by Charnice Milton | Jul 17, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |
I was born in 1987. Looking back over my childhood, I can proudly say that I was a “church kid.” Every Sunday morning and Wednesday night, I was there with my family for service, Sunday school, and Bible Study. Even during my high school and college, I took my faith seriously and participated in church activities even when people questioned why. I grew up and befriended other “church kids”; however, in later years some tend to distance themselves farther away from the church. It turns out that this is a normal phenomenon in my generation.
Earlier this year, there were two major studies published that came to the same conclusion: more “millennials,” or people born since the 1980s, are losing belief in God. In April, the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs released the results of the 2012 Millennial Values Survey. According to the survey, 25% of college-aged millennials (age 18 to 24) identified themselves as “religiously unaffiliated,” compared to the 10% that identify themselves as a “black Protestant.” Of those that are now non-religious, many grew up in religious households.
Last month, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press published their own survey stating that although “the United States continues to be a highly religious nation,” 68% of millennials say that they never doubted God’s existence, a 15-point decline from 2007. In fact, only 55% of millennials say that they agree with the three religious values presented in the survey: the existence of God, the personal importance of prayer, and belief in a Judgment Day. In contrast, two-thirds of older generations say that they believe in all three statements.
Although the Pew survey doesn’t show how each racial group views religion, researchers behind the Millennial Values Survey were surprised with their results. “There was some expectation that racial divisions among this cohort would be somewhat muted compared to what we see in the general public,” writes Daniel Cox, the Research Director of PRRI. “However, we found dramatic differences in the view of white, black and Hispanic Millennials.” One noteworthy difference: African Americans, as well as other ethnic minorities, are less likely to leave the church than Caucasians.
KEEPING THE FAITH: Surveys show African American millennials, as well as young adults from other ethnic minorities, are less likely to leave the church than whites.
Cox believes that there are two reasons why African American millennials tend to stick with their religious upbringing. First, African Americans generally are more religious than their white counterparts, meaning that we are more likely to attend weekly services, pray, and express religious views. According to the Millennial Values Survey, this applies to millennials: 77% of black Protestants stated that religion is either very important or the most important thing in their life. Second, Cox writes that the black church has and continues to be a central part of our community. “I think because it plays such a significant role both spiritual and socially for many African Americans that religious commitment remains strong among African American Millennials,” he writes.
One thing that is noticeably missing from both surveys: how millennials of different socioeconomic levels view religion. Fortunately, there are past studies that could give us some clues. According to a 2010 report, children from in low-income neighborhoods and attend church regularly earn a higher GPA than their wealthier counterparts. In addition, young people who attend religious activities at least once a month are more likely to enjoy school, be in gifted classes, and work harder academically than those who attend religious activities les often. Mark Regnerus, professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, suggests that religion is just one of many positive extracurricular resources for more affluent teens; as a result, religion tends not to be as important later in life. In contrast, religion for a lower-income teen is one of very few positive influences in their lives. Since religious organizations are more accessible in urban areas, it acts as a positive distraction from negative influences like gangs.
Despite the high number of black millennials staying in the church and the well-documented benefits for urban millennials, the question remains why many are leaving in the first place. One reason is that millennials have mixed feelings about modern Christianity. Although 76% believe that Christianity “has good values and principles” and 63% state that it “consistently shows love for other people,” 62% describe Christianity as “judgmental,” with 63% saying that it is “anti-gay.” However, the answer might be in the way the church conducts youth and young adult ministry.
Drew Dyck, author of Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Faith and How to Bring them Back, suggests that youth ministries today focus more on reeling people in than nurturing spiritual growth. “Some have been reduced to using violent video game parties to lure students through their church doors on Friday nights,” he says in an interview for BibleGateway.com. “There’s nothing wrong with video games and pizza, but their tragic replacements for discipleship and Bible teaching. Many young people have been exposed to a superficial form of Christianity that effectively inoculates them against authentic faith.” In other words, youth ministries cannot survive on lock-ins and pizza alone. As for parents, Dyck says dropping teens off for a few hours doesn’t make up for what they see at home: “Parents need to be modeling and teaching a dynamic faith at home. They are the primary faith influencers.”
As Christians, the news about millennials leaving the church can be discouraging. But we can use this research to reflect on how our ministries and parenting styles are helping — and hurting — this generation. As we turn from a focus on simply packing the pews with young people to teaching them how to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we will follow what was said in Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
by Christine A. Scheller | Jul 17, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |
IN THE SHADOWS: Shame and stigma can be barriers to treatment for mental illness. Could this be one reason for the secrecy surrounding Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s mood disorder hospitalization?
After weeks of speculation about why U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has been on medical leave from Congress for “exhaustion” since early June, his office finally announced that he is receiving “intensive” inpatient treatment for an unspecified mood disorder and is “expected to make a full recovery.” The statement did not say what the disorder is, where Jackson is being treated, or who is treating him, The Chicago Tribune reported, but it did say he is not being treated for alcoholism as had been rumored. Citing privacy concerns, Jesse Jackson Sr. has declined to discuss the specifics of his son’s illness with the press, but surrogates have shot down rumors that Jackson Jr. attempted suicide. Speaking at the Rainbow PUSH coalition conference in Chicago last week, his mother, Jackie Jackson, said her son “is unwell” and “needs a moment to heal.” She also suggested that he lacks the internal resources of his parents in dealing with political “disappointments.” “I want to encourage him to hold on – to hold on to God’s unchanging hand, not this politics. See, I play politics, I don’t live it. I live in the house with God,” said Mrs. Jackson.
JESSE JACKSON JR.: The congressman has been sidelined by scandal and now an unspecified mood disorder.
Jackson Jr. has been caught up in the scandal that sent former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to prison for attempting to sell President Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat. He is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations that he participated in a scheme to fund raise for Blagojevich in exchange for the seat. Amidst the scandal, Jackson Jr. also admitted to having an extramarital affair.
Randy Auerbach, a psychologist and instructor at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News that Jackson may have “a genetic predisposition that might make him more vulnerable to a mood disorder.” Depression and bipolar disorder are cited as common mood disorders in the article, with nearly 17 percent of the population experiencing depression in their lifetimes and 4 percent receiving a bipolar diagnosis. “An individual may have a certain vulnerability and in presence of stress, it may trigger the onset of a disorder,” Auerbach said. “Significant life stress is enough to contribute to a depressive episode about 50 percent of the time.”
Because stigma and shame are often barriers to treatment for African Americans and may be playing a role in the secrecy surrounding Jackson Jr.’s diagnosis, we decided to talk to LaTonya Mason Summers, executive director of LifeSkills Counseling and Consulting Group in Charlotte, North Carolina, about Jackson Jr.’s hospitalization and common barriers to treatment in the Black community. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
UrbanFaith: Jesse Jackson Jr. has reportedly been hospitalized for a mood disorder. In general, something serious has to be going on for someone to be admitted for inpatient treatment. Is that correct?
LaTonya Mason Summers: Yes, absolutely. There are usually three criteria to go inpatient. You have to be homicidal, suicidal, or in a psychotic state. People are not admitted for mental exhaustion, unless it’s mental exhaustion with suicidal ideation and a plan. For mental exhaustion, you go on vacation.
If someone has financial resources, could they just check themselves into a facility?
That I don’t know. The criteria may not be the same at centers where you go when you have money. But on our level, you have to be psychotic, suicidal or homicidal.
I’ve heard at least one person express skepticism about Jackson Jr.’s diagnosis. As a journalist, I understand that, but I still find it difficult to believe someone would accept the stigma of having a mood disorder to avoid prosecution.
You would be surprised. I’m not saying that is true or not, but there is a protection when it’s mental health. If you go out of work for mental health, you cannot be fired. When you are in an inpatient hospital, you cannot be arrested. There are certain things that cannot happen until you are discharged.
In our email conversation, you said decreasing barriers to mental health in the Black community is your “soapbox.” Why?
Because here in North Carolina, there are not many African-American providers and I think it helps to have African-American providers, so that African American clients have more access to care. Because there are not many providers, the consumers haven’t necessarily been there, but the number is growing.
One thing I do is I groom African-American providers in the community through the North Carolina Black Mental Health Alliance. A friend of mine and I formed that so that professionals in the community could go further. Some of them might have Bachelors degrees and we encourage them to get Masters degrees. We provide internships and opportunities and we supervise them through licensure so that they are more qualified to provide services. And then, I groom clinicians so that they can become private practitioners and not necessarily work in mental health institutions. There is more of a stigma with those institutions, so African Americans are not as likely to get services if they have to go to a local mental health center. But on a more private level, it’s more acceptable.
Also, churches are becoming more accepting of mental health problems. For African Americans, the church has always been the place to go when you needed help. But the church would say, “Just pray,” “Let go and let God,” and “Keep it in the church or keep it to yourself.” Now that they’re becoming more open, more African Americans are coming to counseling.
According to a National Alliance on Mental Illness fact sheet on African American mental health, only two percent of psychiatrists, two percent of psychologists, and four percent of social workers are Black. Does that sound about right to you?
Absolutely.
What kinds of things are barriers to care?
One is a language barrier. This is a double-edged sword, but a lot of African-American clients come to me and say, “I’m so glad that there are African-American providers because I can say things to you that I wouldn’t say to a White person.” They might say, “Girl, I wanted to beat the black off my kid.” Well, that is a common colloquialism, but should they say that to someone who is not African American, then the department of social services might be called. The double-edged sword is that we African-American therapists may miss abuse because we understand that terminology.
Also, there is a class issue. I had a White therapist who used to work for me when maybe 90 percent of my practice was African American. She was working with a child and also working with the mom on parenting issues. She told the mom to get the child a dog. Now, we know dogs are therapeutic and if you say that to one culture, that may be more acceptable, but to this African American family that was struggling financially, the mom was thinking, “I can’t really feed my kids. How in the world am I going to go get a dog?”
Another thing is that White clinicians may recommend medications more readily than African-American clinicians. I’ve been doing this for 16 years and African-American clients still freeze up when I recommend medication because there is a stigma of taking medications, whereas in the White population that’s okay.
I’ve read that African Americans tend to be diagnosed with more severe mental illnesses than Whites who present with similar symptoms. What do you recommend to overcome these kinds of obstacles?
I definitely recommend counseling and I don’t recommend that African Americans only go to African Americans. I would say there are some African Americans we may not be able to relate to. Culturally, lower income populations may not necessarily come to a designer dressed African-American professional because that might present a barrier. But for someone who can come down a bit and be more urban, but still professional, they may be able to relate. I also recommend that churches be open to recommending counseling and psychiatry and I recommend diversity training for those in the mental health field.
Has the situation gotten any better?
LA TONYA MASON SUMMERS: “For African Americans, the church has always been the place to go when you needed help.”
No. Most of the studies that are done for medications are done on White middle class volunteers, so psychiatrists and physicians still have to adjust the medication and dosages for African Americans. We feel like guinea pigs in trying to find the right dosages. Volunteers in the some of the depression studies are White middle class Americans. Africans Americans don’t show up for stuff like that. So it’s kind of hard to put something together for us because we don’t participate in those kinds of things. I was trained at primarily White Appalachian State University, and even counseling theories were developed by Whites. And so, African-American clinicians have to adapt those theories for African Americans, because they just don’t fit.
And yet, according to the NAMI fact sheet, some of the social barometers that hinder African Americans in regard to wealth, employment, family structure, etc. are associated with greater risk for mental illness. Have you seen an increase in distress among Blacks since the economic downturn?
Yes. I started doing trainings three or four years ago on treating “recession depression.” Someone made up that description, but I thought it was great and started doing research and started publishing on it. The thing that would happen in my practice is that there were Caucasians and upper class African Americans who used to have money and would come for counseling to deal with downward emotions and a down-turned economy, but then the lower income African Americans who had always struggled were struggling even more, so I would have to adapt counseling for two different populations.
How did you adapt it for those populations?
In counseling we don’t ask about money, and so when I started training therapists, I was saying we have to ask people about money, because money is still taboo. People would tell us everything under the sun, but would not bring up financial issues. When you ask, you hear people are in foreclosure, repossessions, and filing bankruptcy. But those are things we would have never known and still don’t know unless we ask. Then, knowing community resources and national resources. What is North Carolina doing for homeowners? What is the U.S. doing? What’s going on in the White House, where they are providing resources for people who are losing their houses and jobs?
It can be difficult for working class people to pay for treatment in a good economy. I can’t imagine in this economy that it’s even an option.
I take Master’s degree level students who are training to become counselors as interns twice a year, and I run a free counseling program, because so many North Carolinians are without insurance. If you don’t have insurance, the only resources available are local mental health centers, but African Americans do not want to go there. No one wants to go there. They’re loud. You may not get the best care. You’re a number. All of that. So, we run a five-month program twice a year, for ten months throughout the year with these students. With supervision, they counsel people who don’t have insurance. It’s a huge program. There are a couple of my colleagues who do the same thing, but if many of us would take it on, people who don’t have insurance could get the help they need.
What I hear you saying is that you would encourage people to get help if they need it.
Yes, I certainly would and hopefully there will come a day when we’ll be able to name disorders, and it won’t be some mystery illness. Should Jackson Jr. name it, there might be more people who come forward, especially as influential as he is. Politically, I know they may not necessarily want to say, but when we lay people see celebrities dealing with stuff, we find it inspirational and encouraging. But there’s still that stigma of mental illness where you can’t give a name. It has to be some mystery.
by Amanda Edwards | Jul 12, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |
Purchasing a home is one of the biggest decisions a person will make. The process can be exciting, and equally daunting. But ultimately it’s a step toward fulfilling the American Dream.
In the wake of the current economic downturn, however, the notion of homeownership seems less attainable than before. And for many current homeowners, the threat of foreclosure has turned the American Dream into a nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of families each year are now faced with the reality of losing their homes due to high interest rates and subprime lending, and the crisis has hit the African American community especially hard.
Last year, a Pew Research Center study revealed that wealth among black Americans dropped 53 percent during the current recession as the result of falling home prices. What’s more, black homeownership rates fell to the lowest level in 16 years.
One company working to reverse these trends is HomeFree-USA, which has been a leader in bringing awareness to the foreclosure discussion in the black community.
Marcia J. Griffin
“Our mission is to provide both information and inspiration,” says HomeFree-USA president and founder Marcia J. Griffin. “We try to teach families and individuals that there are things they can do to improve their situations and avoid foreclosures.”
As a HUD-approved non-profit organization, Griffin’s organization has been aiding families across America in securing and maintaining their dreams of homeownership. According to Griffin, HomeFree-USA has helped more than 7,000 families since 1995, and not one of them has gone into foreclosure.
On Saturday July 21 in Chicago, HomeFree-USA will host “Homeownership for All,” a free community seminar designed to educate and encourage people interested in gaining more insight about buying or keeping a home, all while living debt free.
Joining Griffin and her team of experts will be the Rev. DeForest Soaries, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey, and the author of dfree: Breaking Free of Financial Slavery. Soaries, who will share spiritual principles for successful money management, brings years of practical experience on issues related to the black family. He formerly served as New Jersey’s Secretary of State and was featured in the CNN documentary Almighty Debt
“We think it’s imperative that churches and faith-based organizations be leaders in teaching their communities about financial literacy,” says Griffin. “No one has been giving us wise advice on these matters, so faith-based organizations have an opportunity to make a difference.”
Griffin, who as one of 19 HUD intermediaries in the nation is able to bring both informational and financial assistance to local communities, plans to take the “Homeownership for All” seminar to other cities as well. Following the Chicago event, HomeFree-USA plans to make stops in Detroit, Washington D.C., Miami, and Atlanta.
With high expectations for the Chicago meeting, Griffin says that her hopes are to have a full house. “We certainly want a packed house, with about 200 people determined to make their financial situation better,” she says.
For more information about HomeFree-USA and its upcoming events, call 301-891-8400 or go to HomeFreeUSA.org.
by Christine A. Scheller | Jul 12, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |
MITT’S PITCH: GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney took his conservative message to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention on Wednesday, telling the audience that President Obama’s policies have hurt African Americans. (Photo: Nicholas Kamm/Newscom)
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney “received the most hostile reaction from any campaign audience this year” and “appeared unsettled by three rounds of loud boos” July 11 at the NAACP national convention in Houston , The Washington Post reported.
‘Obamacare’ Opposition Booed
The booing came after Romney expressed his opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, The Postreported, but the article said “many portions of his speech received reserved cheers, such as his promise to defend traditional marriage, and many black voters in the audience stood to applaud him when he finished.”
Trumped Up Support
Colorlines published a gallery of frowning faces from the event and quoted tweetsfrom pundit Roland Martin that accused Romney of busing in supporters. Is anyone else not surprised that a political campaign would bus in supporters, especially when the audience is expected to be less than friendly?
Failure to Connect
“It wasn’t just [Romney’s] sharply-worded criticism of President Obama’s policies” that drew the audience’s ire, according to BuzzFeed. “It’s that Romney doesn’t know how to talk to black audiences.” For example, Charlette Stoker Manning, chair of Women in NAACP, reportedly said, “I believe his vested interests are in white Americans. …You cannot possibly talk about jobs for black people at the level he’s coming from. He’s talking about entrepreneurship, savings accounts — black people can barely find a way to get back and forth from work.” I’m not sure about you, but to me that last bit sounds like a pretty insulting generalization.
Bold, Consistent Message
“We understand that folks aren’t going to agree with us 100 percent,” Romney adviser Tara Wallis quoted as saying. “But at the end of the day, I think that Gov. Romney’s message was bold. He said what needed to be said, and he said what he’s always said.”
Thumbs Up for Courage
“I give him thumbs up for being courageous,” William Braxton, a retiree from Charles County, Md. told The New York Times. However, Braxton also reportedly said he has “never, ever” heard Romney “say anything about how he would help the poor or underprivileged, let alone the black community.”
Obama Absence ‘Perplexing’
Molly Ball, of The Atlantic, found it “perplexing”that President Obama didn’t speak to the group at all, but instead sent Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday and Vice President Joe Biden today because of “scheduling” conflicts. “When the president is invited and sends an underling instead, that’s an undeniable dis, especially when his opponent shows up in person,” said Ball. “Obama, who won 95 percent of the black vote in 2008 (and who, you may have heard, is America’s first black president), may believe he can afford to take black voters for granted. But that’s not at all clear.”
Biden Draws Cheers
The audience was perhaps forgiving, because “Biden drew cheers as he credited Obama for championing a landmark health care law, launching the mission that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and stepping in to rescue the financial system and U.S. automakers General Motors and Chrysler,” the Associated Press reported.
What do you think?
Is President Obama taking the Black vote for granted?
by Harold Dean Trulear, Ph.D. | Jul 10, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |
MASS REPEAL: Calls for the dismantling of President Obama’s signature healthcare legislation have gone into overdrive since the Supreme Court ruled the law as constitutional last month. (Jonathan Ernst/Newscom)
The federal government has not taken over health care. The federal government has taken over access to health care. There is a difference.
When I was a student at Morehouse College in the early 1970s, activists launched a campaign to address the shortage of African American doctors in the state of Georgia. They produced bumper stickers that asked “Only 100 Black doctors in Georgia?” with a map of the state’s 139 counties in the background. With many of those 100 doctors concentrated in urban areas such as Atlanta, people voiced clear concern over access to health care for thousands of African Americans in rural, poor and remote areas. Morehouse College President Hugh Gloster responded to this concern by founding the Morehouse School of Medicine, which joined Howard University Medical School, Meharry Medical College and the Charles Drew School of Medicine (similarly founded to address access issues in the Los Angeles area) as the nation’s only predominantly Black medical schools.
Were the government to have taken over health care, the government would be proffering medical diagnoses, prescribing medicine, and performing surgery. This is not the case. What the Supreme Court’s ruling upheld on June 28 was not government-controlled health care, but a federal system that expands access to health care for millions of Americans, mostly poor and many people of color. In a country where national strength finds measure on barometers of military might and economic prosperity, Scripture connects a nation’s well being to its care for the poor. In the fifth chapter of the biblical book bearing his name, Jeremiah challenges his nation, saying:
5:26 For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.
5:27 As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.
5:28 They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge.
5:29 Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
And among the judgments God speaks through Ezekiel, health care stands prominently:
34:4 The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.
Interestingly, the arguments against the healthcare reform upheld by the Supreme Court do focus on the problem of systemic access, and the price to be paid for it — whether the price is monetary in the form of the penalty for failure to carry health insurance or individual liberty in the form of governmental coercion. Yet in both cases, the plight of the poor and needy, the sick and infirm, goes unaddressed. How to make health care accessible for those on the margins of society receives little attention from those who would dismantle “Obamacare.” Promises to repeal the legislation without offering a clear alternative for how we as a nation make health care available and accessible to all persons reduces “the least of these” to political pawns, whose lives represent fodder for a political machine designed to appeal to the self-interests of America’s middle class.
UPHOLDING THE LAW: Supporters of President Obama’s healthcare reform rallied outside the Supreme Court chambers prior to the Court’s historic ruling on June 28. (Jonathan Ernst/Newscom)
Such a move must be resisted by President Obama and supporters of the legislation. The president campaigned for much of 2008 by appealing to that same middle class. He has lost some of their support with his championing of this version of reform, but that is precisely because our electoral system makes it difficult to appeal to a moral high ground as a strategy for garnering support (unless the issues revolve around sexuality and/or abortion). Some who have been disappointed by the president but still support him for reelection need to become more vocal in raising this issue above individual self interest to the moral high ground, much as Jim Wallis and Sojourners put forth the notion that poverty is a moral issue in the 2004 presidential campaign.
The question of access to health care ought matter significantly to people of faith. But it is easy to see how a church whose own theology promises personal prosperity apart from systemic issues of justice can miss the mark of its high calling to care for the poor. Indeed, it is as if a central claim of many messages draws directly from the Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter, better known as Reverend Ike: “The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them.”
Our ministry to the sick must move beyond prayer and visitation, and our work amongst the poor requires more than acts of charity. Justice questions continue to loom large in a nation with rampant inequality in quality of life, minimized access to maximal care, and economic stumbling blocks that tie the quality of health to possession of wealth. The spiritual gift of healing is not restricted to those in a specific economic category. If God’s divine, miraculous intervention to bring healing cannot be tied to social status, why should not a national healthcare philosophy be similarly non-discriminatory?
The Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act provides the opportunity for the various agencies: government, hospitals, physicians, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and employers to move with plans for implementation. It is good news for many who currently have little if any access to health care.
While many decry the “intrusion of big government,” an unanswered question for Christians who have opposed healthcare reform is “how has the church mobilized on behalf of the sick and the poor?” In other words, could it be that the intrusion of “big government” in part reflects a gaping hole in our mission to care for the least of these through ministries of mercy, prayer for healing, and advocacy for the oppressed? Are we so busy with “destiny and prosperity” that our attentions have been taken from our responsibilities to fulfill Jesus mission in Luke 4 and Matthew 25?
by Christine A. Scheller | Jul 9, 2012 | Entertainment, Feature, Headline News |
Ever since the news media got wind of the fact that 29-year-old U.S. Olympic team hurdler Lolo Jones is a virgin who doesn’t plan to have sex until she gets married, we’ve been eager to find out more about other Olympians of color who have unique stories of faith and perseverance. Now Colorlines has helped us along by introducing us to some other U.S. athletes who are heading to London for the games July 27-August 12. So, we’re spring-boarding off their post with a roundup of seven Olympians we’ll be watching in London.
Lolo Jones
Lolo Jones
Let’s start with Jones, who didn’t make Colorlines list. Although she placed third at the U.S. Olympic trials last month and will compete in London, the pressure from her public declaration may have contributed to a less than stellar performance, The Los Angeles Times reported. Although “She could have tried to shrug off her obviously slow start and labored effort during the middle of the race … she turned the occasion into a public self-flaying, though it’s unclear if that sprang from a drive for perfection or a response to the pressure that has mushroomed around her because of her good looks, the inspiring story of her impoverished childhood, and her recent remarks in an HBO interview about her faith and her virginity,” the article said. All we know is that Jones is not afraid to let people know what she believes, and we give her props for that.
Allyson Felix
Allyson Felix
Another Christian competing this year is 28-year-old runner Allyson Felix, who tied for third place in the 100 meter dash trials with her training partner Jeneba Tarmoh. Twenty-two year old Tarmoh backed out of a proposed run-off for the Olympic spot, allowing Felix to advance, NBC News reported. Tarmoh will be an alternate. In a statement, Felix said she wanted to earn her spot in the 100 and was disappointed that the run-off did not take place, but either way she was already set to run her main event, the 200 meter sprint.
Felix won silver medals in 2004 and 2008. In a 2008 article, Yahoo Voices quoted her as saying, “My faith is definitely the most important aspect of my life. … My dad is a pastor and I grew up in a very strong Christian home. Our family was very involved in our church. I’m currently a work in progress, and like everyone else I face struggles every day.”
Lia Neal
Lia Neal
Seventeen-year-old Neal is of African American and Chinese American descent, but only the second Black female to qualify for the U.S. team, according to The New York Times. Her mother told Life and Times that she believes her daughter, who attends Convent of the Sacred Heart school in Manhattan, is “blessed.” After the trials, Mrs. Neal said, “[Lia] wanted to do well and earn her spot. It came true. I just thank God for it.”
Cullen Jones
Cullen Jones
First from the Colorlines list is 28-year-old swimmer Cullen Jones. He “has worked extensively to encourage African-American kids to take up swimming through the ‘Make A Splash initiative, according to Clutch magazine. After qualifying for two individual events, Jones said his plan is “not to let the U.S. down,” The Charlotte Observer reported.
Chaunté Lowe
Chaunté Lowe
For 28-year-old high jumper Chaunté Lowe, juggling a second child with gold-medal dreams is more challenging now that she has a second child, according to The Los Angeles Times. Lowe and her husband Mario have two daughters, aged 14 months and four years. She told The Times that it was easier to “tag-team” parent with one child than it is with two. Now, she says, “I don’t have that freedom to just move around and train the way that I want to. But I’m a parent first and I have to take care of my responsibilities and when there’s extra time I get to go take care of the other stuff.”
John Orozco
John Orozco
Gymnast John Orozco “has his sights set on achieving Olympic gold and using that platform to give his family a better life,” according to Business Insider. Orozco, who is Peurto Rican, grew up in a tough neighborhood in the Bronx, the article said. When he was ten, he and his brothers were assaulted by a gang of guys as they walked home from church. His mother suffers from lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and, in 2007, his father had a stroke in 2007, BI reported, and he gave up college eligibility to go pro in 2011.
Gabrielle Douglas
Gabrielle Douglas
Sixteen-year-old gymnast Gabrielle Douglas is called “Flying Squirrel” by U.S. women’s national team coordinator Martha Karolyi because of her “height-defying release moves on the uneven bars,” The Los Angeles Times reported. She too has faced family challenges. Her mother, Natalie Hawkins, told The Times that she “almost went into a depression,” when Gabrielle left their home at 14 to train in Iowa with renowned coach Liang Chow. Hawkins said is finalizing her divorce from with Douglas’ father and that the father in the host home where she lives is “an awesome father figure” for her.
Colorlines featured Native American synchronized swimmer Mary Killman today, and Hawaiian volleyball Tamari Miyashiro and Cuban American gymnast Danell Leyva were also featured in their roundup.
So, which Olympians of color inspire you?
