Race in America: The Marital Counselor Analogy

[silentreader]

You'll notice a lot of people have simply gone silent or gone away. There are a few of us, myself included, who have decided not to cede this as KenNet.

This is a classic leftist tactic; to drown the conservatives out by incessant, endless speaking and attacks on conservatives, and try to use a conservative's own standards of civility against them.

yes, a lot of people have gone silent.
in my case? not because of Ken, tho.

Some days seem a bit like stoltz days.

[temporal1]

You'll notice a lot of people have simply gone silent or gone away. There are a few of us, myself included, who have decided not to cede this as KenNet.

This is a classic leftist tactic; to drown the conservatives out by incessant, endless speaking and attacks on conservatives, and try to use a conservative's own standards of civility against them.

yes, a lot of people have gone silent.
in my case? not because of Ken, tho.

Some days seem a bit like stoltz days.

(As i understand) MD began with HOPE and liveliness, and not much else. It was lots of young people interacting in new ways, getting to know each other. It’s sad so many have gone, or gone quiet .. to be fair, for different reasons, not all negative.

There is plenty of HOPE showing up in the form of new members. How to engage new members is the thing.
They usually describe their initial interest .. but receive no feedback. (That may feel a bit awkward?) i’m not sure.

Public: Welcome to MennoNet
viewtopic.php?t=5644

[Bootstrap]

How do you have these conversations in a space like this that is dominated by white people?

I think we can talk about our own experiences and relationships, as white people.

Not pretending to be experts on what black people should think or feel or do, not pretending to all the answers, but trying to live out the love of Jesus in the situations we actually live in. We can discuss how we, as white people, can do that better.

[Szdfan]

How do you have these conversations in a space like this that is dominated by white people?

I think we can talk about our own experiences and relationships, as white people.

Not pretending to be experts on what black people should think or feel or do, not pretending to all the answers, but trying to live out the love of Jesus in the situations we actually live in. We can discuss how we, as white people, can do that better.

I understand that, but that's not really marital counseling. It's going to counseling without the other partner and so it's only half of the conversation. I think the danger is that we do fact think we're experts on what black people should think or do, as my little scrap with Temp about Thomas Sowell. Without the other half of the conversation, I think it's super easy to fall into that.

[Josh]

How do you have these conversations in a space like this that is dominated by white people?

I think we can talk about our own experiences and relationships, as white people.

Not pretending to be experts on what black people should think or feel or do, not pretending to all the answers, but trying to live out the love of Jesus in the situations we actually live in. We can discuss how we, as white people, can do that better.

I understand that, but that's not really marital counseling. It's going to counseling without the other partner and so it's only half of the conversation. I think the danger is that we do fact think we're experts on what black people should think or do, as my little scrap with Temp about Thomas Sowell. Without the other half of the conversation, I think it's super easy to fall into that.

Yet there are no “representatives” of “white people” and “black people”. We don’t hold elections or set up boards of directors to come up with whatever the opinions of white or black folks are.

More importantly, some white people such as myself don’t even agree with a lot of other white people. Wealthy, college educated white people often hold liberal opinions. The strongest liberal bloc is in fact unmarried white women with college degrees. I would prefer not to be lumped in with them in some kind of “marital counselling”. This particular bloc strongly supported BLM and as we saw at protests in places like the PNW, was primarily a movement of white people.

Likewise, I can’t speak for black people, but not all black people agree on everything.

[RZehr]

There are things that anyone can say, and speak to regardless of their skin color. Certain things are just truth, and should we really hunker down behind skin color instead of just acknowledging truth? I’m think specifically of sin matters, not things that are only social issues.
Should the Gospel have been contained to the Middle East, because of a fear of some weird racial component? Should the Gospel today be silenced because one color of people can’t tell another color anything?

[Szdfan]

I think we can talk about our own experiences and relationships, as white people.

Not pretending to be experts on what black people should think or feel or do, not pretending to all the answers, but trying to live out the love of Jesus in the situations we actually live in. We can discuss how we, as white people, can do that better.

I understand that, but that's not really marital counseling. It's going to counseling without the other partner and so it's only half of the conversation. I think the danger is that we do fact think we're experts on what black people should think or do, as my little scrap with Temp about Thomas Sowell. Without the other half of the conversation, I think it's super easy to fall into that.

Yet there are no “representatives” of “white people” and “black people”. We don’t hold elections or set up boards of directors to come up with whatever the opinions of white or black folks are.

More importantly, some white people such as myself don’t even agree with a lot of other white people. Wealthy, college educated white people often hold liberal opinions. The strongest liberal bloc is in fact unmarried white women with college degrees. I would prefer not to be lumped in with them in some kind of “marital counselling”. This particular bloc strongly supported BLM and as we saw at protests in places like the PNW, was primarily a movement of white people.

Likewise, I can’t speak for black people, but not all black people agree on everything.

Obviously, no group is a monolith and I agree with you that it's not possible for one person to represent an entire group.

I just don't understand how in this context Bootstrap's model or analogy is going to work.

[Bootstrap]

People who refuse to read/study/discuss Thomas Sowell, and other conservative POC?

I have read books by Thomas Sowell, I don't know if you have.

But I don't think any POLITICAL camp is what matters. I am much more interested in hearing from black Christians who care about simple obedience to the Bible. In general, I would like to stop having discussions where Christians act as though some political faction is normative for Christianity.

And to go back to the marriage counselor analogy, Thomas Sowell is isn't in this room, and black Christians probably aren't either. We have chased a few away over the years when they did participate here briefly. I think the way we discuss things here was probably a factor in chasing them away.

[Bootstrap]

How do you have these conversations in a space like this that is dominated by white people?

I think we can talk about our own experiences and relationships, as white people.

Not pretending to be experts on what black people should think or feel or do, not pretending to all the answers, but trying to live out the love of Jesus in the situations we actually live in. We can discuss how we, as white people, can do that better.

I understand that, but that's not really marital counseling. It's going to counseling without the other partner and so it's only half of the conversation. I think the danger is that we do fact think we're experts on what black people should think or do, as my little scrap with Temp about Thomas Sowell. Without the other half of the conversation, I think it's super easy to fall into that.

Even in couples counseling, sometimes one partner talks to the counselor to try to figure out how to be a better partner to the other spouse. Those discussions focus on what THAT partner can do, not on what the other partner should do. Not too terribly different from a constructive conversation where two husbands talk about how to be better husbands to their wives, or where two wives talk bout how they can be better wives to their husbands.

Those conversations are quite different from conversations where two husbands trash their wives, go on and on about what their wives should do differently, etc.

I think that racial tensions do exist in America, and even among American Christians. We can constructively discuss what we ourselves can do to strengthen the Kingdom of God across racial lines, to be better neighbors to the black people we know, etc. We can't constructively do much else. Even just admitting that racial tensions are real and that there is a problem is worth something.

[Bootstrap]

There are things that anyone can say, and speak to regardless of their skin color. Certain things are just truth, and should we really hunker down behind skin color instead of just acknowledging truth? I’m think specifically of sin matters, not things that are only social issues.
Should the Gospel have been contained to the Middle East, because of a fear of some weird racial component? Should the Gospel today be silenced because one color of people can’t tell another color anything?

I do think we should seek biblical marital counseling. But it's hard for me to imagine that the tensions between white American Christianity and black American Christianity are about the truth found in the Gospel.

As a white Christian, I do think that white Christians can learn important things about what the Bible teaches from the black preaching tradition. In general, I think black Christians are more familiar with our theological traditions than we are with theirs. In the New Testament, Jews and Greeks had to learn from each other, and it wasn't easy.