Some thoughts about racism and mental illness: The Wilkinsburg shooting

Today marks the 10th anniversary of a major tragedy in Wilkinsburg, Pa., the town just outside Pittsburgh that I call home. A black man named Ronald Taylor who was suffering from mental illness shot five white men, all but one of them in fast-food joints and three of which died, and he now sits on death row because of his crimes. But my connection to the incident goes beyond my having formerly lived there -- it took place within feet of an apartment I had moved out of 5 1/2 years previously.

What gives it pathos was that one of the victims was the stepfather of three girls with whom I attended high school -- one in the band, another in the interracial youth ministry through which I eventually became a Christian.

Back in the late 1980s I got to know their biological father, who himself had suffered from mental illness (his marriage to their mother had fallen apart because of it). However, he was dealing with his issues and at the time of his death about 20 years ago was eulogized as an advocate for fellow sufferers.

That's not all. When he learned that I knew several of his daughters (there were seven siblings), he proceeded to tell me that he had actually taught his kids to reject racism on not just a personal level but a systemic one as well. He said that he even took them to poorer neighborhoods to point out "how some people are forced to live." He was so extremely passionate about racial justice that he even asked me how they had conducted themselves when it came to such matters. (Their late mother had also supported racial justice; indeed, they had moved to Wilkinsburg precisely because of the diversity.)

I never recalled it being an issue, so that's what I told him.

You see the contrast here. See, all Taylor saw was the color of a man's skin; he allowed that anger over legitimate historic injustices to get to him, never taking the responsibility for his attitudes and actions -- and yet the stepchildren of one of his victims had learned better. Nor did Taylor to my knowledge humble himself and seek help for his condition, unlike their dad.

You can thus understand my revulsion when one of my black militant then-co-workers began displaying a picture of Taylor on her desk at work, as if he were the primary victim, and to this day I wish I had given her a piece of my mind. Because she didn't have, or apparently care to know, the whole story.

The final frontier

I have mentioned in other entries that during services on the Sunday after last year's general election, the pastor of my interracial evangelical church had all of us African-Americans stand and then instructed the rest of the congregation lay hands on us, saying that "a spiritual stronghold has been broken."

He did that because he knew he had a politically divided congregation, with most of the whites likely supporting John McCain for president that year, indeed, two weeks previously he preached against such division during the campaign. (This is an evangelical church, after all, and polls indicated that 70 percent of white evangelicals nationally backed the Republican candidate.) By contrast, 95 percent of African-Americans, regardless of faith affiliation, supported Barack Obama.

I've been heartened with the serious efforts that have been made over the past couple of decades toward racial reconciliation among evangelicals -- the Promise Keepers started it all, of course, and some denominations and parachurch groups have made serious strides toward such harmony. However, we have yet to address the ideological differences that still exist, and until that's done we will not achieve it.

Because, bottom line, the issue is one of worldview.

When I became a Christian in 1979, the conservative movement in general and "religious right" in particular was just kicking into gear, with its primary target being government, especially the Feds. The complaint was that it had overstepped its constitutional authority by passing laws and using tax money for purposes it didn't agree with, most notably "Great Society" programs that benefited the poor. More to the point, however, conservatives demonstrated an assumption that authority, whether cultural, social or political, was their right.

African-Americans, on the other hand, historically have had different issues. Most identify with the civil-rights movement, which used the Federal government, including court decisions and legal remedies, to obtain justice (because state and local authorities opposed their efforts). And they -- we -- didn't have the same access to the power structure; thus, it had to be done through moral appeals.

Sadly, in part for that reason, the civil-rights movement eventually pitted one set of Christians against another set of Christians. Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1955 was just a local pastor in Montgomery, Ala., was later denounced as a Communist, and the resentment among white conservatives became so strong toward the national Democratic Party for supporting civil rights that in 1966 the Republican Party, practically non-existent in the South then but already leaning to the right nationally, saw an opening and began running candidates there.

That's the reason that you almost never see African-Americans on Christian TV or hear them on Christian radio; when you do it's in support of the "approved" viewpoint that doesn't accurately reflect the overall views of the black community -- which generally aren't right-wing. I find very interesting that conservatives talk about reaching out to the black community but simply to put a "black face" -- and yes, you can take that as a pun -- on policies and attitudes most blacks just don't accept.

Talk-show blowhard Rush Limbaugh said that, after Obama won that high percentage of the black vote, his color was the primary reason that African-Americans voted for him. Nonsense -- had McCain been black and Obama white, blacks (even evangelicals) would still have voted for Obama, overwhelmingly, or turned out for Hillary Clinton in virtually identical numbers had she won the Democratic nomination. And I'm sure you noticed that the anti-Obama "tea party" movement that got started in April is virtually all-white -- think that's a coincidence? African-Americans just don't have the fear of government that white conservatives do.

For there to be true reconciliation between black and white evangelical Christians, whites have to understand the views and histories of their black brothers and sisters and not believe that they have the last word when it comes to social and political involvement. (For what its worth, African-Americans already understand the conservative view and have rejected it; it's up to the conservatives to find out why.)

And if I needed any more proof ... the racist legacy of the modern conservative movement

About a decade ago during my last dating relationship, my girlfriend's brainy middle son brought home from church some literature from the "Conservative Chronicle" that he said came from "some think tank." I looked it up on the internet, and when I learned who the editor was, a Southern reactionary named Samuel Francis, I decided I wanted nothing to do with it because it came across as borderline racist. (Needless to say, I refused to attend the church as well, and that would eventually doom the relationship.)

Well, it turns out that there was nothing "borderline" about that publication.

Today I learned that the "think tank" that produced it was the Council of Conservative Citizens, a name not as innocuous as it sounds -- it was formerly known as the White Citizens Council, a staunchly segregationist organization that opposed the civil-rights movement in the 1960s. In effect, it operated as a kinder, gentler Ku Klux Klan minus the sheets and secrecy and apparently hasn't changed its views in all that time. Furthermore, it had at least two right-wing now-former Republican politicians -- Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia and Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi -- speak at gatherings. (Yes, the same Trent Lott who insinuated that he was hankering for segregation in feting the late Sen. Strom Thurmond during his centennial in 2002.)

I find it interesting that the political right likes to call attention to the historic racism of the Democratic Party and, in its arrogance, have openly wondered why African-Americans don't vote Republican. They conveniently overlook the fact that the Southern racists that gave the national Democratic Party that reputation began migrating to the GOP beginning in the 1960s -- of politicians of that era, only the late North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms was never elected as a Democrat -- and completely sold out to the GOP on a national level during the Reagan years. (Recall that even Ronald Reagan himself ran racist campaigns to appeal to them.)

Basically, the political right ought to stop denying its ties to racist groups, present as well as past. I don't think it's any coincidence that race has become less a factor as the political right has fallen from power, because back in that day the right used it has a divide-and-conquer tactic to achieve and maintain power. But instead of marginalizing its opponents, it ended up marginalizing itself. There's a reason Jesus said, "You reap what you sow."

The Republican Party's 'Reagan problem'

You are probably aware that the Republican National Committee has selected Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, as its new chairman, the first African-American to hold that post. Arguably, part of his job description will be to attract fellow blacks to the party.

If that's their goal, they're wasting their time -- because the GOP's problem is that it got to where it was by alienating black voters. Specifically, its heart and soul, even though he is now dead, is keeping blacks out because, thanks to its notorious "Southern strategy," the right-wing policies it supported and he championed have done nothing but turn blacks against it.

"He," of course, is the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan, who is still revered in the Republican Party and the conservative movement but absolutely hated in the African-American community. Bet you didn't know that last fact. That's the problem, because conservatives don't even talk to black activists and leaders -- they simply want to neutralize, denigrate or destroy them.

And Reagan, as much as any political figure, was responsible for that polarization. Consider these facts:

-- Reagan ignored the civil-rights movement and, upon the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and while governor of California, was quoted in a Boston Globe editorial as calling the movement “a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they’d break,” never mind that King broke the law only reluctantly when all other options were exhausted.

-- During his 1976 campaign for president, Reagan constantly referred to "welfare queens driving Cadillacs," his audience knowing full well whom he was referring to -- blacks.

-- Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Miss., where three civil-rights workers were found murdered 16 years previously, and announced that he favored "states rights" -- indicating to white racists, "I'm on your side."

-- During that same campaign, a leader in the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia endorsed Reagan, saying that "the Republican campaign could have been written by a Klansman."

-- When in office, Reagan cut government programs for college grants and job training -- cuts that disproportionately hurt African Americans. (We often forget that demonstrations in major cities resulted.) As a result, the poverty rate actually went up.

-- Reagan, through his attorney general William French Smith, tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act because it "discriminated against the South." (Never mind that's where the problems were.)

-- Reagan appointed Clarence Thomas to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- ostensibly to weaken it by changing the rules to favor the employer over the employee.

-- Reagan, using the excuse of the Cold War, consistently opposed sanctions on South Africa's apartheid regime and substituted an ineffective policy of "constructive engagement."

-- Even as he signed the legislation establishing King's birthday as a national holiday, Reagan replied to his political ally Jesse Helms, who voted against it on the grounds that King was a Communist, “We’ll know in about 35 years, won’t we?”, referring to FBI files supposedly "proving" his Communist activity -- indicating that he believed that nonsense.

Amazingly, Reagan won 14 percent of the black vote in 1980s. (He wouldn't get that today, for sure.)

Anyway, an op-ed published upon his death in the New Pittsburgh Courier was titled "Reagan made racism respectable." I don't think Reagan was himself a racist -- you have to care to be a racist and Reagan didn't -- but I have no doubt that he, more than anyone, caused the GOP to maintain racist strategies to remain in power.

However, that has come back to bite them. In late 2002, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, while attending a 100th birthday party for fellow Sen. Strom Thurmond, said that had Thurmond, who had run for president in 1948 as a "Dixiecrat," won, "we wouldn't have had all these problems" -- an oblique reference to desegregation. That remark cost him his leadership post (but only temporarily and only when other conservatives went ballistic first).

Don't think, however, this is merely about racist attitudes. As I mentioned, conservatives, thanks in large part to Reagan, have pursued policies that turned blacks against them, a situation they don't intend to face. They made a big stink about Sen. Robert Byrd's inadvertent use of the "N-word" and his former Klan membership, ignoring that he has changed his views in that time -- even voting for the King holiday -- and apologized immediately for that slur. (Byrd, of course, is a Democrat and was thus labeled a hypocritical "liberal.")

And even in the few times when the Republican Party ran black candidates they didn't get much support, from blacks or anyone else. Steele himself was badly beaten while running in 2006 for the U.S. Senate, as did Ken Blackwell in Ohio and former Steelers receiver Lynn Swann here in Pennsylvania when they sought to become governors. The GOP electorate's general disdain for blacks has come to a point where some black Republicans -- most notably commentator Armstrong Williams and former Tulsa congressman J.C. Watts -- said during last year's campaign they were considering voting for Barack Obama for president.

Bottom line, the Republican Party, if it's serious about attracting black voters, will need to repudiate much of its platform. But to do that it will also need to repudiate Reagan as well -- and I don't see that happening.

The myth of 'compassionate conservatism'

I recently joined the social networking site Facebook and looked around for people I might be acquainted with. In the process I found the page for one woman I've known since the 1990s from the Christian singles community here in Pittsburgh; in the slot for "political stance" she had marked "compassionate conservative."

That took me back to eight years ago, when then-president-elect George W. Bush described himself as the same and promised programs that would reflect that.

Here's the problem with "compassionate conservatism" -- it doesn't really exist. I'm not at all saying that conservatives cannot be compassionate, at least on an individual level; however, "compassion" cannot be shaped into an ideology.

To be truly compassionate a person must "have been there" -- or at least be willing to "go there" -- and also help to determine a person's real needs and how to address them. Committed conservatives, on the other hand, focus on how to do that while still maintaining its agenda of shrinking political involvement. Put another way, "compassionate conservatism" focuses on what it wants to give and how it does so, sabotaging its stated intentions.

The concept of "compassionate conservatism" flows from the suspect narrative that "Great Society" programs instituted in the 1960s have actually hurt the poor, and it proposes that such diaconal remedies be taken over by private charities, generally churches. In fact, President Bush pushed a bill that would have hopefully done just that.

Moreover, as envisioned by Marvin Olasky, editor of the ultra-conservative World magazine and a journalism professor at the University of Texas who had advised President Bush when he was governor of Texas, under such a program the government would pay churches to do ministry -- and hopefully, in the process, convert the poor to his version of Christianity, making people more "moral" so we wouldn't have to worry about them anymore.

However, such things as job training and college grants paid for by tax dollars have actually done more for the poor than anything conservatives have attempted; you don't have a black middle-class outside the South without them. But those programs were cut in the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan, the first modern conservative president, was in office.

More important, "compassionate conservatism" wrongly assumes that the poor are poor primarily because of bad choices on their part; in fact, however, many simply don't have the opportunity to better themselves because of lack of resources and, eventually, hope.

Beginning in the 1950s, for openers, federal policy helped to create, for example, the disparity between rich and poor by making loans available to folks to buy new homes in what are now suburban areas, and the interstate highway system was built at that time to make center cities easily accessible to people with wheels. Those basically emptied out most cities of wealthier whites because economic and political clout -- including, of course, jobs -- left with them. Furthermore, those loans were somehow not made available to African-Americans, so center cities became blacker and poorer; the lack of economic opportunity in part due to racism caused families to split because Dad often had trouble finding good work, creating dissension at home because he then could not exercise his God-given authority as the head of the household.

In other words, we're looking at a problem that had its basis in political decisions that conservatives themselves often benefited from (because suburbs are generally conservative). And in fact, "compassionate conservatism" as practiced was designed to get the "rich" to keep their money and cultural power in the process. No real compassion there, only institutionalized hypocrisy.

Also keep in mind that the civil-rights movement, which conservatives generally ignored or opposed, was not at first about rich vs. poor (that came later). The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor when the legendary bus boycott broke out, actually was a high-class congregation comprising the professional and mercantile class of that city; yet its members regularly felt the sting of segregation.

You see, in this case true compassion seeks not just relief from immediate circumstances but a restructuring of society to make sure that people have a chance to make their own way down the road. If there is a barrier that keeps a friend from getting a job or into a school, the compassionate person will not only commisserate with that friend but will work to have that barrier removed. "Compassionate conservatism" simply doesn't address those barriers, which is why no one's talking about it today.