{"id":538,"date":"2009-06-12T22:30:22","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T22:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2009\/06\/americas-racial-and-religious.html"},"modified":"2009-06-12T22:30:22","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T22:30:22","slug":"americas-racial-and-religious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/06\/americas-racial-and-religious.html","title":{"rendered":"America’s Racial and Religious Equality of Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Rock had a great riff in one of his early stand up comedy routines which basically said how he was scared to death of white teenage boys.  This was the time around the Columbine shootings and the joke was funny because it played off of a contradicting mainstream American fear of grown black males, a demographic of which Chris Rock is of course a member. <\/p>\n

For better or for worse (neither I guess) we have witnessed a leveling of the American fear field as predicted by Mr. Rock. The bread and butter American fears of people of color and of different faiths have been complicated by recent events. The Jewish community experienced violence threatened and actualized by extremists from across the rainbow of color and religion first at the Synagogue in the Bronx followed by the Holocaust Museum in DC. In between we have a Christian doctor gunned down in church by an anti-abortion Christian extremist.<\/p>\n

There is a fearful current in America that is beginning to violently surface.  Fox News analyst Shep Smith <\/a>spoke about his experience of this anger:<\/p>\n

\n

“…in the wake of today’s shooting at the Holocaust Museum, Smith went on the air today to talk about the emails he’s been receiving for “the past few months,” and how they’ve been getting “more and more frightening.” <\/p>\n

SMITH: There are people now, who are way out there on a limb. And I think they’re just out there on a limb with the email they send us. Because I read it, and they are out there<\/i>. I mean, out there in a scary place…I could read a hundred of them like this…I mean from today<\/i>. People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous.”<\/p>\n

He went on to read an email, filled with the usual paranoid “birther” nonsense, which included an admonishment to Smith. “This is, I promise, a representative sample of the kind of things that we get here,” Smith said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Much of the anger that Smith is talking about is coming from those who feel disempowered and fearful under the Obama administration.  Fears about his supposed racisim and socialism are fueled on the internet and by some unfortunate pundits and politicians.  Where there is frustration and a sense of powerlessness there is also a tendency towards violence.  <\/p>\n

America’s new awareness of the truth that violence can and has come from any group at any time demands our response.  No single group can look at another and say the problem is them, because every demographic has its own extremists  It forces each of us to take responsibility for maintaining and lifting others to a higher ground within whatever racial or religious identity we hold.  When we encounter extremists within our own community we have the duty to disabuse them of their disturbed fantasies, and when they are threatening violence we should contact the police.<\/p>\n

Being equal in fear is not a religious or American goal, instead it is to be equal in justice and respect.  Its up to us.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Rock had a great riff in one of his early stand up comedy routines which basically said how he was scared to death of white teenage boys.  This was the time around the Columbine shootings and the joke was funny because it played off of a contradicting mainstream American fear of grown black males, a demographic of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hate-crimes","category-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica's Racial and Religious Equality of Fear - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/06\/americas-racial-and-religious.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"America's Racial and Religious Equality of Fear - 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}