Say Amen, Somebody
African-American ministers struggle to make their voices heard in America’s whitest city.
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 SHOW SOME LOVE: For Dr. W.G. Hardy’s 52nd birthday, Highland Christian Center hosted a three-hour “love concert,” complete with a 41-person choir, a special offering, and birthday cake for the approximately 300 people in attendance. IMAGE: Vivian Johnson (all) |
[April 23rd, 2008]
The national spotlight has rarely glared so brightly on the pulpits of America’s estimated 75,000 African-American churches as it did Sunday morning, March 23. It was Easter Sunday, but the national media dedicated that Sunday to coverage of how those churches would react to one man, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
On the cable news networks, incendiary excerpts from the 2001 and 2003 sermons of Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor were airing more regularly than Pennsylvania poll numbers: God damn America! God damn America! God damn America! Six days earlier, Obama himself had delivered a historic speech in Philadelphia, in which the Democratic presidential front-runner would declare of Wright, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”
Meanwhile in Portland, 2,000 miles away from Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, senior pastor W.G. Hardy stood in a royal-blue frock at the wooden dais of his purple-carpeted sanctuary at Highland Christian Center, which also is part of the United Church of Christ. Three cameramen beamed his image to a jumbo screen behind him and five other televisions in the balconies.
When the 52-year-old Hardy (pictured on the cover) rises each week to speak in the sanctuary of the United Church of Christ outpost on Northeast 76th Avenue and Glisan Street, he can usually count on rapt attention from most in the congregation, about three-quarters of whom are African-Americans. On Easter morning, he had an extra audience: Two Oregon state senators—Avel Gordly and Ben Westlund—were seated in the pews, along with U.S. Senate contender Steve Novick and Portland City Council candidates Nick Fish and John Branam.
Hardy offered them all a blunt message.
“All of us are messed up,” he exhorted the congregants. “Show us your wounds! I heard Obama say, ‘That’s my pastor, I’m going to show you my wounds. I can’t deny him no more than I can deny my white grandmother. I can’t help it, I can’t change it…that’s my wound, you’re going to have to live with it, and I’m going to survive it and get over it.’”
At least half of the congregants stood and cheered—just as they had moments earlier when Hardy hypothesized about the other “wounds” in the church.
“My best friend got shot and died in my arms—I want to show you my wounds,” he said, gyrating his arms to demonstrate figurative examples of suffering. “I used to be a pimp—let me show you my wounds. I used to be a streetwalker—let me show you my wounds. I used to be arrogant, self-centered, conceited, thought I was all that—let me show you my wounds. I survived my wounds; I survived my afflictions!”
If you’re white and living in Portland—and chances are, if you’re living in Portland, you are white, along with 78 percent of the city’s population—this rhetoric, freighting a larger social and political struggle on top of the usual Christian mix of Biblical mores and uplift, may sound odd coming from a church leader.
If you’re African-American, however, and you grew up watching ministers like Martin Luther King Jr. or the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the blend of politics and religion is a given—and so is the sense of injury.
“Anyone who knows a tad bit about African-American history knows what kind of role the church plays in African-American life,” said Charles McGee, co-founder of the Black Parent Initiative, which seeks to organize churches for social activism. “The church is more than just a spiritual vehicle. The church has been the singular place for black people to express themselves. The church was the place where they [could] go to get away from a week of disappointment—a place where they could yell.”
In fact, Hardy—like Portland ministers such as Rev. Robert L. Ned, pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church—believes the uproar over Wright’s statements is downright disingenuous. “What we saw with Jeremiah Wright, it’s always existed in the church,” Hardy says. “As long as [pastors] were a gatekeeper…domesticating the African-American slave, using religion for moral consciousness…it was a ‘good thing.’ When they start to challenge the system, at those times they’re speaking truth to power, and all of a sudden the powers that be want a separation of church and state.
“Tactics haven’t changed. They assassinated Martin Luther King—a religious leader who was raising up a generation of political activists. They assassinated him with a bullet, and they’re attempting to assassinate Jeremiah Wright with the media, because he’s raising up a new generation of political leaders.”
But while African-American ministers in Portland rise to defend Wright’s statements as both theologically accurate and needed tonics to America’s history of racial oppression, their unanimity disguises a much more local question they say confronts their churches now: How do they make their voices heard in America’s whitest city?
Because if Hardy is correct that Wright is raising a new generation of African-American political leaders in Chicago, that phenomenon isn’t apparent here heading into Oregon’s May 20 primary.
If there was a zenith of African-American political power—or at least visibility—in Oregon, it came in 1984, when Margaret Carter became the first African-American woman elected to the state Legislature and Dick Bogle was elected as the second consecutive African-American to hold a Portland City Council seat.
 BLESS YOU: Rev. Robert L. Ned delivers a benediction at Bethel AME Church. |
But in Portland, the city with Oregon’s largest African-American population, no African-American candidate is expected to win a seat on the Council, which has been all white since 1992. And statewide, there are still but three African-American lawmakers in the 90-member state Legislature.
In some ways that’s not surprising. After all, Portland has the largest percentage of white residents of any U.S. city larger than 450,000 people. And its African-American population is just 6.6 percent. The city has elected only two African-American commissioners in its 157-year history.
And the Oregon Constitution barred blacks from residency until 1926, continuing to contain fragments of racially exclusionary language until state voters struck that language by passing a 2002 ballot measure.
Meanwhile, gentrification has transformed Portland’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods of North and Northeast, forcing many longtime residents to find cheaper housing on the outskirts of Portland and in Beaverton, Gresham and Troutdale. But white families have, by and large, rejected the public schools in those neighborhoods. Jefferson High, once one of the city’s crown jewels, is now Oregon’s only majority African-American high school, making it both a source of pride and a symbol of Portland’s institutional racism.
That all adds up, in some eyes, to a crossroads of leadership.
For more than 50 years, the one constant voice of advocacy for Portland’s African-American communities has been the Albina Ministerial Alliance. The alliance is a coalition of about 125 pastors, led by a core group averaging 15 highly active clergy members. In recent years, the Alliance has lobbied the City of Portland on such issues as the creation of Rosa Parks Boulevard and increased oversight of the police. In a city with few African-American candidates who can muster the contributions needed to make a serious run for public office, Alliance pastors like Hardy, Ned and Dr. T. Allen Bethel of Maranatha Church of God serve as links between public bodies and their political constituencies.
The Alliance’s push for social justice has earned Carter’s respect. “Our ministers step up to the plate in terms of leadership, even though some of them have been greatly maligned,” the Portland Democrat says. “The Albina Ministerial Alliance went to our sons and said, ‘This killing each other has got to stop.’ That’s bold. They don’t just take on the easy things. They take on the hard things.”
Alliance pastors urge their congregations to vote, they speak at City Hall and they raise community concerns to the media. Their tone—not outraged but impassioned and resolutely encouraging—rarely calls to mind America’s sound-bite glimpse of Jeremiah Wright. But their methods of using their pulpits as platforms for political activism calls to mind the motto—“Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian”—Wright practiced for three decades at Trinity United Church of Christ.
“You’ve got to really be careful nowadays with how you package things,” Ned says. “It’s the same message” as Wright’s, he adds, “but a softer tone.” But at least one member of the Alliance—Hardy, who was once among the most outspoken—has come to believe the traditional political path of trying to help your community by serving as a highly visible spokesman (and getting white politicians to pay homage) has delivered mixed results.
And the two-year-old Black Parent Initiative is offering churches a new route, abandoning traditional politics to build what it hopes is a grassroots movement that can help congregations publicly advocate for themselves, instead of depending on their pastors. The leaders of the group say they have deliberately modeled their faith-based-organizing blueprint on another Chicagoan—not Wright but Obama, who spent three years in the 1980s coordinating congregations to push neighborhood improvements on the South Side.
The goals Portland’s African-American church leaders are trying to reach—better schools, better jobs and more affordable housing for their parishioners—are the same. It’s the different methods, as expressed by the older tried-and-true approaches or the newer organizers, that will determine if Portland’s African-American churches can use their influence on city politics to heal the wounds of their congregations.
The Old Guard
On Sunday, March 30, Rev. Ned—a thick-set 55-year-old man with a neatly trimmed Van Dyke—told the 50 or so congregants of Bethel AME Church at Northeast 8th Avenue and Jarrett Street that he had a special visitor to introduce. That guest was Fish, a white man who’s running a third time for Portland City Council.
Asked to say a few words, Fish remarked from his second-row pew: “This is not the time for a political speech, but I ask that you pray for our city and pray for me on my journey. As a Christian, I’m honored to be here.”
The following Sunday, April 6, Ned again paused from welcoming guests to make a quick plug for City Council candidate Harold Williams Two (“we’re so very proud of Two”) and offer some impromptu commentary.
“Why are all these people seeking political office passing through?” Ned asked his congregation. “If you want to be anything in the city, you must go through Bethel.”
During an interview in his office, Ned—an executive board member of the Albina Ministerial Alliance since 2001—says the support of his church’s 250 members is not a must for a successful candidate. “We’re not all that,” he says. “But I can say it would be to their advantage to come here, because we are so politically connected. If we put our heads together, we can push that particular candidate.”
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 YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS: (L to R) Andre Young; Charles McGee; April Turner, assistant director of education at Grace Covenant Fellowship; Dwight Minnieweather. |
The church’s members support this approach. “I think there is power in religion,” says Bobbie Smith. “We have a powerful voice.” (She also expresses solidarity with Wright, who she says “touched on issues that most people are afraid to tackle. He told it like it is.”)
Bethel AME has been doing it this way for a long time.
The sanctuary’s peaked stained-glass windows chronicle the history of one of Portland’s oldest African-American churches—founded in 1889, it moved to its current location in 1959.
It comprises an aging congregation. And that congregation is shrinking: In the 1970s, Bethel AME’s membership peaked at 550. It is now down to 250.
Ned says the historically African-American neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland have grown cleaner and safer. But he has also watched his parishioners shut out of those gains—often forced to move east when their property values increased and they could not afford to pay the correspondingly higher property taxes. About 15 percent of his congregants—many of them elderly—now commute to the inner Northeast Portland church from Beaverton. “In seven years, I’ve seen 10 houses sold by blacks, people done a little work on them and sell them again,” he says. “Just turning them over.” He sometimes feels the “flipping” is part of a conspiracy to drive African-Americans from the Alberta and Killingsworth neighborhoods. “My human mind tells me that it’s by design,” Ned says. “I know it’s not, but it feels that way.”
When Ned preaches, many of his words are dedicated to reinforcing what group identification remains. “The membership in the African-American church here in Portland has lost the fragrance of the struggle to get here,” he says. “They have lost that sense of identity.”
Ned urges his congregation toward self-sufficiency. The church has formed a nonprofit called the Bethel Economic Development Committee, which bought property across the street from the church, and is planning to build an apartment complex for seniors and low-income families. “We’re not trying,” he says. “We’re going to do it. We’re moving, man. We’re moving.”
The Megachurch
On any given Sunday morning, you can find between 600 and 800 people at W.G. Hardy’s Highland Christian Center.
In 2000, Highland United Church of Christ outgrew its traditional, steeple-topped building on Northeast 9th Avenue and moved into a converted theater at Northeast Alberta Street and 18th Avenue..
And in 2006, as its displaced congregation continued to drift east, the church erected a $6 million brick campus on credit on Northeast 76th Avenue. That same year, Hardy left the job he’d held since 1986 as an instructor specializing in apprenticeship training for light-rail and ticket-vending mechanics at TriMet to minister full time.
Highland’s services are a combination of traditional African-American worship with the trappings of a modern evangelical megachurch (though nowhere near as large a suburban megachurch as Beaverton Foursquare Church, which can draw as many as 6,000 people). Women cool themselves with fans featuring the portrait of a young Martin Luther King Jr., available for free in buckets in the vestibule that’s next to the Holy Grounds coffee stand, where a 16-ounce latte goes for $3.25. Praise-and-worship is led by a four-piece band. DVDs of holiday services are available for $10 to $15 in the lobby.
Highland members are proud of their church’s prominent position. “I think we should play somewhat of a role” in city politics, says Lakeeshia Lowery, as she walks her son to a minivan. “I definitely do.”
Hardy’s sermons are exuberant, downright joyful affairs, in which he mixes urban argot—“Can I keep it real?” he often asks—with conservative messages out of place in much of liberal Portland because they’re usually associated with the religious right.
In interviews, he summarizes these stances: “The African-American male is an endangered species: You have more in prison than you do in college”; he opposes domestic partnerships for gays, and says “the vast majority of abortions are a matter of convenience and race control—genocide.”
Yet as bold as Hardy is from the pulpit, and as willing as he is to include politicians at Highland services (he sends out invitations to public officials every Black History Month), he is reluctant to speak as a public voice for the African-American community. He says he is haunted by memories of the last time he took his message outside Highland’s doors.
That was in 2003, in the uproar following a white Portland police officer’s fatal shooting of a 25-year-old African-American woman, Kendra James. As the Albina Ministerial Alliance led marches and forums, Hardy was among the loudest voices demanding reforms of the Portland Police Bureau’s disciplinary review process.
And then, on the morning of Sept. 16, 2003, Hardy woke up to a Portland Tribune story reporting how he had been indicted he previous April on charges of felony fourth-degree assault and misdemeanor first-degree mistreatment involving a minor, and had two misdemeanor convictions in 1995 on domestic violence for harassing and assaulting his ex-wife.
Hardy says he chose not to respond to the charges publicly to protect his children: “It’s like letting yourself get beat up, otherwise they’re going to hurt your family.” (Multnomah County Court records show that both 2003 charges were dismissed, though Hardy later pleaded guilty to an October 2003 charge of misdemeanor harassment. Also, he has since remarried.)
“The same thing, I think, happened there that happened with Barack Obama,” he says. “They started counterattacking the credibility of the people who were giving voice to the issues. If you take out the kingpin, generally there’s just a void.”
Hardy says he and other African-American ministers have grown savvier about their political advocacy by “just working underground.”
“Because once you fly above the radar screen,” says Hardy, “that’s the one they’re gonna shoot.”
Hardy says ministers are stealing pages from other, successful ethnic playbooks that rely less on public faces and more on private organizing. “The African-American community is learning to model itself after the Asian community and the Ukrainian community,” he says.
Hardy points to the opening in February of the Avel Gordly Center for Healing—a downtown mental health clinic that serves African-Americans—as an example of the new model. The African-American Mental Health Commission “had to work underground for six years” to build partnerships between churches and Oregon Health & Science University. By the moment the clinic, named for an African-American state senator, was ready to open, Hardy says, “there wasn’t enough time for opposition.”
He adds that African-Americans still need “a 25 year-plan” to achieve equality in education, jobs and housing.
Is such a blueprint in the works? “If it were, I wouldn’t tell you,” he says, “because somebody would try and sabotage it. You get five black people in a room and somebody walks by…” He trails off with a knowing look.
The Newest Organizers
Charles McGee is also convinced that African-American churches need to build up reserves of political capital.
He just doesn’t think the ministers should be doing it.
“They did fantastic work,” McGee says. “They did work that was tremendous for that time and that hour. [But] it’s really clear to me that a new day has come.”
McGee is no stranger to challenging older men. He is 22 years old. At 19, he ran for a seat on the Portland School Board and placed third out of seven candidates with 4,482 votes. After losing that race, McGee re-evaluated his political approach.
“We’re having all these conversations about helping African-American children,” he recalls of the campaign, “and I look around the room and don’t see many African-American people.”
So McGee founded the Black Parent Initiative, a Portland advocacy group designed to “inspire, empower and mobilize black parents in hopes of closing the educational achievement gap.”
BPI was initially funded by a $100,000 grant from the City of Portland’s general fund and an additional $50,000 grant from Portland Public Schools. It operates out of a vinyl-sided house turned makeshift office on Northeast Dekum Street. But its organizational base is African-American churches.
BPI has begun recruiting churches to join—encouraging members of the congregations to attend leadership-training seminars in which they are instructed how to advocate at schools, in public meetings and in the media.
Hardy, while admiring BPI’s aims, is skeptical of McGee’s post-pastor model. “I think most pastors do encourage their congregations to become active in schools [and] the political arena…I’d love to see it move beyond [ministers]; I don’t think it ever will.”
So far, 11 churches have agreed to join BPI. Most are small: places like the Church of the True Vine, with 80 members, and True Believers Christian Center, with 60 members. The ministers at these churches are a little younger—True Vine pastor Rev. Dwight Minnieweather is 47, and True Believers pastor Rev. Andre Young is 37—and they are less interested than previous generations in speaking on behalf of their congregations.
“There is a social place in society for the church,” says Minnieweather, sitting at the BPI conference table, where BPI lead organizer Ron Williams has invited him for an interview with WW before his Sunday, April 6, worship service.
Minnieweather is clearly not accustomed to talking to reporters: He seems shy, and he often glances down at a sheet of talking points he’s prepared for the interview. “I need to take my congregation from the smaller church world to the larger world.”
McGee says the tentative steps taken by Young and Minnieweather will reap rewards by empowering their congregations to move beyond waiting for a commanding pastor to lead them on each and every political question. And as the nation debates Jeremiah Wright’s legacy, McGee is fashioning BPI in the mold of Barack Obama’s early church-organizing efforts in Chicago.
“At the end of the day,” McGee says, “we will have to deliver for our families and our children. The singular leadership model is losing traction. That leader, and we’ve seen it nationally, can and will be torn down. We will not find another Martin. We will not find another Malcolm. People will have to do it for themselves.”
The last major protest led by the Albina Ministerial Alliance was in 2003 after the fatal police shooting of Kendra James. The Alliance issued a report containing 45 recommendations for changes in police procedure. Twenty of those recommendations have been adopted.
“The black churches have not been engaged deep enough,” says Fred Stewart, a Realtor running for City Council. “They’re going to get pissed off at me for saying that, but it’s the truth.… Have they done anywhere near as much to get families in [affordable] homes as I have?”
Last year, Charles McGee’s 27-year-old sister, Charlene McGee, became president of the Portland branch of the NAACP—making her the youngest NAACP branch president in the nation.
Hey pal. Its not Jet Magazine. If you hate white writers that much, don't read there articles.
what's your point?
I liked the article and agree with a lot of points that were made, especially about self sufficiency, and recognizing that you do have to work underground sometimes to get progress. I don't know enough about Reverend Wright to judge him based on quotes that have been looped over and over without hearing an entire sermon. All of the churches that I've attended have been predominatly African American and have been accepting of others, teaching responsibility, self sufficiency and independence while recognizing the challenges that are faced in the real world. I don't agree with everything that Ive heard from every sermon that I sat through, but I do feel a strong sense of community in the african american church where I can be comfortable knowing I'm not the only one out there. I've was born and raised in Portland and have lived here all of my 38 years. I'm black and don't really think about race issues often until a stituation comes up, serious situations like being stopped by the police just to make sure I wasn't driving a stolen vehicle because it looked to new, to puzzling ones like being asked where the good weed is at, or being told how articulate I sound when I speak and when my coworkers wonder why The Dave Chappelle show doesnt impress me, and going into a store or fancy restaurant with more than one person of color, or being asked to sign an anti measure 11 proposal. I guess not everyone fits easily in a box.
I have no clue as to the demographices of WWeek or any paper to determine where they fit on the "whitest news weekly" barometer, but if it's representative of to demographics of Portland than it's locigal and to believe that the percentage of African Americans at WWeek is very low as opposed to Chicago weekly. Now, I don't believe in quotas as long as everyone gets a fair shot based on theit merits. I supplement my reading with the Skanner, the Observer, to get a broader view, but I don't know the demographics of there staff either. At the end of the day a good article is a good article. Some of WWeeks articles on racial issues annoy me because they go too far in overdramatizing things in articles which promote more hostility and division. I do hope that WWeek wants a diverse range of writers. As far as Jet Magazine comment goes, LOL - I have fond memories of that magazinem especially the "beauty of the week"...
Well stated krtz! Thanks for your personal accounts (above). As far as Rev. Wrightis concerned, taken in the proper context (as opposed to biased campaigning and media context), much of what he has stated is absolutely spot on, in my view.
We the African-American community must not forget Our History in Portland & Oregon. We must hear what the founding members of Our present day African-American Community had to say. This can best be done through the documentary "LOCAL COLOR". OPB will be making it available to the public very soon thank to Jeff Douglas, Station manager at OPB. Golden West Project has and will be screening it around the town, and Portland Public Schools will soon be developing a curriculum based upon "LOCAL COLOR". So as we move forward we must also look back...
Arrangements for the screening of "LOCAL COLOR" can be made by contacting Golden West Project :
info@African-American-Historical-Di...
peace
will b.
A couple centuries after the word "black" did.
WW- "there are still but three African-American lawmakers in the 90-member state Legislature."
Blacks make up about 2% of the population statewide and 3% of the state Legislator. Where is the disparity?
Of course Rev Wright's comments were blown out of proportion by Obama's opposition and the media. Alas that's how the game is played. How many hopefuls have not endured immoderate ridicule? Rev Wright offered up Obama's jaw to the contenders and they took advantage. Why is this surprising?
Hardy's attempt at a parallel between Wright and King is more than a bit melodramatic. How about Ferraro and Joan of Arc? Hagee and Saint Stephen?
Say Amen, Somebody
I’ll say Amen and thank you very much for the most positive article about the church in Portland since the Oregonian’s November 30, 1993 “A Tiny Church Opens Its Doors to Addicts”. That, too, was a front page story and rare for the media to present regarding the church.
What I especially appreciated was the presentation of the church (especially the Black church) in transition from the old (following and more recently worshipping the preacher) to attempting to utilize the vast untapped talent of the congregation as a “Good Samaritan.” Wouldn’t you know that the impetus is virtually coming from the mouth of a babe (Matt. 21:16), Charles McGee.
McGee is onto something on at least two fronts. He seems to see the need for and the capability of the church to be working in the midst of the daily grind for the good and benefit of people – exactly where I believe Christ’s body should be (John 13:1-20). After all, that is where He was during His time with us. Secondly, McGee apparently sees where he can and should do something with, for, and through the church other than be a broken-down, stupid, predatory, ego-maniacal, ill-prepared, so-called preacher. Good for him and may God bless him because he will need the full resources of heaven to even make a dent in this current malaise (Birthday, anniversary, and appreciation fetes for the preacher and their wives and “If you want be anything in the city, you must go through Bethel.”).
Hopefully, your article will facilitate a new and powerful movement toward mobilizing the churches of Portland from the morbid death of “faith without works”(James 2:17) to the glorious resurrection of being a servant according to the desires and example of Christ. As far as I am concerned, you deserve a Pulitzer for “Say, Amen, Somebody.” Amen!
Rev. C. Bell Kirkpatrick (Ret.)
I swear, it isn't enough that whites have to go through extensive sensitivity training, that whites are practically crucified over mistakes made by their ancestors, or by mistakes made by idiots who have no association with those who are held accountable, other than the ones who offend are also white. Never mind the fact that often times, whites are regarded with a blatant hostility...sometimes warranted, often times not. I've lost count of the number of times I have been judged a racist because I treat everyone the SAME. On the outside I appear white. But I assure you I am NOT. I am Native American (great-great grandmother was full blood Iriquios), Asian (japanese grandmother, who had a white husband on my mother's side), and African (ancestor of my father's side). It is in my DNA. But on the outside I am white, and therefore judged. I will not discount the fact that there are idiots out there who will pull over a black man/woman simply for being out during a certain time, or pass judgement over the color of their skin..but blacks, even hispanics are not innocent of doing the same. Which is why I believe I am unfairly judged. I believe EVERYONE should be equal, be treated equally within the confines of the law...but, I also believe that those of us who seek equal treatment should do so under the confines of the law...which is why you should not get me started on the so-called "undocumented" illegals here soaking up what is left of the Social Security system that us very hardworking Americans of multiple ethnicities pay into every day and will not benefit from, who make it IMPOSSIBLE for those who really need to be here, refugees from Darfur, the Congo and elsewhere who are in apparent danger as well as poverty to come here. But I digress. Race is obviously still an issue, and as long as it is an issue on all sides, we will never move past it, and move on.
who cares? If you take issue, maybe you should get your journalism degree and apply for a job!
I am glad to see more Americans waking up to the politically convenient and wrongful pillorying of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He deserves much more insightful treatment than he has received.
I also commend the Albina Ministerial Alliance for its somewhat successful efforts to mediate the casually racist environment of Portland.
The jury is still out on young Mr. McGee. All he has done so far is use thousands of dollars in government funds to set up a small organization. We will have to wait and see if he produces any meaningful results.
I did find the comment of Rev. C. Bell Kirkpatrick regrettable. There is no rational reason for any progressive person to oppose the largely successful civil rights efforts of black ministers and the the aggregate black church. (Which, by the way, has long accepted people who are not blacks as participants and members.) Kirkpatrick's bitter remarks remind us the jealous and resentful are always among us.
why do they call them African-American? Aren't they all Americans or were they born in Africa and then came to the US? I'll never understand this. They sure don't show pride of being an American. You either an American or whatever. But I guess it's all about race. That's an important issue these days (bull)!
I don't think calling yourself African American automatically means that you don't have pride in being American, but I'm just speaking for myself as I use Black most of the time and African American other times without really putting a whole lot of thought into it. You do have a point, there are plenty of non-black people who were born in Africa, who immigrate to the US. I can think of an East Indian guy I met from Kenya who lives in Portland , and a college teacher of Dutch ancestry from South Africa, and they could call themselves African American, so I do hear where you're coming from. As far as black americans born in America, and again I'm just speaking for myself, I thinks its more of a choice of self identification based on ancestry. As far a race being an important issue, well I suppose in a perfect world or at least in a perfect America race wouldn't be an important issue. I suppose in a perfect world sexism wouldn't be an important issues, but I'd be lying if I say sexism doesn't exist, and start saying ignorant stuff that women always have to play that sexism card. There's plenty of non racists who are sexist, and plenty of nonsexist people who are homophobic. There's also some internal racism within some cultures which is also an issue thats rarely discussed. In a perfect world we wouldn't need crap like diversity training or sexual harassment training. I know there's good and bad people of all types, some are in positions of power, some are not, and that people on both sides need to deal with each other. I agree that race shouldn't be an important issue, and it usually isn't something I think about everyday unless something comes up (Police following me to check my plates only to stop once they run them realizing that i have no criminal record, owning a home in a gentrified area and being asked how much I pay in rent, hearing the N word repeatedly on the bus by people of my own culture, and being told how articulate I sound - I cant help it if my textbooks were in proper english!, the list goes on..). I've dealt with it enough in Portland to have a sense of humor about it, a very dry Comedy Central/Daily Show sense of humor.
Lulu; I think kriz eloquently responded. My only comment is that not all "African Americans" refer to themselves that way. Many use "black". I am fed up with everyone having to prove their pro-American creds. If it's not wearing a flag pin, having a yellow ribbon or flag car ornament, it's something else. I think we all have numerous identities. What about the plethora of Portlanders who always refer to their German heritage? I consider myself, at times, American, Oregonian, Italian American, West coaster, Cascadian... Who cares? Some Jewish refer to themselves as Jews first, Americans second. It doesn't matter. None of these people are unpatriotic or anti-American.
lulu, I find your use of pronouns highly offensive.
Labeling african-americans who prefer to identify themselves as African-american, 'unpatriotic' is one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard. While I think what we prefer to call ourselves should be an individual preference I think it should be clear that 'African-american' is not denying American roots, but encompassing a complex, painful, and joyful history through slavery and freedom.
For the record, I am swedish-american....not born in sweden, but remembering my history and roots too!
Margaret Carter was not the first African American elected to Oregon's legislature, Bill McCoy was. To quote the City of Portland's Human Resources webpage on his wife Gladys McCoy, "On April 19, 1996, the Oregon State Legislature passed a measure designating Gladys McCoy and her husband, Senator Bill McCoy the “first African-American political family of Oregon .” Bill McCoy was the first African-American to serve in the Oregon State Legislature while she was the first African-American to serve on the Portland School Board and the Multnomah County Commissioners. The resolution applauded “the modern-day pioneers who blazed the trail for members of the State’s African-American community” through their efforts in the struggle for equal protection and opportunity." A little more research would be really good thing.
Generally well done article. I'm not black and I don't understand much of the thought, but I'll go along with it.
I do have a problem with Hardy and his "secret" 25 year plan that whites aren't allowed to hear: I got news for you bro, every white person I know can't wait until "you" achieve equality in education, jobs and housing. Then you won't be such a drag on our society. When more black males are in college or gainfully employed than are in prisons, all of America will benefit. When "you" win, we "all" win. Your paranoia against me is what is holding you down. Share you "plan".
Those are some really harsh comments. I object to the tone of your comments more that the comments themselves which I also find ignorant, however I do appreciate your honesty. Can you explain specifically how one group of people has been such a drag on your society?
Yo Joe; Poor whites are as much a "drag" on society. I also like honesty, but your statement is a gross generalization. There are also other complex reasons blacks may occupy jail cells. Nice try, but the world is not that simple.
Sorry Kriz, but sometimes the truth is harsh. The truth per the article is that more black males are in jail than in college. This is sad. The other truth is that in any multicultural society in history, the economically disadvantged one commits a dis-proportinate amount of crime. If there is a plan to improve this, let's all work on it, not hide behind cultural paranoia.
Tony, reasons schmeasons, the article states too many black males are in jail. It is a simple solution, education, jobs and housing. Hardy's culturaly bias statements keep the status quo, and needs to be reckoned with.
Sorry if i hurt your feelings.
Add to Kriz: The comments do look harsh, maybe a little harsher than if all were sitting around sharing a conversation. It's a flaw in the witten word. If i wasn't "ignorant" i would realize this before i state my opinion. I just don't think that pandering to the issues is the way to solve this particular one.
Don't care about how people describe themselves-i would waste a lot of time if i consistantly described myself as "european american".
Per DM, just my opinion, i could be wrong.
On reviewing this thread, I see an hoary old stereotype has turned up: More black men are incarcerated than are in college. That is not true and never has been during the decades such data has been collected and studied. A disproportionate number of African-American men are in prision, but not nearly enough to approximate the number in college. The stereotype was most recently debunked by fact checkers at the Washington Post.
The stereotype wasn't from the thread, it was from the article. Take up your objection with Reverend Hardy.
The reason more black males are in jail is due to poverty. Poor people committ crimes then do the time. Rich people committ crimes then hire fancy lawyers to get the off on a technicality. As OJ Simpson did.
In talking proportions, there's been more people harmed by white collar crime committed by bankers and real estate speculators who have been responsible for the housing bubble that has caused so many foreclosures, most of whom are not in prison, then every black male in jail for theft in the country. What every black male has stolen who is in jail, added up, cannot hold a candle to what the white collar criminals who ran Enron stole.
Written by the whitest news weekly in the nation. Tell me, what percentage of African-Americans does Willamette Week have on staff and in what roles?