ORIGINAL:
This is an interview about Christian pop culture...
Wait! Don't go yet! The power of Obama compels you!
See, these days with reverends calling out future presidents, and future presidents giving dap like they're chilling at the 40/40 club, the tides of race, religion and pop culture have washed us all up on some sort of unchartered island. Everyone's a little Lost for clear definitions: What does it mean to be black? What does it mean to be Christian? What does it mean to be Tyler Perry?
So here's the deal: Daniel Radosh -- one of the smartest Caucasians I know (statement verifiable by his blog: Radosh.net) -- immersed himself in the mostly white-washed world of Christian pop culture for 12 months. And he survived to tell the story! Annnd that story is available for purchase at your local book store, Rapture Ready!.
Intrigued by how this seeming societal outlier could be a 7-billion dollar a year industry, I emailed Daniel a bunch of questions looking for connections between issues of race and Christian evangelicals. Basically trying to keep it "Spiritual, but not Religious", so we can get more perspective on if those folks are "Christian, but not Crazy."
In so doing we explored why church at 11AM is still the most segregated time in America, and why Jesus "can be your girlfriend, but not your ho", all set-up so that I could pin him down on one question: would he rather wake up as an evangelical christian, or a black person?
Will Daniel provide some compelling data to help us navigate this dark island of cultural politics, or will he say something inflammatory or insensitive? Find out in the interview below:
TAN Interviews Writer Daniel Radosh [EbonyJet]
I went to college at BYU-Hawaii. Probably the school with the least Blacks on campus (three female and seven male).
ReplyDeleteThe problem with going to an all white (or pretty close) church is that the members seem to treat you as a prize. "See...we have a Black member of our congregation"
"...white evangelicals tend to be very personal-oriented. The concept of systemic racism wouldn't really resonate with them. So there's a sense that the problem is solved because there's no personal hatred, and there's not much effort to look at why there's still such segregation in the church." It seems clear, to me, that this distinction -- between those who disclaim racism on a personal/individual level but fail to recognize it in systems and institutions, is the most relevant divide in American race-consciousness.
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