History

Civil Rights

Critical Race Theory: Reviewing the 1619 Project and Beloved

12/17/2021 Bruce Strom 1

Both concerned parents and activists who have no children have been flooding school board meetings across the country yelling and threatening each other over critical race theory and whether we should be teaching our children American History starting with our Founding Fathers and the American Revolution when we won our liberty from the British in 1776, or should we teach our children that our country was originally built on the unpaid labor and bones of slaves since the first was shipped over in 1619 with the first colonists? What role did slavery play in the founding of our nation, and when did slavery end? Finally, when discussing what books should be included in young students’ lessons, one book has stirred considerable controversy, Beloved, by Tomi Morrison. […]

christianity

This Old Deep South White Christian Reflects on How To Teach Both Sides of Critical Race Theory

12/15/2021 Bruce Strom 0

Many white protestors at School Board meetings have only a vague notion of what Critical Race Theory means, other than somehow it is a communist plot by blacks, or that it intends to make white children feel guilty about themselves or their country, in essence they want teachers to teach their white children some variation of the Lost Cause myth, that the Civil War was not caused by slavery, that the Civil War was fought for states’ rights, and that the North should not have invaded the South by arms. […]

AntiSemitism

How the Racist Jim Crow Laws Were Precedent for the Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws

10/02/2021 Bruce Strom 5

The Nazis were not simply demons who erupted out of some dark underworld to shatter what was good and just within the Western tradition, until they were put down by force of arms and the authentic humane and progressive values of Europe were restored. There were traditions of Western governments within which they worked. There were continuities between Nazism and what came before and after. There were examples and inspirations on which the Nazis drew, and American race law prominent among them. […]

AntiSemitism

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning, His Life in a Nazi Concentration Camp in WWII

08/24/2021 Bruce Strom 6

Most books progress, with many chapters, each chapter tell different events, or different people, or different phases of life, usually progressing in some manner.  But the story in Viktor Frankl’s account of life in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II is one long dreary struggle for survival, unrelieved misery, each day running into the next, no weekends, for a precious few a monotonous few years until the war ended, for some many, many months of misery, for most, for nine out of ten Jews, they had left only days before they stripped for showers not of streams of life-giving water but showers spewing noxious fumes into gas chambers.

Viktor Frankl was one of the few of the ten percent whose first shower in Auschwitz sprayed life giving water over their naked bodies, one of the few who survived years of what was the most brutal slave society the world had ever seen, where formerly free men and women were torn away from their families, whose luggage and their jewelry and clothes were taken, even their hair shorn from them.  The Nazis even strove to steal from them their humanity, taking away their names, tattooing on their wrists the numbers they would be their new identity. […]

Civil Rights

Second Founding: The Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution

06/03/2021 Bruce Strom 6

Did the Civil War lead to a Second Founding of the United States? Eric Foner in his book with that title on the Reconstruction amendments and his other books on the Reconstruction era argues forcefully that the Civil War was a political turning point for this country. Before the Civil War, each state determined its own racial policies, but the politics of slavery, then white supremacy, proved so repugnant to the North that it passed these three amendments. […]

Civil Rights

Father Augustine Tolton, From Slave to Priest

05/18/2021 Bruce Strom 2

Day after day Father Tolton was seen coming in or out of the shacks, the rat-infested hovels and tenement houses.  He listened compassionately to complaints of unemployment, desertion, injustice, depravity.  Father Tolton knew how to bring hope and comfort to the sick and dying; he knew how to mitigate human suffering and sorrow because eh himself had experienced the lash of the slave driver as well as the lash of the white man’s tongue. […]

Civil Rights

Frederick Douglass Tells Us About His Life as a Slave in his Autobiography

05/16/2021 Bruce Strom 13

Frederick Douglas was born a slave in Maryland in the late 1820’s, he can only guess how old he is, like most slaves he did not know when he was born. He escaped slavery on his second attempt to run away to the Northern states, and not only did he teach himself how to read, he became a spell-binding orator and abolitionist, agitating for the end of slavery, and becoming a best-selling author, publishing three autobiographies, other books and a newspaper. Some bigots claimed it was impossible for an ex-slave to be able to write that well, though they could not argue that it was not him making his speeches. […]

Civil Rights

American Evangelicals, Civil Rights, and Republican Politics

02/12/2021 Bruce Strom 3

When we study the history of the Christian Church in America, we must ask ourselves, What role should the Christian Church play in our society, in our culture, in the making of the values of our nation?  What role SHOULD the church play?  What role DOES the church play?  There is always a spiritual contest between the church and our culture, this contest is summed up in the eternal question: Who is going to influence whom? Will the Church succeed in influencing our culture?  Or will our culture instead influence the Church? […]

History

Trump, QAnon and Fox News: Body and Soul Snatchers of My Christian Friends

02/12/2021 Bruce Strom 0

Whenever I talk to my white Christian friends and tell them that I am a socialist liberal Democrat; that I support the social justice Catholic position so passionately advanced by Pope Francis; that Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, AOC, George Soros, Tom Hanks, and Hilary Clinton are not QAnon bogeymen kidnapping children; that I am both pro-life and pro-choice, with reservations, and am not pro-death; that Black Lives Really Do Matter deeply; when I tell them this and more, they bulge their eyes, point their fingers, and let out a high pitch screech screaming: Snake!  False Teacher! Satan’s servant!  Liberal!  Communist! Trump hater!  Baby killer!  Murderer!  Democrat! […]

Civil Rights

WEB Du Bois: Souls of Black Folk, Fighting for Dignity

02/12/2021 Bruce Strom 5

Should blacks compromise, or should blacks protest when facing discrimination and segregation? Should blacks compromise under the leadership of Booker T Washington, or should blacks protest under the leadership of WEB Dubois, who founded the NAACP? This question is a question each black person needs to answer for himself from the days of Jim Crow up to the present day. […]