The Evidence of Widespread American Racism

Posted on December 9, 2016 by G.S. Griffin under Race Relations

White conservatism generally stresses that while some whites surely dislike blacks and overtly discriminate against them, racism is no longer a significant societal problem. That is, there are a few “bad apples” in the American bushel, but not enough to affect the lives of most blacks or justify protest movements pushing for change.

Actual research into the subject, however, reveals a rather different story — one of widespread racial prejudice and discrimination that works to cripple any notion of equal opportunity.

First, we must address something many whites simply do not understand: racism can be measured scientifically. That is, researchers can either analyze real-world data or conduct experiments using the scientific method (controlling for outlying variables), which can demonstrate how large a problem racism actually is.

For example, mentioned below is a study showing resumes with “black” names are 50% less likely to be called back for an interview than identical ones with “white” names. In this experiment, researchers created fictitious resumes with equal job and educational achievements for the black and white “applicants,” sent them out to job openings in Chicago and Boston, and waited. The results indicate serious anti-black bias in the labor market.

Second, note that results like this are incompatible with the idea of a “few bad apples.” Were this an insignificant problem — were a black man or woman to come across a bigoted white employer just every so often, once in a blue moon, a 50% discrepancy would simply not be an expected or accurate result. The “bad apples” would not have the numbers to create a drastic statistical disparity such as this; the problem must therefore be more widespread.

Third, it’s important to remember that not all discrimination stems from conscious stereotyping. True, surveys show about 60% of whites can openly admit belief in stereotypes concerning blacks: greater laziness, higher aggression, or lower intelligence in blacks, and 25% of whites say an ideal neighborhood would be totally free of them (see citations in Wise, Colorblind). Among Trump supporters, 40% think black people are more “lazy” than white people. 50% believe blacks are more “violent” than whites. 16% think whites to be a “superior race,” while 14% are “not sure.” This is conscious racism. But nearly 90% of whites hold subconscious (implicit) anti-black biases.

Implicit biases mean whites hold certain dangerous ideas about blacks without even realizing it or being able to control it, ideas pumped into our consciousness since birth, ideas so strong and so pervasive even some 48% of blacks subconsciously believe them. These are subconscious associations: associating blacks with danger, violence, laziness, and so on, versus more positive associations for whites. Those interested in studying implicit biases more should look into Harvard University’s Project Implicit.

Clearly, this is not a small-scale problem. Whether within our awareness or beyond it, anti-black biases lead to discrimination. With prejudice so large an issue, it would be remarkable indeed if the effects were insignificant.

With these three key understandings, observe a few of the arenas in which racism affects the opportunities of African Americans.

Housing

Not only are there millions of reports of housing discrimination each year, blacks seeking a home loan are two and a half to three times more likely to be steered into a subprime (high cost, low protection) loan than equally-qualified (same income, credit, etc.) whites. And, as we would expect with such a pervasive problem of anti-black bias, even higher-income blacks are more likely to be offered a subprime loan than same- or lower-income whites. In New York City, “black households with annual incomes of $68,000 or more are five times more likely to have a subprime mortgage than white households with similar or even less income” (Wise).

In Pittsburgh, a study showed that when blacks have better credit, less debt, and higher incomes than whites they are given higher interest rates on loans (among other things) 56% of the time.

In Chicago and Los Angeles, studies showed blacks and Hispanics were, compared to equally-qualified whites, “told about fewer loan products, offered less assistance, and denied basic information about loan amount and house price.”

Real estate agents also consistently steer black buyers into poorer “black” neighborhoods when said buyers earn incomes that would allow them to afford nicer homes in “white” neighborhoods (Wise).

Employment

As mentioned, when researchers decided to send out resumes to employers, identical except half had “white” names at the top and half had “black” names, the latter was 50% less likely to be called for an interview. The study was entitled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?”

Black men without a criminal record are less likely to be called back for an interview than white men with criminal records, all other qualifications being equal.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, blacks are thus twice as likely to be unemployed than whites with the same work and educational background. That is, among blacks and whites without college degrees, whites are more likely to be hired. Blacks with college degrees are likewise twice as likely to be unemployed compared to others with college degrees.

One often hears conservative whites explaining away doubled unemployment rates among blacks by stating either A) more blacks need college degrees to make them more employable, which ignores the fact these studies look at similarly qualified blacks and whites or B) blacks tend to be twice as lazy as whites, an old racist myth of innate inferiority that, as noted above, too many whites seem willing to believe.

The Criminal Justice System

As surprising as this may be to many whites, blacks and whites use illicit drugs at about equal rates (whites are sometimes a bit more likely to do so). Yet law enforcement tends to pursue black criminals with much more enthusiasm than white criminals.

Blacks are more likely to be pulled over and searched while driving (even driving lawfully) than whites (even driving lawfully). One might suppose whites trying to pretend racism is a thing of the past would say blacks are simply worse drivers, a notion not supported by any evidence. Or perhaps that police focus more attention on black communities — which is true, as blacks disproportionately live in high-crime areas and police are concentrated in such places. That affects such statistics. But such facts exist alongside clear discrimination. For instance, blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession. One could say it’s because the police are concentrated in high-crime black areas, not low-crime white ones. But black youth are fifty times more likely than white youth to be imprisoned for their first drug offense (see Poe-Yamagata and Jones, And Justice for Some: Differential Treatment of Minority Youth in the Justice System). White youth get off much easier when caught.

Where the police operate and actual discrimination come together with toxic results. During the War on Drugs, two-thirds of the people thrown in prison were people of color, even though they do not use illegal drugs at higher rates. An uncovered interview with a Nixon aide recently showed targeting and jailing black people was a political strategy of the war. Michelle Alexander writes,

In seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the level in 1983.

The War on Drugs could have been fought in white neighborhoods. It wasn’t.

Minorities now comprise 60% of all U.S. prisoners. True, part of the reason is higher crime rates for murder and other acts (minorities are more likely to be poor, which results in higher violent crime) and where police are focused, but part of it is discriminatory punishment. For example, blacks are more likely to receive longer prison sentences and the death penalty than whites who commit the same crimes.

How police treat unarmed blacks in confrontations is different than how they treat unarmed whites in confrontations. From 2013-2015, over 57% of black women killed by police were unarmed, vs. only 20% of white men killed by police being unarmed. So when the police kill white men, the latter are usually armed; when they kill black women, the latter are usually unarmed! Overall, blacks in this time period were nearly 7 times more likely to be killed while unarmed in interactions with police (“Race, Gender, and the Contexts of Unarmed Fatal Interactions with the Police,” Washington University in St. Louis).

Blacks are killed disproportionately to their population. Blacks who were not attacking an officer when killed made up 39% of total deaths in 2012, way out of proportion to a small black population, 13% of Americans (compared to 46% of total deaths being white, who are nearly 70% of the American population). Unarmed Americans killed in the first half of 2015 were twice as likely to be black than white. 35% of unarmed people killed in 2017 were black (and 37% of those who were not attacking police). Part of this can be explained by disproportionate police presences and interactions where blacks live, as we saw before. But it is also the expected result of police officers associating blacks — innocent blacks included — with aggression and criminality. They are even perceived to be bigger, more threatening, than they are. That’s what the science shows.

How many studies do we need before you acknowledge a problem might exist?

The police are more likely to become physically violent or draw their weapons at blacks than whites in similar situations (“An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,” National Bureau of Economic Research). “The Science of Justice: Race, Arrests, and Police Use of Force” from the Center for Policing Equity found blacks are more likely, by a factor of nearly four, to experience police force, even when controlling for crime rates. “Protecting Whiteness: White Phenotypic Racial Stereotypicality Reduces Police Use of Force” (Social Psychological and Personality Science) found that the whiter you are, the less likely you’ll have force used against you.

“A Bird’s Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015” (Criminology & Public Policy) found that, when shot by police, “civilians from ‘other’ minority groups were significantly more likely than Whites to have not been attacking the officer(s) or other civilians and that Black civilians were more than twice as likely as White civilians to have been unarmed.”

“Is the evidence from racial bias shooting task studies a smoking gun? Results from a meta-analysis” (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) found that “relative to White targets, participants were quicker to shoot armed Black targets, slower to not shoot unarmed Black targets, and more likely to have a liberal shooting threshold for Black targets.” That was a meta-analysis of 42 studies.

“A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014” (PLOS One) found “evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.” Plus, they noted “there is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.”

“Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) showed how police officers associate innocent blacks with criminality and aggression. “The Police Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals” from the same journal showed ordinary civilians in simulations are far quicker to shoot armed blacks than armed whites, and decide faster to spare an unarmed white than an unarmed black.

“The Correlates of Law Enforcement Officers’ Automatic and Controlled Race-Based Responses to Criminal Suspects” (Basic and Applied Psychology) found that during simulations police officers with anti-black biases shoot unarmed black suspects more often. “The Consequences of Race for Police Officers’ Responses to Criminal Suspects” (Psychological Science) showed police officers are more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed blacks than unarmed whites. Fortunately, the bias diminished with extensive time in the simulation. In fact, “Across the Thin Blue Line: Police Officers and Racial Bias in the Decision to Shoot” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) credited time in simulations when police officers (who had implicit biases) did not use lethal force in a biased way during tests. This kind of training, among others, is important, and may explain why some studies contradict the idea of racist use of police force.

Even black off-duty cops are more likely to be killed by police.

One older experiment looked at what whites thought when a white man and a black man came to blows. When the white man pushed the black man, 17% of white respondents said this was a violent act. But when the black man pushed the white man? 75% of whites characterized it as violent. A 2015 study showed whites still view the actions of blacks more threatening and aggressive than identical white actions.

Portrayals in the Media

Although whites (due to their numbers) commit most crimes in the U.S., in the white-dominated media black criminals often receive disproportionate news coverage, as many studies show.

During one period in New York City, for example, blacks were arrested for 51% of crimes, but received 75% of the news coverage on crime. In Orange County, California, a 2000 study made similar findings: “African-Americans were overrepresented as perpetrators” in local news broadcasts. Blacks are more likely to be revealed to the public in a mug shot than whites who are arrested; for whites, media outlets find yearbook or family photos. One study found that when whites were exposed to a disproportionate number of black mug shots, they supported harsher incarceration policies than when they were exposed to mostly white mug shots.

A study from the University of Houston found that “long-term exposure to local television news, wherein African-Americans are depicted frequently and stereotypically as criminals, predicted increased negative implicit attitudes toward African-Americans.” A University of Illinois study found the exact same thing.

Blacks make up one-third of welfare recipients (though only 4% of blacks use cash assistance, 6-12% use housing assistance, and 11-19% use food stamps; see Loveless and Tin, Dynamics of Economic Well-Being). But the media has reinforced in white minds the idea that most welfare users are black. The media mostly portrayed welfare recipients as white from 1950 to 1964. Yet, from 1967-1992 they were portrayed as black in nearly 60% of news stories. In 1972 and 1973, nearly 75 percent of stories gave a black face to American welfare (see Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy).

Also, just to twist the knife, missing black children receive less coverage than missing white children. From 2005-2007, black children made up 19.5% of the missing youths reported on the news, even though 33.2% of missing child cases involved black kids. Non-blacks made up 66.8% of the actual cases, but received 80.5% of media coverage.

Further — though note this is not a study — some have noticed white mass shooters seem more likely to be labeled “mentally ill” in the papers and on television, whereas people of color are labeled “thugs” or “terrorists.” Others point to headlines that say positive things about white suspects but negative things about black victims (who are often exclusively blamed for their own deaths, a standard rarely applied to white victims).

And more

There are of course many other arenas of life where discrimination takes place.

As Colorblind documents, “Black students are two to three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than whites, even though they do not, contrary to popular belief, violate school rules disproportionately, relative to white students.” This remains true even for black students from wealthier homes attending better schools. In one experiment,

Researchers had 132 educators watch videos featuring a diverse group of students and primed them to expect student misbehavior. Although no misbehavior actually occurred in the videos, teachers tended to focus their eyes on black students. This suggests that educators expected black students to act out more than other students.

Blacks and Latinos are also more likely, under “tracking,” to be put in lower-level classes they don’t belong in. Schools with more black kids have more police officers, regardless of actual crime or misconduct rates.

Studies show blacks are less likely to receive life-saving drugs and operations than whites of identical diagnoses, health insurance, income, and so on.

Also, if you are African American and attempting to sell something online, whites are less likely to contact you — and if they do, they will offer you less money than they would a white seller. Librarians are slightly less likely to reply to email queries from black-sounding names.

Unsurprisingly, whites are less likely to believe racism is a problem than people of color.

About 40% of whites believe racism is an issue, compared to 60% of blacks and Hispanics. This is not so different from a darker American past — in 1963, while blacks were marching and being murdered for their rights, 60% of whites thought blacks were treated equally in America! In 1962, 85% of whites thought black kids had the same educational opportunities as white kids.

Even if the mountain of scientific research proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that racial biases are still a huge issue in American society did not exist, it would still very much make sense to listen to those who claim to be discriminated against. Whites have a history of being wrong about these sorts of things.

As Wise writes,

When more than half of blacks and a third of Hispanics report that they have experienced unfair treatment in public places at some point just in the last month because of their race, for whites to deny the seriousness of racism in America is to say, in effect, that folks of color are hallucinating, irrational or ignorant about their own lived experience. It is to say that we white folks know black and brown reality better than those who live it.

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Absolutely Horrific Things You Didn’t Know Were in the Bible

Posted on December 9, 2016 by G.S. Griffin under Religion

Religious texts often contain edicts, many supposedly directly from a higher power, calling for atrocities and oppression, a fact most Christian Americans are comfortable with when applied to the Qur’an or Hadith, less so when shown the Bible is not an exception.

Peaceful religious persons justify or explain these in many ways. Christians for example believe these ways of doing things were declared outdated, no longer necessary, after Christ appeared. That it was part of “God’s Plan” for it to be permissible to kill a homosexual in 200 B.C. but not A.D. 200 (see Either God Changes or He’s Psychotic: Comparing Testaments Old and New).

Seems morally dubious, especially for an all-loving being, and of course ignores the fact that slavery and the oppression of women were upheld in scripture written after Christ died, and that God still killed liars on the spot and Jesus threatened to kill children.

Others insist these edicts and God’s actions must be “taken in context.” While that is usually just a way to excuse the horrific and sickening things a deity, scriptural hero, or religious writer said or did, it is without question a necessity. The context is obvious: religious texts were written in ancient times by very primitive, barbaric tribesmen.

Holy books describe a culture and a culture’s deity during a particular age. While it is a great relief that gods are total fiction, brutal man is not.

Readers are encouraged to look at multiple biblical translations when double-checking verses, in order to find the version used in this piece.

DISTURBING SEXUAL FIXATIONS

In the Bible sexual perversion and depravity occur and are described with nary a second thought, helpful to those who wish to understand what people, societies, and religions were like long ago, but tragic for the victims of such evil.

Hebrew “men of God” delighted in polygamy (Esau, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon), including concubines (Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Solomon). Solomon had 700 wives, 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3).

Lot, the only righteous man God found in the city of Sodom, offered his two daughters to be gang-raped so a crowd of men wouldn’t gang-rape visiting angels (Genesis 19:7-8). In a vile twist of fate, the daughters later rape Lot on more than one occasion and get pregnant (Genesis 19:32-36). Moses orders that all Midianite boys and non-virgin girls should be slaughtered, but that virgins should be kept alive for his soldiers (Numbers 31:17-18). (They captured 32,000 virgins and “gave 32 of them to the Lord,” possibly to be sacrificed alongside the sheep, cattle, and donkeys they seized; see Numbers 31:32-41.) All a bit odd, since one poor Israelite-Midianite couple was run through with a spear for their involvement in Numbers 25:6-8. God warns his people to kill foreigners, “not intermarry with them” (Deut. 7:1-6). We commit a “great evil” and “transgress against our God in marrying strange wives” (Nehemiah 13:23-30).

The book devotes much space to private parts, genital mutilation, menstruation, sexual purity. You will see below that God personally threatens to expose people’s genitals.

God decrees that everyone who touches a woman on her period is “unclean until evening,” and any object that touches or is touched by the woman is also “unclean” (Leviticus 15:19-20). The woman is “unclean” while on her period, naturally (Leviticus 12:5). Not only that, she is unclean for seven days after her “discharge of blood,” and on the eighth day she must “take two turtledoves or two pigeons” to a priest, who will “offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge” (Leviticus 15:19-30). Menstruation is basically a sin. Men who have sex with their menstruating wives must be exiled (Leviticus 20:18).

Ezekiel 36:16-17 shows just how highly this god thinks of the natural body function that he created: “Again the word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their actions. Their conduct was like a woman’s monthly uncleanness in my sight.'”

God says that if a woman grabs a man’s genitals to break up a fight, her hand is to be cut off (Deut. 25:11-12); some Egyptian men are lewdly described as having donkey-sized penises that ejaculate with the power of horses (Ezekiel 23:18-21); God discriminates against men with crushed testicles or a castrated penis (Deut. 23:1); Song of Solomon is about love and sex, and doesn’t even mention God, with many mentions of breasts, and likely oral sex (4:16, 7:8-9) and anal play (5:4); and King Saul wanted David to bring him 100 Philistine foreskins as a dowry (1 Samuel 18:20-30). He brought more.

Circumcision was a serious business: “You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you… Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people” (Genesis 17:10-14). Moses’ wife saved Moses from being killed by God only when she cut off their son’s foreskin with a rock (Exodus 4:25).

Incest was common, for example Nahor married his older brother’s daughter, his niece (Genesis 11:29, NLT). Abraham marries his half-sister Sarah; they share a father (Genesis 20:12). Isaac and Jacob marry cousins (Genesis 24 and 29). Of course, if one trusts wholeheartedly this work, rampant incest was all part of “God’s Plan,” as Adam and Eve’s children had to populate the Earth somehow, as did Noah’s children later on.

In Genesis 6:1-4, angels (“the sons of God”) copulate with “daughters of humans,” birthing Nephilim, giant men.

THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN

Obviously, the Bible reeks of thousands of years of patriarchal society that deemed women subservient, less intelligent, and less worthy of life. The language of the text marks it as a book by men and for men. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” for example, speaks to the only important sex. The record of the ancestral line tracks the only important sex (Genesis 5:1-32, Matthew 1:1-16), as did the Hebrew census (Numbers 1:1-2). Inheritance was for sons unless none existed (Numbers 27:8-11). God is male, naturally, and when Israel drifts from him it is often referred to as a whore (see Hosea 1:2, ESV). None of the 12 disciples are women.

Scriptural heroes and God himself, judging by the laws and punishments they designed, were violent sexists. Male domination has been a major theme throughout world history, and the Hebrews were no exception — even though guided by an “all-loving God.” Upon reading Leviticus and Deuteronomy it becomes obvious “God’s Laws” are much harsher toward women; they are given the death penalty with far greater frequency. You will notice this throughout this article, but particularly in the next section.

God dictates the oppression early on. After her sin, Eve is told her husband “shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).

God decrees that the woman who gives birth to a boy is somehow “unclean” for seven days, but if she gives birth to a girl it’s two weeks! She must then take 33 days to be purified if she had a son, yet for some reason it takes 66 days to be made clean if she had a daughter (Leviticus 12:1-5). God doesn’t exactly explain why giving birth to a girl makes you more unclean.

Of course, a woman is by nature unclean, from Job’s perspective. “How can one born of a woman be pure?” (Job 25:4). “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing?” (Job 14:1-4). “What are mortals, that they could be pure, or those born of woman, that they could be righteous?” (Job 15:14).

When followers were “dedicated to the Lord,” a man was worth 50 shekels of silver, a woman only 30 (Lev. 27:1-7). God’s own Three-Fifths Compromise.

Divorced couples cannot be remarried if the woman has been “defiled” (Deut. 24:1-4). In other words, a divorced woman who sleeps with another man is unclean. But women whose husbands died were forced to marry and have sex with their deceased husband’s brother (Deut. 25:5-6).

Even in the New Testament, women are forbidden to preach; they are told to be silent and “submissive” while receiving instruction (1 Tim. 2:11-15; “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man”). Woman was apparently made “for man” (1 Corinthians 11:8-9) and must submit to their husbands in everything (Ephesians 5:22-24). Colossians 3:18 says, “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands.” Wives should submit to their men and let their purity show men the truth of the Word (1 Timothy 3:1-2). In the same way that “the head of every man is Christ,” the “head of every woman is man” (1 Corinthians 11:3). 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 reads:

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Men are instructed not to marry a divorced woman, as this would be adultery (Luke 16:18); apparently divorced women are meant to be alone until death.

EXECUTION FOR NONVIOLENT CRIMES

Laws given by God dictated non-virgins, children, homosexuals, non-believers, and others be stoned to death, an excruciatingly painful death compared to alternatives (see Would a God of Love Order a Stoning?).

If you rebel as a youth against your parents and do not repent you must die (Deut. 21:18-21), if you curse your parents you must die (Lev. 20:9), if you commit adultery you must die (Lev. 20:10). At least if you sleep with a woman on her period you get to be exiled (Lev. 20:18).

A woman found on her wedding night to not be a virgin must die (Deut. 22:20-21).

If you are a psychic or a sorcerer you must be stoned to death (Lev. 20:27), if a priest’s daughter is a prostitute she must be burnt to death (Lev. 21:9), if your son gives false prophecy you must kill him (Zechariah 13:2-3), if you are deformed, blind, disabled, scabbed, a dwarf, have crushed testicles, broken limbs, or a flat nose you cannot go to the altar of God (Lev. 21:17-18); if you go too close to the Tabernacle you must die (Num. 1:48-51), and if you speak against these laws of God you must die (Deut. 13:5).

If your family tries to worship another god you must kill them (Deut. 13:6-10, 2 Chronicles 15:13); if you come upon a city that worships another god you must kill all the inhabitants (Deut. 13:12-15); you must kill anyone of a different faith in your own city (Deut. 17:2-7), and kill those who disrespect priests and judges (Deut. 17:12); if a virgin girl is raped she must marry her rapist (Deut. 22:28-29); an engaged virgin girl who is raped must be executed (Deut. 22:23-24); if you commit a homosexual act you will be put to death (Lev. 20:13); if you work on the Sabbath you must die (Exodus 31:12-15).

One man made the mistake of picking up sticks on the Sabbath; he was executed (Numbers 15:32-36).

The Hebrews declared pregnant Samarian women must be “ripped open” and children “dashed” on the ground for disobeying God (Hosea 13:16, NIV). Coincidentally, a psalmist declared that exact action, dashing children on rocks, will make a person “happy” (Psalm 137:9). The author of Hosea prays for enemies to have “wombs that miscarry,” and God promises to “slay their cherished offspring” (9:11-16).

Women suspected of adultery were forced to drink a “holy water” that God would use to “make your womb miscarry” — in other words, abortion (Numbers 5:11-23).

SLAVERY

Then there’s slavery. Paul told slaves to “obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” That’s Colossians 3:22.

Verses upholding and outlining the rules of slave ownership can be found in Exodus 21. They are given directly by God (he begins speaking in Exodus 20:22 and continues throughout chapter 21). Exodus 21 verses 4 and 5 state children born to a man while enslaved will be the master’s property even after the man is freed (same with the wife), and if he wants to stay with his children he must become a slave for life.

Further,

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21)

Exodus 21:7-11 allows a man to sell his daughter into slavery, and, according to scholars, implies she will be a sex slave to her new master. The master can also give her to his son as a wife. Sarah gave her husband Abraham her slave-girl Hagar as a wife, forcing Hagar to let Abraham have sex with her and impregnate her (Genesis 16:1-4). When Hagar ran away after Sarah punished her for being haughty, the angel of the Lord tracked her down and told her to return to Sarah and submit to her (Genesis 16:9).

A thief can be sold into slavery as punishment (Exodus 22:3-4).

For a Hebrew man, one advantage of getting married was you got your bride’s slaves. Leviticus 25:44-46 says, “You may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you…you may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever.” Some translations (KJV, NLT, etc.) of 25:45 say children can be bought and sold too. But verse 46 cautions only foreigners should be treated this way, not the people of Israel, yet Exodus 21:2 makes clear Hebrews can enslave other Hebrews. In Deuteronomy 21:10-14, it is decreed that Israeli soldiers can take home beautiful women captured in war — and even though she is being taken by force, “you must not sell or treat her as a slave”! Conquered people will be subject to “forced labor” (Deuteronomy 20:10-14).

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ,” says Ephesians 6:5.

1 Peter 2:18 commands: “Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.” 1 Timothy 6:1-2 declares:

All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves.

Titus 2:9-10 declares slaves should be “subject to their own masters in everything.” No escaping to freedom, no revolution for liberty.

In Luke 12:47-48, Jesus uses the “lashing” and “flogging” of a “slave” (NASB language) to make a point in one of his parables.

Why doesn’t the Bible simply ban slavery? Why didn’t Jesus? Would that not be most ethical? Perhaps because the Bible was concocted by pro-slavery men, in a culture and time when slavery was common.

WAR, CONQUEST, GENOCIDE, AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

God orders all these things.

The Israelites return from Egypt, and God commands them to “destroy” entire peoples in Canaan (Deut. 7:1-2 and 20:16-18; in the former he commands “no mercy,” in the latter, “do not leave alive anything that breathes”). He orders the same in 1 Samuel 15:3 (“put to death men and women, children and infants”) and includes instructions to also kill oxen, camels, sheep, and donkeys. “Slay utterly old and young,” showing no pity, God commands in Ezekiel 9:4-6, “both maids, and little children, and women.” “Utterly destroy,” he instructs in Jeremiah 50:21. Innocent people from city-state after city-state were slaughtered as Israel stole land and plundered, according to these tales anyway. This is genocide.

In Jeremiah 51:20-26, God promises to use the Hebrew armies to kill old men, women, and children. He promises “no mercy on helpless babies,” the rape of wives, and the murder of captives in enemy cities (Isaiah 13:15-18).

Only trees should be shown mercy: “When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them?” (Deut. 20:16-19). But for people? “Do not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deut. 20:16). This war god says he will “make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh” (Deut. 32:39-43).

Even when women and children are spared, men are not:

As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you. (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)

When a few Benjamites (one of the 12 tribes of Israel) rape and kill a Levite’s concubine, God orders the other 11 tribes to attack the Benjamites. Tens of thousands on both sides die (Judges 20). This is just one example of God punishing the many for the sins of the few. You will see more below.

God vows to “stir up” Jerusalem’s enemies: “They will cut off your noses and your ears, and those of you who are left will fall by the sword. They will take away your sons and daughters, and those of you who are left will be consumed by fire” (Ezekiel 23:22-25).

Even when it does not specifically state God ordered a mass murder, he does nothing to stop it.

David sacrificed 7 descendants of Saul to appease another tribe (2 Samuel 21:1-14). In Judges 21:10-24, Hebrew soldiers were sent to Jabesh-gilead to “destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin.” They rounded up and captured 400 virgins, later kidnapping more.

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down, then Joshua killed every man, woman, child, and animal inside (Joshua 6:21). He does it many more times in Joshua 7-11.

When Moses discovers his people worshipping the Golden Calf, he orders priests to take up swords, and they kill 3,000 people; God allows it and then joins in, sending a plague on the survivors (Exodus 32). He kills nearly 15,000 of his chosen people by plague in Numbers 16:42-49.

Human and child sacrifice were part of Hebrew culture (see footnotes of Lev. 27:28-29). In Judges 11, Jephthah’s faith is put to the test when he promises to God to sacrifice the first person he sees after returning home from a big battle. That turns out to be his daughter. Jephthah is willing to go through with it (painfully obvious by the end of the story), but God doesn’t spare his innocent daughter, as he did Abraham’s son Isaac. She is burnt alive.

But how traumatizing for a boy like Isaac, as well, to think your father is going to kill you! And to live with that memory forever. In Genesis 22, God decides to “test” Abraham, and orders the human sacrifice, which Abraham is willing to do (how traumatizing for him, too, being forced to kill his own child). An omniscient god wouldn’t need to test anyone. He would know what Abraham would do. Perhaps it’s all for Abraham and Isaac’s benefit. What sort of being puts people through such things?

“Give me the firstborn of your sons,” God demands in Exodus 22:29-30. “I defiled them through their gifts — the sacrifice of every firstborn — that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord,” reads Ezekiel 20:25-26. Micah 6:6-8 positions human or child sacrifice as more pleasing to God than animal sacrifice. Hiel obeys the word of the Lord by sacrificing his sons in 1 Kings 16:34.

GOD LYING TO, KILLING, HUMILIATING, AND SELLING PEOPLE

Of course, God’s hands are directly responsible for slaughter, to fill humans with “horror” (Ezekiel 20:25-26). Fire from heaven destroys entire cities like Sodom and Gomorrah, children and all. A flood destroys nearly the entire human race (God, all-knowing, creates mankind knowing he will soon destroy it, as with all his other killings). God sends plagues during which Jerusalem’s enemies’ “flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouth” (Zechariah 14:12). God smites humans with “fever,” “burning,” “tumors,” “madness,” “blindness,” “boils,” and so on (Deut. 28:15-68), and even crushes them with rocks from heaven (Joshua 10:8-11). Estimates of the death toll in this text are in the millions.

Many Jews and Christians have few qualms about this because the victims were supposedly warned to shape up for years or even centuries before judgement arrived, or ignored the obvious power of God demonstrated to them by prophets. Even killing the children was justified: “You can’t leave them trapped in such a sinful place. They’ll grow up to be wicked. Killing them is an act of mercy!” So it’s all permissible, even with more moral alternatives available: God using his power to simply move enemies to another spot on the planet, the Hebrews raising infants as their own instead of slaughtering them, and so forth. Any justification for why God wouldn’t choose a more moral option is undermined by his omnipotence. “The Hebrews adopting child would have led to overpopulation or the corruption of the Jewish culture and faith!” God could have made this not so. This applies to everything else God orders or does as well. He doesn’t have to engage in oppression, pain, and death for this or that, he chooses to. (Why must nonbelievers be tortured for eternity in Hell? Why not a year for every year they lived on Earth, followed by the relief of execution? Why not for a week? Aren’t those more moral options? Isn’t skipping the torture and just snuffing sinners out of existence more moral still?) Because of God’s omnipotence, because he had alternatives on the table that would have done less harm, God is immoral.

On a related note, it does seem difficult to justify calling one faith the only way to God (John 14:6 is cited often) and calling God a moral being. The philosopher Daniel Dennett reminded us that no matter what religion you belong to, the vast majority of humanity doesn’t share your beliefs. Two billion people may belong to Christianity, but nearly six billion do not. Same with Islam. Most humans will be born, live, and die without accepting or even hearing about the “one true religion,” whichever that is — and a higher power that would torture or even mildly punish people for that can hardly be called “good.”

It might also be said that God is an immoral being because he allows innumerable horrible things — rape, disease, starvation, murder — to occur day to day. (Generally, good things that happen to us are “God’s will,” bad things are simply allowed.) Can a divine being truly be good if it just sits by and watches, all while having the power to end such things? At the least, such a god seems less moral than a being that wouldn’t allow trauma, pain, and death on an unimaginable scale. Standard responses about free will and punishment for Adam and Eve’s original sin don’t seem to change this fact. Further, those responses are undermined when one considers miracles. See, God at times does interfere with free will and humanity’s eternal punishment. Can a being truly be good if it prevents some horrific things from happening to some people but not other horrific things from happening to others? A god that interfered in all circumstances for all people sounds more moral than one that is selective, letting some innocent people get tortured or paralyzed in car accidents or killed in the gas chambers of concentration camps. Further, the awful justification that “all terrible things are used by God for good” clearly doesn’t help. God is an omnipotent being. So the Holocaust or a child being raped will somehow bring about Good Thing X…but we know that an all-powerful deity could have brought about Good Thing X without such horrific events! A being that chooses the former path instead of the latter one is not moral — or at least is less moral than a being that would take the latter. Moving on.

This god frequently destroys innocent people for the crimes of others. An angel kills the innocent first-born of Egypt (and their livestock!) because of the pride of one political ruler; he even killed the first-born of Egyptian slave girls (Exodus 11:4-6, 12:29).

“I am about to unsheath my sword to destroy your people—the righteous and the wicked alike,” God tells Israel in Ezekiel 21:3-5.

All humanity is punished for the mistake of the first two humans. All women were given painful childbirth for Eve’s sin (Genesis 3:16-18), and God promises to punish generations of descendants for those who worship other gods (Exodus 20:3-5). He believes in “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation” (Exodus 24:6-7, in the 10 Commandments). “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,” he says in Deuteronomy 5:8-9, “punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” He promises to kill the children of sinners (Leviticus 26:21-22). All this is repeated in Exodus 34:6-7, Numbers 14:18, 1 Kings 21:28-29, Isaiah 14:21, Jeremiah 29:31-32 and 31:18, and elsewhere.

God visits a plague that kills 24,000 Israelites because a few people slept with Midianites, who worshipped Baal (Numbers 25:1-9). God doesn’t call off the plague until Phinehas commits murder (Num. 25:9). Saul killed Gibeonites during his reign, so God inflicted a three-year famine during David’s reign (2 Samuel 21:1). When David takes a census (apparently a grave sin), God sends a prophet to let David choose between three punishments; a plague kills 70,000 people (2 Samuel 24:10-17, also 1 Chronicles 21:8-14). But “what have they done?” David laments.

5 farmers looked inside the Ark of the Lord, and God killed either 70 or 50,000 people to get even (1 Samuel 6; translations differ). David sinned, so God killed his child via illness (2 Samuel 12:13-18). God also murdered Jeroboam’s son for Jeroboam’s wickedness (1 Kings 14:9-12). The households of Korah and his followers, who challenged Moses’ authority, were eaten up by the earth (Numbers 16:1-35). During the slaughter of the End Times, Jesus will destroy cities that ignored his miracles while he was on Earth (Matthew 11:20), even though all those foolish people are long gone. A “bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation” (Deut. 23:2)! God will not show love to children of adulterers (Hosea 2:4) — can they help who their mothers were? “The Lord had kept all the women in Abimelek’s household from conceiving because of Abraham’s wife Sarah” (Genesis 20:18).

It is also interesting that at times God hardens people’s hearts, making them less interested in letting the Hebrews live in freedom and peace. So God hardens Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 7:3), Pharaoh refuses to free the Hebrews, and God gets to send plagues that cause mass torture and death. Wouldn’t a loving deity have softened Pharaoh’s heart, helping the Jews go free and saving Egyptians from pain? God specifically states that “I have hardened his heart and the heart of his officials in order that I may show these signs of mine among them” (Exodus 10:1-2). He wants to continue his horrors. Between Exodus 9:28 and 14:4, Pharaoh agrees to free the Hebrews four times, and four times God hardens his heart to make him change his mind! In Joshua 11:19-20, it’s revealed nearly all nearby cities refused to make peace with Israel, but “it was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy…” In Deuteronomy 2:30-31, God likewise hardens the heart of King Sihon so the Israelites could conquer his kingdom.

God’s other crimes are even more disturbing. In 2 Kings 2:23-24, after a bunch of youths made fun of Elisha’s baldness, God sent bears to kill 42 of them. Job faces “evil that the Lord brought upon him” (Job 42:11). God allows his family to be massacred, his fortune to disappear, and his health to deteriorate (painful boils) all to win a bet with Satan that Job would stay faithful. God sends lions to kill non-believing Assyrians (2 Kings 17:25). When Onan didn’t listen to Judah and declined to impregnate Onan’s sister-in-law, instead spilling “the semen on the ground,” God was displeased and killed him (Genesis 38:8-10).

This deity burns people alive in Leviticus 10:1-3, Numbers 11:1-3, Joshua 7:15-26, 2 Kings 1:10-12, Numbers 16:35, and Psalm 78:59-63. Regarding this first verse, God toasted Aaron’s sons for using the wrong fire in an offering.

God admits to creating evil (Isaiah 45:7, KJV), speaking evil (Lamentations 3:38, KJV), dispatching an evil spirit (Judges 9:23-24, NASB, 1 Samuel 16:14-16), sending evil upon people (Jeremiah 11:11, ASV), sending poverty (1 Samuel 2:6-7), deceiving or misleading humans (Ezekiel 20:25-26, 2 Thess. 2:11-12, 1 Kings 22:19-23) and even killing a person he deceived (Ezekiel 14:9), hating sinners not the sin (Malachi 1:2-4, Hosea 9:15), making people eat bread cooked over fires burning human poop (Ezekiel 4:12-13), and threatening to smear poop on people’s faces (Malachi 2:3)! God will “turn away from you” if you don’t “cover up your excrement” in your camp (Deuteronomy 23:12-14). Diarrhea is even a chosen curse in 2 Chronicles 21:14-15: “The Lord is going to strike your people, your sons, your wives and all your possessions with a great calamity; and you will suffer severe sickness, a disease of your bowels, until your bowels come out because of the sickness, day by day.” God afflicts people with “tumors” or “hemorrhoids” in 1 Samuel 5:6; translations differ.

When God tells a man to slap a prophet, and the man refuses violence, God sends a lion to kill him (1 Kings 20:35-36). A “man of God” was killed by a lion for eating and drinking at the wrong time and place, but an old prophet who lied to him went unpunished (1 Kings 13:16-24). God kills another for touching the Ark of God to ensure it didn’t fall (2 Samuel 6:3-7). When two people lied in the New Testament, they were struck dead (Acts 5:1-11). God vows to “send wild animals against you” to “rob you of your children” (Leviticus 26:21-22).

God even finds reason to “afflict sores on the heads of Zion’s women…and expose their private parts” (Isaiah 3:17, ISV; the original Hebrew word is “poth,” meaning vagina, literally “hinged opening”; see Godless by Dan Barker). In Exodus 20:26 (NIV), God warns, “Do not go up to my altar on steps, or your private parts may be exposed.” In Jeremiah 13:24-27 (MSG), God says, “I’m the one who will rip off your clothes, expose and shame you before the watching world.” He will strip the adulteress naked (Hosea 2:3). People “have been stripped and raped by invading armies” for their “many sins” (Jeremiah 13:22, MSG). God declares, “I will lift your skirts and show all the earth your nakedness and shame” (Nahum 3:5, NLT). “You will tear out your breasts,” God vows in Ezekiel 23:34 (NET).

Perhaps most horrifically, God himself threatens to bring calamity on David by giving his wives to other men to have sex with “in broad daylight” (2 Samuel 12:11-12). God vows to sinners that he will “give their wives to other men” (Jeremiah 8:9-10).

God even sees cause for cannibalism. When God is destroying people, it will be so terrible, “You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters” (Lev. 26:29). Another time, during a siege, “…you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters the Lord has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children” (Deut. 28:47-57). He promises that “parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents” in Ezekiel 5:8-10. God says he “will make your oppressors eat their own flesh” (Isaiah 49:26) at one point and “I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them” (Jeremiah 19:7-9) at another. Cannibalism by God’s design.

God intentionally gave or sold his people into slavery multiple times to punish them (Judges 3:8, 4:2-3, 6:1, 13:1). “I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far away,” God promises in Joel 3:8.

Jesus seems tolerant of beating slaves, castrating yourself (Matthew 19:12; implied in Matthew 5:29-30), or killing fig trees that won’t grow fruit out of season (Mark 11:13-14). In Revelation 2:18-23, Jesus threatens to kill the children of an adulteress in Thyatira. It was he who declared the man who marries a divorced woman is an adulterer (Luke 16:18). He also believes in thought crimes (Matthew 5:28). In Matthew 15:4-10, Jesus is upset that “human rules” have “nullified the word of God,” specifically, “Anyone who curses their mother or father is to be put to death.” He says the same in Mark 7:5-15. In Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus says anyone who calls his brother a “fool” is in danger of burning in Hell! More extreme punishment for nonviolent crimes. It is also interesting that in Mark 14 the disciples have more concern for the poor than Jesus does; the messiah waves off their idea of selling an expensive ointment and giving the profits to the poor in favor of allowing the ointment to be used on his own feet.

Jesus uses the same violent language seen in the Old Testament: “I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.” He resorts to violence in John 2:15, driving moneylenders from the temple with a whip and overturning tables.

Jesus does not seem to mind killing animals, like the God of old (who, after killing nearly all animal life in the flood, thought Noah’s burnt animal offering had such a “pleasing odor” that he decides to never do it again; Genesis 8:20-21). In Mark 5:12-13, Jesus casts demons out of a person into pigs, who promptly kill themselves. One would think an all-powerful being could have accomplished his tasks without animal abuse.

For a text many believe to be the infallible Word of God, it seems to have man’s fingerprints all over it, his cruelty and ignorance.

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‘It’s a Sin Problem, Not a Skin Problem’: On God and Racism

Posted on December 9, 2016 by G.S. Griffin under Race Relations

I am not a believer anymore. Yet it hasn’t been so many years that I don’t understand the appeal in attributing racism to sin. This is a common sentiment when American Christians admit racism is still a significant societal problem, coming in the form of something like “Only the Lord can change hearts” or “It’s a sin problem, not a skin problem.”

Putting aside whether a deity exists and whether he, she, or it happens to be the one Christians believe in, it is obvious that were all to live by the “Do unto others” maxim found in Matthew the world would be a much more decent place. The same can be said of “Wish for others what you wish for yourself” (Islam’s Hadith), which came long after Christ, or “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself” (Confucius), which came long before. Imagine a world where well-to-do whites didn’t go about pretending blacks were lazier than whites, because if they were poor or a national minority they wouldn’t want to be vilified. Imagine if police officers always gave people (children) like Tamir Rice an opportunity to surrender, rather than opening fire immediately, because that’s what they would want if roles were reversed. This would do immense good in ending racism and racism’s effects, and is a noble goal for religious and areligious alike.

However, the idea that one just needs to “find Jesus” and pray the racism away somewhat implies that non-Christians and atheists are a much larger part of this racism problem than true believers — indeed delaying progress on eradicating racism. That may not be on anyone’s mind, but it follows rather basic logic. Given that there is no actual evidence Christians are less racist than nonbelievers (it may actually be the opposite, though other factors like political ideology are also involved), not much more needs to be said to address any who take this implication seriously — except perhaps that 70% of Americans call themselves Christians and 23% call themselves non-religious, meaning the policeman who guns down an unarmed black person or the employer who tosses aside a résumé because it has a “black” name at the top are more likely to be Christians than anything else. Just by sheer numbers, racist incidents will involve more Christians than nonbelievers. But I suppose one could simply say many who call themselves Christians are not “true” Christians, not seeking the Lord earnestly, not praying specifically to dispel their racist attitudes and those of others, and so on.

In any case, the main point is this: While the “Do unto others” maxim is what all should strive to live by, and those who find the Lord could in fact help in the fight against racism if they take that maxim more seriously than they used to, addressing “sin” cannot eradicate racism.

Why? Well, a sin is considered to be a conscious decision. It is a personal choice to violate a deity’s law, whether it’s telling a lie, committing adultery, or going before the altar of God with a disability, flat nose, or scab. If you had a subconscious sexual attraction to someone even though you’re married, that could not be called a sin — you wouldn’t even be aware of it! Not if we’re using the generally accepted definition of sin, anyway.

When we talk about racism, we are not just talking about conscious racism. The white person who thinks to herself that blacks by nature are less intelligent or more aggressive than whites is consciously racist. She believes there’s something fundamentally different about the nature of people who don’t look like her. The person who does not believe these ideas of white superiority is not consciously racist, but can still hold subconscious anti-black biases. Subconscious fear of blacks, as well as notions of laziness or lower intelligence, is something that infects the subconscious of nearly all white people and even some black folk, according to psychological research. People who believe they have no biases — liberals and conservatives alike, believers and nonbelievers alike — are often surprised to learn that they actually do at a subconscious level (they learn through tests like Harvard’s Project Implicit). Subconscious racism, or implicit biases, is not something people have control over or are aware of, until scientific methods are used. It has many predictable effects; for example, studies show white policemen are quicker to shoot armed blacks than armed whites, and decide faster to spare an unarmed white person than an unarmed black person. When people act on implicit biases, they have no idea they are doing so.

The problem with “It’s a sin problem, not a skin problem” is then obvious. If your behavior is driven by subconscious fears or beliefs or desires, being beyond your very awareness, the behavior cannot be called a sin, because a sin by definition is a conscious choice. When an employer who rants to friends or muses to himself about supposed African American laziness throws out a black applicant’s résumé, that’s a sin. But when an employer who believes there really is no difference between blacks and whites besides skin tone and hair texture benignly passes over a black applicant’s résumé due to subconscious anti-black biases, that cannot be called a sin.

One might wish to simply redefine sin to include the wickedness of subconscious thought. After all, it’s “the fallen nature of man” either way. And that is fine, though there would remain a difference between conscious sin and subconscious sin. Does God punish people for beliefs they don’t know they have and cannot control? Like his existence, that is something we cannot know for sure. But I suppose a true believer can try to pray the subconscious biases away.

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Which Broadened Freedom For the Oppressed? Liberalism or Conservatism?

Posted on December 9, 2016 by G.S. Griffin under Politics

When liberals and conservatives debate, the latter will sometimes insist conservatism, supposedly the ideology of small government and personal freedom, was the driving political force behind the expansion of freedom for oppressed peoples like African Americans and women. (I write “supposedly” because while perhaps true in modern times concerning taxes, economic regulations, and aid to the poor, it is consistently untrue for social issues like marriage, abortion, drug use, prostitution, pornography, privacy rights during wartime, and so on.)

Such a claim usually comes after a conservative has pointed out Republicans freed black slaves and pushed through civil rights legislation despite Democratic opposition, ignorant to the fact that the Republican Party used to be the more liberal party (already explored in Republicans Used to be Liberal, Democrats Conservative). But even when this interesting history of anti-black voters flocking from one party to another is explained in full, room still exists to consider if liberalism or conservatism did more to broaden freedom for marginalized and mistreated people. We need to disconnect party name from ideology and examine the latter.

Answering such a question may sound easy, but should not be done without historical evidence.

Several things must be addressed. First, what are the definitions of “liberal” and “conservative”? Second, when did the terms as we know them begin to be used? Third, what policies did those who called themselves “liberal” support? What policies did conservatives support?

The terms and their origins

The official modern definition of a liberal is someone “open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values,” while a conservative is “a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes.”

Of course, few would think these definitions complete and satisfactory. For example, in modern politics the liberal must be described as someone who believes the government should play a larger role in creating a more prosperous society for all, while conservatives believe this only leaves citizens worse off — that is, when it comes to economics. In terms of social issues, the feelings of conservatives are reversed. Liberals still feel the government should take a leading role (say, protecting abortion rights), while conservatives suddenly agree, in order to protect the moral fabric of the nation (say, banning abortion), no matter whose personal freedoms get trampled. Good definitions don’t contain contradictions. For this reason, the role of the State will take a secondary, marginalized part in this article.

There is also the idea that liberals stress equality over freedom, while conservatives stress freedom over equality. This is mostly nonsense, because if we’re speaking of social issues then “freedom” usually translates to “freedom to discriminate.” If we mean actual freedom, such as an African American’s right to vote, it’s obvious to all that you can’t have freedom without equality, nor equality without freedom. A black American under Jim Crow would never be free until he or she had equal voting rights as whites. Perhaps the definition might work better with economic issues (say, if we pretend a minimum wage is trying to promote wage “equality” with the better-off and takes away businesses’ “freedom” to pay people under $7.25 an hour). But with social issues, the definition is not helpful — it only works if it’s liberals stressing equality over the freedom of a private business to not serve gay people due to religious preferences, or conservatives stressing the freedom to discriminate over equality for people who happen to not be straight. Since one can’t have true freedom without equality, and since the freedom to discriminate is not something most people think is acceptable in a decent society anymore, this definition can be put aside.

Therefore, the first definition is what we must use, even if imperfect.

The root word for “conservative” is the Latin word servare, meaning “to make safe, guard, or protect.” The word “liberal” comes from the Latin word liberalis, meaning “courteous, generous, or gentlemanly.” While those were the Latin roots, the terms as we know them came from England and France.

“Liberal” had different meanings over the years in these countries. In the 14th and 15th centuries, according to the Etymology Dictionary, it meant one who was “nobly born” and “free,” then later one who was “selfless,” “generous,” and “admirable,” then one who was a bit too “extravagant, unrestrained.” In the 16th and 17th centuries, it grew into a more political word, concerning being “free from restraint in speech or action,” which is why Scotsman Adam Smith used the term often in his 1776 Wealth of Nations, which stressed free trade and free markets. According to The Atlantic, another Scotsman, William Robertson, did most to popularize the term on the British Isles, starting with a 1769 work. It spread across Europe and then to North America.

But by the late 1770s and early 1780s, the term was also used to mean “free from prejudice, tolerant, not bigoted or narrow,” and by the first years of the 1800s it concerned being open to personal freedoms, but “also (especially in U.S. politics) tending to mean ‘favorable to government action to effect social change,’ which seems at times to draw more from the religious sense of ‘free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions’ (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform), which dates from 1823.”

The French followers of Edmund Burke first coined “conservative” after the French Revolution of the 1790s.

Burke opposed revolutions and utopian ideas, and predicted the Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s coup, arguing violent revolutions lead to violent counterrevolutions. As Salvo writes,

Edmund Burke…believed that society should rarely be swayed by new ideas and promises of utopia because such ideas too often reflect the untested preferences of either a single individual or a single generation. Tradition, on the other hand, has been tested by time; it draws on the experience of many generations and is grounded in such important institutions as the Church and the family. Progress, argued Burke, should thus be piecemeal and organic; it should conserve inherited wisdom and avoid hasty modifications based on trendy doctrines or theories.

One of Burke’s followers called his journal Le Conservateur, which favored the restoration of the French clergy and State. (The terms “left” and “right,” by the way, also came from France, when the French National Convention of 1789 commenced to draft a new constitution and the anti-monarchy revolutionaries sat on the left side of the hall and the pro-monarchy, aristocratic supporters of King Louis XVI sat on the right; the terms took on the meanings of change vs. tradition.) In 1830, the English Quarterly Review wrote that “what is called the Tory might with more propriety be called the Conservative party,” and by the 1840s the terms were linked: the Tories were conservatives (the Whigs in England were the liberals, who opposed monarchy). According to Stanford University,

by 1840 Thomas Carlyle used “conservatism” to describe what he regarded as opposition to progress. (“Tory” survives, as a label for the British party…) Mill’s “Essay on Bentham” (1838) described Bentham as a “Progressive”, and Coleridge as a “Conservative”. Other European languages borrowed “conservative” and “conservatism” from English.

The Whigs in the United States, while taking the same name as the British party (they saw President Andrew Jackson’s policies as too authoritarian, dubbing him “King Andrew”), called itself “conservative” in the Civil War and Reconstruction years. In 1899, Henry Cabot Lodge described Daniel Webster, head of the Whigs in the U.S. before the Civil War, as “the leader of the conservative party,” but although “an unvarying conservative throughout his life, he was incapable of bigotry,” even supporting the removal of a religious test for public office because it was not a necessary “evil.” Lodge wrote that this showed, “more clearly than even ultra-conservatism could, how free he was from any touch of the reforming or innovating spirit,” as “he did not urge, on general principles, religious tests were wrong…and in hopeless conflict with the fundamental doctrines of American liberty and democracy.” He did it because tests were an unnecessary government function. Webster had an “aversion to radical general principles as grounds for change, and [an] inborn hostility to far-reaching change.”

So we see that in American politics, by the mid-1800s the words “liberal” and “conservative” had come to take on modern meanings relating to resistance to change versus the push for change.

In 1911, Ambrose Pierce of Ohio, in his witty Devil’s Dictionary, poked fun at both sides of the aisle when he defined a conservative as: “A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.”

In 1939, President Roosevelt said in a radio address, “A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward… A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head.”

Human Freedom and Progress

Here we arrive at our central question. Which ideology did the most to broaden freedom for the oppressed?

To answer this, it seems prudent to find in American history individuals who state clearly that they are liberals and support X, likewise conservatives who oppose X — or vice versa. It is not enough that historians call this “conservative” or that “liberal” — historical figures must describe their views as such. And it is not that there were not some liberals who surprised the majority of liberals by opposing X, nor that some conservatives supporting X was impossible. This article is speaking more generally, like how it is well understood today that liberals are more open to gay marriage than conservatives, but a minority of liberals may be opposed or a minority of conservatives be supportive.

Most importantly, this article examines the meaning of each ideology, as we have seen, and how those meanings related to movements for basic rights.

To determine which position broadened freedom (a subjective phrase itself), we will examine issues that today virtually all Americans agree with, no matter their political persuasion. Namely, that women should have the same rights as men and that blacks should have the same rights as white people. We will then look at a third, similar issue.

Women’s Rights

Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in The Woman’s Bible (1895), pushed for equality for women in the church and a woman’s right to divorce. She explained the book was created so “that we might have women’s commentaries on women’s position in the Old and New Testaments” and determine if such a position was sensible in the modern era, yet acknowledged that some “distinguished women” would not provide commentary out of

fear that they might compromise their evangelical faith by affiliating with those of more liberal views, who do not regard the Bible as the “Word of God,” but like any other book, to be judged by its merits. If the Bible teaches the equality of Woman, why does the church refuse to ordain women to preach the gospel…?

She urged full equality for women in the church, and said “protest” against a woman’s “present status in the Old and New Testament” was an important way to bring this about:

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving. Whatever your views may be as to the importance of the proposed work, your political and social degradation are but an outgrowth of your status in the Bible.

Stanton wrote of divorce laws, and which states were more favorable to women:

What Canada was to the Southern slaves under the old regime, a State with liberal divorce laws is to fugitive wives. If a dozen learned judges should get together, as is proposed, to revise the divorce laws, they would make them more stringent in liberal States instead of more lax in conservative States. When such a commission is decided upon, one-half of the members should be women, as they have an equal interest in the marriage and divorce laws… Though I should like to see New York and South Carolina liberalized, I should not like to see South Dakota and Indiana more conservative.

An anonymous commentator in the book said that

Jesus was the great leading Radical of his age. Everything that he was and said and did alienated and angered the Conservatives, those that represented and stood for the established order of what they believed to be the fixed and final revelation of God. Is it any wonder that they procured his death?

Here we have examples of “liberal” and “conservative” being used as they are used today (read the whole book for more), by a feminist who clearly favors liberalism. And Stanton is of course not alone. Teddy Roosevelt said in a 1913 speech supporting women’s right to vote that “we have advanced to a far better ideal, the ideal of equal partnership between man and woman… Conservative friends tell me that woman’s duty is the home. Certainly. So is man’s. The duty of a woman to the home isn’t any more than the man’s… The average woman needs fifteen minutes to vote, and I want to point out to the alarmist that she will have left 364 days, twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes.”

But what of the other side of the coin? Do we also have people seeking to hold women back, using conservative values as justification?

In the 1910s, the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, a New York-based organization, distributed a pamphlet outlining several reasons why women should not be allowed to vote, such as “Because in some States more voting women than voting men will place the Government under petticoat rule.” The last argument, echoing conservative meaning, was: “Because it is unwise to risk the good we already have for the evil which may occur.”

At a February 1907 hearing on an amendment to give women the vote in New York, an anti-suffragist named Emil Kuichling read the “official paper” for her colleagues:

Impulse is a thing which the legislator, of all men, should guard against, the thing be has no right to yield to. The New York legislator, as a rule, is a man who realizes this. We are proud of the fact that New York is a conservative state. She is rightly and truly progressive but she does not make a fetich [sic] of the word “progressive” and sacrifice common sense at its shrine.

Would it not be a rather impulsive act for the New York legislator, moved by the appeals of a minority, to favor the grave social experiment of giving the suffrage to more than two million women whom the suffragists, after sixty years of missionary work, cannot convert into wanting it? Women have been accused of being impulsive, but they are far seeing enough to be conservative on this question. Shall the New York legislator be less conservative than the New York woman?

But Anne F. Miller, a suffragist, gave a clever speech comparing resistance to the female vote with her resistance to owning a telephone:

I sympathize with [anti-suffragists] and I pity them, for I have been, for a short time, in a way an anti myself. Not in regard to the use of the ballot by the women, for I was born suffragist and have continued an enthusiastic suffragist; but I was an anti toward the use of the telephone in my own house! That seems absurd, does it not? But I didn’t want a telephone. I knew that we should come to it some day (as here and there an anti-suffragist admits in regard to the ballot), but I wanted to put off the day, for I knew when it came we should never again consider life complete without a telephone. We had hitherto lived very comfortably, and, hoped usefully, without one… I clung to what I called my freedom from the added responsibility of this new connection with life outside the home, but I knew in my heart that the days of my conservativism were numbered.

They came to an end very naturally, through an awakening to the needs of others. My eyes were open to the selfishness of my position… As I listened yesterday to the anti-suffragists…I was reminded of my own one-time attitude toward the telephone. Their objections seemed to me to be based as mine were. (1) On an entire satisfaction with the old way. (2) On a reluctance to open a new avenue of responsibility in a life which seemed already filled. But I awoke, as I am sure my sister antis will soon awake, to the selfishness of such a position.

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage described its work as “conservative” in 1906, and in 1908, in its “Thirteenth Annual Report,” the association described its principles as “conservative”:

The Executive Committee contributed 1,000 pamphlets for use at the State Fair, held in September, at Syracuse, where through the exertions of the Albany Auxiliary a booth was secured. On this was inscribed the conspicuous words “Opposed to Woman Suffrage.” The conservative principles of the Association were strictly adhered to by Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Hamilton and Mrs. Heath, who had the matter in charge.

In 1909, the Remonstrance, a quarterly publication of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women, wrote with relief: “As to municipal suffrage, in 1894 the House actually passed a municipal suffrage bill by a vote of 122 to 106, and only the conservatism of the Senate prevented its enactment… Does not this look as if the suffrage movement were ‘in process of defeat?'”

Clearly, our terms were used back then in the same manner as they are used today, to defend certain policies, some looked back on with admiration and others with disgust.

While we are on the subject of fierce women, Eleanor Roosevelt’s writings on a wide array of subjects provide later illumination. In the early 1950s, she wrote that “the welfare state, so much denounced, has obviously come to stay: the direct moral responsibility for minimum standards of living and social services which it took for granted, are today accepted without a murmur by the most conservative politicians in Western democracies.” Writing of famed socialist Norman Thomas, Roosevelt declared: “Mr. Thomas has seen many of the ideas that he tried to persuade people to accept finally become acceptable in the most conservative circles. So I think he must have the satisfaction of feeling that he has done something to make the world a better place for the majority of people to live in.”

Black Rights

Many of the most famous black leaders were so far left they called themselves socialists, like A. Phillip Randolph, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr. (sorry, he wasn’t a conservative), and the Black Panther leaders, who were inspired by Malcolm X. While it is tempting to dive into their thoughts on socialism and show how the radical left led the fight for black rights (also vocalized by abolitionists and slaveowners alike), this article is about liberalism and conservatism, so we must not digress.

Where else to begin but with infamous racist George Wallace, governor of Alabama and leading opponent of the civil rights movement, who said in a 1963 speech, “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

In July 1964, Wallace gave a speech called, “The Civil Rights Movement: Fraud, Sham and Hoax.” He called the Civil Rights Act, just signed into law by President Johnson, banning race discrimination and segregation in employment, public places, and schools, “the most monstrous piece of legislation ever enacted by the United States Congress.” He continued:

Never before in the history of this nation have so many human and property rights been destroyed by a single enactment of the Congress. It is an act of tyranny. It is the assassin’s knife stuck in the back of liberty.

With this assassin’s knife and a blackjack in the hand of the Federal force-cult, the left-wing liberals will try to force us back into bondage. Bondage to a tyranny more brutal than that imposed by the British monarchy which claimed power to rule over the lives of our forefathers under sanction of the Divine Right of kings.

He foams at the mouth at great length over how the bill would “enslave our nation,” how it is meant to “destroy the rights of private property” and “will destroy neighborhood schools” and “destroys your right — and my right — to choose my neighbors — or to sell my house to whomever I choose.” After saying the Supreme Court has more power than Hitler ever did, and ranting about Communists, Wallace declares:

I am a candidate for President of the United States… I am a conservative. I intend to give the American people a clear choice. I welcome a fight between our philosophy and the liberal left-wing dogma which now threatens to engulf every man, woman, and child in the United States.

To Wallace, the true conservative stands for “liberty and justice for all,” opposing the “senseless bloodletting now being performed on the body of liberty” by forcing whites to allow blacks into their schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, parks, and so on.

What of the “left-wing liberals”? Did they connect their liberal ideology with black equality, as Wallace clearly implies?

Here we turn to John F. Kennedy.

While JFK was not the most radically pro-civil rights figure, and was too slow on the issue in countless ways, he was on the right side of history. If you recall, the battle to integrate Alabama colleges was a President Kennedy-George Wallace showdown. On June 11, 1963, Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama auditorium with police and refused to allow black students to enter and register for classes.

Segregation in schools had been illegal in the U.S. since the Brown case nine years ago, but Alabama had not integrated. Wallace had been swearing for a year that he would personally stand in the doorway of any Alabama school that was ordered to let in blacks; the Kennedy administration pressured him for months before the June incident to follow federal law. When he wouldn’t, Kennedy ordered the Alabama National Guard mobilized with the famous Executive Order 11111. Wallace backed down.

In 1960, Kennedy was running for president as a Democrat — and a Liberal. He was nominated as the Democratic candidate in July 1960, but also became the candidate for the Liberal Party in New York in September 1960. The Liberal Party formed in the 1940s, an offshoot of the American Labor Party. Liberal Party members were unionists and liberals who didn’t like the pro-Communist leanings of the Labor Party, but stood for things like rent control, abortion rights, separation of church and state, ending corporate influence in government, and civil rights. Accepting the Liberal nomination helped Kennedy win New York.

On September 14, 1960, Kennedy gave a speech accepting the Liberal Party nomination. He said:

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label “Liberal?” If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But if by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

“Someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions” — the textbook definition of a liberal, whether lowercase or uppercase, with a mention of “civil rights” included.

On the evening of June 11, 1963, Kennedy addressed the nation concerning the crisis at the University of Alabama, which ended mere hours before:

This afternoon, following a series of threats and defiant statements, the presence of Alabama National Guardsmen was required on the University of Alabama to carry out the final and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened to have been born Negro.

He made several inspiring calls for integration and equality, before calling for legislation that would soon be called the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened…

The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?…

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression…

Yet he also said something with an untruthful implication:

Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every State of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety. Nor is this a partisan issue. In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.

The truth is political beliefs were a major obstacle to uniting on the race issue. JFK knew it, and so did Wallace.

Ordinary people understood this, too. C. Howard Britain, a doctor, wrote to the American Journal of Nursing in December 1963:

I have read the editorial concerning the merits of integration — if there are any… I rebuke you and the ANA [American Nurses Association] for supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1963 (H.R. 7152). Either you are grossly ignorant or it is your purpose to mislead your readers into thinking that this bill is in the best interests of Americans. I, and millions of other Americans, are fed up with these magazines which are saturated with liberal thinkers and left-wing editors.

As one can see, there is not much difference at all in the way people used these political terms.

Gay Rights

We will not spend much time on this issue — not because it is less important, but because there is far less confusion as to where followers of each ideology usually stand. It is widely accepted that opponents of an issue like gay marriage tend to be conservative, while supporters tend to be liberal. Yet some day in the future, when the hysteria over homosexuality has passed (or at least been confined to the rightwing fringe, such as modern conservative critics of women’s voting rights or conservatives being slightly less likely to approve of interracial marriage), people may forget — just as they have forgotten what conservatism meant to the black American under Jim Crow or the woman in a world ruled exclusively by men.

Thus I will offer quick quotes from two modern political thinkers. Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry said, “I’m an authentic conservative” and made it explicit that “Gay marriage is not fine with me” and that like alcoholism, “Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle, you have the ability to decide not to do that.” In other words, gay people should practice self-repression. Don’t flirt with members of the same sex, don’t date them, don’t marry them, certainly don’t have sex with them. If homosexuals would just go through life acting like heterosexuals, there’d be no need for bothersome equal rights laws like gay marriage legalization. But Democratic Congressman Barney Frank said:

I do have things I would like to see adopted on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people: they include the right to marry the individual of our choice; the right to serve in the military to defend our country; and the right to a job based solely on our own qualifications. I acknowledge that this is an agenda, but I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people’s rights to get married, join the army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.

He made clear elsewhere: “I am a liberal.”

Remember, dear readers from present or future, that this does not mean all conservatives opposed gay marriage nor all liberals supported it. Just remember that self-described conservatives were consistently more than twice as likely to oppose gay marriage than self-described liberals (Barney Frank is a gay man himself, but that doesn’t change this fact).

The Subjectivity of Freedom

Freedom is subjective.

The white owner wants the freedom to keep black people out of his restaurant; blacks want the freedom to eat where they wish. The man wants the freedom to govern without female interference; the woman wants the freedom to partake in democracy. The Christian owner wants freedom from providing goods or service to gay people, the religious county clerk the freedom to deny legal marriage licenses; the LGBTQ American wants the freedom to shop where he wish or get her marriage license without any worry of discrimination. American progress is defined by a battle between opposing ideas of freedom.

As Ambrose Pierce implied, to one the status quo is evil, to the other the evil is undoing the status quo — change. The definitions of conservative and liberal align neatly, by the way, with modern psychological research indicating a person who thinks in less abstract ways or has a larger right amygdala, which influences fear and anxiety, tends to be conservative. Fear of “the Other” is a real factor of political ideology.

I didn’t mention gay rights in the “Human Freedom and Progress” section because Americans are not in a place of overwhelming agreement like the issues of women’s basic rights or blacks’ basic rights — I wanted the connection of all three to hit home at the end. Eventually, whether in 50 years, 100, or 500, people will look back and likewise marvel that there was such bickering over gay rights. They will be amazed that society appeased the people who wanted the freedom to turn gay people away, justified using religion, for so long! In the future, homosexuality will be considered (because scientific evidence has finally been accepted) a completely natural biological trait, as natural as heterosexuality, and more people will have rejected ancient religious texts as embarrassingly poor codes of moral conduct. People certainly won’t take seriously the argument that sexuality is so different than race or gender that it’s OK to withhold equal rights from homosexuals (that it’s specifically vilified in the Bible won’t matter either, as people will remember that a plethora of verses condoned slavery and the oppression of women but are now ignored).

And of course, future Americans will look at political ideology. They will consider the definitions of “liberal” and “conservative,” and then read of the liberals pushing for one type of freedom and conservatives pushing for another.

They will shake their heads, amazed such a battle was ever necessary.

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We Can End Homelessness in Kansas City Forever

Posted on December 9, 2016 by G.S. Griffin under Politics

The opening of a brief Kansas City Star article on homelessness from early 2016 said it all:

For the third time in two months, a homeless man intentionally damaged a Kansas City police vehicle because he wanted to go to jail to have a warm place to stay and something to eat.

After smashing a police cruiser’s taillight, the man turned himself in, explaining he didn’t like local shelters and would prefer prison.

Homeless Kansas Citians, specifically their plight and possible solutions, do not make the local news often enough, even while their faces grow familiar to commuters. Kansas City’s homeless are white, black, or brown; old, young, men, women, children, veterans, victims of abuse; disabled, mentally ill, perfectly healthy.

True, the number of homeless Kansas Citians is dropping. According to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Kansas City had an estimated 3,307 homeless people in 2011 (in 2010, Kansas City had the seventh largest homeless population per capita in the nation). Data from 2012 shows about 2,500 homeless people, with over 700 unsheltered. Some 350 individuals were “chronically homeless,” of these just over 100 unsheltered.

That year some 600 were mentally ill, 500 were domestic violence victims, 600 abused drugs or alcohol, 300 were veterans. From 2010-2011, of all homeless adults in local shelters, 10-15% of 18-50 year olds had children with them. The majority of the children were 1-5 or 6-12.

Synergy House, a shelter in Kansas City, writes that

43% of homeless youth report being beaten by a caretaker
40% of homeless youth report being gay and abused in their schools and homes for their orientation
44% of homeless youth report that one or both of their parents had at some point received treatment for alcohol, drug or psychological problems

In 2015, according to KMBC,

the number was down to about 1,450 [345 children]. Still, experts said 19 new families get evicted every day.

Eric Peterson has been homeless for nearly two years. He said it can happen to anyone. “Man, it can happen in just an instant,” he said.

Homelessness is both caused and perpetuated by poverty, job loss, eviction or foreclosure, domestic abuse, substance abuse, mental illness, disability, and other factors. Side of the Road is a 12-minute documentary that gives a voice to Kansas City’s homeless.

While it is encouraging local and national numbers of homeless men, women, and children are declining, these causes are unlikely to disappear. And while local organizations such as the Homelessness Task Force, Artists Helping the Homeless, Homeless Services Coalition of Greater Kansas City, Project Homeless Connect KC, reStart, and the shelters themselves deserve immense praise and reverence for helping the homeless find housing, medical and mental health care, transportation, and jobs–and new townhomes for the homeless are easing the problem–there is more Kansas City can do.

I wrote an article in December 2015 entitled, “U.S. and Canadian Governments Ending Homelessness by Offering Jobs,” which examined the efforts of cities hiring homeless workers to improve their communities.

I wrote that Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example,

began a program that pays a small crew of homeless workers $9 an hour (and a small lunch) to clean up blighted areas of the city…

Mayor Richard J. Berry said, “It’s about the dignity of work… If we can get your confidence up a little, get a few dollars in your pocket, get you stabilized to the point where you want to reach out for services, whether the mental health services or substance abuse services — that’s the upward spiral that I’m looking for… The indignity of having to beg for money cuts through the soul.”

One of the workers, Ramona Beletso, who has slept in cardboard boxes and struggled with alcohol use, said, “I worked for my money. And that feels good.”

And Reno, Nevada

started paying its own small group of homeless residents $10 an hour for three days of work each week to clean up the Truckee River. The city will provide recommendation letters and financial and interview training to help workers find employment in the private sector.

A councilwoman said, “The public has expected something creative and different from us, so I’m glad that we have committed funding to this. It’s not only about instilling pride in the workers from a good hard-day’s work, but also cleaning up the river for the community.”

A homeless worker, through tears, promised at a press conference, “We will make you proud.”

And Winnipeg in Canada launched a program that

pays homeless persons $11 an hour to pick up trash, shovel snow, and other tasks. In 2014, 86 people worked at various times for the city.

An organizer noted it gives workers experience and references for later use, and that the program lets “people see their capabilities and believe in themselves again. They’ve still got gas in the tank. They’re still capable, and it’s a catalyst to get back into the workforce… When we go out you see innate gifts…the leaders, helpers, caretakers…”

A worker named Randy Malbranck…praised the organizers as “tremendous,” and the job has allowed him to move closer to his goal of renting an apartment. “I think it’s very good. If somebody needs work or needs a little bit of money, it helps… The next step is to just get a full-time job.”

Other cities are considering similar job programs, and there is little reason Kansas City cannot follow suit. We need a new, sensible solution to homelessness that might at least partially satisfy those on the Right (no government handouts, people will be paid to work) and the Left (those that fall to the bottom of the social pit will not be left to rot).

And there is precedent here in Kansas City: in 2010 the Missouri Department of Transportation allied with reStart to hire 6 to 9 homeless workers at minimum wage to pick up trash in the urban core. Even disabled persons can be paid for non-physical tasks that improve the community, such as helping children learn to read at public libraries.

In the cities mentioned, work crews were funded through taxes (also supported by donations).

Opponents of a Kansas City jobs program will decry the cost. Yet hopefully someone will point out to them that if Kansas City can afford an Arrowhead Stadium renovation that drew $212 million from tax dollars, Kauffman renovation that cost the people $225 million, or the $6 million from individual transportation sales taxes and a tax on surrounding businesses for the new streetcar, a program to end the joblessness — and homelessness — of the poorest of our neighbors is in the realm of the possible.

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Griffin

The political writings of G.S. Griffin

Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

The Evidence of Widespread American Racism

Housing

Employment

The Criminal Justice System

Portrayals in the Media

And more

Absolutely Horrific Things You Didn’t Know Were in the Bible

DISTURBING SEXUAL FIXATIONS

THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN

EXECUTION FOR NONVIOLENT CRIMES

SLAVERY

WAR, CONQUEST, GENOCIDE, AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

GOD LYING TO, KILLING, HUMILIATING, AND SELLING PEOPLE

‘It’s a Sin Problem, Not a Skin Problem’: On God and Racism

Which Broadened Freedom For the Oppressed? Liberalism or Conservatism?

The terms and their origins

Human Freedom and Progress

Women’s Rights

Black Rights

Gay Rights

The Subjectivity of Freedom

We Can End Homelessness in Kansas City Forever