Lessons from Florida v. George Zimmerman

Much has already been said and written in numerous venues about the killing of Trayvon Martin, the seventeen year-old unarmed black Florida youth by George Zimmerman and Zimmerman's recent acquittal of all charges (second-degree murder and manslaughter) by a six-person jury in Sanford, Florida.  As someone who has been involved with law and cultural competency for many years, I've been interested in what has not been said, what was not done, and what the trial of Florida v. Zimmerman indicates about the extent to which the legal profession remains unskilled in addressing cross-cultural realities in litigation.

One wonders how, in 2013, a six-person jury was selected that included no African-Americans in Seminole County, Florida.  One wonders how and why the prosecution team did not address the reality of racial profiling, racial prejudice, and racial stereotypes during jury selection in order to be able to intelligently decide whether to challenge prospective jurors for cause on account of racial prejudice, or to exercise peremptory challenges for prospective jurors considered unacceptable.  One wonders whether the prosecution team included anyone skilled in cultural competency and inclusion.

We may never know the true answers to these questions.  Whatever the answers may be, they cannot change the trial outcome.  The time for those questions to have been considered and answered was at the outset of the prosecution.  The Trayvon Martin homicide case involved cross-cultural issues at every turn.  It appears that the prosecution team resorted to the age-old mistake many lawyers continue to make of thinking that law is color-blind and that such color-blindness is an asset to achieving just outcomes in legal disputes.

However, law is not color-blind.  Law, as the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, is about experience.  Culturally competent law practice requires that one understand societal realities and experiences and the legal implications they evoke.  To do otherwise is to engage in wishful thinking at best.  At worse, taking a "color-blind" approach to law in a legal dispute with cross-cultural issues amounts to cultural incompetence, however skilled the lawyer might otherwise be viewed.   

Cultural competence, like competence in any other field, involves two essential components:  knowledge and skill.  Blindness is a disability, not a skill.  Unfortunately, American law schools do not teach courses in cultural competence and the law.  Lawyers are intentionally sent into a multi-cultural society that has a long and complex history of cross-cultural disputes without receiving any education on cultural competence and without being required to study and demonstrate any ability to handle cross-cultural issues as lawyers.  Thus, lawyers who become judges lack cultural competence. 

When uninformed and unskilled people engage in conduct that requires the exercise of knowledge and skill it is almost inevitable that mistakes will happen.  As I mention in presentations to lawyers and judges about cultural competence and inclusion, "Oops is not a skill!"  The legal profession should have known that truth long before Trayvon Martin was killed.  The prosecutors in State of Florida v. George Zimmerman should have known it before charges were filed against Zimmerman.  Had they been culturally competent concerning what the prosecution involved, perhaps they would have prepared and conducted the trial differently. 

Trayvon Martin's death should have been investigated and prosecuted by lawyers who were culturally competent.  The shameful truth is that it wasn't. The more painful truth is that this is the level of legal work communities of color, women, people who are gay, lesbian, trans-gender, and bi-sexual, immigrants, and other marginalized persons have come to recognize as business as usual from the professionals licensed by society to handle and decide disputes about justice. 

Truth and Consequences: Implications of Disobeying the Prophetic Ministry of Martin Luther King, Jr.

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES
Implications on Disregarding the Prophetic Ministry of Martin Luther King, Jr.
©Wendell Griffen, 2012

Across the United States people are gathering to celebrate the birth and reflect on the ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Excerpts will be played and recited from his "I Have A Dream" speech. Politicians will position themselves to gain favor with constituents at such gatherings. Proclamations and pronouncements will be issued and uttered. Choirs will sing. People will gather, present, and perform.

I do not condemn or disparage these exercises. But we should also ponder the tragic reality that our society and its civic, social, commercial, and religious leadership have not been faithful to Dr. King's ministry.

Martin King was the Jeremiah Wright of his time. He was murdered in 1968 a year to the day after he publicly called on the United States to end its military involvement in Southeast Asia. King was the Nobel laureate who confronted the Johnson administration and our nation about the tragic irony of sending black and white men to die together in Vietnam while refusing to help them live together at home. Yet the U.S. is as addicted to war-making in 2012 as it was in 1968.

King was the Baptist preacher who dared to confront clergy in Birmingham, Alabama about their willful tolerance of racist and violent conduct of Eugene "Bull" Connor and Birmingham police toward peaceful civil rights protestors. In 2012, the governor of Alabama is a man with racist and xenophobic policies about immigrants that are morally reprehensible.

King was the civil rights leader who hoped to lead 100,000 poor people to march on Washington, DC to confront national leaders about economic injustice and poverty. Economic injustice is what the Occupy movement is about. Economic injustice is what ACORN was about. Now, just as when King lived and preached, local, state, and national civic, business, and religious leaders continue to favor the wealthy and privileged while ignoring the needy and vulnerable.

King was the moral theologian who openly called on a society addicted to military adventurism, crass materialism, and racism to undertake a radical revolution of values. We remember the "I Have A Dream" speech of August 1963. But we have disregarded and disobeyed what he said on April 3, 1967 during his sermon titled "A Time To Break Silence" at Riverside Baptist Church in New York .

"Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken—the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profits motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men [and women] home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."

More than four decades have passed since Dr. King was taken from us. Sadly, we are reaping the consequences of disobeying his prophetic ministry.

Militarism has increased. Most people pay little attention to the suffering of military personnel and their families. News reports about our war-making are now hidden inside newspapers. Politicians won't talk about how much money this nation has spent over the past ten years on the fabricated war in Iraq and the poorly managed war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, we seem to have not noticed that the war atrocities of My Lai in Vietnam morphed into those in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, others in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, and the festering daily travesty we perpetrate and try to ignore of Guantanimo in Cuba. When the Obama administration defended the CIA for killing U.S. citizens who sympathized with Al Qaeda in Sudan last fall the public didn't complain. When President Obama signed a bill on New Year's Eve that authorizes him and any other president to detain and indefinitely hold U.S. citizens without trial the public didn't complain. We've become the land of the un-free and the home of the scared.

Materialism has worsened. The gap between those who have much and those who struggle to survive in this society and our world is more proof that we have disobeyed Dr. King's ministry. We have sunk so morally low that presidential candidates are praised as followers of Jesus even when they publicly oppose providing universal health care regardless of income or employment status.

Racism remains a virulent cancer in our society. When terrorists from Ireland hid in the United States and Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed the Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City national leaders didn't call for a PATRIOT Act. But today Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents and state and local law enforcement officers target Latinos who are doing honest work to provide for their families. Local police continue to harass and racially profile black and brown people. We have a mass incarceration situation that is so large that Michelle Alexander has accurately called it "the New Jim Crow."[1] If you haven't read her book, I urge you to do so.

Our society is paying a terrible price for disobeying Dr. King's prophetic ministry. Yet we seem unable or unwilling to confess our transgressions and turn to the values he preached. Have we reached the spiritual death Dr. King feared?

I do not know when we will heed King's warnings and "undergo a radical revolution of values." But we can no longer ignore the consequences of having refused to do so.

· There are too many casualties from our military adventures to ignore. The costs of war-making have grown so high politicians hide them from us.
· Economic injustice now threatens entire cities, states, and regions across the nation. Birmingham, Alabama and Flint, Michigan are broke. Gated communities and Chamber of Commerce receptions, dinners, and slick ad campaigns can't cover up the damning results of favoring the privileged few over the needy many for decades.
· New laws requiring voter identification have been enacted in some states that will operate to stifle people of color, poor people, and formerly incarcerated persons who have paid their debt to society.

Dr. King foresaw the plight we now live. And with a prophet's heart and voice he left an encouraging word to guide us onward and upward. Obery Hendricks, Jr. shares King's words at the start of his latest book titled The Universe Bends Toward Justice.[2]

"When our days become dreary with low-hanging clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Dr. King was a prophet for our time. Prophets show us the way to live. Prophets challenge our wrong-headed decisions and wrong-hearted values. Prophets call on us to change. But prophets cannot make us want to change. They can hope for us, pray for us, plead with us, and pronounce moral judgments about us. But when all is said and done, whether we change is up to each of us.

The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. Will we cooperate with it or be condemned by it? The answer, as Michael Jackson sang, it's up to "the man in the mirror." So I leave you with this question.

What's happening in your mirror?
[1] Alexander has detailed the situation in her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness.
[2] Obery Hendricks, Jr., a former Wall Street executive and former seminary president, is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary and a Visiting Scholar in Religion and African American Studies at Columbia University. He is also author of The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted. I am grateful to Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Sr. for introducing me to Hendricks and his prophetic work.

The Night You Became Indefinitely Detainable

THE NIGHT YOU BECAME INDEFINITELY DETAINABLE

©Wendell Griffen, 2012

On New Year's Eve 2011, while you and I were anticipating the end of the year President Barack Obama signed a law that makes U.S. citizens subject to indefinite detention by military authorities on suspicion of being terrorists.

The National Defense Authorization Act principally deals with funding the Defense Department. But the measure enacted by Congress and submitted to Obama contains provisions that allow the executive branch (meaning the President) to determine whether to order a U.S. citizen detained indefinitely by military authorities on suspicion of being a terrorist.

If you think that smacks of tyranny, you're right.

If you think Obama is smart enough to know better than to sign such a measure, you're right.

If you hoped Obama would demonstrate the fortitude to carry out his publicized threat to veto the legislation if this offensive provision wasn't removed, you're badly disappointed.

Count me among the badly disappointed people who know tyranny when we see it. Count me among the people who take no consolation in Obama's signing statement that his administration won't use the power he signed into law.

This is the kind of foolishness that produced the 1944 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States that upheld the forced detention of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry based on xenophobic and racist hysteria after Pearl Harbor.

The Korematsu decision is generally considered one of the low points of Supreme Court jurisprudence. It ranks alongside the decisions in Dred Scott v. Sandford (deciding in 1856 that black people had no legal rights white people were obliged to respect) and Plessy v. Ferguson (the 1896 decision that upheld Jim Crow seating on rail transportation that validated racial segregation for the next half century until it was overturned in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education).

I hoped that Barack Obama, a former constitutional law professor, wouldn't align his administration with the forces of tyranny. I hoped he would understand the obvious danger to freedom posed by legalizing indefinite detention of any person based on mere suspicion. I hoped that he would resist the temptation to snatch people from their homes, families, jobs, and communities and deny them access to the civil courts.

And I hoped that he was principled enough to admit that the issue isn't whether his administration would ever sink to such a deplorable state as to resort to such conduct.

Despite Obama's claim that his administration won't use the power he signed into law, no president deserves the power to snatch people out of our society at will. No president should be allowed to order citizens or anyone else held indefinitely without an independent and objective judicial finding that they've done something unlawful.

Obama's action takes on more significance when considered from the perspective of the upcoming holiday honoring the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the direction of J. Edgar Hoover based on Hoover's suspicion that King was a Communist.

The law Obama signed on New Year's Eve now allows dissident voices such as Dr. King to be indefinitely detained on suspicion of terrorism.

Several years ago while visiting the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum in Alabama I found a poster of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. I admired the photograph of that man who escaped slavery, became literate, eventually purchased his mother's freedom, and stirred the fires of freedom by his great intellect and persuasive oratorical powers.

But I purchased the poster because it bears the following Douglass quotation: "There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own constitution."

Sadly, Barack Obama doesn't have that much loyalty, honor, and patriotism.

Now it remains to be seen whether you and I have it.

Will goodwill followers of Jesus find a way to challenge the oppressive new powers that Obama claims he never wanted and won't ever exercise but signed into law? Will pastors find enough loyalty to righteousness and justice in our spirits to denounce this oppression in the spirit of Amos, Micah, Hosea, Frederick Douglass, Martin King, and Jesus?

Or will we imitate the priest and Levite in the Good Samaritan lesson and Barack Obama and look the other way?

God, help us recognize "a good fight," and then strengthen us to fight well.

The Night You Became Indefinitely Detainable By: Wendell Griffen Posted: Wednesday, January 4, 2012 6:31 am Section: EthicsDaily.com's Latest Articles	Email Print
Despite President Obama's claim that his administration won't use the power he signed into law, no president deserves the power to snatch people out of our society at will, Griffen says. (Photo: Pete Souza/White House) On New Year's Eve 2011, while you and I were anticipating the end of the year, President Barack Obama signed a law that makes U.S. citizens subject to indefinite detention by military authorities on suspicion of being terrorists. The National Defense Authorization Act principally deals with funding the Defense Department. But the measure enacted by Congress and submitted to Obama contains provisions that allow the executive branch (meaning the president) to determine whether to order a U.S. citizen detained indefinitely by military authorities on suspicion of being a terrorist. If you think that smacks of tyranny, you're right. If you think Obama is smart enough to know better than to sign such a measure, you're right. If you hoped Obama would demonstrate the fortitude to carry out his publicized threat to veto the legislation if this offensive provision wasn't removed, you're badly disappointed. Count me among the badly disappointed people who know tyranny when we see it. Count me among the people who take no consolation in Obama's signing statement that his administration won't use the power he signed into law. This is the kind of foolishness that produced the 1944 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States that upheld the forced detention of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry based on xenophobic and racist hysteria after Pearl Harbor. The Korematsu decision is generally considered one of the low points of Supreme Court jurisprudence. It ranks alongside the decisions in Dred Scott v. Sandford (deciding in 1856 that black people had no legal rights white people were obliged to respect) and Plessy v. Ferguson (the 1896 decision that upheld Jim Crow seating on rail transportation that validated racial segregation for the next half century until it was overturned in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education). I hoped that Obama, a former constitutional law professor, wouldn't align his administration with the forces of tyranny. I hoped he would understand the obvious danger to freedom posed by legalizing indefinite detention of any person based on mere suspicion. I hoped he would resist the temptation to snatch people from their homes, families, jobs and communities and to deny them access to the civil courts. And I hoped that he was principled enough to admit that the issue wasn't whether his administration would ever sink to such a deplorable state as to resort to such conduct. Despite Obama's claim that his administration won't use the power he signed into law, no president deserves the power to snatch people out of our society at will. No president should be allowed to order citizens or anyone else held indefinitely without an independent and objective judicial finding that they've done something unlawful. Obama's action takes on more significance when considered from the perspective of the upcoming holiday honoring the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. King was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the direction of J. Edgar Hoover based on Hoover's suspicion that King was a communist. The law Obama signed on New Year's Eve now allows dissident voices, such as King's, to be indefinitely detained on suspicion of terrorism. Several years ago while visiting the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum in Alabama, I found a poster of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. I admired the photograph of that man who escaped slavery, became literate, eventually purchased his mother's freedom and stirred the fires of freedom by his great intellect and persuasive oratorical powers. But I purchased the poster because it bears the following Douglass quotation: "There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own constitution." Sadly, Obama doesn't have that much loyalty, honor and patriotism. Now it remains to be seen whether you and I have it. Will goodwill followers of Jesus find a way to challenge the oppressive new powers that Obama claims he never wanted and won't ever exercise but signed into law? Will pastors find enough loyalty to righteousness and justice in our spirits to denounce this oppression in the spirit of Amos, Micah, Hosea, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and Jesus? Or will we imitate the priest and Levite in the Good Samaritan lesson as well as Obama and look the other way? God, help us recognize "a good fight," and then strengthen us to fight well. Wendell L. Griffen is pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Ark., and on the board of directors of the Baptist Center for Ethics. His sermon manuscripts appear on EthicsDaily.com.

The Night You Became Indefinitely Detainable By: Wendell Griffen Posted: Wednesday, January 4, 2012 6:31 am Section: EthicsDaily.com's Latest Articles	Email Print
Despite President Obama's claim that his administration won't use the power he signed into law, no president deserves the power to snatch people out of our society at will, Griffen says. (Photo: Pete Souza/White House) On New Year's Eve 2011, while you and I were anticipating the end of the year, President Barack Obama signed a law that makes U.S. citizens subject to indefinite detention by military authorities on suspicion of being terrorists. The National Defense Authorization Act principally deals with funding the Defense Department. But the measure enacted by Congress and submitted to Obama contains provisions that allow the executive branch (meaning the president) to determine whether to order a U.S. citizen detained indefinitely by military authorities on suspicion of being a terrorist. If you think that smacks of tyranny, you're right. If you think Obama is smart enough to know better than to sign such a measure, you're right. If you hoped Obama would demonstrate the fortitude to carry out his publicized threat to veto the legislation if this offensive provision wasn't removed, you're badly disappointed. Count me among the badly disappointed people who know tyranny when we see it. Count me among the people who take no consolation in Obama's signing statement that his administration won't use the power he signed into law. This is the kind of foolishness that produced the 1944 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States that upheld the forced detention of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry based on xenophobic and racist hysteria after Pearl Harbor. The Korematsu decision is generally considered one of the low points of Supreme Court jurisprudence. It ranks alongside the decisions in Dred Scott v. Sandford (deciding in 1856 that black people had no legal rights white people were obliged to respect) and Plessy v. Ferguson (the 1896 decision that upheld Jim Crow seating on rail transportation that validated racial segregation for the next half century until it was overturned in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education). I hoped that Obama, a former constitutional law professor, wouldn't align his administration with the forces of tyranny. I hoped he would understand the obvious danger to freedom posed by legalizing indefinite detention of any person based on mere suspicion. I hoped he would resist the temptation to snatch people from their homes, families, jobs and communities and to deny them access to the civil courts. And I hoped that he was principled enough to admit that the issue wasn't whether his administration would ever sink to such a deplorable state as to resort to such conduct. Despite Obama's claim that his administration won't use the power he signed into law, no president deserves the power to snatch people out of our society at will. No president should be allowed to order citizens or anyone else held indefinitely without an independent and objective judicial finding that they've done something unlawful. Obama's action takes on more significance when considered from the perspective of the upcoming holiday honoring the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. King was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the direction of J. Edgar Hoover based on Hoover's suspicion that King was a communist. The law Obama signed on New Year's Eve now allows dissident voices, such as King's, to be indefinitely detained on suspicion of terrorism. Several years ago while visiting the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum in Alabama, I found a poster of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. I admired the photograph of that man who escaped slavery, became literate, eventually purchased his mother's freedom and stirred the fires of freedom by his great intellect and persuasive oratorical powers. But I purchased the poster because it bears the following Douglass quotation: "There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own constitution." Sadly, Obama doesn't have that much loyalty, honor and patriotism. Now it remains to be seen whether you and I have it. Will goodwill followers of Jesus find a way to challenge the oppressive new powers that Obama claims he never wanted and won't ever exercise but signed into law? Will pastors find enough loyalty to righteousness and justice in our spirits to denounce this oppression in the spirit of Amos, Micah, Hosea, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and Jesus? Or will we imitate the priest and Levite in the Good Samaritan lesson as well as Obama and look the other way? God, help us recognize "a good fight," and then strengthen us to fight well. Wendell L. Griffen is pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Ark., and on the board of directors of the Baptist Center for Ethics. His sermon manuscripts appear on EthicsDaily.com.

A Time of Shame

President Obama and Republicans in Congress appear willing to continue the national pastime of pandering to the wealthy at the expense of the needy. According to news reports, Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate are willing to support legislation to extend unemployment benefits for workers that are to expire on December 31, 2010 if President Obama and Democrats will support extending the "temporary" tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush for all taxpayers, including individuals earning $200,000 or more and couples earning $250,000, that are also scheduled to expire December 31, 2010.

Such a deal should offend anyone who cares about justice. People making $200,000 a year don't need a tax break nearly as badly as people who've been out of work for months need unemployment benefits. President Obama surely knows this. So why would he agree to such a deal? And why, to add further insult to injury, would his administration agree to exempt estates valued at $5,000,000 from taxation? Why agree to add $900 billion—almost a trillion dollars—more to the federal deficit by giving tax breaks to the rich?

The political answer is that some lawmakers won't agree to extend the benefits for unemployed workers unless people with jobs and high incomes get tax breaks. Tax breaks for the wealthy is the price Republican and some Democratic lawmakers are demanding and Obama seems willing to pay so unemployed workers can buy food, provide shelter, and otherwise care for their families. This situation is happening during Advent season when Christian congregations are joyfully singing and preaching about a time when the Messiah will rule the world "in truth and grace."

We are warned at Psalm 146:3 to not place ultimate trust in rulers—no matter what their political party or philosophy may be—but in God. The drama being played out in Washington over extending unemployment benefits for laid-off workers shows that politicians are dealmakers. Their primary concern is not justice for the poor, weak, and vulnerable, but the campaign contributions and support they can garner from the wealthy and powerful.

So why aren't religious leaders talking about this issue? Could it be that we, like the politicians, are more concerned about money, church pledges to capital campaigns, and budgets than to how our vulnerable neighbors are treated? Are religious leaders and congregations becoming like the politicians the Psalmist warned against trusting? Are we so much "at ease in Zion" that we're more interested in charity for the affluent than justice for the vulnerable?

I don't expect politicians to think and act like prophets. But it isn't asking too much of preachers and congregations who claim to be God's servants to demand that politicians use public money so unemployed people can have food and shelter. It isn't asking too much of preachers and congregations to challenge and criticize politicians who would rather create more public debt to give tax breaks to wealthy people than protect people oppressed by unemployment. And it isn't asking too much of preachers and congregations to challenge ourselves about how much we cater to wealthy people.

The Biblical prophets had a sensitivity about and compassion for suffering people that inspired them to hold rulers accountable for the plight of poor people, immigrants, children, and others who were vulnerable. They called on rulers to relieve suffering, not exempt the powerful and affluent from the duty to help care for the less fortunate. When rulers ignored the divine mandate of justice for the poor, weak, immigrant, and outcast in their societies, prophets challenged them, criticized them, and condemned them. And when priests sided with insensitive and oppressive rulers, prophets condemned the priests along with the rulers.

Have the preachers and members of congregations supposedly devoted to God and divine justice forgotten this biblical history and forsaken our calling? Sadly, we seem so addicted to materialism and popularity that we can't and won't condemn policies and politicians that violate the biblical imperative to care for vulnerable people.

Shame on us for thinking we glorify God while ignoring how rulers treat people Jesus called "the least of these"! Shame on us for honoring the wealthy and disregarding the needy! Shame on us!

Airport Screening and Howard Thurman's Hounds of Hell

©Wendell Griffen, 2010

What if you were required to pass through a scanning device any time you drive on a public highway? Would you consider that requirement intrusive? Would you object to being scanned and insist that government agents have some specific factual basis indicating that you pose a risk of harm to others before they interfere with your travel and scan your body and effects?

Would you object less if required to permit government agents to frisk you and rummage through your belongings before you can travel? Are body and container scans and frisks justifiable because people use the highways to commit crimes?

If you value your freedom to travel without mindless suspicion and your right to privacy, you should find this hypothetical disturbing. Yet this process happens every day to every person engaged in commercial air travel in the United States. All persons who board a commercial airplane must first submit to body scanning. The latest body scanners provide images in graphic anatomical detail that are viewed by a TSA employee. Some frequent air travelers are concerned about the health risks associated with undergoing routine body scans.

Persons unable or unwilling to submit to the full body scanners must submit to pat-down frisking similar to that performed by law enforcement agents on suspected criminals. Many persons, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have expressed objections to the pat-down searches.

However, there has been no reported outcry about the requirement that every person seeking to board a commercial airplane be scanned. TSA personnel needn't have a reason to scan or frisk other than the fact that a person is travelling by commercial airliner. Persons traveling from private airports are not required to be scanned, frisked, or otherwise detained for surveillance and search before they board aircraft.

When a government requires people to be searched without any objective indication that they pose a danger to others, one usually associates that activity with a "police state." If freedom and personal dignity mean anything, people have the right to be left alone by others (including the government) unless there is a specific reason to interfere with that right.

Yes, we live in a world where people carry dangerous objects onto airplanes, including box cutters in their carry-on items and explosives in their shoes and underwear. We can't ignore that some people want to hurt others.

But is it fair and right to conduct surveillance, scan, and search every airline traveler like a potential terrorist? If so, what is left of the Fourth Amendment guarantee that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated?

Searches that lack an objective basis for suspecting the persons searched to be dangerous may be thorough and efficient. Such searches may cause public officials and travelers to feel "safe." However, the searches are not based on reasons to suspect that a traveler is dangerous. Governmental efficiency and irrational fear of strangers do not constitute legally valid reasons to treat people as criminals or enemies.

The airport screening issue involves the fundamental moral concern of whether we'll treat people we don't know as neighbors or enemies. Is the woman ahead of me my neighbor or my potential murderer? What reason do I have to suspect her as a murderer?

Am I justified to consider her more dangerous than myself because I don't know her? Is my suspicion because her clothing, language, ethnicity, or some other obvious feature differs from mine?

Would I be offended if she accused me of being a criminal and insisted that I be searched merely because she doesn't know me? And if I deserve to be treated as a neighbor unless there are objective reasons for suspecting me to be an enemy, shouldn't she and anyone else be entitled to the same neighborly treatment?

In his classic work, Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman named fear, hate, and hypocrisy (deception) "hounds of hell" that prevent people from creating community. And Fred Craddock reminds us that how we treat strangers is a question on life's final exam (Matthew 25:31-46). Judging from the TSA airport screening process, we're not creating community and we're flunking the final.

Religious leaders and congregations haven't addressed the moral implications surrounding airport screening. Terrorist attacks and threats don't trump justice for strangers. 9-11 didn't change the final exam.

Clint McCance, Tea Party Bigotry, and the Religion of Jesus

©Wendell Griffen, 2010
Little Rock, Arkansas

I may be the only person in the world who senses a connection between Clint McCance, Tea Party nationalism, and neo-fundamentalist notions about Christianity. Mr. McCance is the Vice-Chair of the Midland School Board in Pleasant Plains, Arkansas who posted hateful comments about gay youth on his personal Facebook page. His were uttered in reaction to people wearing purple in support of recent gay victims who committed suicide after they suffered bullying.

Among other things, McCance stated, “Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers killed themselves. The only way I’m wearin [sic] it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant [sic] believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed thereselves [sic] because of their sin.”

Since the time those and other hurtful statements were circulated over the Internet and drawn intense reactions ranging from a planned peaceful protest at a local school in his community to a public rebuke by the Arkansas Commissioner of Education, McCance has retreated into a reclusive silence.

I see a similarity between McCance and Tea Party nationalism. Like McCance, Tea Party activists have demonstrated intolerance and hostility. Although they deny being motivated by racial animosity toward President Obama and profess that they are displeased by his policies, many Tea Party activists have publicly challenged his citizenship, his religious faith, and his patriotism in ways that are hateful and racially-biased.

McCance and Tea Party nationalists appear to share one other feature—a neo-fundamentalist notion of Christianity that strikes out against people because they are considered "strangers," meaning different. In McCance's case, the "strangers" are gay people, particularly gay youth. For the Tea Party, President Obama is the "stranger." Ever since Obama won the Democratic Party nomination during the 2008 presidential campaign, people have been showing up at public events bearing signs and wearing clothing depicting him as a Nazi, socialist, witch doctor, and threat to the United States. Some have even worn T-shirts with Biblical references calling for his death.

Somehow McCance, Tea Party nationalists, and neo-fundamental Christians (who in many instances self-identify as "Christian conservatives") have come to believe that people who are different are dangerous. They reject the idea that human diversity is valid. For McCance, Tea Party nationalists, and neo-fundamentalists Christians, safety, security, and salvation require sameness.

This mindset is fundamentally wrong-headed. Reasonably intelligent people understand that human diversity is a fact to be accepted as part of a healthy world, not a harmful condition from which people and a society can or should be cured. A worldview that defines difference as threatening contradicts reality. After all, we are constantly learning about new species of plants and animals. Variety in people is no more ominous than it is in anything else in nature.

McCance, Tea Party nationalists, and neo-fundamental Christians embrace an arrogant and self-glorifying anti-intellectualism. I doubt I am the only person who detects irony in the fact that McCance, a leader (Vice-Chair) of his local public school board, was so arrogant as to demonstrate his incompetence with English grammar and spelling in his Facebook utterances that have prompted such an outcry. McCance brings Sarah Palin (former Alaska governor, 2008 Republican Party nominee for Vice President of the United States, and now leading promoter of Tea Party ideology) to mind. Palin's anti-intellectualism has become her calling card. We should not be surprised that American children are falling behind children in other societies when we deliberately elevate and celebrate people such as McCance and Palin as the exemplary leaders.

McCance, Tea Party nationalists, and neo-fundamentalist Christians aren't merely wrong-headed about human diversity. They're wrong-headed and wrong-hearted about the religion of Jesus. The Gospels present Jesus as someone who embraced people, especially people who were otherwise shunned because they were lepers, women, children, religious, political, and social outcasts, and sick. The Christ of the Gospels did not inspire the "Christianity" proclaimed and lived by McCance, Tea Party nationalists like Sarah Palin, and other neo-fundamentalist Christians who condemn people because of their sexual orientation, religion, language, and ethnicity.

There is as much difference between the religion of Jesus and McCance, Tea Party nationalists, and neo-fundamentalist Christians as there is between noon and midnight. As a follower of Jesus, I intend to show McCance, Palin, and the people they mistreat as "strangers" that I know that difference and am determined to live it.

Calling Out the Hypocrisy of "Fiscal Conservatism" in Current U.S. Political Discourse

Media commentators and U.S. elected officials at the highest levels of government are expressing concern ranging from apprehension to alarm about the federal deficit. Several members of Congress and people who share the Tea Party ideas about government are complaining about federal spending.This concern supposedly was why Congress allowed unemployment benefits for people who had been unemployed for six months or more to expire on June 2.

If the Tea Party, Blue Dogs, and other so-called "fiscal conservatives" such as Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Steve Forbes, and others are truly concerned about integrity—fiscal or otherwise—they should be complaining about the billions of dollars spent to wage war in Iraq. According to the National Priorities Project (www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home), the United States allocated $747.3 billion—almost 3/4 of a trillion dollars—for the war in Iraq since 2003. Here is what the same amount of money could have done for Arkansas, my home state:

• 2,080,756 people—more than the entire population of Arkansas—could have been provided low-income healthcare for one year; or
• 155,419 police or sheriff's patrol officers could have been employed for one year; or
• 166,758 firefighters could have been employed for a year; or

• Scholarships for 1,083,707 university students could have been provided for one year; or
• 1,261,201 students could have received Pell Grants of $5550 each to attend college; or
• Head Start could have been funded to cover 1,103,815 children for a year.

Mind you, the $747.3 billion allocated to wage war in Iraq does not include any money that must be spent to treat thousands of wounded and disabled service members. If the Department of Defense website is accurate, 13,982 service members were wounded in action and not returned to duty and 17,915 others were wounded and returned to duty. The Iraq war cost tally also does not include what the nation owes to survivors of the 4417 military and Defense Department civilians killed in Iraq as of August 2, 2010, 10 a.m., EDT (see www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf). We should have long ago confronted the hypocrisy of people who profess to cherish human life but never challenge a war that has claimed almost 4500 American lives, perhaps hundreds of thousands more in Iraq, and permanently scarred countless others.

Long before now, ethically sound people should have dismissed the hypocrisy of people who opposed spending money to help unemployed working people survive the current recession but who have never opposed the seven-year-old war in Iraq. And we should have dismissed as moral cowards or moral frauds those who said "I want my country back" when the nation debated enacting national healthcare insurance reform, but who never thought the country was at risk morally, intellectually, socially, militarily, and geo-politically because of the quagmire called Operation Iraqi Freedom.

When almost ten billion dollars of the money allocated for the war in Iraq cannot be accounted for, people who understand the difference between integrity and hypocrisy owe God and each other much more than hand-wringing and head-shaking about the nation's budgetary woes. We should be outraged about the hypocritical conduct and conversation surrounding it.

Missed Opportunities--A Commentary on the Cambridge Review Committee Report on the July 16, 2009 arrest of Professor Henry Louis, Gates, Jr.

©Wendell Griffen, 2010

On June 15, 2010, barely a month before the first anniversary of the notorious July 16, 2009 encounter between Sergeant James Crowley of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Department and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University, a report was issued by the Cambridge Review Committee, a volunteer panel of individuals selected by the City of Cambridge "… for their knowledge of issues in policing and criminal justice, law, race, community relations, organizational behavior, and conflict resolution, as well as their knowledge of the City of Cambridge." The Report, titled, "Missed Opportunities, Shared Responsibilities," asserts that the Crowley-Gates incident was "avoidable" and occurred because "Sergeant Crowley and Professor Gates each missed opportunities to 'ratchet down' the situation and end it peacefully."

Even assuming the best intentions of the Cambridge Review Committee and anyone else responsible for their effort, the report missed the opportunity to state the obvious. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. should have never been arrested for disorderly conduct outside his own home merely because he accused Sergeant Crowley of behaving in a racist manner. Crowley's decision to arrest Gates for disorderly conduct—nothing else—made the incident notorious.

The 64 page report reads as if Gates somehow was obliged to not express his displeasure about being suspected of being a thief in his own residence even after proving his identity and lawful right to be there. The report makes much ado about procedural legitimacy, police discretion, and other concepts, but says nothing about personal liberty to protest how a police officer behaves. For all its words, the "Missed Opportunities, Shared Responsibilities" report missed the opportunity to unapologetically declare that in the United States a person does not forfeit freedom of speech when confronted by law enforcement.

Sergeant Crowley had no discretion to arrest Professor Gates for criticizing his presence or loudly accusing him of behaving in a racist manner. If the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States means anything, it means that the government cannot prohibit someone from complaining about how its officials behave. There is no discretion for any police officer to arrest someone from complaining about how the officer is performing. The fact that the officer is investigating a burglary call does not render the First Amendment pointless, useless, or void.

Had the Cambridge Review Committee desired to honestly address the Crowley-Gates episode, its report would have made this point. The section of the report that deals with "Police Discretion" would have said that while the police have discretion about whether to make an arrest when they observe unlawful conduct, there is nothing unlawful about protesting police conduct that one considers racially discriminatory, insulting, or otherwise demeaning. Disorderly conduct laws exist to punish civil disturbances, not curb civil liberty. Those laws do not justify arresting anyone for criticizing official behavior, whether by the police or anyone else.

The United States is a free society, not a police state. Strangely, the Cambridge Review Committee missed a clear opportunity to say so.

We Aren't Your Field Hands!

Ben Smith writes for Politico.com. On June 8 after Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas won her runoff election with Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, Smith received a phone call from an un-named White House staff member.

"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official told Smith. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."

That remark demonstrates so much cultural and political insensitivity that it begs for a response. I'm responding as a native Arkansan, an unapologetic Halter supporter, and someone who believes that in a free society people are entitled to choose the people and causes they consider worth supporting.

Bill Halter received almost 48% of the votes in the June 8 runoff election because working people and progressives in Arkansas want a Senator who respects us as equals, not her hired help. Working people and progressives in Arkansas encouraged Halter to run for Senate. We knew it was an uphill fight, and gladly accepted help from around the country.

Workers and progressives are not field hands for Senator Lincoln, the White House, or anyone else. We support candidates whose records and values square with what matters to us. We're concerned about seniors who can't afford their medications. We're concerned about families who can't afford to help their children attend college because government policies helped corporations move jobs out of the country and favored banks over students concerning student loans.

Workers and progressives disagree with politicians who agreed to loan money to Wall Street banks and Detroit auto manufacturers to keep the economy afloat but were unwilling to loan money to working families trying to avoid foreclosure of their homes. We disagree with politicians who realize the need for federally-funded crop insurance for the nation's farmers—a public option that Senator Lincoln has never opposed—but who don't believe that what is good policy for the farm crop should be good policy for the farm workers who produce the crop.

On these and other issues, a Democratic label alone no longer will earn our support. As Jesus said, people are known by their fruit. We supported Halter because Lincoln's voting record doesn't square with our needs and aspirations. That wasn't flushing money down a toilet. It was acting to replace an insensitive politician by supporting someone whose aspirations and values matched our core values.

Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination and the 2008 presidential election because we were willing to "flush" our money and energies this way. Ned Lamont defeated Senator Joe Lieberman for the Democratic primary in 2006 because we were willing to "flush" our money and energies this way. Senator Claire McCaskill was elected to the Senate from Missouri because we were willing to "flush" our money and energies this way.

We didn't toilet our money and energies in those efforts or for Halter. We invested in candidates we embraced. In the Halter instance that investment didn't produce the desired result. Still, it was our investment to make. That's freedom.

If the White House wants to invest its energies more effectively, it shouldn't treat the people who supported Halter's senatorial bid like field hands by talking and acting like plantation owners. That attitude won't help Lincoln win her fall election against Republican Congressman John Boozman, whose campaign coffers will undoubtedly be "flushed" with donations from business tycoons from Arkansas and elsewhere.

Instead, Lincoln and her handlers should ponder how to re-habilitate her in the minds of Arkansas voters who supported Halter. Lincoln can't win the general election without our votes. Treating us like field hands isn't the way to get them.

Thanks to the White House staffer who spoke with Ben Smith, we know what Lincoln's White House cheerleaders think of us. We're not your field hands. If you want to lose Lincoln's seat in the fall, continue talking and acting like we are.

ARROGANT, INCOMPETENT, AND UNCHECKED

By now most of the nation recognizes that the risks associated with offshore oil exploration are more real than the oil industry, lawmakers, and government regulators have ever admitted. U.S. and state lawmakers and regulators either failed to understand or consciously chose to place blind and unjustifiable trust in oil industry claims about the safety of offshore oil exploration. The same lawmakers and regulators chose to blindly believe oil industry claims that devices to prevent deep sea oil well blowouts will work, or can be effectively repaired before a devastating oil leak occurs following a blowout. Now, almost two months after oil began leaking from the April 20 blowout of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil well more than a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, we know how wrong those claims were.

As much as it may hurt, it is time to admit the truth. The oil industry and government regulators gambled that offshore oil exploration would not pose a problem to the environment, or that any problem would be manageable. Americans joined the bet. We lost.

It is important to realize that the gamble was not necessary. It is certainly true that the United States is overly dependent on oil and other fossil fuels for energy needs. President Jimmy Carter warned about that over-dependence during his one term in office, a factor that probably played a role in his unpopularity and eventual defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 thirty years ago. Had the U.S. population chosen to believe President Carter, heed his urgent call to refocus our lives around conserving energy better, decrease how much we rely on petroleum and other fossil fuels, develop new energy sources and supply systems, and rethink the way we travel (such as by relying more on mass transit), the chances are good that offshore oil drilling would not have been permitted so much and managed so poorly.

But national and corporate arrogance combined with political and corporate opportunism led Americans to reject Carter's assessment of the situation and his plan for energy management. Ronald Reagan, with an easy grin, familiar voice, and rosy projections of national life built on distrust for government and blind trust in the supposed virtues of free enterprise, defeated Carter in 1980. Reagan's election ended the fledgling steps taken during the Carter administration to shift the United States away from its addiction to oil. Reagan's vice presidential running mate was George H.W. Bush, a longtime friend of the Texas oil industry. James Baker, the Texas lawyer whose clients included major petroleum companies, served as chief of staff, Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies (1980-1992). Although the United States worked with other nations to craft the Kyoto Protocol calling for global reduction in greenhouse gases caused by use of fossil fuels during the presidency of Bill Clinton, the United States refused to join the Kyoto Protocol after George W. Bush became President in 2001. Then Vice President Richard B. Cheney and oil industry apologists crafted energy policies favoring increased offshore oil drilling as well as drilling on federal land. One of their most bitter complaints was that they were unable to persuade Congress to permit oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And during the 2008 presidential election contest, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona chose Alaska Governor Sarah "Drill, Baby, Drill" Palin as his vice presidential running mate.

Even now it is interesting to observe how journalists, political historians, and the American public have ignored or pretended to forget this history. The Deepwater Horizon offshore oil well was placed into service in 2001. Oil industry leaders and political leaders from oil industry states downplayed the risks associated with offshore oil exploration and production long before then. As late as March 23, 2010, President Obama signaled his administration's approval of continued offshore oil exploration despite objections by environmentalists. Whenever environmental and safety concerns were raised, oil industry officials and their political friends would confidently assert that the risks associated with offshore oil exploration are rare and manageable. The world now knows that the risks are tragically real, that the oil industry, governmental regulators, and our lawmakers cannot manage the damage associated with them, and that we have no reason to expect that to change in the foreseeable future if we continue business as usual.

All of this should point the nation back to its rejection of President Jimmy Carter's effort to redirect the way we use energy and the sources for our energy. Carter was defeated in 1980 by Reagan, whose distrust of governmental regulation helped chart the course for U.S. energy over the past thirty years. Dead birds and fish increase and more land, water, and people are threatened with each passing day because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Yet the oil industry remains unwilling to admit its environmental arrogance and incompetence and is still somewhat unchecked by governmental lawmakers and regulators. This is the "small government" reality Americans chose with Reagan in 1980, along with Reagan's affable invitation that we embrace what we should now realize was free enterprise idolatry.

American energy policy, one result of that idolatry, now has tar balls washing ashore along the beaches of the Florida Gulf Coast. The families of killed and wounded workers on the Deepwater Horizon platform struggle with tragedies that will never be undone. We face years—if not decades—during which the waters of the Gulf will be unsafe for fish, water fowl, and humans. In the words of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, "the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."

It is not unfair to wonder how things might have been different had the nation listened to and trusted Carter's prophetic efforts instead of following Reagan's path.

RE-THINKING PEACE

When it refused to endorse a statement expressing regret that the racial composition of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2010 will be no different from what it was in 1910 during the heyday of Jim Crow segregation, some members of the Faith Caucus of the Democratic Party of Arkansas and the deputy chief of staff of Governor Mike Beebe expressed regret that Democrats were arguing among ourselves. They were displeased that conflict and tension was introduced into the Faith Caucus by my request that the Caucus endorse the statement of regret. They were uncomfortable with appearing disharmonious toward Governor Beebe. A respected black member of the Caucus even contended that the issue was outside the jurisdiction of the Caucus, whose stated mission is to promote education about the role of religion in public policy. The prevailing sentiment was that the proposed statement expressing regret and the publicity surrounding Governor Beebe's refusal to integrate the all-white Arkansas Supreme Court was contentious, unseemly, and disruptive.

Since the Faith Caucus meeting, I have reflected about how people accept injustice in the name of "peace." Then I remembered a sermon titled "When Peace Becomes Obnoxious" during which the preacher said that there is a kind of peace that is a stench to the nostrils of God. The preacher concluded the sermon with these words: "If peace means accepting second-class citizenship, I don't want it. If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don't want it. If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don't want peace. If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated and segregated, I don't want peace. … Peace is not merely the absence of tension, but the presence of justice."

That sermon was delivered in 1956, weeks after a black woman named Autherine Lucy was asked by the president and trustees of the University of Alabama to leave the school's campus for her own safety and that of the University in the face of vicious threats and acts of violence directed toward her. The preacher mentioned in his sermon, "The day after Autherine was dismissed, the paper came out with this headline: "Things are quiet in Tuscaloosa today. There is peace on the campus of the University of Alabama."

In 1956, Tuscaloosa, Alabama and the University of Alabama were quiet and peaceful communities. The University of Alabama president and trustees were relieved, perhaps even satisfied. Meanwhile, Autherine Lucy had been denied her right to be included. Injustice often masquerades under the veneer of that kind of peace.

Last week, black lawyers in Arkansas were professionally and politically slandered as not being sufficiently competent, ethical, or deferential to serve on the Arkansas Supreme Court for a year. A tenured law professor at the UA School of Law (Carlton Bailey), a seasoned assistant attorney general (Valerie Kelly), a former attorney general (Leon Johnson), the dean of black lawyers in Arkansas (Christopher Mercer), and a host of other lawyers must accept second-class citizenship, keep their mouths shut, complacently adjust to a deadening status quo, and be willing to endure the humiliation of being considered unfit, to keep peace.

Things are quiet in Little Rock today. There is peace in Governor Beebe's office. The legal profession is quiet. The bar association is quiet. Voters and legislators are quiet. There is no regret. No discontentment. If this is peace, I don't want it. I don't want a peace constructed from injustice, exclusionary practices, and defended with blithe rationalizations and sanctimonious absurdities.

Neither did the other preacher. You may have heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. Yeah. That guy who is only remembered for saying "I have a dream."

In "When Peace Becomes Obnoxious," King said that unjust peace is a stench in the nostrils of Almighty God. King rejected such an obnoxious, cancerous, deadly, insidious, polite, courteous, diplomatic, and politically convenient peace. I suspect you won't hear people quoting the "When Peace Becomes Obnoxious" sermon next month during their King Holiday ceremonies.

Perhaps this explains why the faith caucus refused to endorse the statement of regret. Perhaps this explains why people in Arkansas, including some black people, wish the issue would simply go away. Obnoxious peace, not justice, is what passes for race relations in Arkansas in 2009.

That was not what Dr. King dreamed. King was not wrong in rejecting obnoxious peace. We are wrong in preferring it. We should re-think the dream, and re-think peace.

Why Cultural Competence Should Matter to Leaders in Arkansas

Why Cultural Competence Should Matter to Leaders in Arkansas
©Wendell Griffen, 2009

Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe is, by all well-informed accounts, an affable person. He has a long record of victories in political elections. He has a compelling personal history of being raised by a single mother, embraced by nurturing people during his youth, and having worked hard to attend Arkansas State University and later obtain his law degree from the University of Arkansas. He was a successful trial lawyer, and is a devoted family man. He served in the Arkansas legislature and became known as a leading moderate voice about public policy. As Attorney General of Arkansas, Beebe led the largest firm of lawyers in the state, including several lawyers of color whose experience, temperament, and other attributes qualified them to fill an interim position on the Arkansas Supreme Court—a fact that Governor Beebe's staffers and apologists can neither deny nor refute.

In his campaign for election as Governor of Arkansas, Beebe garnered support from all elements of the Democratic Party of Arkansas, including people of color. As Governor, Beebe has appointed people of color to numerous political positions—a point Beebe's deputy chief of staff has emphasized in response to criticism of his failure to name a person of color to the Arkansas Supreme Court despite two opportunities during the almost three years he has been in office.

How could any leader with so many favorable attributes be considered "culturally incompetent"? If Beebe can be culturally incompetent, what does "cultural competence" mean, and how does one avoid "cultural incompetence"? Why does "cultural competence" matter so much, if at all?

The answer to the first question (how any leader such as Beebe could be considered "culturally incompetent") is unsurprisingly simple, and points to the second question (what does "cultural competence" mean). Cultural competence does not depend on affability, political popularity, the touching appeal of one's personal history, success in winning lawsuits, family devotedness, experience leading a law firm that includes people of color, or political standing with people of color. None of those attributes makes Governor Beebe or anyone else competent concerning cross-cultural interactions, relationships, and inclusion. The fact that Governor Beebe's staff and apologists point to those attributes demonstrates that they apparently share Beebe's poor knowledge about what cultural competence means. It is always wise to understand what something is before professing to know what it is not.

Cultural competence involves integrating and transforming knowledge about individuals, situations, events, and groups of people into congruent standards, policies, practices, and attitudes and applying that knowledge in appropriate cross-cultural settings to achieve effective results. As such, cultural competence involves four principal components: cultural self-awareness (awareness of one's own cultural worldview); attitudes concerning cultural differences; knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews; and skill (ability to achieve effective results in cross-cultural situations and encounters).

Cultural competence focuses on results, not intentions, for an obvious reason. Good intentions do not make one competent. One can be an incompetent motorist and affable, educated, industrious, devout, and even politically progressive. None of those factors makes one competent to operate an automobile on a six-lane metropolitan thoroughfare. Saying "I meant well" after causing a collision on such a highway does not make one a competent driver. Standing alone, the statement is merely an excuse for not driving competently.

That is why it is immaterial whether Governor Beebe has acted with benevolent or malevolent intent in maintaining the all-white composition of the Arkansas Supreme Court despite having two recent opportunities to make the state's highest court racially inclusive. Competence is not measured by what one intends, but what one does. Otherwise, no student would ever fail any course unless he intended to fail.

Cultural competence is measured in terms of a six-point continuum that focuses on results ranging from cultural destructiveness to cultural proficiency. The specific aspects of the continuum are:
1. Cultural destructiveness—policies, practices, attitudes, behaviors in cross-cultural situations deliberately produce destructive results. Think of genocide, slavery, rape, intentional disenfranchisement of women and people of color.
2. Cultural incapacity—policies, practices, attitudes, behaviors unintentionally produce results that are destructive or counter-productive in cross-cultural situations. Think of a physician who does not take the medical history of a woman with insulin-dependent concerning her social practices regarding tobacco, when the woman regularly chews tobacco, a product made using molasses.
3. Cultural blindness—policies, practices, attitudes, behaviors are insensitive to the results of cross-cultural situations. The cartoon character "Mr. Magoo" never intended to cause collisions. He could not even recognize that he caused collisions because his near-sightedness was disabling. Blindness is a disability, not a skill.
4. Cultural pre-competence—policies, practices, attitudes, behaviors demonstrate effort, but ineffectiveness, in cross-cultural situations. Typical examples of cultural pre-competence involve affirming that a person or organization is culturally competent by pointing to token or symbolic achievements. Stating that "we have appointed more people of color than any previous administration" may be accurate. The statement does not make a leader better at any cross-cultural interaction. It merely means that the leader has better numbers and is better at counting than previous leaders (whether they cared about the numbers or not). Pre-competence is not competence. A host of pre-mature infants are not mature infants.
5. Cultural competence—persons, organizations, and institutions that perform at this level incorporate five basic skills into ongoing policies, practices, and processes (cultural self-awareness, awareness and acceptance of cultural differences, understanding the dynamics of cultural difference, knowledge of the culture of clients, and skillful adaptation and application of that knowledge in accommodating cultural differences to achieve effective results).
6. Cultural proficiency—persons, organizations, and institutions that perform at this level effectively handle the five skills involved with cultural competence, but also are leading forces, trend-setters, and proponents of "best practices" regarding cultural competence and inclusion.

Whether one views Governor Beebe's decision to maintain the all-white composition of the Arkansas Supreme Court as intentionally destructive (cultural destructiveness), unintentionally destructive (cultural incapacity), insensitive (cultural blindness), or merely ham-handed (culturally pre-competent) can be reasonably debated by people who understand what cultural competence means. At best, however, Beebe's action demonstrated cultural pre-competence. Pre-competence is not competence. Otherwise, the prefix would not be necessary.

People who do not know what cultural competence means will not understand that bragging about being pre-competent is, in itself, glaring evidence of cultural incompetence. The same is true of people who would brag about how well Beebe wins elections, how successful he was as a trial lawyer, or how much he loves being Governor. Culturally incompetent politicians can win elections and culturally incompetent lawyers can win cases when cultural competence does not matter. The history of Arkansas clearly proves that our political officials and lawyers have not cared about cultural competence, and that not caring was not harmful to their aspirations. Orval Faubus was politically powerful and effective because he was culturally destructive. Most Arkansans liked it, and watched as other states advanced over the past half-century.

Cultural incompetence, however popular, comes with a cost. In a world of many cultures where goods and services are increasingly being marketed and acquired on a global basis, being culturally incompetent makes no economic sense. Other states are thinking about cultural competence in terms of how they conduct and market themselves. How will the recent Supreme Court appointment allow Arkansas to be measured? How many opportunities will be lost because of cultural incompetence?

As matters now stand, Governor Beebe has defended his culturally incompetent conduct by claiming that his administration is better at being culturally pre-competent than previous administrations, by saying that he could not find a black lawyer qualified to serve a one-year appointment to the Supreme Court after three black lawyers turned him down. His deputy chief of staff—a black lawyer--effectively lobbied the Faith Caucus of the Democratic Party of Arkansas last Saturday to not endorse a statement expressing regret that the racial composition of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2010 will be no different from what it was in 1910, at the heyday of Jim Crow segregation. Notice, cultural incompetence is not race specific.

So, Governor Beebe has decided to maintain the all-white composition of the Arkansas Supreme Court. Beyond that, he does not regret that the racial composition of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2010 will be no different from what it was in 1910. Of course, Governor Beebe is a fine fellow. He has won many elections. He loves being Governor. He has black lawyers on his staff. He just does not regret that the racial composition of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2010 will be no different from what it was in 1910. Otherwise, he would have acted to make it different, or at least express regret that he failed to do so.

Governor Beebe's performance—after all, that is how competence is always measured—does not demonstrate cultural competence. Rather, it demonstrates how little Beebe and his staff understand about cultural competence, assuming they know enough to care about it.

Health Insurance is A Moral Imperative

There is a troublesome and troubling silence within the religious community concerning the current U.S. healthcare insurance reform debate. People of all faiths, backgrounds, political beliefs, and education levels are challenged daily to obtain and keep affordable health insurance. Reports about health insurance industry abuses—such as "rescission" where insurers terminate coverage and refund premium payments to customers who are diagnosed with chronic or life-threatening illnesses covered by their policies—are well known to everyone, including religious leaders. However, religious leaders and groups have stood silently on the sidelines.

As a Christian minister, I find this situation troublesome. The Bible is full of lessons about healing, health, and compassion for wounded and diseased people. Jesus Christ made healing an integral feature of his ministry. One would think that Christian pastors would be active thought and action leaders concerning the health insurance reform debate. What could possibly be harmful about teaching and leading our congregants and the wider public about this issue?

Because healing is integral to the redemptive ministry of Jesus Christ, it is also troubling if Christian ministers will not recognize the obvious moral implications surrounding the current healthcare insurance system and the need to reform it. It is troubling that religious leaders of all faiths and creeds are not actively determined to make health care affordable and available to every person in this society. The people who should be providing moral leadership concerning this life and death issue are conspicuously shirking our responsibility.

I urge the congregation I serve to be engaged in the healthcare reform debate, and openly favor a publicly-financed program to cover any person who cannot afford insurance in the private market or who may prefer coverage under the public program. Private insurers are interested in charging whatever people will pay while providing as little insurance coverage as possible. The private insurance industry hopes the current healthcare reform movement will require Americans to obtain health insurance and produce millions of new customers. Without a public option, all Americans, and especially the most vulnerable, will be at the mercy of the industry's pricing and delivery practices.

The public financing option for healthcare insurance reform is a moral and civil rights issue. A fair society does not force people who become ill and wounded to depend on the avarice and greed of the market place for their care. Religious leaders should demand that President Obama and Congress include a strong public option as part of healthcare insurance reform. After all, we are constantly confronted with the realities and injustices associated with the existing system.

In this regard, I am struck by what Walter Rauschenbusch, regarded as the father of the Social Gospel movement within 20th Century Christian thought, wrote in his landmark work titled Christianity and the Social Crisis, published in 1907.

"Few churches have the resources and leadership to undertake institutional work on a large scale, but … all pastors who are at all willing to do it have institutional work thrust on them. They have to care for the poor… This is the stake of the churches in modern poverty. They are buried at times under a stream of human wreckage… They have a right, therefore, to inquire who is unloading this burden of poverty and suffering upon them by underpaying, exhausting, and maiming the people. The Good Samaritan did not go after the robbers with a shotgun, but looked after the wounded and helpless man by the wayside. But if hundreds of Good Samaritans traveling the same road should find thousands of bruised men groaning to them, they would not be such very Good Samaritans if they did not organize a vigilance committee to stop the manufacturing of wounded men. If they did not, presumably the asses who had to lug the wounded to the tavern would have the wisdom to inquire into the causes of their extra work."

My congregation holds me accountable for what I say and do concerning the moral implications of public policy issues. More importantly, God holds us accountable for what we do—and for what we fail to do—to provide fair and adequate healthcare for every person in our society, including people who cannot afford it. This is a fundamental issue of social justice. Shame on religious leaders and congregations if we avert our eyes and pass to the other side of the healthcare insurance Jericho Road while millions of bruised and robbed people suffer.