Over the last two decades, we have experienced a cultural paradigm shift among African Americans. If this is certain, this effects and prompts a shift in African American Baptist’s culture as a predominate worldview. On the first hand, younger African Americans are no longer a monolithic “blues – people,” which African American Baptists of all stripes have represented. Historically and predominantly, African Americans nearly have had a common narrative; we have interpreted life through a lens of oppression.
Racism has been our single defining experience. Dr. Gardner C. Taylor once said that our founders were squeamish about the status of people of color, the notion of equality among people based on a notion of race was “like a serpent coiled beneath the constitutional convention table” during deliberation in Philadelphia, in the long ago. As a result, the founders cowardly embraced a three – fifths of a man (person), compromise defining African American humanity as debase to a larger world. Since the beginning, this frames American socio-economic, socio-psychological and jurist –prudence culture and existence.
Gradually this self – esteem condition is changing. It is not over; but now African Americans are coming out of the dark night of slavery, and the condition of unmitigated pain and suffering the crime caused. So gradual is this change, few African Americans realize the progress. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States is an example. Affirming Dr. King’s prophetic words in “I Have a Dream” the young and some intellectuals on the fringes, thought it possible initially. Those same citizens are “jazz people.”
That term simply indicates different feelings about the past. Many have left it there – in the past. They do not avoid their pain as much as they seek different ways to resolve painful experiences; instead, they choose to live in the now and the future. In this instance, anti-epistomology or anti - knowledge of history may help them. If they do not claim their ancestors’ past narrative, it may free them to live a different kind of life.
These are some of the reasons that African American Baptist’s culture needs to change and embrace new ways and methods for reaching people who know pain and suffering but solely not based on negative historical racial categories. I will wrap this up next time…
Leave a Reply