is incorrect.  Bill O’Reilly declared that he was going to have to “exempt himself under the white privilege banner” because he worked hard at lower-level jobs when he was younger.  It seems to me he is reacting in much the same way I did to Sharon Osowski.  How was I at fault for the girls’ dodgeball situation?  When it comes to race, a lot of whites feel like others are trying to make them feel guilty for things that they did not cause. Persons who work hard, face obstacles, overcome difficulties, and generally try to treat others decently don’t like to be told they are privileged.

But the issue of “privilege,” as it is explained by its clearest advocates, isn’t about what a person has done or not done.  And this is the important point:  this kind of “privilege” really exists and it matters.  Some groups in society, through no fault, action or decision of their own, reap benefits because of race, class, gender, or any other number of factors.

This is not necessarily the same thing as being born into a wealthy, powerful family and having everything handed to you, as O’Reilly seems to think it is.  Obviously, Paris Hilton grew up with privileges that you and I did not grow up with, which is why she is famous for….well, just what is it she is famous for, again?  But that’s not really what “privilege” in this sense, means.

Here is why:  yes, I am sure O’Reilly worked hard and didn’t have everything handed to him.   He didn’t grow up in the Hamptons.  He explained in the segment that he grew up in Levittown, New York, meaning his parents did not have a lot of money.

But he doesn’t get it.  (It’s possible he gets it, but he’s more concerned about ammunition…but I’ll assume that he is sincere.)

For instance, Bill O’Reilly has benefited from white privilege in at least one very clear way: in the 1950s and 60s (when he was growing up) Levittown was a suburb that had contracts prohibiting blacks from buying houses in his suburb.  In fact, most suburbs in America at that time had official or unofficial policies that kept blacks out.

A 1950s Levittown version of "Where's Waldo?" goes like this: where's the person of color? (You won't win this game).

A 1950s Levittown version of “Where’s Waldo?” goes like this: where’s the person of color? (Hint: Give up. You won’t win this game).

What did that mean?  It meant that many working-class whites — especially whites whose parents, grand-parents and great-grandparents came from Catholic or Jewish immigrant communities that faced discrimination in the United States — were taking advantage of economic and educational opportunities available to them.  In the 1950s many working class whites who lived in poor neighborhoods in the city could buy “entry-level” suburban houses in places like Levittown.  As I explained in an earlier post, property and land-ownership has been a crucial way for Americans to move up the socio-economic ladder in American history — and it is a feature that historically made the United States different (and more prosperous) than, for instance, Latin American countries.

But in the 1950s, a black family could not move out of the city and buy a house in Levittown, like O’Reilly’s parents did.  When it comes to homes in upwardly-mobile neighborhoods, the United States did not widely extend this opportunity to blacks until….when?  1975?  1990?  2005?  Do blacks have it, fully, today?

Obviously, middle-class blacks who have the financial resources can buy homes in many middle-class neighborhoods.  Legally, they can now buy homes anywhere they want.

So does that mean we have moved beyond this issue?

Well, I know that if I were black, there are still some towns, suburbs and neighborhoods that I would not want to move into because of how I would be treated — at least by some of the people.  (I know of some of these places in my own county).  And I know for sure that I would be hesitant to move if I had kids and had to send them to the public schools in these towns, suburbs or neighborhoods.

However, I am a white person, so I don’t have to worry about those issues.  Neither does Bill O’Reilly.  Socially, the two of us have a certain privilege because of the color of our skin — through no fault, action, or decision of ours.  That has economic ramifications.  The United States is interesting in that historically, it has offered both opportunities and privileges to poorer whites but denied them to blacks and people of color.  We haven’t fully resolved that issue yet.

Another problem:  this kind of privilege is largely invisible to the person who holds it — unless they have had some combination of experience and willingness to consider how it might be so.  It had not occurred to me at all that Mr. Bacon was privileging boys over girls in that dodgeball situation.  Then Sharon Osowski organized her protest.  Before that, I didn’t see any problem.

For those of us who are white, do we know how often clerks ignore blacks who shop in the stores in our town?  How often do banks in our town give better terms on loans to whites, compared to blacks who have the same financial status?

How often do blacks in our town have advantages over whites in the above examples?

Reality:  I don’t know how often these things happen in my town.  You don’t either.  It’s impossible to know the specifics.  But there is plenty of sociological data to show it is still a problem in our society.

There is more. Even with what I have argued, I think the proponents of privilege can have a problem or two in how they argue their point.  Bill O’Reilly might, implicitly, have a point in the midst of this.  That’s in my next post.

The Great Dodgeball Uprising of 1972 and Title IX

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Mr. Bacon successfully quashed the Great Dodgeball Uprising of early 1972. (See my previous post for details).  But this proved to be no more than a tactical loss for the revolution.

Consider:

At that time, the number of girls who played high school sports in the United States numbered about 300,000.  Today it is around 3 million.  Sports used to be largely a male domain.  The small percentage of females who played sports usually were not taken very seriously — though female cheerleaders for boys’ sports usually were.

Today, however, girls’ athletics enjoys a much higher status.  A girl who plays high school sports can still be considered quite “cool” by her peers.  That “cool” status does not come in spite her athletic prowess, but often because of it.  (Do young people still say “cool?”  I’m 52 years-old.  It is so hard to know these things, anymore).

The revolution of females and sports swept the nation and the world, for that matter.

Who, in 1972, saw this coming? Mr. Bacon didn't. Hmm. Neither did I, come to think of it.

Who, in 1972, saw this coming? Mr. Bacon didn’t. Hmm. Neither did I, come to think of it.

But why the revolution?  A common explanation, exemplified by a Sports Illustrated article from a couple of years ago, states that this came about because Congress passed Title IX in 1972.  The key part of that law stated, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Gosh, that sounds like Sharon Osowski had read the text, doesn’t it?  Actually, the legislators weren’t thinking about athletics (it wasn’t even mentioned in the law), they were thinking about other areas of education.  But the most notable impact seems to have been in the area of sports.  And maybe recess.

There are a number of interesting questions that have been discussed here, such as the extent to which the playing field (pun intended) between females and males is or is not level today, and whether Title IX has hurt certain male sports in high school and college.

But I’m more interested in the historical question of whether or not we can really say that Title IX caused all of this.

Why?  Here is what I find interesting:  Title IX was passed in June of 1972, several months after the Great Dodgeball Uprising of Mary L. Daly Elementary School. How could Sharon Osowski, a 4th grade girl from Elkhart, Indiana, show more foresight than Congress?  (Insert joke about Congress here).

Other things were in the works besides politics, of course.  If 4th-grade girls in Elkhart, Indiana were challenging existing gender norms in 1972, then something was afoot in the wider culture.  When I tell this story to my American history class, I ask my students to imagine how it would have played out differently if Mr. Bacon’s dilemma had occurred in 1952 instead of 1972.  My students usually point out that girls in 1952 probably would have accepted Mr. Bacon’s original plan.  It is quite likely they would not have organized a protest, though they might have said something.  Some students observe that in 1952 the girls might not have even really cared about playing dodgeball.

We then dig into the possible reasons for why Sharon Osowski would have thought to lead a protest march in 1972.  I point out that it is quite unlikely that her parents had sat her down in kindergarten and explained to her that if she were ever treated unjustly in school, she must organize her group, assemble protest signs, create pithy slogans, and then march around in front of the authorities.  However, it is quite possible her parents raised her in a way to be aware of these issues.

"You've Come a Long Way Babeeee..."

The logic makes no sense: cigarettes for women = women’s rights.  But we accepted it anyway, along with the other message that roles for women were changing.

The other main factor here, though is media.  I’m guessing that none of the girls in my class knew who Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan were, but I’m pretty sure that they all, like me, had seen independent women on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Mod Squad” or Virginia Slims commercials.  Furthermore, weren’t similar attitudes towards girls and sports changing in Britain, Canada, Belgium and other nations outside the jurisdiction of Title IX?

So which had a greater causal effect:  Title IX or the thousands, maybe millions, of ways throughout the late 1960s and 1970s that ordinary women (and girls!) were acting differently than they had two decades before?   If Title IX had not passed, would anything have changed?  Probably, but how much?  If Title IX had passed in 1952, would it have caused the same amount of change?

I don’t know.  Obviously the changes came about because of a combination of complex factors.  But it is a reminder that changes in society take place every day, through the cumulative effect of the actions of ordinary people like Sharon Osowski who, as we stop to think about it, was on the cutting edge of a revolution in gender and sports.  (My 4th grade self hesitates to call her “ordinary” — because she might be doing remarkable things today.  I don’t know.)

And finally, to commemorate the Great Dodgeball Uprising of 1972, here is a link to the only thing that, in my 4th grade world, would have been greater than a game of dodgeball:  a game of dodgeball played against Major League baseball players!  Epic.

Great Moments in American History:  Dodgeball and Gender at Mary L. Daly Elementary School in early 1972

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One of the very important things I learned in the 4th grade was that you don’t mess with Sharon Osowski.

That lesson was learned one day in early 1972 at my elementary school in Elkhart, Indiana.  On that particular afternoon, the weather was quite nasty and our class could not go outside for afternoon recess.  But there was a problem.  Our teacher, Mr. Bacon, had been counting on making an important phone call while we were out on the playground.   What to do?

Mr. Bacon improvised.  He told the girls that they were going stay in the room and the boys were going to go down to the gym to play dodgeball.  I am pretty sure he reasoned, quite logically, that the girls were mature enough not to foment a revolution while unsupervised.  And I am pretty sure he reasoned, quite logically, that the boys were immature enough that if they occupied themselves with a mindless game of running and throwing and catching and dodging, they would not figure out how to foment a revolution.

Ah, the criss-cross texture, the bright red color, the little black rubber air hole, the slight smell of rubber: this is the stuff of 4th Grade Bliss!

Ah, yes: the checkered texture, the bright red color, the little black rubber air hole, the faint smell of rubber: this is the stuff of 4th Grade Joy!

My reasoning was that the day had suddenly turned into something of a holiday.  There was no greater gift that God could bestow upon us at school than that absolutely wonderful game of dodgeball.  The joy was that much greater when the gift arrived unexpectedly.  And so, we boys went down to the gym and had a great time.

After a while, Mr. Bacon came into the gym and directed us back to the classroom, ahead of him.  We returned in a state of 4th-grade boyish bliss.  But as we walked into the classroom we were puzzled by the general state of things.  We found the room quiet and empty, completely devoid of girls.  This was strange.

Then, as we walked to our tables to sit down, the door to the girls’ bathroom suddenly swung open.  (Each classroom in this school had a boy’s and a girl’s bathroom connected to it.)  Sharon Osowski came marching out, leading the entire class of girls.   In a truly remarkable display of group discipline, the girls popped out from that small bathroom in single-file formation — there came Amy Peterson, Jodi Romberger, Karen Osowksi (Sharon’s twin sister), Mary Lovejoy, Cynthia Vaughn, and more — the whole female lot of them.  They each had written slogans on notebook paper that rang with cries of injustice.  Things like “Girls Can Play Dodgeball, too!” and “Boys shouldn’t have all the fun!”  They had taped these to their rulers, which they held aloft, protest-style.  And as they marched around the room, they chanted something like “Unfair to Girls!  Unfair to Girls!”

It was a sight to behold.

Indeed, I was a bit amused at first. But as I took my seat at my table and watched the girls snake around the room, I became annoyed.  It seemed to me like the girls were blaming the boys for this whole dodgeball situation.  But what had I done?  I only went down to the gym because Mr. Bacon told us to.  It wasn’t my fault that the girls didn’t get to play dodgeball.   To my way of reasoning, their protest seemed a bit unfair to us boys and, quite frankly, unduly confrontational.  And as that protest line, led by Sharon Osowski, marched closer to my seat, something in me just snapped.  I suddenly reached up and ripped the paper off of Sharon’s ruler.

This was a mistake.

It was a mistake for a number of reasons.  1) You don’t mess with Sharon Osowski.  2)  I was sitting and she was standing, so she had the height advantage.   3) She held a dangerous weapon in her hand.  4) Mr. Bacon had just walked through the door, the instant before I snapped.  He saw the entire violent episode, brief as it was.

Several things happened very quickly at that moment.  Sharon Osowski, who knows how to use a ruler, immediately abandoned whatever principles of peaceful protest she had picked up from Martin Luther King, Jr.  She swiftly turned her plowshare into a sword and brought it down on my head.  For maximum effect, no doubt, she made sure that she did not lead with the flat side of the ruler, but with the edge with the metal strip.  I am here to testify that it hurt.

Before I even had a chance to consider whether or not I wanted to tangle further with Sharon Osowski, Mr. Bacon took control of the room.  Sensing that, despite his best efforts, the revolution had been fomented after all, he immediately ordered the girls to take their seats and, in no uncertain terms, told everyone to be quiet.

Don't let the peaceful exterior fool you. Inside the walls of Mary L. Daly Elementary School, social conflicts of global proportions played out.

Don’t let the peaceful exterior fool you. Inside the walls of Mary L. Daly Elementary School, desperate 4th graders have struggled amidst a veritable maelstrom of social conflict.

He then turned his wrath upon the person most responsible for the social unrest he had witnessed. To my surprise, shock, and utter humiliation, that person was me.  Now, I hated to get in trouble and I especially hated it when my getting-in-trouble happened publicly.  But here, in front of the entire class, Mr. Bacon charged me with a whole list of crimes, which seemed to my fourth-grade mind to include assault & battery, vandalism, libel, and treason.  He may have mentioned the First Amendment.

With the rebellion quashed, the room returned to its normal elementary school productiveness, which probably meant mathematics or spelling or geography.  All I know is that my head hurt and I had been publicly humiliated.  I was trying hard not to cry in front of the five other classmates at my table, because boys were not supposed to cry.  As fate would have it, Sharon Osowski sat at my table.  But in addition to being an impressive community organizer, Sharon Osowski was a mature fourth grade girl.  And so, after a few minutes of listening to my sniffles, she apologized.  “I’m sorry I hit you, Jay,” she whispered.  “But you shouldn’t have ripped off my paper.”

In addition to being a disrupter of peaceful protests, I was an immature fourth grade boy.  So I did not apologize, or say anything in return.

It was, actually, a significant moment in American history.  I’m serious about this.  I’ll explain why in my next post.

(Historian’s note: The above account is how I remember the event. I need to point out that historians are very aware that people commonly mis-remember some facts about events that took place long ago, so some of my details may not be fully accurate.  However, I am quite sure that my joy for dodgeball, Mr. Bacon’s dilemma, Sharon Osowski’s sense of injustice, and my hurting head speak to the truth of what transpired on that fateful day).

 

The Bible vs. The Qur’an

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No, this is not a post setting up a heavy-weight battle between two powerhouses who slug it out, like the Rome vs. Carthage, or the Yankees vs. the Red Sox, or Wile E. Coyote vs. the Road Runner.

Not exactly, I guess.  But you know where my faith commitments lie.  So I confess that I want to make a theological point about how God works in the world and what that has to do with language.

If you have had some instruction in world religions or if you just pick things up about the world, you might know that, when it comes to language, Christians and Muslims view their sacred texts in different ways.  Christians believe that the Bible can be translated into any language and it will still be sacred.  It’s still the Bible.   Muslims, however, believe the Qur’an is only the Qur’an if it is read in Arabic.  You could translate it into English, but if you do that, it is no longer sacred and it is no longer authoritative.  In other words, to truly read the Qur’an as a sacred text, one has to read it in Arabic.

So what?

Mandinka boys....who actually seem a lot like boys everywhere, regardless of the language.

Mandinka boys….who actually seem a lot like boys everywhere, regardless of the language.

I began to understand the significance of this a number of years ago when I participated in a seminar led by Lamin Sanneh.  Sanneh, who today is Professor of World Christianity at Yale Divinity School, grew up as a Muslim in the Gambia.  His people were the Mandinka.  As a young boy, Sanneh was sent off to Qur’an school to learn the sacred scriptures. That meant, of course, that Sanneh had to learn Arabic. As I recall him telling the story, Sanneh internalized the message that his own language, Mandinka, which was spoken at home, in the market, and in the fields, was not a language fit for the holy things of Allah.

Years later, Sanneh was drawn to Christianity.  In the midst of the process of exploring Christianity, he had been struck by the reality that the Bible was translated into the Mandinka language.  All his Islamic training, of course, had taught him that one had to work very hard to master a very special language in order to approach Allah, (assuming one was a privileged male with access to Qur’an school to begin with.)  Yet here was Christianity, translating its sacred text into Mandinka.  What kind of God was this, whose holy words could be spoken in this language used by little girls, and pottery merchants, and goat-herders?

Translation, then, not only made it possible for the Bible to be spoken in Sanneh’s heart-language.  Biblical translation implicitly declares that God cares about the Mandinka language, Mandinka culture, and Mandinka girls and Mandinka pottery merchants and Mandinka goat-herders.  Not to mention Swedes, Brazilians, Kikuyu, Japanese, and Arabs.  This is a profound and mysterious way the incarnation works.  God meets us where we are.

I was reminded of this while reading John 4 this morning.  This is the wonderful story where Jesus stops to talk to the woman at the well.  The setting alone blows me away, when I think about it.  God did not have to become flesh.  And even then, God could have appeared anywhere in history, in any way, to anybody.  So, of all the prominent, godly, smart, talented, or notable people down through history whom God could speak to, God chooses to have a compassionate face-to face conversation with an unknown Samaritan woman of dubious reputation.

What kind of God is this?

 

Boxing Day, The Wizard of Oz, Kikuyu Bibles, That Sort of Thing…..

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And now, for a holiday that Americans don’t spend any money on….because it is British.

Many years ago, when I was teaching at Rift Valley Academy in Kenya, I took part in an old English tradition on Boxing Day.  As I found out, Boxing Day has nothing to do with that dubious athletic goal of punching another person senseless, (sorry for sounding like an elitist snob here, but why do we consider boxing to be a “sport?”)  Boxing Day, rather, stemmed from a 19th century tradition when people would box up food and other items on December 26 to take out to the neighborhood poor.

As a former British colony, Kenyans still celebrated Boxing Day.  Like the British, though, few Kenyans actually boxed up food for the local poor any more.   In fact, most Kenyans, like Americans, may not even know what this holiday was all about.  The Brits themselves may be a bit fuzzy themselves.  From what I can tell from my English friend and colleague, Malcolm Gold, when he was growing up the English primarily celebrated Boxing Day by watching “The Wizard of Oz” on the telly.  Because, you know, munchkins and flying monkeys.

A time-honored holiday tradition! For some people, I guess.

A time-honored holiday tradition! For some people, I guess.

At any rate, one year when I was in Kenya, the chaplain of our school for missionary kids had decided that it would be good to resurrect the old English custom since there were a lot of poor in our area.   He had collected money from the students during the previous term and then purchased goods to take out to the community on Boxing Day.  I went along to help because it sounded like a good thing to do.  And I didn’t have TV reception to get “The Wizard of Oz.”

Our chaplain had worked with the Kikuyu elders of the local church to identify about a dozen of the poorest households in the community.  In Kenya this means those who are what economists would call “desperately poor” rather than just “poor.”   These people had far fewer resources than those in poverty in the US — we’re talking about people who make something like $200 to $600 a year, with no soup kitchens, welfare or rescue missions around.  They were, of course, quite grateful to be getting a box full of food.  These people knew what it was like to have days when you did not have much, if anything, to eat.  And that is why I was rather surprised to see that a number of them got even more excited (as did a few neighbors who had gathered around) to find that our chaplain had included a Kikuyu Bible in the box.

Think of this:  you are poor, you sometimes don’t have enough food to eat, you receive a box of food, but you get most excited about a Bible in the box?

I could end the post right here with a nice evangelical moral about how valuable the Bible is.  I won’t do that though, for two reasons.  First of all, it is a little too simple.  It sounds a little too much like the sappy moralistic stories that Victorian Christians used to tell their children in Sunday School to get them to be good.  Therefore it would come off sounding shallower than what it really was.  (I ought to point out, though, that those same sappy Victorian Christians did think they ought to personally get up and try to do something to help others, which is much more commendable than sitting at home watching Judy Garland and Toto cavort with a scarecrow.   Though, you know, that would be fun).

Today you can get the Kikuyu Bible online for free...if you have enough economic resources to have internet access.

Today you can get the Kikuyu Bible online for free…if you have enough economic resources to have internet access.

The second and primary reason I don’t end the story here is because there are important theological and cultural dynamics at play here.  These were Bibles that had been translated into Kikuyu.  At that time, for reasons that I don’t understand, there had been publishing problems in Kenya.  Kikuyu Bibles were in short supply.  But not other Bibles.  There were plenty of English and Swahili Bibles to be found.  Most of the Africans in our community spoke Kikuyu, English and Swahili.  So, if they could get Bibles that they could read, what was so special about a Bible in Kikuyu?

The answer lies in understanding how language works and what that has to do with the Christian faith.  A friend of mine who is an anthropologist and a missionary talks about the importance of the “heart language.”  For those of us who grew up in the United States and really only know one language, this is kind of hard to grasp.  But for those who know several languages, there is often something special about the “mother tongue” or language that one learned first, as a child.  Great truths take on far more power, meaning and significance when they are communicated in the first language one learned.   It might be something like the mix of passions and emotions that can arise within you when you hear a favorite old hymn or song.  For those who grew up speaking Kikuyu before learning Swahili or English, a Kikuyu Bible will have far more meaning and power.

The “heart language.”  There is a lot to this — important theological, cultural and historical implications to this relationship between language and culture.  And it is important for the church today.  My plan is to explore these in the next couple of posts.