Bailout 13: Breaking Up the Oligarchy

An excellent analysis of the current state of the banking industry was mentioned on truthout. It comes through several layers. The interview I read was from Bill Moyers, and he was talking to an analyst whose piece he had read, MIT's Simon Johnson. Johnson participates in a blog called The Baseline Scenario. It is a pretty interesting site, and readable.

The conversation starts around Johnson's experience while working for the International Monetary Fund. He points out similarities in the current US economy to the oligarchic systems which can be found in places like Russia, Indonesia, Thailand, or Korea.

In the US, folks tend to be lulled into believing that vigorous democracy is alive and well, even though such enormous amounts of money sway elections, and the people appointed to regulate industries are mostly industry insiders. Over a decade ago, John Howard Yoder, writing about the church in relation to the modern nation-state, proposed that the US was better described as a plutocracy than a democracy. Now, with a few executives of huge corporations seemingly able to do whatever they want with huge amounts of taxpayer money, maybe Johnson is right to see an oligarchy in place. It is an excellent interview for reading or watching.

Reversing the Police State and Torture

The Patriot Act and the numerous laws and policies that have followed in its wake represent a dangerous turn in U. S. government and society. I have long criticized these laws and worked for their repeal. The Cheney-Bush policies about torture, secrecy, wiretapping, etc., have made the U. S. an ever greater symbol of repression.

I read with interest a post by Michael Westmoreland-White concerning Obama's appointments to the Justice Department. MW-W is encouraged that these high-level lawyers will turn the tide on civil liberties. I hope and pray that he is right. Thanks, Michael, for your helpful analysis.

Bailout 12: Whose Justice? Which Regulations?

The usual debates about economic policy end up gravitating toward "free market" solutions versus "government intervention." The assumption is that one side encourages regulation and the other deregulation. Dean Baker has pointed out repeatedly how this way of presenting the argument misleads, obscuring the ways that interests of different groups are served by policies. In an article from The Boston Review, he gives a more extensive argument with numerous helpful examples.

Baker claims that markets are always regulated, and most "free market" conservatives actually favor a certain kind of government regulation that protects the interests of the wealthy. He uses numerous examples, such as the cost of drugs, computer operating systems, and music protected by patent and copyright laws. These laws require extensive government involvement in industry and personal life, or regulation. He points out that arguments favoring changes in bankruptcy laws have focused on the irresponsible decisions of borrowers and created government intervention on behalf of creditors without imposing the same kind of penalties on the irresponsible decisions of the creditors who were not forced to loan money. While many industrial and service workers are unprotected from international competition, the government intervenes extensively to protect doctors, lawyers, and many other powerful professions from international competition, even though many of those regulations have nothing to do with protecting public health or order.

In relation to the recent bailout, he says that the so-called deregulation of the finance industry over recent decades failed to deregulate at a key point: it preserved the "to-big-to-fail" doctrine. Thus, as financial institutions, executives, investors, and other players took greater and greater risks on the assumption that the housing bubble would never crash, they knew that they would ultimately not be allowed to fail. After all of the carnage, those who reaped enormous profits during the boom (not just the paper profits, but the ones cashed in) get to keep their "earnings," while others (homeowners, pensioners, the uninsured, the unemployed, the taxpayers) will have to pay for the costs of their profligacy. This is a government intervention, not a free market. A purely free market solution of letting the banks fail, the insurance companies fail, and other giant corporations fail would probably have been worse. But the point is that the decision to bail out reveals that it was never a free market. It was always regulated.

Christmas Letter

We used to be very faithful senders of the "informative Christmas letter," but over the years I have found myself pressed with lots of things as December rolls around. We missed quite a few years, becoming occasional senders of greetings.

But this year Everly got us organized, and we put one together. Our mailing lists are not fully up to date, so some of the letters are coming back stamped "no such addressee." I'm sorry if we did not get letters to all the right addresses.

Here is a copy for those who are interested.

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Merry Christmas 2008

Seasons Greetings from the Durham Broadways! We hope this letter finds you well this holiday season. We missed sending a letter last year, as sometimes happens, so we will try to make up for it in this one. ☺

David is still working part time at Waldenbooks near the Broadway home in Durham. He has now moved to a house just two blocks away from the rest of the family, which he shares with two friends, some budgies, and a guinea pig. He is attending North Carolina Central University in Durham, majoring in history. He’s driving the Saturn wagon that Grandpa Herbie and Granny Ree used to own, and one of his favorite hangouts is an estate sale store called Everything but Granny’s Panties. He’s discovered vinyl LP records there, so he got a turntable to listen to them.

Naomi graduated from high school in June 2007. Spring Break of her senior year was spent with 38 other AP Biology students in Mexico and Belize. The next fall she entered St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX. Majoring in Psychology, she has now spent three semesters there and is still enjoying it very much. Still dancing, she is active in the campus Ballet Folklórico and the dance ministry at First Baptist Church in Austin. This past summer she was elected to be the Young Adult representative on the Board of the Baptist Peace Fellowship and attended the first meeting in Vancouver in October 2008. She will be joining the college ministry of First Baptist on a mission trip to Chile in May 2009.

Lydia is in the 11th grade at Riverside High School. She is in an engineering program called Project Lead the Way, which has given her the chance to take courses in computer assisted drafting, digital electronics, and other specialized study. She is the secretary of the student group for engineering called Technical Students Association. She also works a couple of afternoons a week at One World Market, a fair trade craft store, where she helps with unpacking shipments, setting up displays, running the cash register, and whatever else they ask her to do. She continues to learn new skills in playing the guitar and meets her teacher once a week. At church, she is an officer in the Youth Missionaries and helps Dad in the nursery fairly often. She’s driving her car pool to school this year.

Everly is the Section Chief for Mathematics K-12 for the NC Department of Public Instruction. In case you did not hear, in August 07 she was able to go as a VIP guest of NASA to see the launch of the space shuttle, a day to remember. She put in many hours over the past year revising and completing her research at UNC. In November, she successfully defended her dissertation, completing her doctoral degree. The research is on the possibilities for improving achievement by improving the math curriculum in high schools, with a particular focus on the achievement of African American students. In October, she caught up with Mike and turned 50, and to celebrate, she and her sister Ruthie went to see the new Donny and Marie Osmond stage show in Las Vegas. They got front row seats and an opportunity for autographs and photos with Donny and Marie.

Mike continues to teach at Shaw University Divinity School and to serve at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church. This past year he has helped to revive the Faculty Senate and served as a committee chair, researching and working for equity on issues of faculty compensation. He has also been learning to organize his work around the new emphasis on assessment of student learning outcomes, a whole new set of jargon with more complicated ways of writing syllabi, assignments, and planning documents. Ugh! This past summer, Mike was invited to be a keynote speaker for the Ekklesia Project Gathering in Chicago, IL, speaking on ecclesiology, hermeneutics, and race. He also gave his Presidential Address on the concept of “whiteness” in relation to black theologies at the annual meeting of a regional group of Baptist professors. At church, he teaches middle schoolers in Sunday School, helps coordinate the nursery, and works with the community organizing (everyone knows what that is this year) group Durham CAN.

The whole family again attended the Baptist Peace Fellowship Summer Conference. The 2007 meeting was in Berea, KY, and this year in Montreal, Quebec. The girls joined Mike for the trip to Chicago this summer, and they wore themselves out visiting museums. Some of Everly’s intense writing opportunities during the past year took place at a friend’s beach house near Wilmington, and the girls tagged along to spend a few days on the beach vacationing. The 1994 Dodge van is in its final days. We replaced it with a smaller wagon for traveling, a 2008 Scion xB. The van, at 249,000-plus miles, has served us well, but it’s not really roadworthy any more. It will soon find its final rest at a local junk yard, once we stop using it as a storage container.

In their Jubilee year, Mike and Everly remember the vision of God’s Shalom for all people of the earth, and we pray that we and you may live as witness and sign of that Shalom as we give of ourselves as we have received from God’s abundance.

The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth.

For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes,

But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums.

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever—
Redemption rips through the surface of time

In the cry of a tiny babe.

-- Bruce Cockburn, “Cry of a Tiny Babe”

Bailout 11: Market Morality Won't Just Vanish

The assumption of much public policy making is that getting the money in the right place or setting up the right program will solve problems. Of course, these things can and do make a difference. However, as Cornel West argued long ago, changing the conditions of extreme poverty will not go away just by setting up programs. Nor will they go away by telling the people caught up in poverty to change their behavior. Culture and social structures are interlinked. That is why he wrote about "market morality." When social thinking becomes colonized and dominated by doctrinaire market theories, then other forms of moral vision and community begin to be eclipsed by individual self-interest. That is why West called for a "politics of conversion:" the change has to be deep and it has to be systemic.

Henry A. Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux have picked up this argument in relation to the current bailout of the economy. They recognize that new views of the economy are gaining a hearing, but they also point out that the general population has been schooled in free market thinking and its market morality. A change that renews the commitment to the common good, a belief in government's role to do good for citizens, and moral limits on individual freedom will require a process of education.

Politics is not simply about the production and protection of economic formations; it is also about the production of individuals, desires, identifications, values and modes of understanding for inhabiting the ideological and institutional forms that make up a social order. At the very least, any attempt to both understand the current crisis and what it would mean to produce a new kind of subject willing to invest in and struggle for a democratic society needs to raise another set of questions in addition to those currently posed.

Moral formation of another sort is required. Are there any communities of alternative formation that can point the direction toward a more humane vision of economic life? Churches too often have allowed the economics of the world to negate the economic vision of the Bible. We need churches to stand for an economic life in which "there are no needy among you" (Deuteronomy 15:4; Acts 4:34).

Clean Energy Jobs

Van Jones has risen to leadership in the dual struggle for a cleaner environment and an end to poverty. The founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Jones engaged in the struggle to improve the lives of young blacks in the Bay Area. Over time, he gained a new recognition of the relationship of race, poverty, and the environment, leading him to found another organization called Green for All. An excellent article, "Greening the Ghetto," tells about his ideas, his life, and the influence he is now having on public policy.

Bailout 10: Make Banks Accountable

Today's news reports that the Governor of Illinois has threatened to suspend state business with Bank of America. B of A is the bank which cut off credit to a window and door factory that has announced it will close, leading workers to sit in at the factory to demand the company pay them for accrued time.

Now the Governor of Illinois may in part be trying to distract attention from his other problems, such as being arrested on corruption charges today. However, it is about time leaders make this kind of decision to stand up to the banks which have become beneficiaries of one of the greatest wealth redistributions ever known. Public servants need to serve the public interest. Tax dollars are for the public interest. When tax dollars are provided to a private corporation in order to further the public interest in stabilizing the economy, then those private corporations must be held accountable.

That is why I wrote to my Representative, David Price, today to ask for increased oversight over banks and financial institutions who received "bailout" funds from the Department of the Treasury. The accountability was left too vague, and executives are retaining their expense accounts and euphemistically renamed "bonuses" while autoworkers are being demonized as overpaid for getting middle-class salaries, health care benefits, and retirement. I asked him to demand repayment from banks that refuse to make these funds available to support industry and jobs in the economy. If dramatic change can be demanded of GM, and I am all for that, then it can be demanded of Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldmon Sachs, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and others.

Get rid of the $10 million Wells Fargo (see Bailout 9 post) severance package for one Wachovia executive and you can pay annual salary and benefits for over 100 of the better paid GM autoworkers who have mortgages to pay and families to support. Okay, let the Wachovia guy have the same amount as an autoworker. Bank of America's bailout money would be much better used if provided directly to struggling industrial producers.

Praying Before Eating, Praying Before Consuming

Our mealtime prayers precede a kind of consuming. But that word consuming has a more complex meaning related to a form of economic activity central to our culture and society. Rachel Anderson wrote an intriguing reflection on the practice of praying before consuming, tying it to this seasonal feast of shopping.

We pray in gratitude at mealtime. Are we also grateful in our other consumer activity?

We pray in humility because we are not able on our own to assure the supply of food. Are we humble in our other consumer activity?

We pray in compassion for those who made it possible for us to eat and for those who may not share our abundance. Are we compassionate toward the makers, the workers, the less prosperous, in our buying?

We pray in hope for many more good meals shared with our loved ones. Are our acts of consumption acts of hope for shared prosperity?

The idea grabs hold of me as I think back on the past few weeks of shopping for a car and shopping for gifts. Here is a portion of Anderson's essay from God's Politics.

A gratitude economy involves, I think, a more spiritually conscious consumerism. It is no better to wallow in guilt about our need to buy things than to flaunt our ability to buy while considering ourselves specially blessed. It will not advance global justice to focus simply on what not to buy; rather we also have the responsibility to buy the right things –- for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters worldwide.

As we go about our shopping or no-shopping in the next days, why not say a prayer dedicating the buying and giving and receiving and yes -– our stuff — to God?

May the food we eat feed those who farmed it. May the things we buy support those who fashioned and shipped and sold them. For everything we enjoy from your good earth, God, thank you.

And if the purchase doesn’t sit right with the prayer –- well, maybe that’s a sign to put it back on the shelf.

This is a good place to link a video I saw recently from a group called the advent conspiracy. Take a look at it. It is not a new idea, but a good presentation of ideas long promoted by people like Alternatives for Simple Living and BPFNA.

Buy Nothing Day Report

We had a good Buy Nothing Day in the cold gray weather. We had coffee, ate leftovers (including pie), ran into friends, slept late, did some organizing, walked around in downtown Asheville and made a visit to the grocery store, where we did buy something (we're not legalists).

A few friends in Philadelphia got together to announce the good news of being together and caring for one another. Here is a video they posted. Enjoy it.

Bailout 9: Will Obama's Advisers Learn from Their Own Mistakes?

The New York Times printed a good editorial expressing the reservations I share with many people about the President-Elect's chosen economic advisers. Larry Summers helped to craft the deregulation of derivatives. Timothy Geithner played a role in scheming the strange and problematic bailouts of financial institutions in the past couple of months. Neither one of them gave early warning of the housing bubble that has caused our current crisis. Will they do better next time? We must make sure our representatives know we are concerned, and let Mr. Obama know that he needs to be listening to more than the same people who were architects of a building in ruins.

Obama's critics jumped all over a phrase he used in a conversation with a plumber's assistant in Ohio. He remarked that everyone in financial difficulty, from top to bottom, would benefit together if we "spread the wealth around." Dean Baker points out that Secretary Paulson, Chairman Bernanke, and the Bailout planners are busy with their own plans to "spread the wealth around." Who is using government to transfer wealth from some citizens to others? Wells Fargo, a beneficiary of the bailout (announced that ten top executives of Wachovia) the bank they were able to buy because of the bailout, would be eligible to receive an average of $10 million each for severance. That money is coming from somewhere. I thought the banks were out of funds. Oh, yeah--taxpayers have to pay it. Talk to your representatives.

Bailout 8: Who Needs a Pay Cut?

In discussions of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler during recent days, many people have sought to name the problem that has brought these automakers into such serious difficulties. Of course, the precipitating events have to do with the decline of wealth among U. S. car buyers because of the drop in home values after the housing bubble deflated. The general economic crisis that includes layoffs and fear of layoffs also led to an unprecedented drop in auto sales.

These immediate and serious causes are part of the picture, but there are other reasons. Many people believe that the next credit crisis will come in consumer debt. People have been living as if they can buy more and more things they can't afford, and lending institutions have allowed it. This is again related to the housing price bubble. If consumer debt got too large, the paper wealth of the ever increasing real estate market was the counterbalance. People could refinance consumer debt with home equity loans. So as credit card debt gets tight, people can't or won't buy a car.

Other people address the environmental and energy-efficiency issues in relation to the Big Three automakers. These companies resisted alternative energy sources, even killing previous progress on electric vehicles. They resisted fuel efficiency standards and majored on building larger gas-guzzler vehicles. Unlike some other automakers, they did not keep up the pace of developing new and better technology for automobiles. They failed to adopt a business model by which they could make strong profits from selling smaller, more efficient cars. When the volatility of gasoline prices struck, driving transportation costs higher and higher, they found themselves stuck with large numbers of vehicles that people were less and less interested in owning.

Among many other reasons given, some people have blamed the automakers' problems on unionized workers. Certainly the benefit plans and retirement plans for these workers are expensive. But most of the attacks on the union workers' wages hid or ignored important facts.

For instance, the highest paid auto workers in the U. S. last year worked for Toyota building Camrys, not for GM. The worker pay differential between companies selling cars in the U. S. is changing. That does not, however, mean that all non-union auto factories in the U. S. are paying comparable wages. It does mean that it is possible to pay high wages, comparable to or greater than the union wages paid to GM workers, and make great profits.

Second, it targets union workers and not other potential candidates for pay cuts in the industry. Who else is getting good pay in the auto industry? Why not cut their pay? As Congressional questioners wondered, why not cut corporate jets for the executives?

Dean Baker makes this point well when he addresses the case of Robert Rubin, an economist who is having a great deal of opportunity to speak about how to solve the current economic crisis. Rubin worked in the Clinton administration, and his allies are being named as Obama advisers. But in January of this year, he said that the economy's struggles would not lead to any serious problems, and certainly no economic meltdown.

Baker points out that Rubin was interim CEO of Citigroup, and that he remains an executive and a director of the corporation that the government bailed out again over the weekend. He was part of the leadership who oversaw the bad loans and the risks of an inflated housing market. Even farther back, he was a central figure in U. S. economic institutions during the dot.com bubble that led to the last recession. Baker asks why with all the hoopla about GM autoworker wages, no one is asking whether Robert Rubin will be taking a pay cut. Who needs a pay cut when corporations are struggling? Why not the executives who helped lead the corporation into their crises?

Close the SOA/WHINSEC

On Saturday evening, Lydia (my 16-yr-old daughter) and I made the long trip to Georgia to participate in a solemn prayer vigil and protest. We met my other daughter, Naomi, who came from Texas, and a friend named Frances from Louisiana.


We gathered outside the gates of Ft. Benning with thousands of other people. You can view a news report from a local station in Columbus, GA.


Our purpose was to convince the Pentagon, Congress, and the President that the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation must be closed. This training school, known in Latin America as the "School of Assassins," has funded "anti-insurgency" courses for officers and soldiers of the militaries of Latin American countries for over sixty years.

Banished from Panama as "the biggest base for destabilization in Latin America," the school was relocated to Ft. Benning, in Columbus, GA. There it continued its work on behalf of multinational corporations and U. S. interests, training the Latin American militaries to repress movements for greater democratization and economic restructuring. After shocking news of murder and repression in Central American countries in the 1980s, especially El Salvador and Guatemala, many U. S. citizens awakened to the role of the School of the Americas in exporting violence and torture to neighboring countries. Heinous crimes against church leaders, educators, labor organizers, and entire villages of peasants were being ordered, led, and committed by graduates trained at the SOA. In El Salvador, among the thousands of victims were Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered while conducting mass; four Maryknoll Mission church women; and a household of priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter, including Father Ignacio Ellacuria, a well-known theologian.


Church people and other protests became increasingly organized to close this training school.


One key point in the campaign was the discovery of a training manual which included instructions for employing torture as a way to prevent insurgency. As the movement brought pressure on Congress to close the SOA, eventually the possibility of its being shut down became realistic. In a bureaucratic and legislative sleight of hand, the Pentagon and Congress finally cut off funding for the SOA, closing it down in the final days of the Clinton presidency. However, it was immediately replaced by WHINSEC (a much harder abbreviation to parody), using the same buildings, the same faculty, the same courses, and empowered for the same purposes. Even thought the military "closed the SOA," the effort to end its exporting of torture and violence had to continue.

After the Abu Ghraib photos became public and discussion of the use of torture by U. S. government or military officials came into public debate, the momentum again began to build to close the SOA. At the vigil and protest that year, I displayed a sign asking, "Do you believe us now?" Yes, it is possible that the U. S. government may promote torture as a tool of policy.

In 2006, the effort to end funding for SOA/WHINSEC fell short by a mere six votes. Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich announced his plans to shut down the SOA, and thirty-five of the Congressional Representatives who voted to continue funding for the SOA in 2006 were defeated in the recent election. The President-Elect has announced plans to close the Guantanamo detention facility, but he has not taken any public stand about closing the SOA.

I encourage you to sign the petition to the next President to close this school by executive order. I also urge you to write to your Congressional Representative, asking her or him to vote against any further funding for the SOA/WHINSEC.

This year the sign I held during the vigil said, "LET 2008 BE OUR LAST TIME." If you look at the news report video I mentioned above, about two-thirds of the way through you can see my hand lift this sign up in the middle of the screen.


I hope you will help make that happen.

Buy Nothing Day

There's nothing like an economic crisis to get us thinking about our spending. Reports on retail sales indicate many people are cutting back on spending. Wal-Mart and Costco are still making good profits, so it seems that the people who are shopping are inclined to hunt for bargains. The advertisements are getting thicker and rowdier in my newspaper and my mailbox. SALE! SALE! SALE! A Target commercial on TV has little children acting in a school Christmas pageant about going shopping.


As we approach the end of this Christian year and the beginning of the next with Advent, we find ourselves living in conflicting times. The standard calendar, the Christian calendar, the school calendar, and the shopping calendar are out of sync. Advent tells us to pause and reflect, awaiting what God will do. School tells us to burrow in and study, finish projects, and pull all-nighters. Shopping tells us that Christmas is the high festival of consumption, and we must offer sacrifices at the malls and department stores for a month in advance, especially on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving Day.

In an effort to recover some sanity about this time of year, a variety of groups have renamed Black Friday as "Buy Nothing Day." Rather than get caught up in a feeding frenzy of shopping, they say to use this day for family time, doing things together, playing games, telling stories, serving others. An entry in the God's Politics Blog suggests using the day to make things rather than buy things. Give some thought to making a different use of the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Bailout 7: Cheering on the Road to Destruction

When we think about the economic situation we find ourselves in, it is amazing that so few people had noticed that it was coming. Certainly there were people concerned about sub-prime mortgages, and now and then someone would suggest there was a "housing bubble." People debated whether the stock market was on a long downward trend or just a temporary decline. Many predicted a rosy future as economic skittishness passed on by and people got back to spending more money than they have.

A viral video showed up this week with clips of business news programs in which various analysts discussed the direction of the economy in 2006 and 2007. The theme of these clips was a certain analyst named Peter Schiff who was predicting a severe recession because of the inflated prices of homes and stocks. He said a long and serious recession was about to come. He said to stay away from financial stocks because these companies were not making any money. He said that people would see their assets dissolving as "paper wealth" went back up into thin air. They would respond by stopping their spending and borrowing and starting to save money to make up for the lost paper wealth they thought they had in their overpriced homes. He said it would not be merely a subprime mortgage problem, but most of the housing market would crash, people would default in record numbers, unemployment would soar, and credit would dry up.

All the while, these clips show business reporters recommending people buy stock in Merrill Lynch ("an astonishingly well-run company"), Washington Mutual, Goldman Sachs, and even Bear Stearns. They continually laughed at Peter Schiff's claims that these companies were terrible investments which would soon crash because they have no real earnings.

Well, we don't know if he got everything right about what was coming, but one thing is clear. There were people who could see this crising coming, and there were people wearing rosy tinted glasses who insisted that every day things would gett better and better. Much like the dot.com bubble and crash, they were operating in what seems now to be a kind of hysteria, mutually reinforcing one another's willful ignorance. They were not reporters, but promoters of borrowing and spending, without concern for saving money. It was very poor wishful thinking, and perhaps even for some, a kind of dissembling.

Carter's RACE 7: Perpetual Peace for Our Kind of People

As the Enlightened European race moves toward its destiny, its political development is driven by two poles, and advance toward both makes advance toward either possible. The first pole is humanity’s development toward a cosmopolitical universal history. Reason, as the selfsame character of the species in all persons of the species, drives humanity toward this necessary outcome. On the other hand, the distinct nation-states must develop toward democratic polities. Such democratic polities are hindered by the infighting among Europeans.

In both cases, the emergence of an Enlightened race of human beings is the critical task. Yet in both the remote orient and the central occident, the unenlightened alien remains a problem. Carter says,

To reflect on the problem of the alien body, whether without or within, is to attend all along to the perfection of the white, occidental body.

This problem gives Kant the task of articulating a political structure and process by which whiteness can be perfected. It will require the subjugation of the racial alien within and without. Again, quoting Carter,

Race controls Kant’s ostensibly egalitarian politics of global civil society and a domestic civil society.

A political theory emerges. Kant will ground it in his new science of anthropology. It becomes, as Carter shows, the predominant research and teaching project of his entire career as a professor. It links together his “1780s critical phase” and his “1790s postcritical phase.” He seeks the answer to how the purified reason of his critical work might emerge as the perfected humanity of Enlightenment, a destiny borne by whites and the emergence of reason in their transracial humanity.

In an unpublished, and incomplete, essay on Baptist ethics and race relations in the U. S., I undertook to examine baptist historiography and how it affects baptist theologizing, and in particular how it has engaged topics of race. My analysis of one historian led me to compare his methodology for describing baptist identity to Kantian use of polar logic, as in the antinomies. Perhaps most fascinating to me now in reflecting back on that essay is Carter’s emphasis here on how the polar logic becomes a driving force toward progress in history. Unlike Hegelian contradictions, the Kantian antinomies do not struggle until one overcomes and absorbs the other, but they remain in antinomic relationship as an engine of progress. Both law and freedom drive the advance of human rationalization of society. Both remain established in the vision of any end, even though they seem to stand in contradiction.

If baptist identity affirms both the authority of Scripture and liberty of conscience, some would argue that it maintains a sort of Kantian antinomy. I gained from Carter’s argument something that I did not recognize in my original analysis of the historical approach. This antinomy drives progress. It identifies a field in which the internal teleology of baptist existence develops. In part, one might recognize just such a teleology in certain baptist historiography. I do not intend to say that such teleologies are driven by race in the same way that Carter has shown Kant’s to be. On the other hand, it may be that such reasoning, widespread beyond the teaching and writing of any particular historian of baptists in the US South, may require further examination toward identifying the residue of race-driven theories of universal history that may have shaped baptist historiography.

Carter's RACE 6: The Triumphal March of White Bodies and Purified Reason

Carter sets out to demonstrate that Kant’s critical work is not merely an ahistorical project to purify reason by purging the clouds of prejudice and bad thinking that have mostly clouded human reason. He argues that it has a powerful driving teleology of the emergence and growth of the Enlightenment as the universal destiny of humanity. In making this case, he shows that the teleology is inextricably tied to a theory of human races which finds its center and purpose in the unfolding of the exemplary and ultimately perfectible white race.

The teleology is driven on the one hand by the seeds of human nature. The development of humanity in this way is rooted in the seeds of human nature which give rise to the various capacities of the human species, although this natural driving force does not by itself tend toward the full development of humanity toward its destiny. Thus he must identify another driving force for teleology which is not confined by the materiality of human existence and sensory perception. This other teleological factor must unfold in human reason.

Human reason’s emergence as Enlightenment has occurred in the white race of Europe. The white race, transcending the limitations of races, constitutes the nature and destiny of the human race which remains to be perfected. These other races will ultimately be stamped out by their own limitations, through a kind of “inner rotting or decay” (92). They are too embedded in the materiality of humanity and its passions, and they lack full capacity for educability. They will never reach full self-governance, but the white race is exempted from this failing.

This second driving force of a purified rationality is what Kant worked in his Critiques to identify. The Enlightened human race must now embark on its world-historical task of extending its autonomy and freedom throughout the globe. Apparently, this process will accompany the process by which the other races are stamped out.

This destiny of the spread of Enlightenment (whiteness) must now face its challenges. The great challenge is that humanity would become sidetracked or stunted in its advance toward perfection. As Kant’s theory of race describes this process, certain developments of human nature are partial and lack balance. Having become imbalanced, these “wayward reproductions” cannot be brought back into balance. Such alien humanity must not become intermixed with the Enlightened, balanced portion of the race. Miscegenation becomes the great fear, whether in the periphery of the lands where Europe is only beginning to exercise dominance, or in the heart of Europe itself. If alien races contaminate the humanity that is destined to emerge, then the rise of Enlightenment (whiteness) may be hindered.

Frankly, Kant is getting creepy here. The party line in looking at European philosophers in relation to European history has been to show how Hegel believed in the inevitable advance and rise of an Enlightened race through the dialectical struggles of history, building a foundation for race theory in the concepts of thesis and antithesis and the inevitable overcoming of such contradictions. Then the close of the Enlightenment with Nietzsche provided the theory of the Übermensch who through the sheer force of his will to power reshapes the world in his image. These philosophers, therefore, get assigned indirect blame for the rise of German National Socialism and of Hitler.

Often, Kant gets offered as the antidote to that stream of German philosophy because his theory of a common human nature exhibited in reason supports doctrines of universal human rights. A few dissenting voices have raised the claim that Kant’s theory of the rational human leaves many gaps through which certain humans might be considered less than fully human. Human rights only apply to those who are defined as human. The debates in the Bush administration’s efforts to apply different rules of war and justice to some persons, deemed not to deserve the same rights as other persons, illustrates the ways that such theories of human rights can be shown to have loopholes.

What Carter has shown in this analysis of Kant is that what some might call loopholes turn out to be the engine driving the argument. Some animals are more equal than others. Some races, even recognizing that their development is part of the essential potentiality of the human species, remain imbalanced and deficient, and must ultimately pass off the scene if the true humanity is to emerge. That sounds plenty useful to a theory of the rise of the Aryan race.

What November 4 Means: Poverty Isn't Just Going to Disappear

The language of the President-Elect's campaign made note of our mutual responsibilities toward one another. He called for changing how we think and feel about the poor, along with changes that can come through legislation and budgets. Neither of those kinds of changes happens overnight. It does not happen easily. It does not sweep across entire populations without time and effort.

Even if most of Barack Obama's supporters in the election agree with his statements about the poor, at most that is just a portion of 52% of the voting population. That is not to say that many who voted against him may not also share his views about communal responsibility for the poor. Rev. Alan Clapsaddle points out how far the people of Orlando have to go in caring for their most impoverished saints.

Moreover, we must hope and work to see that issues of poverty, homelessness, access to health care, and jobs do not get pushed aside by the crises of banks and wars and stock markets. They are clearly related, but it would be possible to solve the banks' problems, stop a war, and get the stock market stabilized without ever getting around to the least of these. Sojourners announced today an event scheduled for April: The Mobilization to End Poverty. This could be an important organizing opportunity to start change. It will not solve everything. I saw a quotation from Marian Wright Edelman today that is a good reminder:

Justice is not cheap. Justice is not quick. It is not ever finally achieved.

Honoring Women in the Military

Honoring the military includes honoring the struggles of women of all ages and ranks. The shocking fact is that a third or more of women who serve in the military have been raped by fellow members of the service. The prevalence of sexual assault upon women in the military has been brought to public attention repeatedly in recent years. It is amazing each time another facet of this problem comes to light.

Yesterday it was reported that women in the military, insured by TRICARE, must pay for their own rape kits, since TRICARE does not cover them. "Women in the military are twice as likely to be raped as their civilian counterparts" according to an article written by Penny Coleman. Of the 2688 sexual assaults reported in the military in 2007, only 8% went to court, as compared to over 40% in civilian courts. When Congress requested a report, Robert Gates prevented the officer in charge of sexual assault prevention from testifying until the Congress threatened a contempt citation.

When we honor those in military service, we must not exclude the women who serve.

What November 4 Means: Comedy and the New President

I read several commentaries on the way that comedians and comedy shows have dealt with Barack Obama during this campaign. The general consensus is that they have not done a good job. On one hand, there has been a good deal of talk among white comedians and comic writers about how Obama does not give them much to make jokes about--he's too serious, too sincere, too upright, etc. But this probably says more about white comedians than about Obama. They are too unfamiliar with black life that does not fit the ways that white people stereotype blacks. They do not know the black middle class. Therefore, they do not know how to make jokes that pertain to a real black person, not just a product of white imagination.

Developing this argument, the comments of Salamishah Tillet, University of Pennsylvania, seem to me to be on target, and I have quoted from her essay below.

It's not just that SNL does not give a back story to the Obamas or that a non-African-American actor plays Barack Obama; it is that these skits miss the complexities, contradictions and the interior features of African-Americans lives. On SNL and other mainstream political comedy shows like "Real Time" and to a lesser extent "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," the cast and writing staffs lack diversity, and it shows in the racial parochialism of the humor itself.

Perhaps Bill Maher was right when he said that Barack Obama leads to bad comedy because he is "too perfect" as a presidential candidate and that "liberals" and "comedians" (both of whom in Maher's calculations all appear to be white) are "afraid of laughing at anything with a black person in it." But, I think it goes deeper than that.

For such comics to consider Barack or Michelle funny, one of two things now has to happen: Either the Obamas must begin to feed into prevailing racial stereotypes (and therefore be seen as unfit for the presidency), or mainstream satirists will have to learn the cultural nuances of black America.

. . .

SNL focuses on Obama's intellect and verbal pauses but does not satirize his performance of the "cool" black man. Understanding both his swagger and cool requires an understanding of black bourgeois respectability, not just in opposition to caricatures of working-class blacks but as a source of potential contradictions and comedy.

She describes something like what Willie Jennings has said about interracial understanding in the churches. Black people in the U. S. have long understood that an intimate knowledge of the ways of white people is valuable, if for no other reason than to help them survive in a system that works against them. Thus, blacks have gained a kind of cultural intimacy that is not reciprocated. One of the key features of white privilege is the ability to think and behave as if black people are largely irrelevant to white lives. Jennings says that until white church people begin to pursue cultural intimacy with blacks, they will remained puzzled by the lack of progress in racial reconciliation in the churches. The kind of understanding that would allow sharing the commitments of church life with one another may have some similarity to the kind of understanding it takes to be able to laugh together.

A Confession and a Tribute

Last Monday a wonderful event occurred. Everly, my wife, successfully defended her dissertation after many years of hard work. My excitement in the days leading to Monday brought back memories of 1993 when I was approaching my own dissertation defense. The general anxiety, the inability to keep focus on some tasks, the specific worries about whether important details were incorrect or forgotten—as I observed these behaviors in her I remembered them in my own history.

One part of her story is very different from mine. While Everly held high-responsibility executive jobs during the entire seven years of her doctoral work, I spent most of my seven years with the opportunity to focus as a full-time student, with only a couple of stints in part-time jobs. Making it possible for me to be a full-time student, Everly was giving me the luxury of uncluttered time and thought to work on my courses and research. The joyous opportunity to spend with my young children as the primary caregiver was also part of the deal, and that all three were under the age of seven when I completed the dissertation provides some of the explanation why I spent seven years doing doctoral work.

On the other hand, Everly worked full time, did her motherly duties, and managed essential household chores at the same time as she took night courses, wrote papers, conducted a major research study, and eventually wrote a dissertation. Frankly, she got a whole lot less support from me than I got from her during the process of completing a doctoral degree.

I’m not trying to beat myself up. I just want to think about the incongruity between my ideal of what kind of husband I would be and my actual practice of husbanding. When Everly made her entry into doctoral studies, she did not make any sustained proposal about becoming a full-time student. If she seriously entertained that option, I was either oblivious, or she did not consider it viable. As a teacher at a small private college, I have never had the larger paycheck in the family. As an executive leader in education, Everly has been the primary breadwinner. She has borne that responsibility with courage and honor, and I appreciate the opportunities our family has had because of how hard she has worked. Moreover, the work that she was doing was the actual context of her research. There were advantages of continuing in her professional appointments, to be weighed against the advantages of full attention to research and study.

Still, I find myself wondering if I should have made a persuasive case for her to consider letting me bear the financial load and take on some education loans so that she could focus on school. I wonder whether something about the gender politics deeply embedded in our generation left that door mostly closed to us. Or maybe when the time came, I just did not listen to the calling to carry my part of the load. So I confess my disappointment in myself for not working harder to make sure she could have taken that path. At this point in the story, those words are pretty empty.

The other confession is that I did not find it in my character to bear more of the load of managing essential household tasks while she carried the weight of an executive job and doctoral studies. I’m not as great a self-motivator as I would hope to be. I am easily distracted, and sometimes plain lazy. I wonder how old I will have to be before I display mature self-discipline.

Looking at her achievement in the midst of so many demands draws out great admiration and pride. I don’t mean the bad kind of pride, the vice that comes before a fall and names one of the seven deadly sins. I mean the kind of pride that takes note of something good, worthy, honorable, and admirable that is close to home, that does not see achievements as small things, that recognizes the effort and sacrifice that go into accomplishing something good, that sees a good thing for what it is. Her research is deeply rooted in a life of work to make schools better and to make the lives of students better through them. And it is making a difference, step by step, although there is an occasional step back along with the steps forward.

It is something like what I have often thought, sometimes written, and regularly taught concerning the church. Churches struggle to be what they are called to be, and in limited, often temporary ways they may give us a glimpse of the Reign of God, the embodiment of the love of God in human communities. They do so in particular ways, sometimes fostering reconciliation, other times overcoming loneliness and alienation, occasionally promoting well-being and justice through housing, nutrition, education, jobs, recovery from addiction or imprisonment, and many other ways.

Everly’s work has in sometimes dramatic and sometimes incremental ways opened cracks and chasms in the walls that shut off opportunities to learn and flourish. Students, teachers, and whole schools have seen the fruit of her labor. It is divine work, which honors and blesses the image of God in humanity’s children.