This week I’ve devoted much of my energy to a pretty spirited discussion via Facebook about Governor O’Malley’s plans to build a prison for youth in East Baltimore. The $104 million prison would be dedicated to youth being charged as adults. For many years, I’ve stood in solidarity with many others in publicly denouncing...
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White folks
Governor O’Malley’s Prison for Baltimore Youth Temporarily Delayed
A word to the Urban Farming/Healthy Food Movement…
I was surveyed this morning about how the urban food movement can improve and more specifically about what the Chesapeake Urban Farming Summit could address in future gatherings. I sent the following note and I share it here hoping to provoke critical dialogue about the possibilities of the urban farming movement as it intersects...
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Black People Should Control The Baltimore City Public School System (Part 2)
When you take a nearly 90% African American student population and you willfully ignore their culture while subjecting them to a European-American educational setting you set them up for psychological enslavement. The African student population is not permitted to engage in the process of knowing themselves, the story of their people on the map...
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Black People Should Control The Baltimore City Public School System (Part 1)
The history of African Americans does not begin with slavery. However, that’s what African American students are likely to believe while matriculating through many of this nation’s public schools. Their miseducation instills in them the view that they are an inferior people whose historical heritage starts in slavery. Their miseducation proliferates while at the...
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Pastor John Hagee bringing Christian Zionist Message to Baltimore Area
In C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya’s classic work on the Black Church, they rightly describe the character and nature of the “Black sacred cosmos.” Much more than just casual weekend activity or flippant denominational recognition; Christianity for practicing African Americans is so interwoven into personal and social identity that it’s hard just to...
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From the Grand Canyon State to Charm City: The Problem of the Power Structure’s “Education” System
What the Arizona Public School System’s ban of ethnic studies does is expose crucial questions about authority and autonomy as it relates to the public education system. The crucial question is: Who should control the educational direction, content, and implementation of education? Who should be trusted to mold the minds of today’s students? That...
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Arizona Ethnic Studies Ban Raises Crucial Question of Pedagogical Authority
I watched this CNN interview and exchange last night between Tom Horne, Arizone Superintendent of Public Instruction and Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, professor and social critic. The issue was Arizona’s new ban on ethnic studies. Apparently, Arizona’s public school system was worried about non-white children being taught their history. According to Mr. Horne, as...
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BOOK REVIEW: The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity
Recently, I finished reading The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity by Soong-Chan Rah. Rah, a fellow Baltimorean by way of Korea, provides a truly thoughtful and passionate critique of the current landscape of American Christianity. The foundation of the book’s argument is not rooted in theology, but actually finds it...
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When Christian Mission Goes Way Wrong (part 2)
Photo Credit: Telegraph.Co.Uk I have an uneasy feeling when it comes to Christian Missionaries. I know that sounds strange coming from a pastor. But anyone who reviews the history of missionaries from the Western, American context will find a deluge of disheartening examples connecting Christian Mission with subjugation, oppression, and the dehumanizing of Indigenous...
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When Christian Mission Goes Way Wrong (part 1)
Many of you have been following the situation going on in Haiti – no, not the earthquake and recovery, but the arrest and pending trial of 10 U.S. Christian Missionaries who are under judicial scrutiny right now for the alleged kidnap attempt of dozens of Haitian children. This story disturbs me on many fronts,...
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