Wednesday, August 4, 2021

The Sexual Revolution and Black America

Before Civil Rights legislation, when there were places in America that has discrimination against blacks in the law books, there was no disproportionally bad crisis in the black family.  Quite the contrary, black families were often thought to be a close nit and loyal structure, helping blacks navigate one of America's many blind spots in its short history in the world.  

By the way, before schools were segregated, were most black students taught by black teachers?  And if so, did those teachers spend their days telling their black students how inferior they were and how they deserved what they got in life?  I wonder, given that teachers and schools today seem quite happy to tell their white students how they are to blame for the world, deserve practically nothing they've earned, and more or less should get what they have coming.  I'll have to look into that.

Amway, since the Civil Rights era the whole of the black community has been on a perpetual downward spiral.  Placing almost exclusive faith in American liberals and the Democratic Party to lead them to the promised land, they've been let down for decades - if BLM is to be believed.  After all, in most places where blacks suffer the most  are where liberal Democrats have been calling the shots almost exclusively.

Beyond political allegiance, however, the black community has all but sanctified the Sexual Revolution in all its glory.  I would lie if I said the SR has only hurt the black community.  With over 1.5 billion aborted pregnancies in barely three generations, matched with tens of millions dead from drugs, AIDS, and a host of related consequences, the Sexual Revolution is no doubt one of the worst catastrophes visited upon the human race in the history of the human race.  And entirely self-inflicted. 

Nonetheless, like most things to hit the black community since completely aligning with the Democrats, the harm done by the Sexual Revolution has hit it harder than most other demographics. Sadly, most Christian traditions - including Catholics - approach the Sexual Revolution as some minor point of disagreement over which we may respectfully agree to disagree.  While the body count piles up like cordwood, while millions of lives are shattered and ruined, we act as if the Sexual Revolution should be somewhere between pizza toppings and carpet color in terms of important debate. 

Thank the Lord, therefore, for brave voices such as Pastor Walter Hoye.  Rev. Hoye has the unenviable task of ministering to the black community against the tidal surge of leftwing driven (and often right wing acquiesced) pro-sex, debauchery, slaughter and blasphemous living that defines the Sex Revolution and the American Left's official endorsement and promotion of the same. 

In my Protestant days, I served for a while in an urban church with a robust inner city mission.  I got to see first hand the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to inner city populations and their myriad problems, many within the black community.  I met black pastors who chose to blame everything on white people.  I met others desperately trying, however, to keep it real and do everything they could to save the sinking ship.  Based on the article, it appears that Pastor Hoye is one of these, and God bless him for it. 

After all, there is much in the black community that many others could learn from, and could be a beacon for all Christians of all backgrounds and origins. Perhaps that's the biggest crime of them all.  For instance, once when I was in seminary, one of my professors invited my wife and I to the church he was pastoring in downtown Cincinnati.  It was an African American Pentecostal Baptist church.  More on that eye opening liturgical experience some other time.

When we arrived, let's just say my wife and I stood out like two proverbial sore thumbs.  We stood in the foyer, and about two dozen parishioners stood and glared at us the whole time.  We looked for my professor, but he was meeting with the church's elders, as they did each Sunday before the service.  Meanwhile, a growing crowd of church members gathered, staring at us and saying nothing.

Then the door opened, my professor walked out and in his 'almost too much joy for Jesus' way, rushed over and gave my wife and I a giant bear hug.  At that moment it was as if a spell had been broken.  Almost the entire group that was standing there broke and rushed over to us, shaking our hands, welcoming us, making us feel like long lost friends.  It continued all through the service and after, where we lost track of the number of families who invited us back to have dinner with them next time we were there (we had dinner that Sunday with our professor's mother - and let me tell you, I still need alka seltzer just thinking about how much food was there - four meat courses alone!).

It was a beautiful thing to see a community like that.  I get that we were on the outs at first, that we were just being sized up with little in the way of hospitability.  Some might think there was something wrong with that, and maybe on some spiritual level, it wasn't healthy.  But I personally think it was wonderful, or at least pointed to the possibility of something wonderful  They were that close as a community, and had that much regard for their spiritual leader and their place in the church, that all it took was a hug from him and we were family. 

That is lovely and, I think deep down, that is what the black community still has to offer our broken, crazy world.  Sadly that struggling community is being encouraged to take that same tendency of community and family and use it for all the wrong reasons, while so many - I'm looking at you Catholic leadership - go along with the worst tendencies and worse activism that is taking such qualities and corrupting them.  

May God bless those like Pastor Hoye who are fighting the good fight and trying, against all odds, to sow a little seed of the Gospel in a community that is being exploited, used, abused and driven down all the wrong pits that only lead to Hell, in both this world and the next.  

7 comments:

  1. Pretty sure the descriptive statistics on ba*tardy and divorce ca. 1958 were indicators that families in the black subculture were weaker than they were in the larger society. The ratio of illegitimate births in the black population increased 12-fold between 1960 and 1990. That same ratio among the general population increased by a similar amount during those 30 years.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's interesting. One thing I've heard that seems to get both sides to agree - though for different reasons - is that the black family was generally stronger in the pre-Civil Rights days, and has gotten disproportionally worse. Conservatives blame the Democrats, who the black community has typically aligned with since the 1960s almost exclusively. While liberals blame the 'Southern Strategy', in which conservatives decided to embrace racism and work against blacks in order to court the Southern racist vote. But I've not heard it said that the black family was worse, especially where things such as illegitimacy and fatherlessness are concerned, and has not gotten worse than anyone else in the last decades.

      Delete
    2. To clarify:

      A word got deleted in my editing.

      The ratio of illegitimate births to legitimate births got worse on both sides of the color bar and did so in similar magnitudes. That ratio stood at about 0.175 for blacks in 1960 and at about 2.125 in 1990. It stood at just north of 0.03 for the general population in 1960 at at 0.4 in 1990. The attrition rate for marriages - the ratio of divorces to extant marriages - saw no net change between 1947 and 1967, then trebled in 12 years. (I don't have a racial breakdown for that).


      I've never heard liberals blame the 'Southern Strategy' for social problems in the black population, in their static or dynamic aspect. The Southern Strategy discourse is a rhetorical thrust in a political argument in regard to the composition of party electorates. It's utter humbug, of course, but most of what liberals think about the society they live in is.


      People as disparate as Michael Harrington and Thos Sowell have attempted to attribute social breakdown to economic factors. That just doesn't fly.


      As far as family relations go, I don't think there are policy adjustments which are going to have much effect. Street crime, school disorder, gross inefficiency in the educational sector, and perverse incentives in how common provision is structured are things you can do about. Liberals are not interested in addressing any of these problems.

      Delete
    3. I've seen in brought up as an explanation when the problems within the black community post-CR has been stated. Now, I should clarify that I have heard liberals deny such a thing. It was too broad to say I've never heard anyone. Yes, I have. They maintain the black family was generally a hot mess, and that because of systemic racism, Jim Crow, and similar. On the other hand, I have heard some liberals respond, accepting the premise that the black family was not worse off than others, stating that any collapse out of proportion of other demographics is due to a concerted effort by conservatives to beat the black population down, again to cozy up to the southern, racist vote.

      Delete
    4. stating that any collapse out of proportion of other demographics is due to a concerted effort by conservatives to beat the black population down, again to cozy up to the southern, racist vote.

      Again, to anyone remotely familiar with the history of the last 60 years in this country, such a thesis sounds unreal.

      Delete
    5. I've often thought it was more projection than truth. And most don't say 'Southern Strategy', but I've heard more than one pundit say the plight of black America is because of conservatives sucking up to the racist elements. We saw that most flagrantly of course during the Trump years.

      Delete
  2. It wasn't a hot mess. It was just weaker than were family relations outside of the black population. Family relations in all notable segments of the population today are a hot mess. It's just a hotter mess among blacks.

    Thos. Sowell's has been that the mild decay in the durability of family relations discernible in the larger society during the period running from 1900 to 1960 was not observed in the black population.

    ReplyDelete

Let me know your thoughts