READERS' EXCHANGE

 

World Turned Black

Your recent article on the black students was interesting. I believe all our efforts ought to be aimed at the very young. That is, our educational efforts. The older blacks need to learn that education is a human trifle, like wealth, and of no ultimate importance. In short, they need religion, as we all do. All else is futile. God bless you richly.—Alabama

I enjoyed your piece, A Word Turned Black. It throws a different light from that which most of us have always held.—Indiana

The soul-searching honesty in your article, A World Turned Black, is as refreshing as a cooling breeze under the desert sun.... You have likewise demonstrated the hold one’s traditional upbringing can have on him... One day, after the tragic murder of Dr. King, a girl in the office wondered why I, “a whitey,” ventured to the office in the heart of the riot-torn city. In calm assurance I told her: “I recognize only one race—the human race—and Jesus Christ, my Savior, came into the world to save sinners, not skins.”—Arlington, Virginia

As you might imagine I read with more than usual interest the account of your experiences at Bishop. How I identified with so much that you said! I too find no simple solutions to our problems. But if I am close enough to you, I would like to make one or two observations on your article. In return I would be glad to have your response to my thinking.

First, your remarks seem to reflect a widely prevalent white attitude relative to the benefits of the Negroes’ integration into white society. But I wonder if our benevolent attempts at “integration” hide an implicit assumption that the whites have something better to offer blacks? Obviously we generally do have more material wealth and more economic and political power. And it is right that blacks share this nation’s economic and political power. But is it not possible that many blacks may care very little for social inter-course with their white tormentors? In other words talk of integration can hide a paternalistic sense of superiority which is offensive to blacks who have fully accepted their blackness.Second, in teaching philosophical problems with special implications for race relations why not bring into the class materials by blacks, particularly contemporary blacks. If Edmund Burke is worthy of a black student’s attention, how much more Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, or Fran Fanon. This is not to say that the theory of social change proposed by these men is correct as opposed to that of Burke, but whether they are correct is precisely the issue with which young blacks students of philosophy need to get confronted... Bob Ross, Alabama A&M University, whose world is also black.

The President’s Committee on Civil Disorders expressed fear that we are rapidly becoming a nation of two cultures, one white and one black. I too fear this, which means I think it undesirable. I want us to be Christian in the way we relate to each other, to be brothers together. Perhaps we can be segregated without being segregationists, which means we will go our own color way by preference and not by force. I doubt if this should be the case in a nation that honors the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. At the level of the most intimate social relations, such as marriage and family life, preferences may make a color difference, and this may be proper. Like a charming secretary at Bishop College that I asked about dating white men. She said that she might consider it, but it was obvious that she had no such desires. Too bad for the white fellows! We might be able to afford two cultures in this respect, but if the black man is to have all the economic opportunities that the whites now have, there cannot help but be considerable social intercourse—and sexual intercourse too for that matter.

If blacks become executives in large corporations, proprietors of businesses in affluent neighborhoods, stock brokers, leading educators, foremen of construction crews, government officials, as well as professional athletes—and this will eventually happen if opportunities are truly equal—then it will be impossible to speak of two cultures. We will be an integrated society. Blacks may, for the most part, continue marrying blacks, as do the Jews, and their “inner circle” may be mostly black. This would be altogether proper. But there would not be black music, black literature, black education, or black business. There would simply be music, literature, education, and business.

By an integrated society I mean there will be no thought given to a Negro moving into our neighborhood, or to black and whites marrying if they choose to, or to a black man serving in the White House. We are far, farm from this, and I think Christians should be busy cultivating this kind of atmosphere.

As for your second point, I am in favor of using black source material, but we have to admit that there is not much to use. That is my complaint. Let us be busy making great philosophers, men of letters, artists, commercial leaders, and all the rest—both black and white. Every man must have a right to the vision of greatness and equal opportunity to attain it.

On Reading

That the Church of Christ reader can be distinguished by the books and commentaries he reads (and rereads) has long been suspected, and now confirmed by a little six page flier issued by Baker Book House Publications. The leaflet is titled, “Books for Church of Christ Readers”, and has evidently been widely circulated both by Baker and by Church of Christ publishing houses. We all fall into a trap of reading to confirm our own prejudices, and “The Church of Christ Reader” is probably no exception. Some of the doctrinal hang-ups are noticed simply on casual reading of the folder. Evolution (rather anti-evolution) gets top billing with conservative writers interpretation of anti-evolution only to be later exposed to the ever expanding new vistas of biology and related sciences.

The Church of Christ reader also seems to be gravely concerned in an “expose” of cults, isms, and the recent tongues movement, without being seriously concerned in exposes of the sins of Church of Christism. The reader also wants to know what the sects reach, without considering that we may be a sect. There are also the commentaries. Although written by denominations, whom we regularly dechristianize, they are obviously “sound” enough on the fundamentals to become last word on a topic. Also given top billing is the strongly amillenial book More Than Conquerors, with the designation as a commentary achieving “the status of a classic among the Churches of Christ.”

It’s obvious popularity is due to the amillenial interpretation. Strangely enough the circular reached me through a routine mailing from a premill publishing house. One wonders what the Church of Christ reader would think on being exposed to some of our Restoration pioneers that believed in an earthly, literal thousand year reign, and meanwhile were walking “in the old paths”. Perhaps Baker Book House is telling us that the average Church of Christ reader can not be trusted to be critical in his reading. At any rate the list clearly reveals how narrow a sect can become.—Ralph Sinclair, 1197 Holz Ave., Cincinnati 45230