A Walk in Their Shoes....

On my way back from Church today, there was an episode of Interfaith Radio on National Public Radio, in which they were discussing John Howard Griffin's book "Black Like Me" . In this book, Griffin dyed himself black in order to experience the life and journey of African-Americans in during the 1960's. He traveled all around the south experiencing some of the most racially-divided areas, in order to illuminate the different treatment that was endured by African-Americans.

Throughout his book, Griffin reveals much of the mistreatment and racism that he encountered. In particular, Mr. Griffin describe a "hate stare” which he would receive from whites just by from entering into a bus, room, etc. This in turn reminded me of our discussion in class regarding homeless people. Dr. Corsini mentioned how there is an interesting phenomena in American culture, in which we pretend like homeless people do not even exist. In a sense, homeless people are dehumanized through this process, as the attributes given to humans (mercy, compassion, love, etc.) are taken away from them.

In the same manner, Mr. Griffin went through this same dehumanizing process as individuals regarded him not as a person, but of something of contempt or indecency. Of course, he didn't do anything to appropriate this mistreatment, but simply changed the "tent" that he was in. In both situations--the homeless man or the African-American man-- the outward material component was used to judge the immaterial aspects of an individual, their person-hood. This is not a phenomena that is reserved to America, but is an aspect of humanity that can be observed throughout history. Regardless of the immaterial aspect of an individual, human's primary mode of interacting with other individuals is based upon their material component. Naturally, human's rationality leads them to avoid this type of judgment and as Christians we should be even more vigilant to avoid “material” judgments. However, it is difficult to avoid the human's fallen mode of material judgment.

I am not my hair.

I watched a clip of a conversation on the View about black women and their hair. They hit on a lot of the typical questions about the how’s and why’s of Black women hairstyles but the one I was currently interested in was the concept of role models and hair styles. They hit on the fact that if we as black women had more black role models we would wear our hair in more authentically black hair styles (like an afro or something). I think this is a wrong belief due to a popular societal mental evaluation.

In class we are reading Larry Crabb’s book Effective Biblical Counseling and in it Crabb talks about mental evaluations and how they can cause wrong beliefs. Crabb says that whether we realize it or not we all mentally evaluate external events. That means we have an inner dialogue about the things we externally experience.

I think that the whole concept of black women needing to wear more authentically black hair styles is a wrong belief due to a popular societal mental evaluation. I believe that the societal mental evaluation of a black woman that is not wearing her hair in authentically black hair style has lower self-concept then one who does. This mental evaluation then leads to the wrong belief that we need more black role models. My question to them is why can’t my role model be white or any other race I choose? Personally, I have chosen to do my hair in rock star/ skater styles because of my favorite rock stars the Barlow Girls and SuperChicks. I picked my favorites based on their stand for purity and Christianity not because of their race. I feel that telling me that I am wrong for not picking a black woman that stands for the same things is racism. Racism - a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement.