I try so hard not to write about this racial stuff, but then Amy Sullivan writes this:
But I’ll be back in a few hours to talk about why the Democratic party outsourced religion to black churches, and how that’s hurt the party. It’s also left most Americans with a Disney-fied impression of African-American religious leaders as folks who sit around listening to gospel music all day, spout inspirational phrases to slap on calendars, and generally act like Denzel Washington in “The Preacher’s Wife.”
By “most Americans” she means of course “white Americans”.
You may remember Sullivan as the author of a piece decrying the tepid sports cuture of Washington without once mentioning the Washington Redskins. In that instance, as well, Sullivan substituted white upper class DC for the more mainstream, blacker rest of Washington (aka most people who live in DC). She also has a habit of saying Democrats don’t like religion.
UPDATE: It gets worse:
For decades, the Democratic Party has ghettoized religion, outsourcing it to African-Americans within the party.
As one of the commenters notes:
Yes, I well remember noted African-American and Sunday school teacher Jimmy Carter. African-Americans Bill Clinton and Al Gore both also made a big show of their Baptist faith, while African-American John Kerry frequently mentioned his time as an altar boy.
For the love of God, someone tell Amy Sullivan to STFU.
UPDATE 2: A friend notes: “Ghettoized” religion. Ghetto.
It’s not the racial stuff that bothers me, Oliver. It’s the religious crap. Can we get over that somehow? The racial stuff is a discussion worth having. Why this church is more, less or same crazy as that church is not and has no legitimate place in a political debate.
Oh those pesky black people. They’ve been screwing it up for the poor Democrats since the 60s.
I think maybe Obama ought to give that speech over and over and over and over and over.
OW: A friend notes: “Ghettoized” religion. Ghetto.
So… she’s talking about Polish Jews?
“Ghetto” doesn’t necessarily mean “inner city black neighborhood” to many folks. You have reason aplenty to take issue with her comments, but you’re tipping into over-parsing the words a bit.
The actual context is that religion was ghettoized by outsourcing it to black churches. She’s not discussing Warsaw.
“It’s also left most Americans with a Disney-fied impression of African-American religious leaders as folks who sit around listening to gospel music all day …”
She does have a point here though, although I fail to see how this is the fault of the Democratic Party. It’s more the fault of a media, Hollywood in particular, that divides its portrayal of African-Americans between dangerous criminals and near-mystical innocents. It’s the racial equivalent of the virgin/whore thing. Most white people were probably shocked by Rev. Wright because it clashed with their media-reinforced image of black churches as places of joyful song and humble praise. They had no idea that black churches are also centers of social and political engagement. Of course, when and if they do recognize that, it’s mostly in nostalgic terms, as if black churches stopped being focal points for black activism when racism was done away with at the end of the Civil Rights Era.
Sullivan’s attempt to take the Democratic party members to task for not being publicly religious enough is a full blown fubar.
fafaroo, it’s probable that some were as you say overcome by hollywood and media renditions of black churches. Anyone who’s attended a church knows that community and social issues are talked about and addressed in sermons. The majority of religious leaders relate biblical text to real life and vice versus.
I don’t get the fuss about Wright myself. He’s not the first religious leader to use the imagery that God is angry and going to put a serious smack down on the whole human race. That’s been happening for thousands of years.
As I said at Washington Monthly, Wright did not pick from “the cool” list of things to say that God was angry. Had he stuck with sex, gays or women, it’d be a non-issue. He didn’t. He addressed the fact that America still has not addressed our racial problems which encompasses a lot more people than those having unapproved sex, gays or women. To other sects that’s wrong. Now it’s a battle of religious sects. Obama of course in their eyes does not belong to the “acceptable” sect.
Then there is the whole it’s traitorous and evil to criticize America people. After all when it comes to America it’s not possible that America could ever ever have problems and flaws. That would be like mature and adult.
“As I said at Washington Monthly, Wright did not pick from “the cool” list of things to say that God was angry.”
I think that pretty much nails it. It’s okay to say that God will damn America because of teh gay! But say god might be pissed off at America because it still tolerates racial injustice? Look out …
Mike Huckabee defends Obama and Rev Wright:
http://www.bozzysworld.com/2008/03/20/mike-huckabee-defends-obama-rev-wright/
OW: “The actual context is that religion was ghettoized by outsourcing it to black churches. She’s not discussing Warsaw.”
She didn’t say ghettoized by outsourcing to black churches. In the context she did use, “ghettoized” works perfectly fine. I suppose she could have used another word to get a put-it-away-out-of-sight meaning. But a quick search for a synonym to “ghettoize” turns up nothing.
Perhaps it’s an unfortunate word choice, but the use of “ghetto” doesn’t necessarily mean someone is making a racial slur.
Verb
* S: (v) ghettoize, ghettoise (put in a ghetto) “The Jews in Eastern Europe were ghettoized”
o direct hypernym / inherited hypernym / sister term
S: (v) isolate, insulate (place or set apart) “They isolated the political prisoners from the other inmates”
# S: (v) segregate (separate or isolate (one thing) from another and place in a group apart from others) “the sun segregates the carbon”; “large mining claims are segregated into smaller claims”
# S: (v) ghettoize, ghettoise (put in a ghetto) “The Jews in Eastern Europe were ghettoized”
# S: (v) cloister (seclude from the world in or as if in a cloister) “She cloistered herself in the office”
# S: (v) seclude, sequester, sequestrate, withdraw (keep away from others) “He sequestered himself in his study to write a book”
# S: (v) quarantine (place into enforced isolation, as for medical reasons) “My dog was quarantined before he could live in England”
# S: (v) maroon (leave stranded on a desert island without resources) “The mutinous sailors were marooned on an island”
o derivationally related form
W: (n) ghetto [Related to: ghettoize] (formerly the restricted quarter of many European cities in which Jews were required to live) “the Warsaw ghetto”
o sentence frame
Somebody —-s somebody
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&s=ghettoize
pedantry off
Thanks, fafaroo! I was looking for synonyms in thesauri. Should have thought to look for a definition in dictionaries. I blame the late hour. (chagrin)
Still, “cloistered”, “secluded”, “quarantined” et al wouldn’t make good substitutes in Sullivan’s sentence.
“Perhaps it’s an unfortunate word choice…”
You might be able to make that argument if there wasn’t an overwhelming pattern here.
“Still, “cloistered”, “secluded”, “quarantined” et al wouldn’t make good substitutes in Sullivan’s sentence.”
Why not? “Cloistered” even has a religious connotation.
Pedantic Man strikes again!
Yeah, segregated would have been a much better word choice, huh?
“Yeah, segregated would have been a much better word choice, huh?”
Haw!!
“Still, “cloistered”, “secluded”, “quarantined” et al wouldn’t make good substitutes in Sullivan’s sentence.”
I agree about that but when you look at the context of the sentence and the piece, ghettoized isn’t the right word either. In the same sentence, she talks about the Democratic Party out-sourcing religion to African-American churches. But ghettoizing and outsourcing are not the same thing. Ghettoizing is a disenfranchisement, a marginalizing of something. It’s not a benign neglect, it’s just straight up neglect. That’s different than outsourcing. When you outsource something you still consider the product important you just want it on the cheap. It’s exploitative, yes, but it isn’t gheotoizing. Sullivan’s not dumb. She knows the connotation she was making. I’d wager that she thought she was being cute or clever in underscoring how white dems deal with race and so she stretched. If people get a offended by it, Sullivan is still to blame because they being offended by the connotation she intended to make. I’d also wager she didn’t have the guts to go with her first choice: something about plantations …
Ghettoizing is a disenfranchisement, a marginalizing of something.
“Marginalize” is good. Or “neglected.” Or “ignored.” Or “trivialized.”
But none of these would have served Ms. Sullivan’s biases that Democrats hate religion and take their black members for granted.