So Gates discusses how language excludes in some ways people of color, specifically talking about the issue of black authors and black identification within language. He asks “how can the black subject posit a full
and sufficient self in a language in which blackness is a sign of absence?”
(Gates 12). The troubles with language-specific representation and inclusion are an interesting issue in and of themselves, but when I put that question together with Gates' little anecdote about the Pope interacting with the animistic
African religious leaders I was struck by his remark that the Pope denied the Africans "the right
to remake European religion in their own images” (Gates 6).
Which comes to my question; can Gates' exclusion of language be applied the uncompromising exclusion of religion? Is this exclusion still a problem, and if so, is the solution to compromise on different views or to, like Gates and other authors we have read have implied, work harder to get voices of the minorities heard in the wider public sphere within their own category? I am curious about this because his comments reminded me of a movie about that Ruby Bridges girl, the little black girl who was integrated into a white grade school and had to be lead to school by a security guard because of all the white people threatening her and screaming at her. My dad and I were watching it, and in the movie Ruby's father takes down the picture of a white Jesus that is hanging on his wall and throws it away. When the mother protests, the father says he doesn't want Ruby seeing the white Jesus icon and feeling inferior because she wasn't the same color as the image of Christ. It reminds me of the fact that I have two adopted siblings from Ethiopia and my parents plan on raising them Christian in a very dominantly white church.
What is the solution to this distance, at least, what would Gates propose? Should individuals like my sisters just make their own little niche in the mostly-white church, or go and seek out another one with primarily black descent? How is the awkwardness in the belief of a white Jesus overcome when it comes to the exclusion of minorities that happen to encounter that belief? How does Gates' idea of exclusion of language apply to exclusion of religion, or exclusion of language in religion?
Which comes to my question; can Gates' exclusion of language be applied the uncompromising exclusion of religion? Is this exclusion still a problem, and if so, is the solution to compromise on different views or to, like Gates and other authors we have read have implied, work harder to get voices of the minorities heard in the wider public sphere within their own category? I am curious about this because his comments reminded me of a movie about that Ruby Bridges girl, the little black girl who was integrated into a white grade school and had to be lead to school by a security guard because of all the white people threatening her and screaming at her. My dad and I were watching it, and in the movie Ruby's father takes down the picture of a white Jesus that is hanging on his wall and throws it away. When the mother protests, the father says he doesn't want Ruby seeing the white Jesus icon and feeling inferior because she wasn't the same color as the image of Christ. It reminds me of the fact that I have two adopted siblings from Ethiopia and my parents plan on raising them Christian in a very dominantly white church.
What is the solution to this distance, at least, what would Gates propose? Should individuals like my sisters just make their own little niche in the mostly-white church, or go and seek out another one with primarily black descent? How is the awkwardness in the belief of a white Jesus overcome when it comes to the exclusion of minorities that happen to encounter that belief? How does Gates' idea of exclusion of language apply to exclusion of religion, or exclusion of language in religion?
1 comment:
In the town I come from, there is a "First Baptist Church" and a "Second Baptist Church". The First Baptist Church is where the white people go, and the Second Baptist Church is where the black people go. This is weird and disturbing.
Names aside, I think the reason people tend to divide themselves this way is because of culture. Go to the First Baptist Church and you'll see everyone standing very still in their pew spots singing their hymns. Go to the Second Baptist Church and they'll most likely be singing the same hymns, but the whole church will be a moving mass of people. (I can say this; I've been to both.) I'm personally really into religion, but I don't study modern Christianity really at all, so I can't say much more on the subject.
However, I can talk about the Pope and the Supreme Priest a bit. It bothers me that the pope went to Togoville in order to "[discuss] the compatibility of their belief systems" (5) and went home still concerned about "syncretistic mysticism incompatible with the Church" (6). It's a "my way or the highway" kind of attitude that says "You can't have my Catholicism because you'll pervert it with your otherness". Gates says that the Pope is "denying Africans the right to remake European religion in their own images, just as various Western cultures have done" (6).
I think probably the Pope's issue was that he went in to Africa expecting a "heart of darkness" (6) experience and because of his preconceptions about the "mystical black Other" (6) was unable to see any actual compatibility in their beliefs.
As we probably know, Catholicism is syncretized quite nicely with African Voudon in the south, with Santeria there and elsewhere, and with witchcraft in Europe. I guess all of this claiming of Catholicism by Others and thus a sort of othering of Catholicism probably gives John-Paul II the heebie-jeebies.
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.