Why?

Welcome to this community.  I am glad you are all here, and I hope to see this grow.  I try to be careful to never refer to this as my community because I believe that if it becomes what I hope for it to be that we will all feel like owners.




We all know the tumultuous history the black family has faced in this country and as a result of this country.  Black families were separated in Africa due to the slave trade.    If the family found themselves all captured they then had to endure the middle passage and hope that the family could avoid rape, murder, or death from deplorable conditions.



Once in America, if still together, the black family had to hope that they were bought/sold as a unit.  Otherwise husband was ripped from wife.  Mother was ripped from child.  Brothers and sisters were separated and children were left to raise themselves.



For generations blacks were denied the opportunity to raise our own children.  We were denied the opportunity to love our spouses until death.  We were not allowed to be a black family.  That did not change with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.  Black families were still torn apart due to murder and acts of terrorism.  We all know about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers; family men, patriarchs, husbands, fathers.  These killings were not isolated events.



Vernon Dahmer was involved in helping register blacks to vote.  A business man with a successful store, saw mill, a cotton farm and other business ventures; he offered to pay the poll tax for blacks who could not because in his words, "If you don't vote you don't count."  One night his house was set ablaze with his family inside.  He stayed inside returning fire while his family snuck out of the back entrance.  He later died of smoke inhalation and his burns.  That day one wife lost a husband.  Eight children lost a father.

For centuries the black family has had more adversaries than advocates.  Presently, however I think we are in a position where we have the opportunity to do what our ancestors could not.  We have the opportunity to love our spouses till death.  We have the opportunity to rear our children.  With those opportunities we continue to face challenges.  What I envision for this community; our community, is a place where we can discuss our challenges, celebrate our successes and share best practices.

I believe that our best practices are a marriage and family structure centered around Jesus.  We need to pray.  We need to love.  We need to forgive our spouses.  We need to forgive ourselves.  We need what God is anxious to pour out in us.  We need His Holy Spirit.

For many people, their Christianity is their church.  Their Christian walk is how they fit into someone else's vision.  Many of us are not plugged into Christ, but we are plugged into someone who we hope is plugged into Christ.

    
For us to be who we were designed to be we need to be plugged in to Christ.  Our salvation is based on Him.  Our lives should be based around Him.  Our marriages should be based around Him.  We are to raise our children in his nurture and admonition (Ephesians 6:4).

That is my hope for this community.  My hope is that we can sharpen each others iron.  My hope is that we can encourage each other because narrow is the path and hard is the way that leads to life.  My hope is that we can promote spiritual growth, familial love, and we can lay a STRONG foundation for the black Christian families that will come after us.

God bless you all.

Severed Ties

When George Zimmerman pulled out his 9mm pistol and took the life of Trayvon Martin it had nothing to do with Martin's sexual preference.  When Officer Darren Wilson unloaded his service weapon into Mike Brown it was without regard as to whom Mike Brown was romantically involved.   When officers applied an illegal choke to Eric Garner there was no consideration as to whom Garner was married.  Twelve year old Tamir Rice's gender identity was not a factor in the shooting that cost him his life.  Walter Scott's death is totally unrelated to his sexual history.  John Crawford III was killed in an Ohio Walmart without regard to which sex he chose to identify with.  If sexuality, gender identity and marriage were not factors in these killings, why are they tied to the resulting Black Lives Matter movement?  

Brandon Ellington Patterson wrote an blog called "Why you can't be Pro-Black and Homophobic at the Same Time."  In it he states:

 It's problematic for members of any one marginalized group to challenge the progress made by members of another, especially when both groups suffer as a result of the same system—a system that favors being white, male, straight and "cisgender," a term used by academics and advocates to describe the opposite of trans.

But it is especially problematic for black people to reject the LGBT rights struggle, especially when, over the past year, black people have been particularly vocal about their own racial oppression, via sustained, high-profile protests that have swept the nation.

Most glaringly, it's problematic because blackness and LGBT identities are not mutually exclusive. There are lesbian black women, gay black men, bisexual black people, transgender black men and women, "genderqueer" black people—identifying as neither gender or both—and black people who are any combination of any of the above.

And black LGBT people and their allies have made incredible contributions to the black liberation struggle, from Bayard Rustin during the civil rights movement toAudre Lorde, a poet, feminist, and LGBT advocate, as well as the three women who founded the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and the organization that birthed the movement: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.

Patterson makes two arguments as to why black issues and LGBT issues are intertwined.  His basic arguments are that our struggles are so intertwined that progress for one group is progress for all.  He goes on to say that the struggles are not mutually exclusive given that there are LGBT individuals who are also black.

His first argument regarding intertwined struggles seems to be a burden that only blacks are forced to carry.  In 2015 Roland Emmerich released Stonewall, a movie based on LGBT riots in 1969.  While these riots, celebrated in LGBT pride cultures, were largely started by blacks, Emmerich creates a white hero who takes the first brick out of the hands of a black man to throw and begin the riots.  To his surprise, Emmerich faced some backlash from the LGBT community.  He explained his decision to center the movie around a white fictional character by stating:

You have to understand one thing
I didn't make this movie only for gay people.  I made it also for straight people.
As a director you have to put yourself in your movies, and I'm white and gay

By Emmerich's admission, he could not identify with a black leading character and changed history in his movie to make a movie more accepting to mainstream.  The ties Patterson describes that supposedly bind blacks and gays are more often a bind to blacks.  Gay causes can be championed at protests for black murder victims but a gay director thought it best to replace a black historical figure with a white imagined figure.  I'm not upset that Roland decided to rewrite history.  My point is that our struggle as blacks is not intertwined with LGBT causes and that we should not accept being shackled with that burden.

Patterson's second point is less of an argument and more of an emotional plea.  It is an appeal to the lowest common denominator; an implication that we should support gay blacks for no other reason than because they are black.  I'm always leery of people who attempt to appeal to a wide demographic by way of appealing to a common denominator.  We are comprised of more than our basic similarities.

I don't use the term lowest common denominator to insult my heritage.  I mean it only as a large basis to which some believe I can be appealed to.  Why did Donald Trump meet with black pastors?  Because it represented two large bases by which to attempt to appeal to people without understanding who you are appealing to.

In John 6:44 Jesus says that no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him near.  I have been saved, not because God made an appeal to my lowest common denominator.  I have been saved because God drew me near and Jesus died for me.  I won't compromise the guidelines left for me by someone who died for me because of appeal thrown at my race.

I am pro-black in that I believe we should all get due process.  I am pro-black in that I believe a black man killed with an illegal choke hold or a child shot while breaking no laws deserves the right in death to have their killers accused in a court of law.  While I am pointedly pro-black, that in no way ties me to the LGBT movement.  The two are not mutually exclusive, and to say so is an insult to the history of African Americans.