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Showing posts with label xenophobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label xenophobia. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
A message from our partners. . .
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Bonhoeffer on racism
Thanks to an old friend, I received a link to an extremely interesting essay dealing with the Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thoughts on racism ("The View from Below: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Reflections and Actions on Racism," by Martin Rumscheidt, Toronto Journal of Theology, Supplement 1, 2008, pp. 63-72).
Bonhoeffer, an ordained Lutheran minister and one of the twentieth century's most influential theologians, struggled with the hate and racism of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany on the one had and the apathy and complicity of his fellow German church folk on the other.
Prior to WWII, for one year (1930-1931) Bonhoeffer came to the United States for post-doctoral studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Thanks to his relationship with Frank Fisher, a fellow student and African American from Alabama, Bonhoeffer spent most of his free time during that special year in Harlem where he attached himself to the youth ministry of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.
Upon his return to Germany, Bonhoeffer and his family spoke out against the racism, anti-Semitism and hatred of Hitler and his regime. As a result, he fell under continuing surveillance by Nazi intelligence officials, as well as Hitler himself. After becoming involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer was arrested and consigned to the Flossenburg concentration camp. He was hanged on April 9, 1945.
The quote that follows comes from Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition (Macmillian, 1971, page 17). Note particularly the section in italics:
"We have been silent witnesses to evil deeds. We have become cunning and learnt the arts of obfuscation and equivocal speech. Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings and often we have failed to speak to them a true and open word. Unbearable conflicts have worn us down or even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? Geniuses, cynics, people who feel contempt for others, or cunning tacticians, are not what we will need but simple, uncomplicated and honest human beings. Will our inner strength to resist what has been forced on us have remained strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves blunt enough, to find our way back to simplicity and honesty?
"It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering. If only bitterness and envy have during this time not corroded the heart; that we come to see matters great and small, happiness and misfortune, strength and weakness with new eyes; that our sense for greatness, humanness, justice and mercy has grown clearer, freer, more incorruptible; that we learn, indeed, that personal suffering is a more useful key, a more fruitful principle than personal happiness for exploring the meaning of the world in contemplation and action. But this view from below must not lead us into taking sides with the perpetually dissatisfied. From a higher satisfaction that is actually founded on the other side of below and above, we do justice to life in all its dimensions and affirm it."
_________________________
I'd love your responses.
If you'd like a copy of the entire essay, email me at ljames@CentralDallasMinistries.org.
.
Bonhoeffer, an ordained Lutheran minister and one of the twentieth century's most influential theologians, struggled with the hate and racism of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany on the one had and the apathy and complicity of his fellow German church folk on the other.
Prior to WWII, for one year (1930-1931) Bonhoeffer came to the United States for post-doctoral studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Thanks to his relationship with Frank Fisher, a fellow student and African American from Alabama, Bonhoeffer spent most of his free time during that special year in Harlem where he attached himself to the youth ministry of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.
Upon his return to Germany, Bonhoeffer and his family spoke out against the racism, anti-Semitism and hatred of Hitler and his regime. As a result, he fell under continuing surveillance by Nazi intelligence officials, as well as Hitler himself. After becoming involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer was arrested and consigned to the Flossenburg concentration camp. He was hanged on April 9, 1945.
The quote that follows comes from Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition (Macmillian, 1971, page 17). Note particularly the section in italics:
"We have been silent witnesses to evil deeds. We have become cunning and learnt the arts of obfuscation and equivocal speech. Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings and often we have failed to speak to them a true and open word. Unbearable conflicts have worn us down or even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? Geniuses, cynics, people who feel contempt for others, or cunning tacticians, are not what we will need but simple, uncomplicated and honest human beings. Will our inner strength to resist what has been forced on us have remained strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves blunt enough, to find our way back to simplicity and honesty?
"It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering. If only bitterness and envy have during this time not corroded the heart; that we come to see matters great and small, happiness and misfortune, strength and weakness with new eyes; that our sense for greatness, humanness, justice and mercy has grown clearer, freer, more incorruptible; that we learn, indeed, that personal suffering is a more useful key, a more fruitful principle than personal happiness for exploring the meaning of the world in contemplation and action. But this view from below must not lead us into taking sides with the perpetually dissatisfied. From a higher satisfaction that is actually founded on the other side of below and above, we do justice to life in all its dimensions and affirm it."
_________________________
I'd love your responses.
If you'd like a copy of the entire essay, email me at ljames@CentralDallasMinistries.org.
.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Racism and Xenophobia--immoral and stupid
Racism is immoral.
Xenophobia is immoral.
But, to be very practical, on top of this both are absurdly stupid and the doings of complete idiots.
Case in point: My father's stay in two hospitals and a skilled-nursing center (read here "nursing home") over the past three weeks.
After suffering a slight heart attack or mild stroke three weeks ago, my 87-year-old father made it through two tough surgeries and a week of rehabilitation.
He came home yesterday.
He was so happy to be back home!
During the illness that kept him from home and my mother, daddy received amazing care from the first minutes in the Emergency Room in Richardson, through the next three days (during which we almost lost him) in the hospital, to his dual surgery experience at a specialty hospital in Plano, to his discharge to the nursing facility and finally on to two different physicians' offices before landing back home.
All along he way, we enjoyed rich encounters with professional caregivers who really cared, were very concerned and did their jobs with class, expertise and joy. Yes, I said, joy.
Almost all of those who nursed and doctored my dad back to strength and his home were "ethnic minorities" and/or immigrants.
African Americans, African immigrants, Latinos, Mexican Americans, folks from the Caribbean, people from all over Asia, Middle Eastern people--my dad was cared for by people with all sorts of backgrounds, national origins and racial heritage.
If you are a racist or if you don't like immigrants, let me just say you are in a world of trouble! You see, the people caring for us when we can't care for ourselves are these good people of color from here and all over the world.
I am mighty glad they were there for my dad. I am thankful they will be there for me. People caring for people in a shrinking, increasingly crowded world.
As I watched them work so hard, with such patience and happiness (almost all of the time in challenging circumstances), it struck me that if things were just left to us ordinary folks, the world would be a much more peaceful and harmonious place.
There is simply no place left in our nation or our world for racism or xenophobia, thankfully.
And, when my dad walked into his home again on Friday, he was greeted first by a home health worker provided by Medicare. And, you guessed it, she happened to be both an immigrant and a person of color.
We were so glad to meet her.
Xenophobia is immoral.
But, to be very practical, on top of this both are absurdly stupid and the doings of complete idiots.
Case in point: My father's stay in two hospitals and a skilled-nursing center (read here "nursing home") over the past three weeks.
After suffering a slight heart attack or mild stroke three weeks ago, my 87-year-old father made it through two tough surgeries and a week of rehabilitation.
He came home yesterday.
He was so happy to be back home!
During the illness that kept him from home and my mother, daddy received amazing care from the first minutes in the Emergency Room in Richardson, through the next three days (during which we almost lost him) in the hospital, to his dual surgery experience at a specialty hospital in Plano, to his discharge to the nursing facility and finally on to two different physicians' offices before landing back home.
All along he way, we enjoyed rich encounters with professional caregivers who really cared, were very concerned and did their jobs with class, expertise and joy. Yes, I said, joy.
Almost all of those who nursed and doctored my dad back to strength and his home were "ethnic minorities" and/or immigrants.
African Americans, African immigrants, Latinos, Mexican Americans, folks from the Caribbean, people from all over Asia, Middle Eastern people--my dad was cared for by people with all sorts of backgrounds, national origins and racial heritage.
If you are a racist or if you don't like immigrants, let me just say you are in a world of trouble! You see, the people caring for us when we can't care for ourselves are these good people of color from here and all over the world.
I am mighty glad they were there for my dad. I am thankful they will be there for me. People caring for people in a shrinking, increasingly crowded world.
As I watched them work so hard, with such patience and happiness (almost all of the time in challenging circumstances), it struck me that if things were just left to us ordinary folks, the world would be a much more peaceful and harmonious place.
There is simply no place left in our nation or our world for racism or xenophobia, thankfully.
And, when my dad walked into his home again on Friday, he was greeted first by a home health worker provided by Medicare. And, you guessed it, she happened to be both an immigrant and a person of color.
We were so glad to meet her.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
A Quick Quiz
A prominent American made the following statement about immigrants:
"Few of their children in the country learn English. . . .The signs of our streets have inscriptions in both languages. . . . Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious."
Who was it?
A) Lou Dobbs, CNN journalist
B) Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO)
C) Tim O'Hare, Mayor Pro Tem and member of the Farmers Branch, Texas City Council
D) Benjamin Franklin
If you selected "D," you are correct.Franklin spoke disparagingly of the German immigrants of the 1750s.
Some things never change in this country.
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