An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Affair

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dales
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An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Affair

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Butler blog post2.jpg


Anthea Butlers latest blog post on religiondispatches.org in which she says that God is a "White Racist" in response to last weeks not guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman. (FoxNews.com)



An Ivy League professor blogged after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin that the verdict shows God is a “white racist” who stalks “young black men.”

Anthea Butler, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Religious Studies, made the unusual comments in a blog post released on Monday on ReligionDispatches.org, where she is a regular contributor.

“God ain’t good all of the time. In fact, sometimes, God is not for us,” she wrote in the post. “As a black woman in an [sic] nation that has taken too many pains to remind me that I am not a white man, and am not capable of taking care of my reproductive rights, or my voting rights, I know that this American god ain’t my god.

“As a matter of fact, I think he’s a white racist god with a problem. More importantly, he is carrying a gun and stalking young black men,” she added.

Butler adds that Trayvon Martin’s killing was the result of racism that was influenced by Christianity.

“As a historian of American and African-American religion, I know that the Trayvon Martin moment is just one moment in a history of racism in America that, in large part, has its underpinnings in Christianity and its history,” she wrote. “Those of us who teach American Religion have a responsibility to tell all of the story, not just the nice touchy-feely parts.”

“When the good Christians of America are some of its biggest racists, one has to consider our moral responsibility to call out those who clearly are not for human flourishing, no matter what ethnicity a person is. Where are you on that scale? I know where I am.”

According to her biography, Butler holds doctorate and masters degrees in religion from Vanderbilt University as well as a masters in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is the author of a 2007 book titled "Women in the Church of God in Christ, Making A Sanctified World," published by University of North Carolina Press.

Butler, who did not respond to requests for comment, is also an associate chair for the school's religious studies department and is a regular contributor and guest on both MSNBC and CNN.

Josiah Ryan, editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, which first reported Butler's comments, said the professor's reaction to the verdict was bizarre.

"No amount of heartbreak over the Zimmerman acquittal justifies these hateful posts," Ryan said. "Professor Butler's remarks were clearly designed to hurt when Americans needed healing and to divide when we needed unity.”

"In tumultuous times students must be able turn to their professors for calm and wisdom. In stoking the flames of hatred, Professor Butler has betrayed her students' trust. UPenn administrators ought not to allow her back in the classroom."

Officials for the University of Pennsylvania declined to comment


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/16/up ... z2ZQ1PBkwb
There is so much wrong on so many levels, one does not know where to begin.

How does one become an Associate Professor of a Ivy League University with such a dis-jointed thought process? Outside the racial spoils system, I see no other way.
Last edited by dales on Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.


yrs,
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Gob
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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Gob »

Victimhood studies?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by dgs49 »

There is an underlying belief in all of the visible "Black" reaction to this acquittal: Trayvon Martin was justified in physically attacking a "white" man because he didn't like being asked a question.

If you accept that premise, it all makes sense.

As for the good professor, her reaction says more about the institutions who passed out those grad degrees than it does about her.

What fucking joke.

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Joe Guy »

An Ivy League professor blogged after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin that the verdict shows God is a “white racist” who stalks “young black men.”
Didn't God send his only son to the Middle East a couple thousand years ago to apologize to the black community?

Or am I confusing my history a little bit?

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Scooter »

dgs49 wrote:There is an underlying belief in all of the visible "Black" reaction to this acquittal: Trayvon Martin was justified in physically attacking a "white" man because he didn't like being asked a question.
One wonders how it can be that Dave was not called as a witness at the trial, since apparently he was there and saw it all.
"Hang on while I log in to the James Webb telescope to search the known universe for who the fuck asked you." -- James Fell

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by rubato »

Add "Black" to "Ivy league prof." And dgs could have posted it.

Yrs,
Rubato

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Gob »

Yes, and?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Lord Jim »

Rube is obviously attempting to insinuate that there's something racist about posting an article about breathtakingly idiotic and ignorant comments of a professor at a prestigious university about a story much in the news.....

It's hardly surprising that rube would rise to defend the breathtakingly idiotic and ignorant; regular readers of his posts will know that when it comes to breathtakingly idiotic and ignorant, rube is a huge fan....
Last edited by Lord Jim on Mon Jul 22, 2013 12:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by rubato »

What a total stupid fucking gas bag.

Nothing I said defended anyone.

It was an individual comment from one person. Only jackasses like you would generalize from this about the "Ivy League" or any other collective group.

Wow. Just when I think you've all reached rock bottom for intelligence you discover new lows to demonstrate.

Yrs,
Rubato

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Sue U »

Did any of you even bother to read Anthea Butler's actual blog post? Did you even bother to find out about -- let alone look at -- the source material on which she is commenting? Or did you just rely on:
Josiah Ryan, editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, which first reported Butler's comments,
Because why ever would a "conservative activist" blog, re-distributed by Fox "News," take quotes out of context or distort the meaning of a piece by a "black" "female" "Ivy League" "professor?" (Is that dog whistle loud enough for you yet?) But hey, why actually think when you've got a big fresh steaming pile of manufactured outrage, right?
What Does it Mean to Call "God" a White Racist?
By Willie James Jennings

***

Dr. Butler recalled a seminal text, Is God a White Racist?, written over forty years ago by William R. Jones, which pressed a disturbing question to African-American Christian intellectuals and especially two of the most important American theologians of the twentieth century: James Hal Cone and J. Deotis Roberts. Against the genius of Cone and Roberts who argued that God in Jesus enacts liberation, or liberation’s possibility, for black peoples, Jones pressed the simple request—show me where? Where is this liberation from God for black flesh? Jones’ conclusion was elegant. If God is known by God’s actions, and if I look at what is happening to black people in America (and elsewhere), then the question we must face is a horrible but necessary one: Is God a White Racist? Jones saw that wound that refuses to heal, and Dr. Butler, like so many of us, is yet haunted by that question.

It would be a mistake, however, to read Dr. Butler as calling God a white racist. She has called up the struggle, the struggle of faith for black peoples, who are reminded by the Martin-Zimmerman tragedy, that we have cried out and are crying out to God to help us even as our blood continues to flow and the pain cycles back again. Although Jones’ question is a real one, a serious one, so too has our faith been real and serious. What I learned from Drs. Cone and Roberts is that the question Jones raised was already a question inside of faith, not against faith. Christians follow an ancient Jewish gesture in asking God Why? We follow in the extraordinary legacy of a people who question God, our complaint rising together with our praise, both of which press God to answer for the continuing loss of black life and the seemingly unrelenting hostility against our bodies.

Dr. Butler also points out the contradictions of American Christianity embedded in this legacy. At this very moment, the Christianity of America in all its varied and magnificent forms is yet to reckon with the incredible power of whiteness. Whiteness is not biological fact or a bedrock reality of culture. It’s a way of looking at others (especially people of color) and oneself that grew powerful in America as arriving immigrants sought to shed perceived cultural impediments to their full assimilation into a white American identity.

American Christians must take on the difficult work of understanding how whiteness has been woven like a cancer into their Christianity. It is the power of that whiteness to shape our social worlds—defining good and bad, beautiful and ugly, true and false—that is at heart the reason this wound will not heal. It is the reason why some people deny our grotesque racial history even as it stares them in the face with the case of George Zimmerman.

***

Willie James Jennings teaches at Duke Divinity School in the areas of systematic theology and black church and cultural studies. He is the author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale, 2010). An ordained Baptist minister, Professor Jennings has served as interim pastor of several North Carolina churches and continues to be an active teaching and preaching minister in the local church.
Source: Religion Dispatches
Last edited by Sue U on Mon Jul 22, 2013 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
GAH!

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Crackpot
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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Crackpot »

Your link is wassing up my screen
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Sue U »

Better now?
GAH!

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Lord Jim »

Geez ma knees rube, can't you even come up with an original insult?
Wow. Just when I think you've all reached rock bottom for intelligence you discover new lows to demonstrate.

Yrs,
Rubato
Every time I think he has pushed the boundaries of the outermost limits of human stupidity just as far as they can go, I'll be damned if he doesn't come along and show that he can push them even further...

How mind bogglingly, toe curlingly, hair achingly stupid does a person have to be to see a moral equivalence between an emotionally troubled self destructive rock singer, and a murdering terrorist? :roll: :loon
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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Econoline »

Sue U wrote:But hey, why actually think when you've got a big fresh steaming pile of manufactured outrage, right?
:ok
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by Econoline »

FWIW, and since still nobody has posted it, here is Anthea Butler's full, actual, original blog post from the Religion Dispatches Magazine website:
The not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman case has me thinking a lot about a book I first encountered in seminary, Is God a White Racist?, by the Rev. Dr. Bill Jones. As a budding seminary student, it took me by surprise. Now, as a wiser, older professor looking at the needless death of Trayvon Martin, I have to say: I get it.

God ain’t good all of the time. In fact, sometimes, God is not for us. As a black woman in a nation that has taken too many pains to remind me that I am not a white man, and am not capable of taking care of my reproductive rights, or my voting rights, I know that this American god ain’t my god. As a matter of fact, I think he’s a white racist god with a problem. More importantly, he is carrying a gun and stalking young black men.

When George Zimmerman told Sean Hannity that it was God’s will that he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, he was diving right into what most good conservative Christians in America think right now. Whatever makes them protected, safe, and secure, is worth it at the expense of the black and brown people they fear.

Their god is the god that wants to erase race, make everyone act “properly” and respect, as the president said, “a nation of laws”; laws that they made to crush those they consider inferior.

When the laws were never made for people who were considered, constitutionally, to be three-fifths of a person, I have to ask: Is this just? Is it right? Is God the old white male racist looking down from white heaven, ready to bless me if I just believe the white men like Rick Perry who say the Zimmerman case has nothing to do with race?

You already know the answer: No.

The lamentation of the African-American community at yet another injustice, the surprise and disgust of others who understand, stand against this pseudo-god of capitalism and incarceration that threaten to take over our nation.

While many continue to proclaim that the religious right is over, they’re wrong. The religious right is flourishing, and unlike the right of the 1970s, religious conservatism of the 21st century is in bed with the prison industrial complex, the Koch brothers, the NRA—all while proclaiming that they are “pro-life.” They are anything but. They are the ones who thought that what George Zimmerman did was right, and I am sure my inbox will be full of well-meaning evangelical sermons about how we should all just get along, and God doesn’t see race.

Please send them elsewhere.

As a historian of American and African-American religion, I know that the Trayvon Martin moment is just one moment in a history of racism in America that, in large part, has its underpinnings in Christianity and its history.

Those of us who teach American Religion have a responsibility to tell all of the story, not just the nice touchy-feely parts. When the good Christians of America are some of its biggest racists, one has to consider our moral responsibility to call out those who clearly are not for human flourishing, no matter what ethnicity a person is. Where are you on that scale? I know where I am.

People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
God @The Tweet of God

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Re: An "Ivy League" Prof. Chimes In On The Trayvon Martin Af

Post by dales »

Perhaps I should redact the topic post? :nana

Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.


yrs,
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