“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own…. Therefore honor God with your body.” 1 Cor. 6:19-20
It is well known that blacks live sicker and die younger than any other racial group. Look no farther than the church with the pastor battling hypertension and diabetes or the congregation with several obese members sitting in the pews. It would seem that the black church in America would be the leading ally supporting the nation’s first black president in the debate over access to affordable healthcare. It would seem that the black church would lead the way toward healthier eating and living.
Could it be that black church culture is leading us astray?
I thought about this during a recent conference in Baltimore on black global health. The International Conference on Health in the African Diaspora, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions, brought together healthcare professionals and researchers, from across the Western Hemisphere to discuss common health problems among the descendants of African slaves. Black Arts Movement icon Sonia Sanchez set the tone as the keynote speaker July 4, inspiring the crowd with a special poem for the occasion. The award-winning author participated throughout the weeklong conference.
Listening to a sister from Brazil and a brother from Peru discuss high rates of obesity, diabetes, infant deaths and the spread of HIV/AIDS among blacks in their countries sounded like the health crisis of black New York, Chicago, or the Mississippi Delta. Modern racism and the legacy of slavery haunt all of us. Participants also shared solutions and pledged to work together. In fact, according to Dr. Thomas LaVeist, a book and curriculum addressing these health themes are being created for the public and for high school and college educators. Thomas, who happens to be my brother, directs the Hopkins center and is the mastermind behind the conference, which is scheduled to take place every two years.
Solutions are basically what government and institutions can do to end racism and ensure all people have access to quality affordable healthcare and what blacks can do themselves to care for their “temples of the Holy Spirit.”
The black church should be more outspoken in support of increased access to quality affordable care. Our cousins from Canada and Central and South America, who for the most part receive varying degrees well-executed and poorly-executed universal healthcare, are puzzled as to why we richer Americans are debating what the rest of the industrialized world has long settled — that healthcare access is a God-given human right, not a privilege to be determined by profit-seeking private insurance companies.
After the conference, Thomas told me that the Catholic Church (obviously many Catholics are also black) has been the most vocal Christians on healthcare, mainly around the debate on whether Catholic organizations should be mandated to support abortions for employees (some evangelical Protestant organizations have recently joined that fight, too). Thomas suggested the traditional black church denominations could find their unified voice by calling for all Americans to be insured (Obama’s Affordable Care Act would still leave 20 million people uninsured). However, regardless of what the government does, black churches should lead by example with healthier eating and living, he said.
BAD FOR THE SOUL? Black churches are routinely feeding their people unhealthy soul food staples such as fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. Is that biblical?
“Black church culture is out of alignment with some biblical teachings, particularly when it comes to how we eat,” my brother said. “Church culture has got us drinking Kool-Aid, eating white bread, fried chicken, large servings of macaroni and cheese and collard greens drenched with salty hog maws (foods that are high in sugar, salt, calories, and carbohydrates that trigger health problems). We’re eating this in the church basement at dinner and at church conventions! Meanwhile, the Bible teaches against gluttony.”
Don’t judge or condemn those who are obese, but encourage and show everyone how to eat healthy, Thomas added. He cited Pastor Michael Minor of Oak Hill Baptist Church in the Mississippi Delta as pushing the healthy eating message that all black churches should adopt. The Delta is one of America’s poorest areas and leads the nation in obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates. In 2011, Pastor Minor, known as “the Southern pastor who banned fried chicken in his church,” banished all unhealthy foods and insisted soul food meals be prepared in healthier ways; many of his members are losing weight and improving their overall health. Other churches across the country such as, First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, are on similar missions.
Ask yourself, when it comes to health, what is the black church best known for?
What might the state of black health in America (and the African diaspora) be if your answer was healthy eating and living?
On the 4th of July, millions of patriots will wave the flag and declare that they love USA. But which USA? Sometimes it seems we love a country that never existed, and despise the country we actually have. Do we really mean “God bless America”? Or just God bless myself?
The reality is we do a poor job of loving most of America. We love the declaration of independence, but continue to live as though much of it is a lie. We do not believe we are all “created equal,” but instead that some of us are just plain lazy, stupid, ill-fit, and unworthy. We value ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ but deny it to the 49 million Americans living below the poverty line.
We rally around the Constitution but ignore its very first sentence, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility.” Have we forgotten this founding mission, even as we make false idols of our founders?
We fight to keep the Pledge of Allegiance intact at our schools, but ignore the words “and justice for all” — we like to pretend that it just says “with liberty.” We behave as though “liberty” and ‘justice’ are opposing forces, forgetting that they have always been, and must remain, inextricable allies. We pride ourselves on our freedom, while maintaining the highest incarceration rate in the world (we hold some 25% of the world’s prisoners in our cells).
We wear t-shirts with the Statue of Liberty, but bare our teeth at the immigrants she was erected to welcome. We love her flame held high, but spit at the plaque at her base: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But given our history, you cannot be a patriot of this country and a bigot toward our immigrants at the same time.
We declare “support our troops!” But if you “support our troops” that means you must support our young, our poor, our people of color — the populations that are fighting our wars. Yet we claim we support our troops while maintaining the systems of injustice that oppress the soldiers fighting on our behalf.
If you “support our troops,” it means you keep their streets at home just as safe as they have kept the streets abroad. It means you give them access to the homes and jobs that they have kept secure. It means you provide the healthcare that keeps their families healthy. It means if they are legal to fight, they are legal to attend school, and that you admit them into your colleges.
We wage war against those that killed some 3,000 on September 11th, but turn a blind eye to the 245,000 poverty-related deaths that occur every year. Is our reaction different because of the identity of the victims, or that of the aggressors?
You say you are afraid of those that want to destroy our country. But so am I. I love America. So much so that I will not stand for the bigots, the oppressors, and the fear mongers who try to destroy it. We need to understand that our ‘American values’ are meaningless if they apply only to the privileged. We need to make clear everything that is anti-American about hate.
We need to reframe what it means to love America and who gets to be the patriots. It is patriotic to care for our neighbors. It is patriotic to educate our children, feed our hungry, and clothe our naked. We need to reclaim patriotism for all Americans.
This commentary originally appeared at By Their Strange Fruit. It is reposted here by permission.
TWO SIDES OF JUSTICE: Public opinion in the Trayvon Martin-Geroge Zimmerman case has tended to split along racial lines, and it's doubtful some questions will ever be answered. (Photos: Wikipedia)
With the announcement of new details about events leading up to the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin by neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman, at least three things are clear: we likely will never know exactly what happened that evening of Feb. 26 in Sanford, Florida; the situation could’ve been avoided had Zimmerman followed the 911 operator’s instructions and stayed in his vehicle; Martin and Zimmerman were both flawed human beings like the rest of us.
Yesterday, as prosecutors released more than 200 pages of photos and eyewitness accounts showing Zimmerman had wounds to his face and the back of his head, the national debate about the case (which consistently appears to be divided sharply along racial lines), was reignited. While supporters of Zimmerman and his claim of “self-defense” see the new evidence as proof of his innocence, others view it as a mixed bag that doesn’t necessarily bolster his defense. The lead detective in the case against Zimmerman said he believes Zimmerman initiated the fight by getting out of his car to confront Martin, and that he should be charged with manslaughter.
Further complicating the public debate was the release of details from an autopsy report that showed Martin had traces of THC, which is from marijuana, in his blood and urine. A scan of comments around the blogosphere and social media reveal that, in the minds of some, this information reinforced the assumption that Martin was complicit in triggering the incident that led to his death, though one expert pointed out that the amount of THC found in Martin’s blood was “so low that it may have been ingested days earlier and played no role in Martin’s behavior.” Nevertheless, for many it added weight to the argument that Martin was not the young, angelic kid that they feel the media painted him to be.
In addition to this new information, new photos of George Zimmerman were released showing the 28-year-old soon after the incident with Martin. The images offer a clear picture of his alleged injuries. Plus, news outlets released the surveillance video of Trayvon Martin at the Sanford 7-11 store, purchasing the iced tea and Skittles that he carried when he crossed paths with Zimmerman several minutes later.
In a way, the public debate over the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case has become a mirror for seeing our nation’s ongoing racial tensions, with many from the White community predictably aligning with Zimmerman and many from the Black and non-White communities siding with Martin’s family. Though there are certainly Whites who side with Martin and Blacks who side with Zimmerman, the anecdotal evidence for a stereotypical racial split is incontrovertible. In fact, this is not strictly an issue of race, but of justice. Nevertheless, in this era of the first Black president, tensions are already high when it comes to race. These are tensions that were heightened by partisan politics during the 2008 presidential campaign and subsequent election of Barack Obama, and that continue to flare whenever a new racial controversy erupts. It proves we have a long way to go in bridging our country’s racial and cultural divides.
What Do You Think?
Does the release of this new information make you more inclined to believe one party’s side of the story? Does the autopsy’s revelation that Martin had THC in his system affect your view of the teen’s role in the confrontation? What can we do as a nation to turn this tragic episode into something constructive?
I have a confession to make. You might want to sit down for this: I am a young Black woman and I enjoyed the filmThink Like A Man.
Whew. Feels good to get it off my chest.
I’ll be honest, when I first heard that there was a film slated for 2012 based on the book, I did the obligatory eye roll and didn’t expect much. The past few times I made the grudging trek to the theatre to see movies with predominately Black cast — primarily so that I could keep my membership in the Black community — I was mildly disappointed. I say mildly because I have sadly grown to expect very little from Black movies. In real life, I find my community to include a wealth of comedic talent, natural artistic abilities, an eye for concepts that are abstract and often complex, and yet … on screen it seems that we often fall flat.
Nevertheless, Think Like a Man (TLAM) was everything you wanted a romantic comedy to be. It was witty, keen, and resonated for me as a young unmarried woman in her late 20s. I kept whispering to my best friend, “This is hilarious … This is so on point … This is so true!” He agreed.
But of course, EVERYONE doesn’t agree. Rahiel Tesfamariam, the founder and editor of Urban Cusp (a website I deeply respect), posited that TLAM served up “patriarchy with a smile.” Rahiel writes:
… Harvey, Tyler Perry, T.D. Jakes and countless others are making millions branding themselves as cultural gurus who understand the plight of black women.
Only a patriarchal mind set would constantly paint women with stereotypical, pathological brushstrokes and serve it up as digestible truth. As if real-world paternalism wasn’t enough, we can also have it to look forward to in black cinema.
She goes on to outline the four stereotypes of Black women found in the movie: the single mother, the promiscuous Jezebel, the never-satisfied control freak, and the emasculating powerful executive.
The problem here, though, is the article forgets the purpose of a romantic comedy. Have you ever seen a good rom-com where the women and men in the movie don’t have some serious flaw? That’s the whole point! Let’s break down these alleged stereotypes:
1. Single Mother – I’m not sure if “single mother” is a stereotype or if it’s a reality for many women, of all races. I’d be more inclined to believe that Regina Hall’s character was a stereotype if she were irresponsible, unable to care for her child, and dependent on welfare. But she wasn’t. She was the mother of one child who balanced healthy friendships, relationships, and a career. She was a single mother you’d be proud of!
2. Promiscuous Jezebel – Meagan Good’s character, Maya, just doesn’t fit this stereotype. She’s only shown sleeping with one man prior to her onscreen counterpart, Zeke. If anybody was seen as promiscuous, it was the man she was sleeping with who failed to remember her name and left the morning after. Was she more trusting than she should have been? Possibly. Promiscuous. Not sure on that one.
3. Never Satisfied Control Freak – I’m having trouble with the premise that Gabrielle Union’s character fell into this stereotype. She wanted the man she was dating to improve his career and commit to her…. Where’s the control freak part? Furthermore, when attempting to remodel their apartment, she asked for his input prior to making any decisions and only proceeded after he passed the reins over to her. Yeah, calling her a control freak is quite a stretch here.
4. Emasculating Powerful Executive – Here is where I can concede that there was a possibility that Taraji Henson’s character, Lauren fell into a stereotype, just not the one that Rahiel pointed out. What stuck out for me wasn’t Taraji’s power role, it was her ridiculous expectations for a man. She expected him to have a certain kind of career, pedigree, and power. The sad part is, while this is a stereotype, it’s one that I see in real life, much too often.
I’d be more inclined to believe that men are stereotyped in the film more than the women. You have:
1. The Reckless Rebounder – Kevin Hart’s character, Cedric, is the recently separated man who leaves a good woman he loves and embarks on a tour to get back on the dating scene and do nonsense in strip clubs.
2. The Playa – Romano Malco’s character, Zeke, is the ultimate player who wines and dines women, sleeps with them, then disappears.
3. The Mama’s Boy – Terrence J’s character, Michael, plays the ultimate cliché, the adult male who can’t quite let go of his dependence on mama.
4. The Normal White Guy – Gary Owen’s character, Bennett, is the White friend who has it all together and is in a happy marriage.
Unfortunately, though, calling out TLAM’s stereotypes of men doesn’t appear to fit in Rahiel’s overall theme that Steve Harvey and the film’s producers are serving up patriarchal ideals.
One other criticism lobbed at TLAM, not only by Rahiel but by others, is the lack of a spiritual message or any discussion of faith. In her commentary at The Washington Post, Rahiel says:
Matters of faith have historically been so deeply embedded into the black American psyche that’s its practically dishonest to reflect black women navigating concerns about love, family and careers without any substantive “God talk”…. Maintaining centrality in the character’s lives by providentially coaching them through life’s most important decisions, Harvey symbolically played the role of God.
Wow. Considering Steve Harvey’s frequent and often Tebow-like references to God in his comedy and on his radio show, I’m sure he’d be offended by the statement. As a Christian, though, I understand why matters of faith may have been strategically left out of the movie. A good portion of the movie centers around the “90-Day Rule,” in which Harvey posits that women should not have sex with a man until after 90 days of dating, because a good man who respects you will stick around for that long to “get the cookie.” The Christian perspective as outlined by the Bible, however, is in direct conflict with this advice. Sex outside of marriage is simply not an option for committed Christian couples. Steve Harvey knows this. And there clearly are contradictions inherent in his “God talk” and “relationship guru” personas. I cannot defend him on that. But this film is a separate matter, and I think viewers should judge TLAM for what it is, not what we want it to be.
How exactly could a movie with such a heavy focus on Steve Harvey’s 90 Day Rule also expect its characters to rely heavily on spiritual themes or guidance? If the characters did that, then they’d toss the book and its advice in the trash, and we would never have had a premise for this hilarious film that gives us something relevant to talk about with our friends.
In short, expecting a movie that does not purport to represent Christian values and themes to include references to “matters of faith” is a bit odd.
Think Like A Man is a keen, entertaining film with characters that I recognize from my daily life, but I believe many people expected it to suck — and probably for good reason. Unfortunately, when you start with low expectations, there is opportunity for self-fulfilling prophecy to take hold. You assume the movie is going to have you up in arms, so you find a way for the movie to, well, have you up in arms.
Give it a chance, if only for the lively discussions afterward.
A DISTINGUISHED BREAKTHROUGH?: Will this man, Lamar Hurd, become the first Black "Bachelor" on ABC's popular reality show?
When I stumbled upon the news that Lamar Hurd launched a campaign to become the first Black man cast on ABC’s The Bachelor, I sighed and shook my head.
Let me say this up front: I hold no ill will toward Lamar Hurd. A late-20s sportscaster based out of my hometown of Portland, Hurd is the type of guy I should have no problem finding likeable. He was a standout ballplayer at Oregon State, and went on to play pro ball overseas for a year before returning to build a career in broadcasting.
So what I want for him is the same thing I want for me, my loved ones, and really for all people in general — to have lives of significance, spent in the pursuit of our God-given purposes, developing meaningful relationships along the way. According to a recent interview, his faith is an important part of his life, so I think that he probably wants the same thing for himself.
Which is why I hope he changes his mind and stops trying to get on that show.
Because 20 years from now, I don’t think being the first Black guy on The Bachelor is something he’ll look back on with much pride or accomplishment. Even if we ignore the lawsuit that two other African American applicants filed decrying The Bachelor’s lack of diversity, the political or cultural implications of achieving diversity goals via class action litigation in general, and how it might negatively impact Hurd if he’s cast as a result of public pressure to fulfill a quota … even if we ignore all of that … it’s still a bad idea.
Not that I don’t understand the allure, though.
Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I understand the whole First Black Guy thing. My dad was the First Black Guy in his region to take a full-time staff role at a particular faith-based nonprofit. I was among the first few Black guys to graduate my elite private high school. There is a certain element of privilege at being able to break through a perceived color barrier, which is part of the reason why President Obama will always occupy a special place in history, regardless of the efficacy of his political legacy.
But we’re not talking about politics, or academics, or even sports. No, Lamar, we’re talking about reality television.
(Can I call you “Lamar?”)
This is the genre that made household names out of Kato Kaelin, Omarosa, and Jon Gosselin. Is this really the venue where you want to establish your reputation, a show where the male protagonist is encouraged to sample ladies like hors d’oeuvres at the supermarket? It’s not exactly consistent with the kind of sterling character and integrity that you spotlight in your campaign video below.
C’mon, Lamar. Not only does this have the potential to make you look bad, but seriously … do you really want to select a wife from a pool of women who are incentivized to actively compete for your attention? When the woman in Proverbs 31 is mentioned as being shrewd in the marketplace, she’s supposed to be the seller, not the product on display.
Plus, even if we assume that you and your prospective wife both succeed in participating in the show without degrading yourselves — a long shot, to be sure — it’s still no way to prepare for a long, committed, prosperous marriage. Because anytime she disappoints you by not living up to your expectations, you’ll be tempted to compare her to one of the other dozen ladies who caught your eye before, and think, “Shoot, I should have picked her instead.”
If you’re really serious about your faith, then put more of it in God than in a reality TV show. You may be surprised by how well He can meet your deepest needs and desires, even those you’re not aware of.
Or, if you prefer, think about this like a basketball player. Do some scouting. Research the last ten guys cast as The Bachelor. Find out how many of those guys are still dating or married to the woman they selected. Then ask yourself if this show will get you the best, highest-percentage shot at a successful marriage.
And if none of that works … just hit me up, bro. I know a few ladies who could be a good fit for you. I don’t know if they share any of your likes or dislikes, but I know they have more sense than to audition for The Bachelor.
I have a confession to make. You might want to sit down for this: I am a young Black woman and I enjoyed the film 