Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, 59, is one of America's most prominent black citizens and only the second black man appointed to the court. He just wrote a book, My Grandfather's Son (so named because his father abandoned him and he was raised by his grandfather). He discusses his life, naturally from the perspective of a black man who grew up during the transition from legal, institutionalized segregation to the society we have today.
Thomas was raised Catholic and is still a member of the church. Nonetheless he voiced some strong criticism of its policies in the 1940s and 1950s.
In my lifetime--which started only a few years before Thomas's--the civil rights movement illustrates my point. The Quakers were the only white Christian denomination I know of who fought for the rights of black Americans when it was not only unfashionable but downright illegal to do so. Surely there were a few more even smaller congregations who also distinguished themselves by living up to the standards of their holy book, but mainstream white churches in America were as segregated as our schools and beaches.
It was the music community that broke the bounds of segregation by putting white and black performers on the same stage and--at great risk--the same tour bus. It was the sports community that broke the bounds of segregation by putting black athletes on major league baseball teams and later other games. It was the secular government that broke the bounds of segregation by integrating the members of the U.S. Army, and shortly thereafter by integrating the public schools in the Redneck states. It was the hippies--a thoroughly secular bunch unless you count their studied and iconoclastic curiosity about Eastern spirituality--that broke the bounds of segregation by simply integrating themselves and then by protesting vigorously.
By the time the white churches got involved in the movement--not to disparage the sacrifices suffered by many of their brave and righteous members--it was clear that segregation was doomed. The Christian community did not lead the civil rights movement, but merely tagged along once it became acknowledged by the leaders in the crowd--if not yet the entire crowd--as the right thing to do.
It's no wonder that many black Americans expressed their contempt for white American Christianity by converting to Islam. (The irony notwithstanding. There were many Muslims among the African slave traders--both black and white.)
Thomas was raised Catholic and is still a member of the church. Nonetheless he voiced some strong criticism of its policies in the 1940s and 1950s.
I have often made the observation that even in eras when the Abrahamist communities do good, they only do good when the road to goodness has already been paved and the destination becomes inevitable. That when Abrahamists do good it is only out of a desire to follow the crowd, not because their religion motivates them to be better than the crowd.
In my lifetime--which started only a few years before Thomas's--the civil rights movement illustrates my point. The Quakers were the only white Christian denomination I know of who fought for the rights of black Americans when it was not only unfashionable but downright illegal to do so. Surely there were a few more even smaller congregations who also distinguished themselves by living up to the standards of their holy book, but mainstream white churches in America were as segregated as our schools and beaches.
It was the music community that broke the bounds of segregation by putting white and black performers on the same stage and--at great risk--the same tour bus. It was the sports community that broke the bounds of segregation by putting black athletes on major league baseball teams and later other games. It was the secular government that broke the bounds of segregation by integrating the members of the U.S. Army, and shortly thereafter by integrating the public schools in the Redneck states. It was the hippies--a thoroughly secular bunch unless you count their studied and iconoclastic curiosity about Eastern spirituality--that broke the bounds of segregation by simply integrating themselves and then by protesting vigorously.
By the time the white churches got involved in the movement--not to disparage the sacrifices suffered by many of their brave and righteous members--it was clear that segregation was doomed. The Christian community did not lead the civil rights movement, but merely tagged along once it became acknowledged by the leaders in the crowd--if not yet the entire crowd--as the right thing to do.
It's no wonder that many black Americans expressed their contempt for white American Christianity by converting to Islam. (The irony notwithstanding. There were many Muslims among the African slave traders--both black and white.)