Believers Vs. Thinkers....Can't we all get along?

My faith informs my world view and there is hardly a day that passes that I am not the recipient of some random and even unintentionally disputatious comment by friend, family member or co-worker. It causes me to pause and think "Do they really hear what they are saying?" I can almost understand "non believers" going along with the agendas and notions that are at play in our Godless culture, but what baffles me is how Christians are often indistinguishable from the non-christians in this regard. I am not referring to our daily deportment or our lifestyles (which is another subject for another day) I'm talking about where we (Christians) stand in the marketplace of ideas. I wonder if we are too busy, too pre-occupied, too complacent, or just too lazy to think for ourselves. Is it easier to just let someone else define what we believe and why we believe it?

For fear of being annoyingly opinionated and confrontational and because I sometimes don't have the energy or the inclination to engage in debate, I let it go and I blog. But I can't help but wonder what it would be like if more "Believers" would think and if more "Thinkers" would believe-- ah.... Utopia!

African American....Why did we let Jesse do this to us?

When I was in my sophomore year of college circa 1983 I went to bed one night black and woke up African-American, well at least that's what Jesse told me to call myself....NOT!!!!

Below is an article by my favorite scholar Thomas Sowell:

Did anyone ever call Franklin D. Roosevelt a "Dutch American" or Dwight Eisenhower a "German
American"? It would have been resented, not only by them and their supporters, but by Americans in general. These men were Americans -- not hyphenated Americans or half Americans. Most black families in the United States today have been here longer than most white families. No one except the American Indians can claim to have been on American soil longer. Why then call blacks in the United States "African Americans," when not even their great-great great-grandparents ever laid eyes on Africa? It is certainly understandable that activists, politicians and others who wish to divide Americans for their own purposes would push the notion of "African Americans." They also push such things as the "African" holiday Kwanzaa -- which originated in Los Angeles -- and "black English" or "ebonics," which originated centuries ago in particular localities in Britain, and is wholly unknown in Africa. Names are just part of the process of creating wholesale frauds about the past, in order to advance special agendas in the present. Personal names are also part of that fraud. The vogue of repudiating black family names that supposedly were given by slaveowners in times past is another reflection of the widespread ignorance of history among Americans in general, as a result of our dumbed-down education. Slaves were not only not given family names, they were forbidden to have family names. In many parts of the world, family names began with the elites, and only over the centuries moved down the social scale until ordinary people were allowed to have them. In England, common people began to have family names only after the Middle Ages, and in Japan it was the late 19th century before commoners could use family names. It was the 20th century before ordinary people in Iran were allowed -- and directed -- to have family names. Slaveowners in the American antebellum South were especially opposed to slaves having family names because such names emphasized family ties -- and the only legally recognized tie of a slave was to his owner, who could sell him miles away from his kin. The slaves themselves, however, used family names to create a sense of family, though they were careful not to use these names around whites. Even after Emancipation, blacks who had been raised in slavery often hesitated when some white person asked them their family name. The so-called "slave names" that so many blacks began repudiating in the 1960s, were neither given to them by slaveowners nor were they usually the slaveowners' family names. They were names chosen despite prohibitions, in order to symbolize family ties that were often stronger than those in today's ghettoes. The late Herbert Gutman -- a tough-minded historian -- was once on the verge of tears as he described the desperate efforts of blacks in the years after Emancipation to try to find family members who had been sold, sometimes hundreds of miles away. These poor and illiterate people would find somebody who could read and write, who would write what were called "inquiring letters" to black churches in the South. In these churches, someone would then read these letters aloud to the congregations, asking if anybody who knew anything about the person being sought would speak up, so that this family could be reunited again. Those who try to claim that the shattered families in today's ghettoes are "a legacy of slavery" ignore the fact that, a hundred years ago, a slightly higherpercentage of blacks than of whites were married and most black children were raised in two-parent families, even during the era of slavery. As late as 1950, a higher percentage of black women than of white women were married. The broken families of today are a legacy of our own times and our own ill-advised notions and policies. Of all the reactions against the supposed "slave names" among blacks, the most painfully ironic has been the taking of Arab names instead. The Arabs engaged in massive enslavement of Africans before the Europeans began to -- and continued long after the Europeans stopped. One of the many reasons for studying history is to prevent history from being misused for current hidden agendas. Names are just one of the things being misused in this way.

Painfully provocative,uh...........When will we stop falling for the liberal left-wing rhetoric of our time and start thinking for ourselves???

Know Thy Party....

"If Black people get off of this plantation of the mind that the unaccountable democratic machine has us on -- then we become a threat to them" - Pastor Harry Jackson

Do We Raise Our Sons to Anticipate Marriage?

As my cousin, daughter and I drove to get crabs at "Ruff & Ready" this Sunday our casual conversation turned into a heated debate. As usual I was the odd woman out. My daughter was discussing the fact that one of her very best friends is dating a white boy and I casually made the off the cuff comment that "if she (my daughter) had any sense she would too". I really didn't think I meant it until I was forced to defend why I made such a comment.

Being a mother who wants only the best for her beloved little "mini-me", I want her to date and ultimately marry someone who is going to value her and love her as Christ loved the church. I want her to be with a man who understands the institution of marriage who will put her needs before his own. Now, I certainly do not think that white men corner the market on husbandtry-- but white men generally start looking for a wife in their late 20's to early 30's and that is not generally the case with black men. I have been told by many of my friends and family members that I place far too much emphasis on marriage so my natural conclusion is that we don't really value marriage very much in the black community and therefore we don't encourage or son's or daughter's for that matter to marry. With every fiber of my being I believe that therein lies the problem. It puts us at a natural disadvantage in terms of asset and wealth accumulation because how much more can two people accomplish than one -- TWICE AS MUCH!!!! (Assuming of course that we are talking about two enterprising and productive people). So am I a horrible, bourgeois, elitist because I want my "mini-me" to be loved, covered, valued and appropriately partnered? Or am I just pragmatic to a fault because I'm calling a spade a spade (oops, no pun intended) If she limits her dating pool to men who are more concerned with being "ballers" than with starting a family and building a future with one woman then isn't she setting herself up to be yet another "single, black women" getting things done (albeit quite well) on her own. Why would any mother in her right mind want her daughter to struggle through life alone (Yeah, I know she'll have Jesus -- Don't we all )?

I ultimately did not win this argument with my dear cousin and daughter as I wasn't able to effectively communicate my point with all the screaming going on between us. But hopefully this will all be a moot point because "mini-me" will meet one of those black man who actually wants to take a wife and build a life and legacy together-- but I think chances of that are as good as "mini-me" buying a million dollar lottery ticket. If I'm wrong then why are there so many single black women? By the way, these women are lying if they say they don't need a man. While we may not need a man to take care of us financially or even physically (some of us can do a better job of that ourselves anyway) on an emotional level our deepest human need is to love and be loved in return.