ONE OF MY JOURNALS I WRITTEN FOR MY CLASS. THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE The topic that I will be addressing in this journal is Christianity and consciousness. The big question that I think most people should be wondering and thinking hard about is how can we connect Christianity and consciousness in our daily thinking? To be a little more elaborate, how can we use the gospel and connect that to the social matters, such a racism in today’s world? Racism is by no means a small issue. Every day that I wake up, I am subjected to it. When I watched the news about the Eric Gardener and the Michael Brown court cases, it hurt and angered me to see his families and his friends who lost their loved ones over a persons ignorance. Racism is a very difficult topic for me to talk about with my friends, because most of them are white. When I do try to explain my opinions and my lifestyle of what it means to be African American in America some of them refuse to accept my point of view. The refusal from some of my white friends makes me feel like I am just a liar and fabricating my whole life. The example that I liked in class was when Dr. Moser used his wife as an example when she mentioned how it is hard to be a woman in society. When Dr. Moser’s wife would explain to him about how she gets hit on by guys or treated differently because she is a woman, Dr. Moser would sometimes refuse to accept her opinions. Dr. Moser came to the conclusion that that process of thinking is wrong, because he does not know what it feels like to be a woman. It goes equally the same way: the fact that I am African American, white people cannot relate to my life, because they do not live my life the way I have to every single day. I am not going to lie; being African American in America is tough. Some people do not like to accept the notion that if an African American screws up in society they do not get a second chance; but if a white person screws up they get that second chance. I am already marked by the system since my birth. The way I act, the way I talk, the way that I conduct myself is how I will be judged by society. I feel like I have to work twice as hard as the next person, because of my skin color, which is not fair; but I accept it, because racism had been so ingrained in our system that this type of thinking will not change. Even though I do not talk about this issue a lot to my friends, I do have discussions like this with my family. To go back to my question about how can we start connecting Christianity and consciousness, is we need to start having constructive conversations about racism. Rather than white people rejecting how an African American lives their life to racism, white people need to begin to try and understand why African Americans feel that way. White people also need to realize that the incident with Michael Brown is not the only issue about race. In the recent years, there has been a pattern of cases of white cops abusing their power over African Americans, resulting in the death of the African Americans and the freedom from penalty for the cops. I am so sick and tired of having this happen, because this could have easily been my mother, my brother, my dad, or any of my relatives. As Dr. Moser put it “we need to bend the ark of God’s kingdom and promote a sense of justice” and I think the only way we can do that is begin to understand the viewpoints of everybody and begin to start making changes in our society. One of the most positive things this year that has helped me become open minded was taking my first philosophy class. I use to go into class having my own thoughts and opinions about things. The moment I heard something new, I would not even try to understand. I would instead reject it without understanding a person’s argument or claim. A lot of people feel that same way about theology: before they can even understand what God is trying to say or do, they just reject it as a whole. If the world keeps that kind of close minded thinking, then we are in trouble. There will be no change in our society. There will be no change in how African Americans are treated. Things like race will continue to dominant our world. Racism will inevitably never die out if this closed my thinking continues.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 04:27:22 +0000