Arden Chatfield
Posts: 6657
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (Kristine @ May 21 2007,14:59) | | Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2007,13:16) |
| Quote ("Rev Dr" Lenny Flank @ May 20 2007,13:29) | By the way, I notice that all of the "Fellows" at DI are, uh, white, and almost all of them are white men.
Can anyone explain to me, please, why Black people might be unable to grasp the world-shattering significance of the, uh, "science" of Intelligent Design . . .?
Does it have something to do with the fact that Black people also overwhelmingly reject fundamentalist Christianity, too (perhaps because they've seen its effects firsthand) . . . . . ? |
Actually, it's more complicated than that.
My wife is a school teacher in a poor/working class black neighborhood, and I can confirm, the folks in that neighborhood overwhelmingly vote Democrat, hate George Bush, and are usually quasi-fundamentalist Protestants (with Jehovah's Witness in second place), very often Baptists. They're America's big exception to the generalization that Christian = Conservative Republican, and of course as such, white Christianists really don't like to talk about them.
My impression is that most working class blacks around here really don't know much or care much about evolution and/or ID, except to have a vague suspicion of evolution as something that supposedly conflicts with the Biblical doctrine they hear every Sunday. But they'd never in a million years use evolution as an excuse to vote Republican.
Also, sadly, some of these same people are some of the most homophobic people you'd ever come across, which also violates the rule of 'hates gays' = 'votes Republican'.
If the DI doesn't employ any blacks, I'd suspect it's probably due to the fact that rightwing white fundies distrust blacks for voting Democrat. Essentially it's oldline racism with a new political rationalization. I suspect if a highly educated black Republican came along with the correct religious and political credentials, the DI would probably hire him to show how nonracist they are. |
I've worked alongside a lot of African-American women in (unfortunately) low-paying service jobs and I can second everything Arden has said. Vehemently anti-evolution attitudes. It also has something to do with how Europeans viewed Africans, long before Darwin, as another form of “ape.” (Which we are, but it was meant as an insult and as something not true of whites.) There is a LOT of baggage here, and a lot of misconceptions to surmount, as there always are when you're blue-collar of whatever ethnicity moving into academia or the corporate world. |
Actually, yes, I should have added that.
In my wife's experience, when the average working-class African American in the neighboorhood where she teaches expresses an opinion on evolution (rare, very rare), it's almost ALWAYS negative. There is a very widespread notion among working-class Blacks that 'evolution' = 'eugenics' = 'scientific excuse for saying Blacks are a lower form of life'. The fact that it clashes with certain readings of the Bible is just icing on the cake.
The fact that an extreme misunderstanding of evolution like this can be so persistent and pervasive is really just due to (a) the overwhelmingly oral nature of African American culture in the city where my wife works, and (b) the minimal level of science education and awareness that most of the population there has. I don't see these preconceptions changing unless the education levels among the people there improve enormously.
So: massively Christian, don't like evolution, don't like gays; sounds like Republicans, except I think Bush got something like 5% of California's Black vote in 2004. Funny, that.
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"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
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