Monday, March 31, 2008

All the news that fits

A couple of links here from the New York Times:

A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith: A really good article about Sen. Obama's relationship with the Rev. Wright. Note the date: April 30, 2007. So why did it take almost a year for this dialogue to really get going? Really, why did we have to take so long to start talking about race? And are we talking? Maybe if we had been talking all along, you know ...

Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race: Published today, a nice article about being mixed race in the Obama era. He's done for us what Tiger couldn't.

"Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”


Also, check out this page at Union Theological Seminary (where I'll be on Friday and Saturday to attend the New Testament and Roman Empire conference) that highlights black liberation theology in light of Rev. Wright's media attention, and discusses everything you ever wanted to know about black liberation theology. I especially found the link to the Forbes magazine interview with James Cone (whose book God of the Oppressed we're about to start reading in my theology class) particularly interesting.

1 comment:

drlobojo said...

Who is my brother? My sister?
Cousins?

One of the missing factors in racial identity, indeed in all identity is the math.

Assuming 25 years per generation to breed the next generation in 10 generations at 250 years ago you have 1,024 progenitors for each personalive today.

At 15 generations it is 33,728 progenitrors. By the 20th generation 500 years ago it is over a million. So going back to say, to just 1600 C.E., you have a million grandfathers/grandmothers contributing to your gene pool, to your race, to what you are.
So how can we know what we are?
Where we came from?
Of whom we are decended?
Choosing a single line in all that matrix of life is hard.
Most heritage is all fiction.