Black Churches Are No Longer Ground Zero for Civil Rights Activism

by | Dec 18, 2014 | Headline News |

c. 2014 Religion News Service

(RNS) The Rev. Delman Coates approached his pulpit on Sunday (Dec. 14) with a straightforward sermon: “Black Lives Matter.”

The Facebook page of his Mount Ennon Baptist Church featured photos of a congregation of thousands, dressed in black, with their hands held up. And the Clinton, Md., church announced plans for a “March on Annapolis” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to push state lawmakers on police brutality, foreclosure and African-American businesses and colleges.

Fifty years after civil rights movement activists marched across the South, the black church is finding new ways for activism. But often, its clergy admit, they are not the leaders, and their sanctuaries are no longer ground zero for the civil rights movement.

On the day some churches dubbed “Black Lives Matter” Sunday, many people in the pews found themselves playing catch-up with the people who had already been on the streets.

Thousands of black churches — prompted initially by leaders of three historically black denominations and later joined by officials of mostly white and Hispanic faith groups — marked the day with black suits and dresses, litanies and prayers to be counted among the throngs of Americans decrying recent grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in the killings of unarmed black men.

“I hope that we can build the sentiment … to really reclaim this tradition of activism and social justice advocacy, which is really at the heart of the black church,” said Coates, who spearheaded the first conference of the progressive Black Church Center for Justice and Equality earlier this month.

Coates and others say the black church — which he defines as a movement committed to freedom, not just a group of African-American worshippers — is being challenged by a number of factors, including young people who are not drawn to their pews and pro-gay activists who are pushing for more welcoming attitudes in their sanctuaries.

In a statement responding to the “Black Lives Matter” campaign, young adults of the African Methodist Episcopal Church urged its members to “find ways to connect with young adults who are not in our churches” and address their needs.

“Let us not become comfortable in places or spaces of privilege as our privilege is only of worth if it serves as a platform to challenge the status quo,” they wrote.

African-American churches also struggle with whether to focus on only black concerns or on a broader range of issues. When some said they were going to focus specifically on praying for black males on that Sunday, women and gay activists called for more inclusivity. “Black LGBT bodies must matter, too!” said a statement from Many Voices, a pro-LGBT church group.

“It really makes for some of our congregations to be betwixt and between,” said Alton B. Pollard III, dean of Howard University’s School of Divinity.

Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker, director of the AME Church’s Social Justice Commission, said the challenges reflect a generational divide and a wider disconnect that needs to be bridged.

“We’ve become aware that the -isms that the young people want to approach are broader than the -isms that the historic black church is focused on,” she said.

As the upcoming movie “Selma” depicts the Alabama voting rights marches led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other clergy, today’s ministers acknowledge they now have a different role.

“I think what history is going to record is that this is the first movement in black history that’s not been led by the church or by a religious figure,” said the Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, pastor of Baltimore’s Empowerment Temple, whose members marched to a nearby mall after Sunday services for a “die-in” protest.

“The church is jumping in to lend its support — not to lead it — which is a different place from where the black church has been historically.”

Even as leaders of the black church grapple with their roles and plan activism around updated legislation and police policies, new LifeWay Research surveys show that black clergy may have to lead the charge themselves.

Two-thirds of U.S. adults say religious leaders offer a positive role in the country’s race relations. The vast majority of African-American pastors (93 percent) said their churches were involved in racial reconciliation, compared with 71 percent of white pastors.

After the Sunday demonstrations, leaders of the AME, AME Zion and Christian Methodist Episcopal churches plan to meet to discuss strategy to carve out their place in the latest cries for equal treatment.

“To assume we are at the forefront is erroneous,” said Senior Bishop Lawrence Reddick, of the CME Church. “We certainly should participate, and if people call us to leadership we certainly should take the role of leadership. But leadership has to be earned by people who look at us and want to follow.”

And, he added, for some black clergy this may take some adjustment: “It may be a change we don’t all want to accept.”

Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.

The Roof is on Fire: Dismantling the Juvenile Justice System

by | Dec 16, 2014 | Headline News |

Burning Down the HouseThe premise is simple but powerful: our country’s criminal justice system, particularly as applied to our youngest citizens, is irreparably broken. Don’t try to reform it; dismantle it. This bold approach might seem extreme, but a serious consideration of the overwhelming evidence for such a proposition stops in its tracks our halting and limping toward some kind of middle ground for justice. Veteran journalist Nell Bernstein’s stunning book, “Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison” lays bare the incomprehensible racism, brutality, and turbulence that undergird and motivate our juvenile justice system. The numbers tell the story[i]:

*As reported in February 2013, 66,332 American kids were housed in juvenile facilities.

* A 2010 federal survey indicated that more than a third of juveniles in secure facilities reported that staff used excessive force; about 50% had experienced some kind of ‘group punishment’.

* A 2011 Annie E. Casey Foundation report authored by Richard Mendel reports pervasive abuse of juveniles in the system, including “systemic violence, abuse, and/or excessive use of isolation or restraints” in 39 states.

* Youth of color make up 38% of the youth population but 72% of locked up juveniles.

And the stories back up the numbers[ii]:

* In Mississippi, guards stripped girls who demonstrated suicidal behavior, tied them up and threw them into solitary confinement; they also forced girls to run in hot weather carrying logs, and when they got sick from heat exhaustion, forced them to eat their own vomit.

* In Georgia, guards punched a young boy so hard in the ear that it punctured his eardrum.

* A teen girl in a juvenile facility recounts being sexually abused by the man who was assigned as her counselor.

Nell and I had a very personal, transparent conversation about her book wherein we each learned from the other as we considered the state of the juvenile justice system and what it means for us and our communities. Below is an excerpt from our talk, edited for clarity.

CWC: This book was hard for me to get through. There were times when I literally stopped and put it down anywhere from a couple minutes to a few days because there were some parts that were hitting home in a personal way or were just so devastating for me to read and be up close and personal with that I had to step away. So I’m thinking if I’m reacting that way reading it, what was it like for you writing it?

NB: That’s funny when you ask that question; I was thinking that I had the same kinds of feelings when I was reporting it. I’ve known kids and worked with kids who’ve been locked up for a couple decades and so in a way for me I think that was the harder part when they were kids I loved. I think there’s a little bit of numbing that you have to engage in as a reporter; but I remember Gladys Carrion who was the head of the juvenile system in New York, she talked about visiting her facilities when she first took that job and then sitting in the parking lot and crying and I do remember doing that sometimes.

CWC: The average reader, someone who [is not an advocate or familiar with the issues]—do you want them to have a certain kind of reaction, i.e. a ‘shock-the-conscious’ sort of thing?

NB: Absolutely, yes. I think there’s a lot of work out there that’s really good work that offers a more distanced analysis of why this is a failed system. But I did feel like there was a need for something that included that analysis but also went for the gut. It’s almost become in my mind not ok not to be upset about what we’re doing to kids. It’s funny in terms of the pushback that I expected versus the response I’ve gotten. First of all, I’ve gotten very little pushback from conservative radio and more mainstream venues for a position that I would’ve thought would be seen as pretty extreme. The only pushback I’m getting is, ‘This can’t be true. This is not a credible writer. She has to be making this up.’ When I reported the book [and] heard a story like [the one about a young man incarcerated who was made to kneel for two weeks], I always did my best to check it out. What I found when I looked at court papers and investigations in that particular facility was not only official reports that kids were being forced to kneel for long periods of time but that in some cases they were forced to kneel upon sharp objects. So it was even worse than this kid had told me. I think the way that we protect ourselves seems to have gone from, ‘These are bad kids. If they didn’t want to have this happen they shouldn’t have done these things’, to a certain level of disbelief.

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As I read the book, I waited to see whether Nell would explicitly name racism as a factor in the functional collapse of the juvenile justice system. She did not disappoint.

CWC: One of my favorite chapters in the book was Chapter 3: Other People’s Children. In that chapter, you say, “Racism does not merely inform or infuse our juvenile justice system; it drives that system at every level, from legislation to policing to sentencing to conditions of confinement and enforcement of parole.” I get weary of people talking around it, trying to come up with different ways to say it. Or they try to attribute racism to other things and it gets under my skin. Given the truth of a statement like that, can changing how we confine and treat juveniles really change why we do it? Does it matter why we do it, or just how?

NB: That’s a really profound question. I guess the first thing I’d say is that changing how we confine [kids] to me is a different question from changing whether we confine them. I’ve visited therapeutic prisons and what I call ‘better mousetraps’ but they’re still based on this premise that the best way to deal with either certain actions or certain groups of kids is to isolate them. I have a personal problem with that premise, [and] all the research indicates that confinement doesn’t rehabilitate, [but] in fact exacerbates whatever problems led to the original act. But are you saying that even if we changed our response so that it was something other than confinement, if we didn’t change how we thought about the kids, would that really make a difference? Is that your question?

CWC: Yes because to your point, racism is at the very bottom of it.

NB: I think unless we can change the way that we look at kids and get rid of this notion that there is such a thing as ‘someone else’s kid’, or ‘a different kind of kid’, we’re not going to make lasting progress. And I say that for two reasons.

One is my fear that the main driver has been financial. Until state budgets really began to crumble, [reform] just didn’t happen. I used to call incarceration the last standing entitlement because I think we reached a point where states couldn’t balance their budget unless they did something about [mass incarceration of juveniles]. My fear is that if the economy shifts, if our thinking doesn’t shift along with it then we’ll just fill those beds right back up again. You can tinker with the facility but when you don’t change the fundamental relationship between the ‘keeper’ and the ‘kept’ there’s resentment that the kids have built up and it’s built up over years and years. It’s not going to just go away because you unlock a door but don’t change the fundamental premise that [kids] need to be confined and isolated.

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Whose responsibility is it to address these issues? Is it up to the families only?

CWC: With the kind of bias that we’ve just been talking about being so entrenched, people have started having town halls where they’re talking about this is what you do if you get stopped; these are your rights; this is what you need to know if you’re out with friends, etc. And I’m beginning to wonder are those kinds of [conversations] ultimately helpful? In other words, trying to build a structure around our children that is supposed to keep them [safe]—does that matter?

NB: You’ve gone right to the heart of where I’m most uncomfortable. I feel like it is made the responsibility of black people to address this, but I think if we don’t talk about [it as] a white issue and then an everybody issue too, then it’s the thing that [black people] know, but nobody [else] speaks.

CWC: As the mother of two African-American young men, I’m concerned that in our effort to try to stem the tide or wrap another layer of protection around our kids, we’re buying into the erroneous thought that says, ‘There’s something else out there [something that parents aren’t doing] that will help this situation‘ [of young black people being targeted by law enforcement and the justice system]. It seems we’re saying that the racial disparities or racism is really about [parents] telling kids to be respectful; telling them not to wear their hoodies after six; tell[ing] them don’t put their hands in their pockets; make your hands visible at all times; and make sure if you get stopped you put your hands on the steering wheel. I’m afraid [this approach] gives our kids a false sense of security. As if there really is something they can do if they run up against Jim Bob in North Carolina or Albany or Orlando that is going to stop him from proceeding in the way [he determined] to proceed from the moment he saw that child.

NB: I honestly don’t know what to say to that. I’m a hyper-vigilant mother anyway so because of the work I do, I have had that conversation with my kids and understand that they are much safer. I remember my son asking me when he was about 10: ‘When’s it going to hit? When are they going to start looking at me with suspicion?’ I think [the issue is] racialized, but there’s also a hatred of youth generally, and youth in groups, and youth in mixed groups; it’s really complicated. I don’t know the answer on an individual level. Definitely it shouldn’t be an individual parent’s responsibility.

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These are our children—all of ours. They know the system is broken, and they want out.

“The many thousands of young people locked away today cannot afford to wait for incremental reform. … As the decades-long debate over juvenile justice drags on, these are the young people whose lives hang in the balance. They are living in a state of emergency, and they want someone—everyone—to take notice.” Burning Down the House, p. 318

It can’t be fixed, so it’s time to burn the whole thing down.

[i] As reported in Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison

[ii] Id.