I’m your daytime blogwatch at the Taco Tiki Hut…

Amy Welborn:

…When I think of St. Patrick, the word that comes to mind is forgiveness.

For St. Patrick had been kidnapped as a boy, and taken in slavery to Ireland, held there for years.

When it was time, years later, to share the Gospel, Patrick responded to the call – to share that Good News in Ireland, with those who had caused him great suffering and even killed members of his family.

His story reminds me of that of St. Isaac Jogues, another disciple of Jesus who returned to serve those who persecuted him.

It makes you think. What are the limits of my love?

more

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

…I think it takes a real flight of fancy to dismiss the culture argument. If you are rich and you’ve been rich for generations, you almost certainly develop cultural habits. Likewise, if you’re poor and you’ve been poor for generations, you do the same. If you’ve been wealthy for generations and you were suddenly asked to function in the ghetto, you may have problems because you didn’t know the rules. You weren’t acculturated. Likewise, if you’re poor and you’re trying to climb up the economic ladder, you may also have problems. What will keep you safe in the projects, may well get you fired from a job, or kicked out of school. I think this would be true whether you are poor in West Baltimore, or poor in West Virginia.

But one reason that a lot of African-Americans get pissed off at cultural arguments is because the “culture of poverty” is often so easily transposed over the “culture of black people.” I went to public school all my life. So does my son. I’ve had my share of contact with the culture of poverty. But the culture that encourages people to jump the broom at weddings, isn’t the same as the culture that makes drug-dealing a choice occupation. The culture at, say, Spelman isn’t the same as the culture of the projects here in Harlem. And the culture at Spelman isn’t the same as the culture at Howard.

more (this is a blog post, not a treatise, so I’m going to pretend I don’t see the parts where Coates tries to lump all cultures-of-poverty together and handwave ways in which the contemporary US black culture of poverty is a) different from previous US black cultures of poverty, b) different from non-black cultures of poverty, and therefore c) not inevitable–its good aspects need preserving and its bad aspects can be combated….)