Taking Stock of the Trayvon Martin Case

by | Mar 27, 2012 | Entertainment, Feature, Headline News | 2 comments

COMPLICATED PICTURE: After a week of protests and media hysteria, the Trayvon Martin case has taken yet another turn as information emerges that calls Trayvon's character into question.

Yesterday was the one month anniversary of when Florida teen Trayvon Martin was shot to death by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. If it weren’t for the work of journalists, this story would never have made national news and the U.S. Department of Justice would not be investigating the case for civil rights violations. Neither would a grand jury have been convened in Florida to hear evidence about it, nor would the Sanford, Florida, police chief have “temporarily” left his post and been replaced with a black man. But, if it weren’t for the work of journalists, the rush to judgment about the case also would not have happened.

Conflicting Accounts

In the past week, we’ve learned that Martin was on the phone with his girlfriend moments before the shooting. She has said that Martin told her someone was following him and that she heard Martin ask the man why before a scuffle broke out between them. But Sanford Police Department sources told the Orlando Sentinel that Zimmerman said Martin attacked him as he was walking back to his SUV and that Martin tried to take his gun and slammed his head into the ground.

Maligning and Defending Trayvon Martin’s Character

Conservative websites have begun to malign the character of Martin, who had been portrayed as a wholesome teen. They published pictures and status updates that they claimed were taken from Martin’s Facebook and Twitter accounts to show that he had tattoos and gold teeth and implied he sold drugs, as if these supposed facts were somehow relevant. But a website reportedly owned by conservative pundit Michelle Malkin issued an apology for publishing one widely circulated photo, saying it was not, in fact, the Trayvon Martin who was shot to death by Zimmerman. And journalist Geraldo Rivera was roundly criticized, even by his own son, for suggesting that Martins’s choice of attire was as responsible for his death as Zimmerman was.

In response, Martin’s parents held a press conference. His father, Tracy Martin, said, “Even in death, they are still disrespecting my son, and I feel that that’s a sin.” His mother, Sybrina Fulton, said, “They killed my son, and now they’re trying to kill his reputation.” The family is asking for donations to keep their fight for justice going and Fulton has reportedly filed for trademarks to the phrases “I am Trayvon” and “Justice for Trayvon.” She, of course, has been criticized for that. Martin’s friends, meanwhile, say they can’t imagine Trayvon picking a fight with anyone.

Catalyst for National Discussion

On Friday, President Obama spoke out on the killing, saying we all need to do “some soul searching” and if he had a son, the boy would look like Trayvon. GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich immediately pounced on Obama’s statement, suggesting the president’s comments were racially divisive. At the same time, Gingrich and fellow GOP hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum each called Martin’s death a “tragedy,” and Santorum suggested that Zimmerman’s actions were different from those protected by Florida’s “stand your ground” laws.

On Sunday, Christians (mostly black ones) wore hoodies to church in solidarity with Martin. On Monday, New York State legislators wore them on the senate floor. Everyone seemed to be talking about having “the talk” with their black children, and people, including me, began asking why white evangelical leaders have been largely silent on the issue. Others, including one former NAACP leader, accused the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson of exploiting the situation.

Some, like Evangelical Covenant Church pastor Efrem Smith, wondered where the outrage is about black-on-black crime. Smith posted a series of tweets noting the lack of attention these victims receive. “A couple of months ago in Oakland multiple young blacks were victims of violent crime by other blacks but Al Sharpton didn’t come to town,” he said. Why not?

‘Justice Doesn’t Alienate Anyone’

Although Zimmerman’s friends continue to defend him and the authors of Florida’s “stand your ground” law defend it, Regent University law professor David Velloney told CBN News that if Zimmerman “was following [Martin] in somewhat of a menacing manner and he violently, or aggressively approached the teenager, then he becomes the initial aggressor in this situation and really then he loses that right to self-defense.”

I’ll give Velloney the last word on the case for now, because amidst all the discussion, debate, and hype, his comment gets to the heart of why this story blew up in the first place. People reacted to a grave, familiar injustice that was aided by an unjust interpretation of what may be an unjust law. Now that the road to justice has finally been cleared for the Martin family, perhaps it’s time we all calm down and take the words of Bishop T.D. Jakes to heart. “Justice doesn’t alienate anyone. It is truth,” Jakes told CBN News. “It is consistent with Scriptures that we investigate, and that we support the defense for all human life.” Amen to that.

Trayvon Martin and the Myth of the ‘Criminalblackman’

by | Mar 22, 2012 | Feature, Headline News | 9 comments

WE ARE TRAYVON: Thousands of protesters demanded justice for Trayvon Martin during the Million Hoodie March on March 21 in New York's Union Square. (Photo: Christopher Sadowski/Newscom)

The Trayvon Martin tragedy is perhaps the most-talked-about news story of this past week, yet a casual scan of Facebook pages and other social media suggests the outrage over Martin’s death does not extend that far beyond the African American community. That’s unfortunate, because this is a story that should upset all Americans, regardless of race, especially those of us in the Christian community.

Trayvon, an African American teenager, was walking down a Central Florida sidewalk when he was targeted by an overzealous neighborhood watch captain named George Zimmerman. Some sort of confrontation ensued and Trayvon, who was unarmed, was slain by Zimmerman, who claims he shot the 17-year-old in self-defense. The shooting has raised enough suspicions about the incident being racially motivated that the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department have opened investigations.

Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, told CNN, “I think that’s an issue that Mr. Zimmerman himself considers as someone suspicious — a black kid with a hoodie on, jeans, tennis shoes. Thousands of people wear that outfit every day, so what was so suspicious about Trayvon that Zimmerman felt as though he had to confront him?”

The charge brought to mind a recent college class I taught in which I was interrupted in the middle of my lecture by a student who challenged a fact I had just presented about the frequency of highway drug arrests. “I don’t believe it,” he stated. “I was in a car that was stopped once by the cops and we weren’t arrested even though they found marijuana.”

“Where were you, how many of you were in the car,” I asked, “and what races?”

The answer was that he and the four male teens were in a rural area of Ohio not far from their homes, and they were all white.

“So do you think your race and location had anything to do with not being arrested?” I asked. He didn’t.

I knew then I needed a set of facts to convey the reality that he and the other all-white class of students in my college course weren’t able to see — precisely because they were white and had never been viewed suspiciously in their hometowns because of the color of their skin. Michelle Alexander’s much-discussed book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness, provided those facts.

22 Facts That Challenge Perceptions

As we worked through Michelle Alexander’s book over the course of the next couple of weeks, my students began to rethink their assumptions about how post-racial we as a society really are, even in an era of civil rights and a black president. This happened as they began to understand the reality of what Alexander, an Ohio State University law professor, coins the “criminalblackman.” In condensed form, here are the 22 statistics from her book that — cumulatively grasped — served as the scalpel for removing the colorblind scales from my white students’ eyes:

• To return to 1970 incarceration rates today, we would need to release 4 of every 5 inmates. (p. 218)

• Federal law requires that states permanently exclude anyone with a drug-related felony from receiving federally funded public assistance. (p. 153)

• Inmates work in prison for less than minimum wage, often for $3.00 an hour but as low as 25 cents an hour, even though child alimony and other payments continue to accrue. (p. 152)

• In the last 25 years, multiple fees have been added for those awaiting trial. These include jail book-in fees, jail per diems to cover “room and board” while awaiting trial, public defender application fees, and bail investigation fees. (p. 150)

• Post-conviction fees include public defender recoupment fees, work-release program fees, parole fees, probation fees. Example: Ohio courts can order probationers to pay a $50 monthly supervision fees as a condition of probation. (p. 150)

• Four of five drug arrests are for possession, not sales, of drugs. (p. 59)

• More than 31 million people have been arrested for drug offenses since the drug war began. (p. 59)

• There were 3,000 SWAT deployments a year in the early 1980s, but 30,000 by 2001. Driven by federal grants based on arrests, special tactic teams often act in military fashion as they “blast into people’s homes, typically in the middle of the night, throwing grenades, shouting, and pointing guns and rifles at anyone inside, often including young children.” (p. 74)

• Forfeiture laws (which allow local police departments to keep a substantial portion of seized assets and cash) are frequently used to allow those with assets to buy their freedom, resulting in most major kingpins getting short sentences or no sentences while small-time dealers or users incur long sentences. (p. 78)

• Tens of thousands of poor go to jail each year without ever having talked to a lawyer. In Wisconsin, 11,000 indigent people go to court without legal representation since anyone who earns more than $3,000 a year is considered capable of hiring a lawyer. (p. 83)

• Prosecutors routinely “load up” defendants with extra and questionable charges to force them to plead guilty rather than risk longer prison sentences resulting from the trumped up charges. (p. 86)

• Some federal judges have quit in protest over minimum sentencing laws, including one conservative judge who quit after being forced by minimum sentencing requirements to impose a five-year sentence on a mother in Washington, D.C., convicted of “possession” of crack found by police in a box her son had hidden in her attic. (p. 91)

• Most people convicted of a felony are not sentenced to prison. In 2008, 2.3 million people were in prisons and jails, but another 5.1 million were under probation or on parole. (p. 92)

• Even those convicted of a felony for a small amount of drugs are barred from public housing by law and made ineligible for feed stamps.  (p. 92)

• By 2000, about as many people were returned to prison for parole violations as were admitted to prison in 1980 for all reasons. One can be returned to prison for any number of parole violations, including being found in the presence of another convicted felon. (p. 93)

• “Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino.” (p. 97)

• White young people have three times the number of drug-related emergency room visits as do black youth. (p. 97)

• In 2006, 1 of every 14 African Americans was behind bars, compared to 1 of every 106 European Americans. (p. 98)

• A study of Maryland highway stops found that only 17 percent of drivers along a stretch of I-95 outside of Baltimore were black, but black people comprised 70 percent of those stopped and searched for drugs. This was the case even though the study found that whites who were stopped were more likely to be found actually carrying contraband in their vehicles than people of color. (p. 131)

• States typically have mandatory sentencing for drunk driving (a statistically “white” crime with 78 percent of arrests being white males) of two days in jail for a first offense and two to ten days for a second offense, but the “black” crime of possessing even tiny amounts of cocaine carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison. (p. 201)

• White ex-offenders may actually have an easier time gaining employment than African Americans without a criminal record. “To be a black man is to be thought of as a criminal, and to be a black criminal is to be despicable — a social pariah. To be a white criminal is not easy, by any means, but as a white criminal you are not a racial outcast, though you may face many forms of social and economic exclusion. Whiteness mitigates crime, whereas blackness defines the criminal.” (p. 193)

The one statistic, however, that finally broke through the rural white Midwestern defenses was this one: “Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color” (p. 7).

Continued on page 2.

Finally, a Famous White Pastor Gets It

by | Mar 16, 2012 | Feature, Jelani Greenidge | 11 comments

Justice or Socialist? for urban faith

Reformed theologian and pastor John Piper’s latest book, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, can be viewed one of two ways depending on one’s perception. Some might write it off as another paternalistic White Christian trying to sanitize issues of race and justice for the church, give them a White spin that engenders a false sense of Christian unity. On the other hand, some might approach it as a sincere message from a White leader who cares about the church in all its diversity and wants to challenge it to embrace a biblical understanding of racial reconciliation. In the spirit of reconciliation, I’m willing to go with the latter option and give Piper the benefit of the doubt. In fact, while I don’t sign on to everything he says, I believe his book is significant enough to be required reading for laypeople and church leaders alike.

Bloodlines is a combination of biblical exegesis, cultural analysis, and historical retrospective. In it, Piper methodically builds a case for a set of basic premises with revolutionary implications — that (I’m paraphrasing here) what God has done through Christ on the cross should supersede racial divisions in America, and the fact we’re not united is evidence that Christians in America have yet to fully embrace the gospel in its fullness.

He does so by taking a broad look at American history (including his own racist upbringing), by citing various pundits and intellectuals in the pursuit of societal solutions, and most importantly, walking through the Scriptures in order to demonstrate how the person and work of Christ has the power to unite us all into a singular, holy bloodline.

A 'RIGHT NOW' MESSAGE: John Piper's biblical exegesis and cultural analysis of race in the church is filled with urgency.

Like most solid biblical teaching, these ideas are not new, nor did many, if any, originate within Piper himself. Indeed, one of Piper’s smartest moves happens toward the end of the book, where he included the text of a previous speech that amply quotes, and subsequently comments on, the writing of African American theologian Carl Ellis in his seminal work, Free At Last: The Gospel in the African American Experience.

Though systematic in tone and delivery, Piper’s writing in Bloodlines has a sense of urgency, not as someone who wishes to address this matter once and for all, but as someone trying to lovingly prod and shake the uninvolved and ignorant off the fence and out of their stupor. Which is to say that, for the most part, Bloodlines is written for White people.

Not that only White people should read it, of course. Like most of Piper’s work, it’s aimed at as wide an audience as possible. But I suspect that plenty of Blacks and other people of color might find it less than satisfactory, for a variety of reasons.

Pastor and theologian Efrem Smith, for example, offered plenty of respect in his blog to the ministry of Dr. Piper, as they both have a history of cross-cultural ministry in the Twin Cities. But Smith took Piper to task for relying exclusively on a reformed, Calvinist theological framework, saying its Eurocentric bias undercuts his premise of racial reconciliation. He also criticized Dr. Piper for espousing only politically conservative solutions to the problems of entrenched racialized inequity that he tries to address.

Criticisms like these, while certainly valid, on some level miss the point.

As far as I can tell, Bloodlines is not designed to be a definitive guide for how to most effectively address and eradicate several centuries’ worth of racialized societal inequity in America. I’m not sure such a book could possibly be written at all (much less by a White person) without looking hopelessly naive, blatantly arrogant, or some combination of both. As such, the exploration of proposed societal remedies, particularly in the discussion of addressing individual prejudice versus institutional racism (highlighted by the dichotomy of approach by Dr. William H. Cosby and Dr. Michael Eric Dyson) is less of a showdown of competing ideas and more of a demonstration that there are diverse schools of thought regarding solutions. In other words, regarding solutions, Bloodlines is more of an overview, less a conclusion.

And as such an overview, it’s guilty of bias, as is any such work. A person can only speak from his or her perspective, and Dr. Piper doesn’t apologize for his, theological, philosophical, or otherwise. Nevertheless, he accomplishes several important things in Bloodlines, and they’re significant enough to be mandatory reading for ministers of all stripes.

1. He breaks down Scripture.

First and foremost, Bloodlines is a biblical apologetic that explains how the Gospel of Jesus Christ bears ultimate relevancy in the way we understand and approach racial issues as Christians. And this presupposes that Christians are, in fact, supposed to engage in racial issues — an idea that many evangelicals resist (more on that later).

But Piper does this by going systematically through various biblical passages that deal with racial discord and disunity, to show that he’s not engaging in proof-texting (manipulating Scripture in order to get it to line up with his point of view) but rather to show that choosing and promoting racial reconciliation is, and should be, a reasonable, logical response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In doing so, he starts with what’s most important — the message and life of Jesus as recorded and revealed in the Holy Scriptures.

This sounds really basic, but in an age of biblical illiteracy, this is huge. Televangelists, pundits, and politicians regularly get away with saying, “the Bible says [such & such]” without actually showing where in the Bible these things are being said. It’s a way to assume the appearance of a Christian worldview without actually demonstrating it. In Bloodlines, Dr. Piper appeals to the Bereans among us, those who, like the believers in Acts 17, don’t just take preaching and teaching for face value, but diligently search the Scriptures to see if what is being taught lines up to the truth of God’s Word.

2. He provides a biblical basis for diversity and racial reconciliation in the church.

Using Scriptures like Luke 4:16-30, Matthew 8:9-15, and many, many more, Piper demonstrates the heart of God for the ethnic outsider, and traces the evolution of God’s favor as residing as a result of faith in Jesus, as opposed to Jewish ethnic identity.

Having a biblical foundation for diversity and racial reconciliation is critical, especially for church leaders, because it’s easy for these issues to be framed as purely sociopolitical, demographic, or pragmatic issues. Especially since diversity continues to be a huge buzzword in corporate and academic circles, a lot of the conversation surrounding diversity in the church is about how churches can grow and adapt in diverse settings, as if it’s a foregone conclusion that the church must incorporate all of the latest models to survive.

In contrast, Piper calls believers toward doing the right thing for the right reason. We don’t pursue diversity just because it’s popular or expedient, he’s saying, we do it because it’s central to the heart of God, and because Christ’s love compels us.

That compulsion leads to a third, even more important thing Dr. Piper does in this work:

3. He doesn’t let anyone off the hook.

One of the many truths of White privilege is the idea that White people have a choice about how and when they choose to deal with race issues, because most of the societal institutions that people lean on for support or authority have, historically speaking, been dominated and controlled by White people. And if this is true for American society, it’s especially true of the American church.

There have been many factions of the American church, particularly among conservative evangelicals and their counterparts in the political establishment, who have consistently sought to minimize, distort, or even deny outright the culpability that White people bear for centuries of racism in America. These folks may contribute to hilarious segments on The Colbert Report, but the egregiousness of their claims often overshadow a bigger problem — the inertia that their half-truths create.

To be fair, the same faction of the religious left helped create the problem by aligning themselves with people who are all about social justice but don’t take God or the Bible very seriously. (These are some of the same people who eschew religion and instead embrace Jesus-flavored spirituality.)

But no matter how it happened, eventually a false dichotomy emerged, whereby the (mostly Black) Christians who kept bringing up the racial issues were viewed by (mostly White) defenders of the status quo as secularized radical troublemakers. According to their ilk, real Christians would never associate with such extremism. And so we have a whole generation of predominantly White churches and church leaders, content to attend an annual MLK community event, recite a few well-worn Black History Month facts or poems once in awhile, and call it enough.

It is into this thick cloud of inertia that John Piper forcefully asserts the truth — no, it is not enough.

He doesn’t use incendiary language, but in terms of clarity, Piper’s reformed tautology is as about as subtle as a Molotov cocktail. All of us are guilty, all of us need forgiveness, and we’re mistaken if we think we can use the excuses of others to get ourselves off the hook.

Consider this final plea from his concluding chapter:

No lesson in the pursuit of racial and ethnic diversity and harmony has been more forceful than the lesson that it is easy to get so wounded and so tired that you decide to quit. This is true of every race and every ethnicity in whatever struggle they face. The most hopeless temptation is to give up—to say that there are other important things to work on (which is true), and I will let someone else worry about racial issues.

The main reason for the temptation to quit pursuing is that whatever strategy you try, you will be criticized by somebody. You didn’t say the right thing, or you didn’t say it in the right way, or you should have said it a long time ago, or you shouldn’t say anything but get off your backside and do something, or, or, or. Just when you think you have made your best effort to do something healing, someone will point out the flaw in it. And when you try to talk about doing better, there are few things more maddening than to be told, “You just don’t get it.” Oh, how our back gets up, and we feel the power of self-pity rising in our hearts and want to say, “Okay, I’ve tried. I’ve done my best. See you later.” And there ends our foray into racial harmony.

My plea is: never quit. Change. Step back. Get another strategy. Start over. But never quit.

Here Dr. Piper is clearly and unmistakably talking, with gravitas and candor, to White people. And yet, by appropriating so much of Carl Ellis’ Free At Last at the end, he doesn’t let Black people off the hook either:

Black is truly beautiful, but it is not beautiful as a god. As a god it is too small. Afrocentrism is truly magnificent, but it is not magnificent as an absolute. As an absolute, it will infect us with the kind of bigotry we’ve struggled against in others for centuries. . . . Whenever we seek to understand our situation without [the] transcendent reference point [of the Word of God] we fail to find the answer to our crisis.

No, Bloodlines is not a perfect book. It’s understandable, though a bit regrettable, that so much if it is devoted only to the Black/White dynamic, when we know that America is much more complex, racially and culturally. Dr. Piper does acknowledge this, and explains his reasoning.

But the good news is that the main point of the book is something that people of all races, cultures, and ethnicities can embrace. More than simple political compromise (an oxymoron for sure), Christians are called to a deep, gut-level commitment to live out the gospel by tenaciously pursuing cross-cultural relationships and initiatives. That is what the church and the world need so desperately.

I don’t always live up to this idea, but no doubt … I get it.

And now it’s fair to say that when it comes to the race problem in America, John Piper gets it too.

The question is …

Will we all?

Touré: Fading to Post-Blackness

by | Mar 5, 2012 | Feature |

RACIAL PROVOCATEUR: Touré, the outspoken journalist and cultural critic, takes the post-racial conversation to another level with 'Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?'.

Cultural critic and Rolling Stone contributing editor Touré is not one to shy away from breaking Black racial norms, and he does exactly that in his racially rowdy book, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now. The title refers to the notion that in the 21st century there exists a new understanding of the Black identity. He interviewed 105 well-known Black personalities from a variety of vocations on his journey to unpack “Post-Blackness.”

Post-Blackness like most terms under the post-modernist umbrella is an attempt to redefine meaning. Touré borrowed the term from the art world where Black artists were envisioning a way to practice their craft without being pigeonholed into the genre of “Black Art.”  So to define their shows and artistic pieces they constructed the term Post-Black. This term is not to be confused with the more controversial “Post-Racial,” a term that suggests race does not play a significant role in America anymore. Post-Blackness is contrarian to such a notion (“It doesn’t mean we’re over Blackness; it means we’re over our narrow understanding of what Blackness means.”)

Racially Touré believes one age has ended and another begun (“the age of Obama.”)  When using this term, he is not talking politics but rather using it as a signifier of a new racial day. Obama’s racial identity is “rooted in, but not restricted by, his Blackness” as interviewee Dr. Michael Eric Dyson puts it. Obama’s refusal to engage in racial identity politics, while at the same time maintaining a strong connection to Black America, has been nothing short of a political revolution. By taking such a posture, he was able to move from fighting the power to being the power. The same could be said of the President Obama’s good friend Oprah Winfrey (“She ruffled a lot of Black feathers by turning Blackness inside out and allowing it to breathe in the white world on its own with little explanation or apology.”)

For the author, both Oprah and Obama serve as metaphors for a new generation of Blacks that refuses to be pigeonholed into a stereotypical racial Black narrative. This generation vigorously defends their rights to individualism while at the same time value the history of the collective Black experience. Concerning that experience, they refuse to be limited or totally defined by it.  This is the author’s core argument (“the number of ways of being Black is infinite” and “what it means to be Black has grown so staggeringly broad, so unpredictable, so diffuse that Blackness itself is undefinable.”)

Of course the “age of Obama” and corresponding Post-Black posture doesn’t necessarily sit well with all. For instance, Dr. Cornel West and broadcasting luminary Tavis Smiley have been super critical of Post-Black posture and have publicly accused the president of ignoring issues specific to the Black community. Really the charge is Obama has not been Black enough. Anyone who has been Black for more than a few minutes knows this charge is not limited to politics. There are “racial police” in all venues enforcing all kinds of chameleon-like rules of Blackness.

One incident the author addresses happened while he was a college student at Emory University. At 2:30 a.m. he entered into a discussion with some fellow Black students concerning always being stuck with cleaning up after a party. A linebacker-sized Black man who wasn’t even in the conversation silenced the whole room by shouting angrily, “Shut up, Touré! You ain’t Black!” He talks about the embarrassment of being charged with being an Uncle Tom and reflects on the racial wrestling that followed. Touré desires this type of attitude to be abolished (“I wish for every Black American to have the freedom to be Black however he or she chooses and to banish from the collective mind the bankrupt, fraudulent concept of ‘authentic’ Blackness.”)

So how does the Post-Black dynamic affect us in Christian circles? Historically, seven major denominations comprise the traditional Black church — the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church; the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church; the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church; the National Baptist Convention, USA., Incorporated (NBC); the National Baptist Convention of America, Unincorporated (NBCA); the Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC); and the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). Blacks have also had a significant presence in historic White denominations such as the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Congregational, United Methodist, and Roman Catholic churches. Over the last century, the primary perspectives of the Black Christian experience have arisen from those two groups (traditional Black denominations and historic White denominations) with good reason.

Today we need to acknowledge the existence of a significant Post-Black church movement. Over the last 40 years, many Blacks have come to faith through White parachurch ministries such as Navigators, InterVarsity, and the like. Many have matured in their faith within independent evangelical churches, been educated in predominately White Seminaries, and found homes in White denominations looking to become multiethnic. This group has a set of distinctives that differs from the historic Black church. Will the Post-Black Christian generation be grafted into the overall Black church experience?

I have a significant dog in this fight. Post-Blackness presents to us the idea of being rooted in, but not restricted by, Blackness. That is where I, and many Black Christians, live today. I have historic roots in the traditional Black church, but possess a Post-Black Christian identity. Which leads me to wonder, is there room for people like me in the traditional Black church? And, frankly, what does a Post-Black future signify for Christianity as a whole?