What she said

The May 6, 2008 post, to be precise.

http://firstyearminister.blogspot.com/

Seeking allies and recognizing the costs

Today I spent an hour watching this documentary, about a desegregation lawsuit in Yonkers, New York in the 1980s.

www.brick-by-brick.com

The NAACP filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, alleging systemic racial discrimination in housing and education in Yonkers. Suit was filed in 1980, continued through much of the 1980s. The educational element settled, but Yonkers dug in its heels with the housing issues, ultimately being held in contempt of court and paying crippling fines rather than submit to the court order. The first subsidized housing in the good side of town opened up in 1992 and the final resolution didn't occur until 2007. Twenty-seven years after the lawsuit was brought. Did it need to take so long?

I thought the most interesting character was Mary Dorman, going from fearing potential changes in her neighborhood, to actively opposing desegregation, to welcoming her new neighbors. She’s not a horrible vicious stereotype. And there were probably lots and lots of Yonkers residents like her (and also some who were simply virulently racist).

So, it used to be very common when you bought a house that the deed would include a “restrictive covenant” keeping you from later on selling it to a minority. The Supreme Court case that struck down these restrictive covenants was Shelley v. Kraemer and the house in question was in Washington Park, a neighborhood of Chicago that was close to where I went to school. At the time of the case it was a thriving middle class neighborhood. Now it’s the stereotypical depressed inner city.

Now I want to be on record as entirely in favor of Shelley v. Kraemer. Entirely in favor. However, you do not need to be innately evil to really not want your beloved neighborhood to take the same path that Washington Park did. Schooling can be the same way. People can be not racist and still not want their seven-year-olds to be spending hours on a bus going across the city. And in college I spent some time volunteering in a public high school that I would have attended if my family had lived one block north and we had gone to public schools (we went to the neighborhood Catholic schools). That was an eye-opener. I would estimate that this tenth grade class was doing about what my class had done in sixth grade. You do not have to be a horrible person to say “I’m not sending my kid there.” And I’m CERTAINLY not interested in having my kid spending hours on a school bus to go across town when that’s what they’re going to.

During the days of the major desegregation decisions, there was often a criticism that the judges, living happily in their wealthy and overwhelmingly white suburbs, were not going to have THEIR kids bussed across town. Those areas are not going to be meaningfully desegregated anytime soon. That burden will be felt by the people in the cities, etc. The lower economic class whites. And that’s true. However, that doesn’t mean that the judges weren’t right to order desegregation.

It seemed as if the NAACP was reacting to a real and serious and very destructive injustice in Yonkers and in response they went on the warpath. And I can understand why they did so because after all it was a real and serious and very destructive injustice.

But is our goal here front page newspaper stories about our victories or is it actually improving the situation? Maybe it’s both. Precedent matters. Those headlines can make a difference. But gosh darn it, the ultimate goal here has to be actually changing the situation. And I have to wonder if maybe the process might not have been so destructive, might not have taken two decades, if there had been some effort to reach out to the Mary Dormans of the world and enlist them as allies instead of (or in addition to?) going in with guns blazing with the result that the Mary Dormans of the world were threatened, had no one assuaging some relatively reasonable fears (as well as many many unreasonable ones) and were told that they were awful people when gosh darn it Mary Dorman did not think of herself as awful. Given that dynamic, it is not all that surprising (although deeply, deeply wrong) that she went into anti-desegregation activism. Could this have been avoided? Could the NAACP have gotten the Mary Dormans of the world as allies? Could maybe those awful racially divided City Council meetings have been avoided, or at least lessened?

This also raises a question of to what extent we need to be heroic. The big argument for white flight was often “well sure, I have no problem with the new people moving into the neighborhood. But let’s just be realistic, my neighbors will, and property values are going to plummet. I just have to get my house on the market first before they fall too much more.” And that is true. But it also accelerates the process of the property values falling, there being less disposable income in the neighborhood and so not as many stores, etc., so the neighborhood is less attractive so people with some money don’t want to be there anymore, etc. etc. etc. To what extent are we required to say “Yes, property values may well fall. I probably am going to lose a good chunk of my life savings by staying here, meanwhile the neighborhood is becoming a less attractive place to be. I’m still staying.” That’s a huge burden to carry (and it has to be noted, a burden that is not borne at all in the wealthy suburbs – this is a burden imposed on the working class). Same thing goes for schooling. Prosperous families, with time and resources to invest in their kids schooling, are going to avoid that high school I observed if they can. They’ll buy a house that goes to the neighboring high school instead (property values increased significantly in that one block!) or pay the tuition for private schools or something. But, having those families at the public high school and involved in the school community would help make it better for all concerned. Are we obligated to do so? When is the cost just too high?

AAACK. My head is hurting. Why can’t moral issues be simple?

Talking about love

As if I didn't have enough books demanding attention. This one looks like it could be well worth savoring.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3289

I was especially struck by this paragraph from the book review:

Thomas Aquinas explained how differences in closeness and worthiness justify different degrees of love--for, say, a sinful parent and for a virtuous stranger. By contrast, Luther says that Christian love for others should be independent of their worth. The epitome of Christian love, for Thomas, was friendship for God, whereas Luther emphasized obedience to God’s word. While Thomas made self-love central, Luther considered it sinful.

I'm not familiar (yet) with the nuances being summarized here. Luther seems right that Christian love should be independent of the worth of the beloved. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and all that.

However, there are differences of roles and relationship and to overlook that seems inhuman. A Christian may well owe a duty to starving children in Africa, but it is very different from the duty owed by a Christian parent to their own children. Any moral system which does not recognize this difference is simply out of line with humanity.

I love Thomas's emphasis on friendship for God. Obedience is very important. Obedience is how we learn to develop a friendship for God, but simple obedience is far from the end goal.

And then there's the issue of self-love. So often we hear about "self-love" and think of narcissism and arrogance. And so often we label our own narcissism as "self-love", which does not help matters. However, it seems to me that the two could not be further apart, and so much sin comes not from an excessive self-love but from the lack of it.

After all, I am the beloved of God! As a follower of God, I ought to love what God loves. And God loves me. God loves a whole lot else, of course, but God definitely loves me. How can I do otherwise? And when I recognize that, what else do I need? I don't need to be the center of attention. I don't need to puff myself up. When I don't know God's love for me, and don't love myself, then I will fall into narcissism.