Roots of affliction

This week I've been reflecting on the recent presidential election in the States. I voted absentee before I left for Peru in September, and I think that symbolically it is a great achievement for a black man to have been able to win the presidency - 145 years after the abolition of slavery and only 40 years after the end of legalized racial segregation.

Still the intersection of politics and religion continues to be disturbing. For example, I read that 3 out 4 for white evangelicals voted for one candidate, and the overwhelming majority of black evangelicals voted for the other. Can this be explained by racism? Or could it be that the more privileged class does not give as much importance to the concern for social justice reflected in the statements and positions of the candidates? African Americans have a history of oppression that could have prepared them to be more sensitive to systemic injustice, so possibly the black church is less blind in this area.

This is no great revelation, but I believe that politicians of every party are controlled far too much by powerful financial interests. I also believe that the public is expertly manipulated, and recall a good example of this described by Thomas Frank in a Bill Moyers interview I saw online several weeks ago.

In the interview, TF argued that "conservatives" can use a social or religious issue to advance their economic agenda and its attendant evils to which people may be blind. For example, it's no sacrifice for the economic principalities and powers that be to support candidates who take a conservative position on abortion laws as long as the candidates also support economic policies that favor the powers that be above everyone else. Thus because of a hot-button issue, many people will vote against their own economic well being. The other catch is that the politicians only need to speak correctly about the hot-button issue, and in fact do not or can not deliver on their words.

I've been reading an excellent book by Martin Luther King called "Strength to Love," which is a collection of his sermons in the sixties. He remarked that the church was the most segregated major institution in America at that time. Is this still the case?

Searched for translations of MLK's works into Spanish or Portuguese and haven't been able to find any except his "I Have a Dream" speech, which is unfortunately about the extent of what most people know about him. It seems that all of the translated Christian literature in Latin America I've seen so far is by best-selling white authors who may not be very outspoken about the injustices of the status quo socioeconomic system.

written by  cjones on November 6, 2008 from Tarapoto, Peru
from the travel blog: so-journ
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