Departments
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Week of 26 March 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 28 |
Feature
Article
Templeton lecturer Rivers calls for post-civil rights approach
By Eric McHenry
Do economic and political freedom help foster a more just society?
This question, which the John Templeton Seminar on Freedom and Economic Justice was created to address, got a spirited treatment March 18 in the third Templeton Lecture of the academic year. Rev. Eugene Rivers, pastor of the Azusa Christian Community and cofounder of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, spoke to an audience of students from the UNI seminar and other BU community members at the Photonics Center.
"What does freedom mean when 30 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, black Americans lock themselves in their homes and apartments to avoid being caught in urban crossfire?" Rivers asked in an address called Beyond the Civil Rights Industry. "What does freedom mean for a people enslaved by the spiritual and political blindness of its own leadership? What does freedom mean for a generation of young people who buy what they want and beg for what they need?"
Rivers is both a Harvard-educated public intellectual and a hands-on community activist. His oratory is a seamless combination of academic discourse, pulpit charisma, and occasional urban slang. Glenn Loury, UNI professor and director of BU's Institute on Race and Social Division, described Rivers in an introduction as "an ex-gang member who has risen to become one of the premier voices in this city, and in the nation, on behalf of the positive role that the African-American church can, and must, play in dealing with the problems of America's inner cities."
Rivers contended that the aging civil rights paradigm of the 1960s, which clings to integration and legal equality for minorities as its primary objectives, is obsolete. He called for a viable post-civil rights framework for the black community, rooted both in religion and in a pragmatic black nationalism.
"A new vision of freedom," he said, "cannot simply address relations of black citizens to the broad political community of the state. As American politics evolve and inner-city life degenerates, our vision must also encompass relations within our community, black families and the importance of parental responsibility to the health of those families, the evil of black-on-black violence, the stupidity of defining black culture around anti-Semitism or other forms of racial and ethnic hatred, the value of education and intellectual achievement, the importance of mutual commitment and cooperative effort, and the essential role of personal morality as a religious conviction.
"In defining morality," he added, "I argue that a post-civil rights framework, if it is to have any resonance, power, juice, utility, will have to be theologically mediated."
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Eugene Rivers, pastor of the Azusa Christian Community, is interviewed by Fox 25 television news anchor Tory Ryden prior to his Templeton Lecture March 18 in the Photonics Center. Photo by Fred Sway |
"A sensible post-civil rights nationalism is principally about advancing the interests of the black community, a nation within a nation," he said. "Its account of that nation starts from the central role of slavery in the formation of black identity, emphasizing the subsequent experience of racial subordination, and highlighting the special importance of religion in the evolution of the black nation."
Rivers drew a bright line between the institution-centered black nationalism he advocates and the adversarial sort embraced by such controversial black leaders as Louis Farrakhan. "I'm not defending the ignorant," he said. "I'm saying we need to rethink our identification of racial equality with integration, and reopen the debate about a sensible, postessentialist, nonchauvinistic, nonxenophobic nationalist project."
Following his address, Rivers fielded a number of questions from the audience, most concerning his position on particular strategies for strengthening the black community. Education emerged as a theme of the dialogue, with Rivers stressing the vital importance of literacy, and particularly, technological literacy. He argued that resources ought to be allocated to those institutions "closest to the problems," that the results they produce should be rigorously evaluated, and that supplements or alternatives to public education, such as vouchers to attend private schools, should not be ruled out.
"You suburban liberals, God bless you, you can fight that one," he said. "At the end of the day, in the hood, we have got to enhance the academic performance of kids so that they can be competitive. That's my endgame."
The John Templeton Lectures on Freedom, Markets, and Economic Justice are sponsored by UNI and the IRSD, through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. For more information, visit the IRSD home page at www.bu.edu/irsd/.