The Truth Hurts: James David Manning on Barack Obama

I grew up in Maryland nearly a half century ago now.  There were black people in the schools I attended.  I didn't get to know any of them.  It isn't because I didn't want to get to know any of them.  They grouped together and I remember feeling hostility from them.  I didn't feel anything much toward them -- neither hostility or appreciation.

I do remember admiring their skill as members of the football team.  I was in the band.



I just discovered this philosophy professor online.  His experience is pretty much an echo of my own.  Stephen Yates writes:

I grew up in an all-white suburb in Atlanta, during the era of integration via forced busing to increase racial balance in public schools. As I recall, we white kids didn’t hate the black kids. We didn’t understand them, and they didn’t understand us. If there were opportunities for genuine education about our differences, they weren’t taken. Remember, this was forced on public schools, and those in them had no idea how to carry out what they were being told to do. By high school we were afraid of the black kids, who kept to themselves, usually congregating in one section of hallway. Most aggression, which wasn’t “micro” either, came from them if one of us had to pass through that section. Their measure of a person’s worth seemed to be physical prowess, which may be why so many black kids of my generation excelled in sports. While again it was doubtless different in the pre-civil rights era, I never saw a white student single out a black student for abuse. Nor did I see a teacher or an administrator do it. I recall black students being openly defiant of teachers on more than one occasion, however.

Many could not read! Some of us wanted to help them learn to read! But we had no idea how to go about it! They had already separated themselves and wanted nothing to do with us!

There were a few sterling exceptions to this pattern: black students, presumably from the same background, who could read, took their studies seriously and made good grades. They were polite to everyone around them. They dressed decently. They did not hang out in the courtyard or on sidewalks smoking cigarettes, then blow smoke in white kids’ faces (yes, they did that, too). I believe they’d figured out that personal effort and responsibility — variables roundly condemned as code for “racism” by cultural lefties and media elites — actually went a long way! Those guys went on to college and probably made something of their lives. I do not imagine their children are burning down businesses in Baltimore.

The majority of blacks don’t realize that white elites in government — a bastion of real privilege — sold them a bill of goods from top to bottom right from the start. Today, they’ve basically developed a different culture, one lived in decrepit public housing and on the streets. Perhaps in a sense those of us who lived in safe, well-kept neighborhoods should feel “privileged” not to have grown up in that environment. But such claims won’t bear the weight cultural leftists are placing on them. How do they explain why Asians, with far fewer numbers than blacks and often unable to speak English, came to the U.S. with nothing but the clothes on their backs and went on to succeed brilliantly at whatever they tried, often outperforming whites in business or their studies? Is there some hidden “Asian privilege” none of the lefties or media elites have noticed?

Coach Dave Daubenmire at Pass the Salt Ministries says Manning, the preacher in the youtube above, is the bravest man in America.  He speaks right up to black people.  And he is entertaining.

I like the fact that he holds blacks, as well as all of us, accountable to Christian moral teachings on family formation and sexuality.  Some prudes will object to the tone and style of his bold attacks on political and media elites.  I don't.

There is a crying need for this communications style.  Evil should not be taken so seriously that we limit ourselves to mere civility in responding to it.  Christians consume a steady diet of the entire range of communications styles from movies and the media.  And nearly all of what passes for humor today (Stewart and Colbert) is leading us away from respect for God, who is the Father.

When I think about Manning I think about a truth GK Chesterton pointed out, "A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."  It is gratifying to watch Manning swim up America's polluted cultural stream with powerful overhead strokes on his youtubes.

And since I'm jumping into the deep end of the stream with this blog post maybe you should also take a few minutes to watch this one.

There are two things we can't talk about in the home of the FREE (speech) and the land of the brave --  Blacks and Jews.  About the only thing we're allowed (somewhat) to fight over now is sex.

Kinda weird, don't you think?

A hundred and fifteen years ago Chesterton wrote, "Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance."