The One Book On Race That You Must Read This Year

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson has written the one book that you simply must read this year.  It is called Disintegration.  He uses the premise that there is no longer one monolithic group called,

"Black America."  Black America is now comprised of four different groups of people.  The first is the mainstream; African Americans who have moved up to the middle class.  Secondly, there is the transcendent class.  The black political movers and shakers, the Oprahs and the Obamas, the monied classes make up this group.  The emergent classes; biracial people and immigrants from African and the Caribbean are the third group.  The last group is called, The Abandoned.  The abandoned are black people caught in intractable poverty.  He says that their plight is worsening and he calls for national attention to their issues.  Robinson often hits the nail on the head.  He also misses occasionally, like when he offers 

gentrification as a cure for urban poverty.  Discussion groups should break out all over America based around what is offered in this book.  

Christmas Time and Idolatry

There are a whole lot of people laying in the graveyard because of material things.  

Years ago, before the invention of the walkman or the ipod, a device called a “boom box” was in style.  It was basically, a stereo with a guitar strap.  The bigger or louder your boom box, the cooler you were thought to be. These combination, radio and cassette players were status symbols. They were also statements of power and street cred.  You see, young men got preyed upon and robbed for these items all the time.  It was the unspoken thought that you were tough; a man among men or a woman among women if you could walk around with this item unmolested.

One of my best friends was robbed at gunpoint for his boom box.  Looking back at it, the assailant could have killed my friend.  And for what, a cheap piece of plastic with some speakers in it that would have been out of style by the the next summer?  

A fear years later, gold chains came into vogue.  I remember going to nightclubs where groups of marauders paid an entrance fee to prey on party goers who decided to show off their jewelry at the event.  How many young people were murdered for a “dookie” rope chain? Today, no one wears them.  They have gone out of style.  How many died over something that in the end meant so little?

The list continues.  People in the hood have been murdered over sneakers, cell phones, ipods and other shiny trinkets.  The value of life has become so cheap that we will murder someone over a fashion accessory?  Why?  Idolatry.

Idolatry takes place when we worship things rather than the Creator.  Ironically, idolatry’s holiday is Christmas.  Christmas; the season when we fight to get in stores promising bargains on flat screen TVs.  Christmas; the season when we go into credit card slavery because we say that the people we love will not love us unless we produce more things in shiny wrapping paper with ribbons on it.  It sounds like science fiction.  All this is done in the name of Jesus Christ; a man who was born in a barn and buried in a borrowed tomb.  

Idolatry is slavery.  Break the chains.  Make a list of organizations that serve the poor.  Instead of buying gifts for your relatives and friends, make donations in their name.  Give them Christmas cards with the donation receipts inside.  Will this work?  What do you think?