Southern Baptist Letters

Armin, it is a strategic move. They are fully aware that most Christians and many ordinary Americans are sensitive about our racial history and will go to great lengths to avoid being seen as supporting that. So, that is where they attack. If it was merely about being white, then when minorities begin to get vocal about Christian principles or conservative ideas that extol Western culture, they would not have a problem with it. Yet, the Left does have a major problem with it. They hate black or Asian or Jewish or Hispanic traditionalists just as much as they hate… Read more »

I’m just shaking my head that, on the week that Trump exposed his racial strategy yet again as well as having those presidential tapes drop, the only discussion of racism on this board is to discuss the nuances of how we are to hate on people who call it out. What Pastor Wilson constantly ignores is WHO actually started identity politics. Race-based slavery, the Confederacy, anti-Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, apartheid, colonialism, red-lining, the Southern Strategy, White Flight, they all existed long before the reaction to them existed. Leaders like Nixon, Reagan, and Trump (and far too many in power in… Read more »

@ MKT
Sport, take a chill pill. You’re going to stroke out if you don’t and that would be a real shame. Jesus needs you to help Him maga.

I suspect that you consider your racism synonymous with your faith mkt, but I’m fairly certain even the Babylon Bee doesn’t go there.

In fact, for you to be linking that article is quite ironic, though I guess if your set has been choosing culture over Christmas for generations then there was never anything for you to personally “abandon.”

I would think that my most counterculture stand would be leaving a promising career in research science to serve Christ instead, or my family’s choice to leave our home to live in the radical simplicity that Christ commands, or perhaps my commitment to the nonviolence that Christ teaches. But if you think that my distrust of technophiles and GMOs is more countercultural than those stances, I guess that’s your prerogative. No, I don’t believe that my positions on race or Basil-style social justice are in lockstep with the culture, otherwise there’d be more people doing what I do when hardly… Read more »

You had just accused me of joining most of America in failing to live as Christ commands, while clearly implying that you are part of the minority that has it right, and then when I counter with actual examples you accuse me of Pharisaism….for declaring that I was trying to live as Christ commands.

I’ll also note that you also completely left the train of discussion to move the goalposts to a new target.

You lost the train MKT. I made a list of racist stances, you responded by claiming that I had left the Christian positions for cultural ones. Unless you were just making a random ad hominem attack unrelated to what I actually said, then you were implying that to oppose those racist stances was anti-Christian.

How is it “convenient but dishonest” for me to have responded in the EXACT context of the discussion? I made a list of racist stances I opposed, you replied claiming that I was leaving Christian stances for culture. Again, unless you’re admitting to a total ad hominem with no relation whatsoever to the list of stances I had just made, then you were suggesting that opposing those things was somehow unChristian. So I took you at your word. And there’s an obvious difference between “never” and “rarely”. If someone is going to accuse me of leaving the faith for opposing… Read more »

“rarely if ever” does not mean “never”. It means “rarely”. This is basic English mkt. Look it up in the dictionary and then apologize:

RARELY/SELDOM IF EVER idiom

Definition of rarely/seldom if ever:

—used as a more forceful way to say “rarely” or “seldom”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rarely/seldom%20if%20ever

And again, I was applying it to the specific context where I rejected racist actions and you responded by claiming that I was rejecting Christ.

Jonathan, whatever you may wish to claim about the racial motivations of politicians on the right, they still at the very least publicly condemn explicit racism. Some of them may be secretly hypocritical in doing so, sure. But is it truly worse to support someone who is accused of racist motivations while publicly denouncing explicit racism, than to support someone who openly supports abortion and sodomy? Because while many white (and more than a few non-white) Christians will be doing the former, many black (and more than a few non-black) Christians will be doing the latter.

I swear there’s gotta be some verse that deals with the idea of deflecting from our own issues to point out the sins of others instead…. You do make a good point though – at the least racism is still generally considered a bad thing and that is good. I too prefer hypocrisy to flagrant sin. Unfortunately, what people seem most upset about currently is being called a racist, and not whether their thoughts or words or actions are wrong. So the main energy is spent trying to move the Overton Window to expand as much as possible the range… Read more »

For example, the entire focus after Trump’s mean-spirited and lie-filled diatribe against four non-White congresswomen was “Was it racist?” and not that it was a despicable thing to do regardless of the word placed on it. When his crowds chanted “Send her back!” in reference to the only one of the four who actually immigrated, the focus was still so much on “Is this racist?” that few conservative commentators spent much energy on how incredibly unChristian it is to demand the expulsion of a neighbor (and former child refugee – i.e. “stranger”) solely because she chose to critique the policies… Read more »

It’s like you’ve gone full nihilist. You’re not even trying.

I don’t read either of those outlets unless someone happens to link me to something, and that would happen quite seldom. So once against you are wrong on the facts in addition to proving yourself blatently incapable of making a logical case for any point at all.

The sole content of your comment was to accuse me of spending way too much time reading the Huffington Post, of not being gainfully employed, and suggested I would praise taxpayer-funded abortions next. Literally none of those statements has anything to do with me or with the conversation. That’s why I called your argument nihilist. In your very first STATEMENT in the thread, before I had said a word to you, you claimed that I had left the positions of Christ for the positions of the world. In direct response to me listing explicitly racist stances that I opposed. Someone… Read more »

Jonathan, you are partially right. However to major in race-based identity politics while calling out race-based identity politics is simple hypocrisy. History provides no excuse for that.

Sort of like “racism”, to complain without context about “identity politics” risks falling to word play. I wholeheartedly agree that there are bad ways to use race in politics. From the Southern Strategy to The Nation of Islam to the Hindu identity groups that Tulsi Gabbard (and Steve Bannon!) have been courting, there’s a lot of ways to do it wrong. However, I quite often see “identity politics” used to describe things as tame as “acknowledging that race has an impact on our nation.” No one should denounce the Southern Strategy of courting anti-Black racists if they are purposely courting… Read more »

For those who haven’t seen, here were some of the choice statements from the latest presidential tapes. “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” “That reaction on television was, it proves how they ought to be still hanging from the trees by their tails.” “these, uh, these cannibals on television last night,” They saw it on television and, he said, ‘These cannibals jumping up and down and all that.’ And apparently it was a pretty grotesque picture.” “I’m not saying that blacks cannot govern; I am saying they have a hell of… Read more »

The comment nesting makes it difficult, but back in my own comment I was referring to I was trying to parse “Trump exposed his racial strategy yet again” (in reference to the “crime-ridden” and “rat-infested” attacks on Rep. Cummings and his district) and “as well as having the presidential tapes drop” (in reference to the racist conversations involving Reagan and Nixon) as two different events. I later explicitly said, “Trump, Reagan, and Nixon” in that comment, but I see how not noting Reagan and Nixon in the first comment makes it confusing. I’m not too worried that I misled anyone… Read more »

MKT, The difference is that the left’s dislike of non-white conservatives isn’t based on their race, but on the fact that they see them as not sufficiently anti-white. Prominent non-white conservatives rarely speak explicitly about white people in a positive way, but will repeat standard civic nationalist rhetoric such as calling for a a race-blind society or lecturing the democrats for their “soft bigotry of low expectations” or keeping blacks on the “democrat plantation.” Hardly a white supremacist approach if you ask me, but in the mind of the more rabid leftists and anti=whites, it’s enough to warrant the kind… Read more »

Armin, I see white leftists regularly on the top of the leftist food chain, and leftists treating non-white conservatives as badly or worse than white conservatives. The notion that “anti-white” is their driving passion (as opposed to a tactic) is thoroughly implausible. It also doesn’t explain or mesh with their celebration of abortion and sodomy. They target whites as a tactic because this country does have a shameful history with white supremacy. They target whites as a tactic because it’s easier for people to measure the errors of the past than to accurately suss out the appropriate boundaries of the… Read more »

Armin is right. The white leftists hate other white folks. They view white skin as original sin, and hating white people is part of how they atone. You can see it in the fact they “love” all poor except white poor, who they hate and call white trash. They assign all wickedness in society to the stain of unatoned-for whiteness, and it’s hangers on such as Western Christianity. They believe because they are sanctified through wokeness, and have played their part in the great browning of the US, that the folks they brought in to replace their white countrymen will… Read more »

I’ve literally never, ever heard someone say, “check your privilege” in person. The news tells me it’s a thing at certain colleges and on Twitter, but it wasn’t cool yet when I went to school and most people here are my age or older. But the funnier aspect is in a time where we’re constantly stretching credulity to claim that the most offensive statements aren’t racist, now something as innocuous as “check your privilege” is the big example of anti-white hate. As someone who regularly faces much, much worse language on this Christian board, I’ll just have to appropriate another… Read more »

BJ was claiming that “most Americans” hated white skin and their own history and culture. If most of us have literally never heard or seen it in person, then it leads me to suspect that it can’t be used as evidence of something exhibited by most Americans. But my impression of it is that it doesn’t even indicate anti-white hate. Like I said I haven’t seen it used personally, but the first page of google results suggests in means exactly what it sounds like it means – that you should be cognizant of your own biases and advantages when speaking… Read more »

Well, yes, first page Google results do tend to give a reasonable if imperfect proxy for what most Americans think

If you wanted to discuss with any sort of honesty, you would a provide a different source that you consider better to answer this particular question. What are you adding to the conversation here?

“It seems more likely that you’ve absorbed a view of your identity that takes any perceived criticism in the worst possible light.” This is rich coming from you. And for the record, when you run in upper class, highly educated Reformed church circles, it is everywhere. They rarely say the truly crazy stuff, but when I present it to them, they have a hard time saying they oppose it. Then, I usually get told about my position of privilege. I normally giggle and inform them I am about as unprivileged as it gets being from the trailer in redneck Ohio… Read more »

So if I’m reading you right, you say that you run in upper class, highly educated circles, where you blend in and are assumed to be one of the “in” group.

In those circles you have a tendency to make statements that lead you to “have been called racist so many times I have lost count” and are often told to check your privilege as a result. In such scenarios you often smugly mock people who think your skin color might give you any sort of privilege.

Just checking.

“So if I’m reading you right…”

Lol. This is hilarious. You are almost always trying to twist people’s words and read them in the worst possible light. Let’s not kid ourselves.

Then clarify for me if I got anything wrong.

You said that you run in upper class highly educated circles, that you are assumed to be a similarly elite in-member in such circles until you choose to reveal otherwise, and that you have basically no privilege whatsoever.

That’s what you said, right?

And you also said that you quite often say things that the Reformed church circles you run in perceive as racist? Yet you still continue to run in these upper class highly educated circles?

But no privilege at all, right?

Lol. Keep trying kiddo.

Maybe you can get there one day.

I was referring to the SBC in general and Al Mohler specifically, who is critiqued at the top of this very article and whose stand on racism Pastor Wilson has critiqued heavily. Not the three random people you name who weren’t mentioned anywhere in the letter, one of whom I’ve primarily seen Pastor Wilson speak of positively and the other two whose names I honestly don’t recognize at all. Pastor Wilson have criticized Mohler’s stance on race and well as the SBC in general in quite strong terms more than once, for example the following: A few weeks ago, I… Read more »

You claimed this was about some assortment of “Thabiti/Dwight McKissic/Kyle “Fake Crip” Howard”, now you’ve jumped to agreeing it’s the SBC in general and blaming Hall instead of those three. But no matter where you move your goalposts, it doesn’t change the fact that I was referring to Pastor Wilson’s position on the SBC in general and Mohler specifically. I realize you lack the humility to retract anything. But Wilson never said his position was somewhere between Arwin and Mohler. That’s something you made up. In fact, my exact words were: When compared to his position, posters like Arwin are… Read more »

Mohler does not reflect the ideas of most Southern Baptists.

I honestly don’t know what most Southern Baptists think, but Pastor Wilson has suggested in previous blogs that the SBC in general is going down the wrong path on racial issues, as I quoted above.

Son, you really are out of your depth. I realize that you are doing you damndest to help Jesus fight the evil, fake-christians ruining our beautiful country but that kind of holy work should be left to the nodded off professionals like Wilson and Ascol . It’s probably best that you sit this one out. Go in peace and be filled.

Jonathan, first of all, you don’t know if Wilson has responded to Armin directly? He did so in this very post (and has in a couple of other letters posts as well). But aside from that, there’s good reason to respond differently to the likes of Mohler than to Armin. The fact is, Mohler, whatever his blind spots and errors, still has every indication of trying first and foremost to be faithful to Christ. A charitable hearing of Mohler has him as someone who shares our fundamental goals, and might be open to correction (and who is worth giving a… Read more »

I agree with you Mike. That’s why I find it quite odd that a number of regular commenters here (three by my count) are showing far more affinity and grace to Armin’s statements in this conversation than I have ever seen expressed for Mohler’s statements on race (or Piper’s, Thabiti’s, Hall’s, my own, etc.) Not that it would necessarily be wrong to operate from a standing of grace and take every statement for its own value rather than having to couch it all in our views of that person. But it’s just striking to me to see it down for… Read more »

“Doug is always trying to be witty and find the humorous or cute metaphor or title.” I agree with you there… “He also tries to assume a deep intellectual response to the nonsense spewing forth from the Left…” Say what now? This blog is an unending stream of right wing culture war red meat. Practically everything Wilson says streams straight from his biases and resentments, most of which appear to have been inherited without examination from the latter 20th century right wing social consensus. I can’t recall a time when he has taken a leftist argument seriously, or treated a… Read more »

When his main criticism of the Left is that it is a Gramscian march through the institutions (and I agree with that assessment, for the record), his posture is an intellectual stance. Ask the average church goer if he or she has any idea what cultural Marxism or Critical Race Theory or intersectionality is or who Gramsci or the Frankfurt School are and you are likely to get a blinkered, deer-in-the-headlights look. Doug is attempting to approach this discussion with an intellectual air. Instead of saying that calling for poor whites from families who never owned slave (or much else… Read more »

It’s called reparations, and no one is publicly saying it like I did, but that is the reality behind it. Even leftist John McWhorter says as much: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O3POpubeoIc&feature=youtu.be In my family’s case, and likely yours to some degree as well, it was the corporate overlords oppressing and stealing wealth. I know unions aren’t popular in this neck of the woods, but if it wasn’t for collective bargaining, I’d likely still be in the holler. But this isn’t the Oppression Olympics. The fact of the matter is that I could replicate story after story of blacks oppressing whites, Asians oppressing other… Read more »

And that would continue the cycle of in forgiveness and injustice. Where would I then go to tell my story of injustice? How much money and from whom would I receive reparations? You are playing on guilt to perpetuate a hideous cycle.

Buy why does that matter? Government reparations for Black people haven’t happened in the 155 years since slavery ended, haven’t come even CLOSE to happening at any point in the last 140 years, and aren’t going to happen at any point in the next 100 years. So why even talk about what they’re saying? Why not talk about what we should be doing instead?

Neither myself nor Demo were trying to call for reparations. We were talking about restorative justice. I thought Demo was going to great pains to distinguish restorative justice from government reparations. BJ was the one who kept insisting on talking about reparations, Demo kept trying to pivot back to restorative justice instead.

Why would the people of Ocoee need to make amends. The people of Ocoee didn’t kill anyone. Even the descendants of the perpetrators, for what it matters, may or may not be living in Ocoee. It is unlikely all the people living in Ocoee now are descended from the people living there at the time;why should the ones who are not have to apologize or make amends to anyone, even if we think descent somehow confers guilt ?

Anyway, I’m glad you’re not calling for categorical reparations.

“Restorative justice doesn’t perpetuate a cycle of inforgiveness and injustice.” We are no where close to talking about restorative justice. Not even close. “Would it really perpetuate a cycle of inforgiveness and injustice if, years later, that community found your children and apologized directly to them and did what they could to make amends? I’m asking honestly?” Do you honestly think this is what is happening in our political circumstances? It makes me wonder if you are really paying attention or if you are simply being played by guilt mongers into doing their work for them. Let’s change the scenario… Read more »

demo, I have only been skimming over this thread.

With that acknowledgement – “Would it really perpetuate a cycle of inforgiveness and injustice if, years later, that community found your children and apologized directly to them and did what they could to make amends?”.

Is that really all reparations are all about? Amends for the living children of people who were abused and murdered recently enough to have still living children? I do not get the impression it is all about doing that.

I’m not sure if anyone can say “what reparations are all about” as it is still a fringe movement and I see little meaningful definition to it. But yes, there are large numbers of living children of people who faced terrible racial abuse, land-stealing and violence. Even many of those very people who were stolen from are still alive. I would say that we cannot dismiss the victimizations of the early 20th-century anti-Black riots as being in the distant past, as not only are children of the victims still alive but the repercussions clearly extend to the grandchildren and further… Read more »

It is not a fringe issue when viable candidates for President are calling for them.

The details of what it would look like is really what is being debated on the Left. That is driven, not by what is morally appropriate, but by what is politically viable at this point.

Programs that only cover basic necessities are not “wealth transfer programs” as no wealth is transferred. Food stamps merely provide food, if any wealth is transferred at all it is going to the pockets of store owners and the like, not the food stamp recipients. As Demo pointed out, Black people in the United States up to a point even well above the median have close to zero wealth, and this is not due to the slavery, segregation, and race riots alone (some examples of which he gave quite well), but also due to the general inability of many Black… Read more »

Yes, a bit of money is moved. For a family of four making $100,000/year, about 0.14% of their income, 38 cents a day, goes to providing food to the poorest residents of this country. But as that money is immediately cycled back into the economy, much of it will end up back in the pockets of those same relatively wealthy people. On the other hand, a poor urban family that was screwed out of home ownership by redlining or contract mortgage or any number of other racist schemes will be forced to transfer $1000 or more every single month to… Read more »

You seriously just called the idea that people profit off of rental properties a “left-wing fantasy”.

If they didn’t profit off of owning those places, they wouldn’t have bought them or they would have sold them long ago. Profits off of those buildings are enormous – and I have the experience of living in them before, in Inglewood, so I know full well how little many of those landlords provide for the huge amounts of money they extract.

And the idea that poor people are continually screwing over wealthier people in court is laughable.

I have no doubt that there are “examples” of poor people winning cases over wealthier people. But it would deny reality to claim that poor Black people are continually winning cases they shouldn’t over wealthy people. Lawyers cost so much because they get their money’s worth, to suggest the courts don’t tilt in that direct denies reality.

I thought there was pretty much one definition of profit – additional income made above and beyond costs. What you do with it is irrelevant.

The point being, the fact that Black people were largely frozen out of home ownership and thus are forced to pay rent instead means that those Black people cannot build wealth for themselves, and end up building wealth for someone else. So someone is profiting off the fact that they don’t have a home of their own.

Regardless of whether you think it is “inherently bad”, the truth is the that, due to systematic racism that prevented most Black people from owning homes and forced most urban Black folk into renting in the worst neighborhoods. So they are unable to build wealth today, they are losing $1,000 or more in rent every month that cannot be used to build wealth, explicitly due to the racism against them or their parents or grandparents. And the people who are making a living off of the fact that those Black people don’t have homes are certainly profiting off of their… Read more »

Before we decided to start treating the market as God, theologians explicitly taught that deferring to the “market rate” was wrong and that poor people’s ability to pay DID have to factor into our actions. John Calvin himself said that it was wrong to default to the market rate when profiting off the poor and what you needed to consider was their needs. And in history that’s seen as a huge compromise, as Calvin admitted you could profit off of them a little bit but with with a large number of qualifications, while for 1500 years before that such profits… Read more »

You keep ignoring the Biblical commands. Did Nehemiah have to mind-read in Nehemiah 5 in order to know that what the people were doing was wrong? Nothing in the passage suggests ill motives by the creditors at all – except for the obvious fact that they were making their profits at the expense of other people’s poverty. Your claims go the same direction all the status quo profit-defense always goes – claiming that it’s all a heart issue, therefore in practice anything goes. This was NOT what the Church Fathers taught or what the Bible teaches, for 1600 years there… Read more »

“Love your neighbor as yourself” or “Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you” alone should be enough to kill any suggestion that it’s okay to profit off of the victims of racism when they are in need. I don’t know how you can read that Nehemiah 5 passage or the explicit commands not to profit off the poor and suggest their need doesn’t matter. Imagine there was a huge hurricane and your area was flooded with refugees. They are desperate for water. The market price for bottled water jumps to $50 as a result. You… Read more »

Why can’t a Christian businessman just make a profit off of the vast bulk of his customers who are not stuck in poverty? Why not make a living selling to those with means and then providing at or below cost to those without means? Why do you suggest that you HAVE to profit from the poor, when the Bible says the opposite? You ignore the plain text of the Bible in order to justify the status quo. You can’t just claim the Bible is irrelevant because it doesn’t sound good to you. Over and over you keep ignoring the Biblical… Read more »

Are you suggesting that food stamps are unjust?

I didn’t even see “food stamps are unjust” or “food stamps are stealing” as anyone’s claim. The claim was that food stamps are a transfer of wealth. And to me that’s like claiming that the meals fed to prisoners are a transfer of wealth. The fact that it costs money to feed prisoners doesn’t mean that wealth is getting transferred to the prisoners, because they can’t actually turn those meals into wealth.

I thought the original question was about restorative justice, but no one appears to want to talk about that.

I still don’t understand what argument you actually want to make regarding food stamps or whether you just are trying to play games. But whatever, I’m tiring of people who are just arguing to argue and clearly don’t want to even consider whether we have a Christian duty in this matter that hasn’t been fulfilled.

And I am saddened that your reply completely ignored the Biblical insight on the issue of profiting off of the poor versus working to restore them. Whoever increases wealth by taking interest or profit from the poor amasses it for another, who will be kind to the poor. – Proverbs 28:8If any of your kin fall into difficulty and become dependent on you, you shall support them; they shall live with you as though resident aliens. Do not take interest in advance or otherwise make a profit from them, but fear your God; let them live with you. You shall… Read more »

Before we decided to start treating the market as God, theologians explicitly taught that deferring to the “market rate” was wrong and that poor people’s ability to pay DID have to factor into our actions.

John Calvin himself said that it was wrong to default to the market rate when profiting off the poor and what you needed to consider was their needs. And in history that’s seen as a huge compromise as Calvin admitted you could profit off of them so long as you prioritized their needs, while for 1500 years before that such profits had been explicitly decried.

You made a claim about Southeast Asians, I showed the claim was terribly wrong for most Southeast Asian groups and in fact the opposite was true, you claim now that it holds for just one of those groups. So which one of us is cherry-picking? I’m not sure why the Vietnamese did relatively fine while the Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmong did so much more poorly, but my offhand guess is that as the American allies in Vietnam predominantly came from wealthier backgrounds, those who fled were likely from better-educated backgrounds and thus were better equipped to take advantage of their… Read more »

There are no Oppression Olympics mkt, their situations are not comparable. What happened with the Vietnamese (who ended up in less poverty than Black folk) or the Cambodians (who ended up in more) is completely irrelevant to the completely different situation that Black folk are in. I postulated some obvious reasons why more (though certainly not all) Vietnamese were able to succeed where Cambodians, Laotians, Hmong and African-Americans have not. That doesn’t mean they lose (or win?) the Oppression Olympics, it just defeats your attempt to use the model minority myth to victim-blame any group you don’t like. It was… Read more »

All that isn’t some defense of food stamps or welfare or anything. I’m just pointing out that the massive injustices Demo pointed out did occur, and food stamps and the like do nothing to rectify them so they still exist. How do we respond? I see it as pointless to talk about political solutions as the political will to do anything meaningful isn’t there. So what can we do as churches, as communities, as followers of Christ? Personally, I grew up working class (zookeepers don’t make anything) but to parents who had both come from well-off families who owned their… Read more »

I already addressed that silliness earlier, but you have your narratives. Interesting that earlier you claimed there were all these Black women getting better jobs than you, but you also want to play the right-wing game of blaming the issues that plague the Black community on general welfare programs (and not, you know, the sins that actually targeted the Black community at that exact time). It’s obviously how the wave of violence and discrimination that was launched against Black people and Black communities as a reaction against would have a detrimental effect. How would health care, education, or food stamps… Read more »

Jonathan, right or wrong, how is it not wealth transfer if the wealth of the taxpaying class is, for the food stamp recipient, converted to the goods wealth is used to obtain?

Why are black people unable to get *fair* wages, – what are *fair* mortgages (honestly not sure what you mean), and especially – what do you mean that black people are unable to get access to the G.I. Bill?

That’s a constant part of the narrative, at least from the right. And it’s dead wrong. the release of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) report, which documented how widespread failures in regulation and recklessness on Wall Street led to the recent financial crisis. Unfortunately, the movie’s success has spurred Wall Street allies to dust off their revisionist claims that the federal government’s affordable housing and community lending policies caused the crisis. These assertions have been thoroughly debunked in every serious analysis of the crisis. Nine of the 10 FCIC members, including five Democrats, three Republicans, and one independent, explicitly… Read more »

So you’re a personal expert in this and have studied the issue deeper than the official reports. Right. Anyway, here’s the actual background of the FCIC members, to kill your conspiracy theory: President of AKT Development Corp and former California State Treasurer Retired Congressman and fellow at American Enterprise Institute Former FCTC chair and partner at Arnold & Porter Partner at Coughlin Stoia and Robbins Geller Retired Senator Former economic adviser to GW Bush President of American Action Forum and former economic adviser to McCain Founder and former chair of Nevada Cancer Institute Chairman of the board and former CEO… Read more »

It’s not wealth transfer because it never becomes wealth. You can’t build wealth with food stamps unless you’re running some sort of scam. And no one is losing wealth due to food stamps – as the money taxed for food stamps is cycled back into the system, and as money cycled back into the system gravitates towards the same well-off people who were taxed, there’s no net loss of wealth. Which is why food stamps and welfare do nothing to close the ever-growing wealth gap. I too didn’t know much at all about contract mortgages, discriminatory impact of the GI… Read more »

It seems to me you’re defining “wealth” narrowly to support your your case. It is a wealth transfer simply because it involves transfer of one party’s money (wealth) to provide something of value to a second party, without compensating the first party by exchange of anything of value into their possession. That the money is cycled back into the system does not change the equation for the first party, unless we can show that it recycles back to them as fully, surely, and directly as it was taken. My point does not have to do with whether food stamps are… Read more »

I am defining wealth to actually mean something. The discussion was whether or not there have been wealth transfers that have made up for the wealth that was stolen from the Black community. That clearly has not happened. You could hand out food stamps for the next 200 years and it would still fail to restore the wealth that the Black community lost, they wouldn’t be any closer to making it out of poverty. If you’re desire is simply to call it a “wealth transfer” to win the internet, then do what you will. And yes, predatory loans disproportionately targeting… Read more »

I am defining wealth to actually mean something. The discussion was whether or not there have been wealth transfers that have made up for the wealth that was stolen from the Black community. That clearly has not happened. You could hand out food stamps for the next 200 years and it would still fail to restore the wealth that the Black community lost, they wouldn’t be any closer to making it out of poverty. If you’re desire is simply to call it a “wealth transfer” to win the internet, then do what you will. And yes, predatory loans disproportionately targeting… Read more »

Yes, You’re defining wealth to mean something; you’re defining wealth to mean what you need it to mean to support your point of view. Whether or not there is a case for aid to make up for past injustice (which is not really the intent of food stamps anyway) has nothing to do with the definition of wealth.

I do agree that food stamps aren’t going to help anyone out of poverty.

Bringing up predatory loans is changing the subject from what I asked about, and you answered.

The definition of wealth isn’t necessary to support my point of view. People who want to say “wealth transfer!” just in order to be able to say the scary (although quite obviously Biblical) words “wealth transfer!” are the ones who are stuck on the definition of the word. My point, which you agree with, is that food stamps do nothing to lift people out of poverty. Thus if an injustice has been committed which forced Black folk into poverty, then no amount of food stamps can “pay back” that injustice. The claim was that even if Black people got screwed… Read more »

Then you have no reason to obstinately argue that food stamps do not represent a form of wealth transfer. You could easily say “Fine. Food stamps are wealth transfer, and good that they are!”, and it wouldn’t change what you say is your point.

You’re basically right. My central personality traits is that I’m obsessed with getting things “right”, and so often I can get hung up on details not necessary in the bigger picture.

I didn’t mention wages, but one way in which Black people historically had difficulty getting fair wages is that they were often shut out of unions, and when they did unionize on their own those unions were often put down especially violently. Even today it can be more difficult for Black persons in certain places to access unions. I read an article about the City of Oakland requiring union workers on all their construction projects, which was opposed by Black construction workers in the area as there had not been a union training center in Oakland in over 20 years… Read more »

I didn’t know much about mortgage discrimination either until just a few years ago. Here is a relevant story and a few quotes to introduce the subject: In 1961, Ross and his wife bought a house in North Lawndale, a bustling community on Chicago’s West Side. North Lawndale had long been a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, but a handful of middle-class African Americans had lived there starting in the ’40s. The community was anchored by the sprawling Sears, Roebuck headquarters. North Lawndale’s Jewish People’s Institute actively encouraged blacks to move into the neighborhood, seeking to make it a “pilot community for… Read more »

And there were other ways Black people were kept out of access to mortgages. A common refrain here is that “welfare” somehow created the Black ghettos and really bad-off neighborhoods that built up in the 1950s and later. The truth is much more sinister and blatant: Whereas shortly before the New Deal, a typical mortgage required a large down payment and full repayment within about 10 years, the creation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in 1933 and then the Federal Housing Administration the following year allowed banks to offer loans requiring no more than 10 percent down, amortized over… Read more »

With the G.I. Bill, the issues were threefold: Most Black veterans weren’t allowed into college (southern universities still barred black people, northern universities were discriminatory in entrance, and HBCUs couldn’t handle nearly the numbers necessary), so they couldn’t use the G.I. Bill’s education benefits. Segregation and redlining made it impossible for many Black folk to apply for real mortgages, so they couldn’t use the G.I. Bill’s home ownership benefits. Job training programs were still segregated or limited to White students completely in many cases, so they couldn’t use the G.I. Bill’s skilled job training benefits. As a result, while some… Read more »

I just ran into this striking quote in the Atlantic today. Conservative Republicans began to echo some of the earlier Democratic warnings about Reconstruction, in less flagrantly racist terms. Whereas Democratic newspapers once warned that the “poor whites of the country are to be taxed—bled of all their little earnings—in order to fatten the vagabondish negroes,” Richardson writes that “some Northern Republicans were willing to accept Southern Democrats’ opposition to African-American rights so long as their complaints were framed in terms of a conflict over political economy rather than race.” The more things change… The article in general is quite… Read more »