2020/08/13

알라딘: 떨림과 울림

알라딘: 떨림과 울림



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편집장의 선택
"진동을 떨림으로 바꾸니 물리학이 다정해!"
”존재의 떨림은 서로의 울림이 된다.” 이 책의 제목을 만든 문장이다. 인간의 눈에는 보이지 않지만 온갖 사물부터 공기, 심지어 빛까지 온 세상은 떨리고 있고, 인간은 그 떨림에 울림으로 반응하며 또 다른 떨림을 전한다는 설명이다. 이공계 수학과 전자공학의 주요 내용이라 할 진동을 떨림으로 풀어내니 왠지 이해가 되는 기분이 들고, 다른 개념은 어떻게 풀어냈을지 궁금해지기까지 한다.

생각해보면 물리학자라고 해서 처음부터 기호와 수식으로 설명하고 대화했을 리는 없다. 소리는 어떻게 들리는 것인지, 별빛은 어떻게 지구에 도착하는 것인지 물었을 테고, 떨림와 울림, 아니 그보다 범박한 표현으로 생각을 나눴을 게 분명하다. 그렇게 '우리'의 호기심과 궁금함에서 시작된 물리학이 더 멀고 깊고 커다란 세계를 알아갈수록 '우리'와 멀어졌던 게 아닐까. 물리학자 김상욱은 이 거리를 한껏 좁혀 떨림과 울림을, 서로의 진동을 느끼고 나눌 수 있도록 "근사한 과학의 언어를 읊는다." 물리학이 인간적으로 보이길 바라는 그의 마음은 충분히 전달되었고, 이제는 모든 게 물리학으로 보이는 착각에 빠져들 정도다. 정말 떨리는 순간이다.
- 과학 MD 박태근 (2018.11.09)
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책소개
물리학자의 눈으로 바라보는 세계는 어떤 모습일까? 우리의 몸과 마시는 공기, 발을 딛고 서있는 땅과 흙, 그리고 매일 마주하는 노트북 모니터와 휴대전화까지. 세계의 모든 존재들은 모두 ‘원자’라는 아주 작은 단위로 이루어져 있다. 김상욱은 이 작고도 작은 단위까지 내려가 우리 존재부터 우주라는 커다란 세계까지 들여다보고 질문한다.

물리학자가 원자로 이루어진 세계를 보는 방식은 마치 동양철학의 경구를 읽는 듯 하다. 나의 존재를 이루는 것들은 어디에서 시작되었는지, 죽음을 어떻게 성찰할 수 있을지, 타자와 나의 차이는 무엇인지… 엄밀한 과학의 정답을 제시하는 대신 물리학자만이 안내할 수 있는 새로운 시선을 제시해준다.

‘물리’라는 새로운 언어를 통해 우리 존재와 삶, 죽음의 문제부터 타자와의 관계, 세계에 관한 생각까지 새로운 틀에서 바라볼 수 있게 안내해주는 책이다.
목차
프롤로그

1부 분주한 존재들 - 138억 년 전 그날 이후, 우리는 우리가 되었다
[빛] 138억 년 전, 처음으로 반짝이던
[시공간] 시간과 공간의 탄생
[우주] 세계의 존재 이유를 안다는 것
[원자] 우리를 이루는 것, 세상을 이루는 것
[전자] 모두 같으면서, 모두 다르다
‣ 생명이 존재하려면 『미토콘트리아』
‣ 물리학자가 바라본 존재의 차이, 차이의 크기
‣ 크기가 말하는 것 『이상한 나라의 앨리스』
‣ 존재의 크기에 관하여 ‘위상수학’이란 무엇인가

2부 시간을 산다는 것, 공간을 본다는 것 - 세계를 해석하는 일에 관하여
[최소작용의 원리] 미래를 아는 존재에게 현재를 산다는 것
[카오스] 확실한 예측은 오직
[엔트로피] 어제가 다시 오지 않는 이유
[양자역학] 우리는 믿는 것을 본다
[이중성] 대립적인 것은 상보적인 것
‣ 지구에서 본 우주, 달에서 본 우주
‣ 달을 가리키는데 왜 손가락을 보는가? <인터스텔라>
‣ 물리학자에게 ‘우연’이란 「바빌로니아의 복권」, 『픽션들』

3부 관계에 관하여 - 힘들이 경합하는 세계
[중력] 서로가 서로에게 낙하한다
[전자기력] 존재의 떨림으로 빈 곳은 이어진다
[맥스웰 방정식] 현대 문명의 모습을 결정한 수식
[환원·창발] 많은 것은 다르다
[응집물리] 우선은 서로 만나야 한다
‣ 인공지능에게 타자란 <엑스 마키나>
‣ 세계의 온도는 표준편차가 결정한다

4부 우주는 떨림과 울림 - 과학의 언어로 세계를 읽는 법
[에너지] 사라지는 것은 없다, 변화할 뿐
[F=ma] 세상은 운동이다
[단진동] 우주는 떨림과 울림
[인간] 우주의 존재와 인간이라는 경이로움
‣ 상상의 질서, 그것을 믿는 일에 관하여 『사피엔스』
‣ 인간의 힘으로 우주의 진리를 알아가는 것 『천국의 문을 두드리며』

부록
지식에서 태도로 - 불투명한 세계에서 이론물리학자로 산다는 것
책속에서
첫문장
계약직 연구원으로 독일에 도착한 첫날, 숙소가 어둡다는 것을 깨달았다.
  • P. 251 인간은 의미 없는 우주에 의미를 부여하고 사는 존재다. 비록 그 의미라는 것이 상상의 산물에 불과할지라도 그렇게 사는 게 인간이다. 행복이 무엇인지 모르지만 행복하게 살려고 노력하는 게 인간이다. 인간은 자신이 만든 상상의 체계 속에서 자신이 만든 행복이라는 상상을 누리며 의미 없는 우주를 행복하게 산다. 그래서 우주보다 인간이 경이롭다.  접기
  • 수학에 의도 따위는 없다. - boooo
  • 소듐과 칼륨이온이 신경세포의 세포막을 넘나드는 것이 전기신호다.  이들은 그냥 자연법칙에 따라 움직였을 뿐 거기에 어떤 목적이나 의도는 없다. 인간의 사유도 원자로 만들어진 몸에서 일어난 일이다ㆍ
    모든 사람은 죽는다. 죽으면 육체는 먼지가 되어 사라진다.
    어린 시절 죽음이 가장 두려운 상상이었던 이유다. 하지만 원... 더보기 - 프란체스카
  • 과학은 불확실성을 안고 가는 태도다. 충분한 물질적 증거가없을 때, 불확실한 전망을 하며 나아가는 수밖에 없다. 과학의 진정한 힘은 결과의 정확한 예측에서 오는 것이 아니라 결과의 불확실성을 인정할 수 있는 데에서 온다. 결국, 과학이란 논리라기보다 경험이며, 이론이라기보다 실험이며, 확신하기보다 의심하는 것이며, 권위적이기보다 민주적인 것이다. 과학에 대한 관심이 우리 사회를 보다 합리적이고 민주적으로 만드는 기초가 되길 기원한다. 과학은 지식이 아니라 태도니까.

    - 본문 P269 중 -  접기 - 듀란달
  • 온도를 가진 모든 물체는 빛을 낸다. 인간도 빛을 내고 있다. 132쪽 - 김재범
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출판사 소개
출판사 제공 책소개

<다정한 물리의 언어로 근사하게 세계를 읽는 법>

“김상욱에게 배웠다면 물리를 다정하게 대했을 텐데” - 유시민

● 물리의 언어로 세계를 읽고, 사유하는 방법
―원자, 빛, 시공간부터 카오스, 엔트로피, 단진동까지
다정한 물리의 언어로 다시 바라본 우주와 세계 그리고 우리


60년간 특파원으로 일하며 국제정치 칼럼을 썼던 언론인 플로라 루이스는 외국어를 배우는 일에 대해 “새로운 언어를 익히는 것은 단지 사물을 부르는 다른 단어를 배우는 것이 아니라 사물에 대해 생각하는 또 다른 방법을 배우는 것”이라고 말했다. 『떨림과 울림』은 ‘물리’라는 과학의 언어를 통해 세계를 읽고 생각하는 또 다른 방법을 안내한다. “김상욱에게 배웠다면 물리를 다정하게 대했을” 거라는 작가 유시민의 말처럼, 물리학자 김상욱의 글을 따라가다 보면 어느덧 물리의 세계에 발을 딛게 된다. 무엇보다 물리라는 언어를 통해 세계와 우리 존재를 바라보는 다른 눈을 얻게 된다. 물리의 핵심 개념 중 하나인 원자를 소개하면서 죽음에 대한 질문을 던지는 식이다.
우리의 몸과 마시는 공기, 발을 딛고 서있는 땅과 흙, 그리고 매일 마주하는 노트북 모니터와 스마트폰까지. 세계의 모든 존재들은 모두 ‘원자’라는, 바이러스보다 훨씬 작은 단위로 이루어져 있다. 원자는 빅뱅 이후 처음 생겨났고, 그 존재는 사라지지 않고 순환한다. 우리 손가락 끝에 있는 탄소 원자 하나는 “우주를 떠돌다가 태양의 중력에 이끌려 지구에 내려앉아, 시아노박테리아, 이산화탄소, 삼엽충, 트리케라톱스, 원시고래, 사과를 거쳐 내 몸에 들어와 포도당의 일부로 몸속을 떠돌다, 손가락에 난 상처를 메우려 DNA의 정보를 단백질로 만드는 과정에서 피부 세포의 일부로 그 자리에 있는 것”일 수 있다는 의미다. 그러니 원자의 기준으로는 인간의 탄생과 죽음이 단지 원자들이 모였다가 흩어지는 것과 다르지 않은 일이라고 김상욱은 말한다.
『떨림과 울림』은 빛, 시공간, 원자, 전자부터 최소작용의 원리, 카오스, 엔트로피, 양자역학, 단진동까지 물리에서 다루는 핵심 개념들을 차분히 소개하면서 ‘물리’라는 새로운 언어를 통해 우리 존재와 삶, 죽음의 문제부터 타자와의 관계, 세계에 관한 생각까지 새로운 틀에서 바라볼 수 있게 안내한다. 물리학자가 원자로 이루어진 세계를 보는 방식은 마치 동양철학의 경구를 읽는 듯하다. 나의 존재를 이루는 것들은 어디에서 시작되었는지, 죽음을 어떻게 성찰할 수 있을지, 타자와 나의 차이는 무엇인지. 엄밀한 과학의 정답을 제시하는 대신 물리학자만이 안내할 수 있는 새로운 시선을 제시해준다.

● 빅뱅이론, 양자역학 안내하며 세계를 질문하다
―우리가 본 것은 사물의 실재일까? 우리의 경험은 느끼는 그대로 사실일까?


“물리는 지구가 돈다는 발견에서 시작되었다. 이보다 경험에 어긋나는 사실은 없다. 아무리 생각해봐도 지구는 돌지 않는 것처럼 느껴지기 때문이다.”(7쪽)

두 발을 땅에 딛고 서 있는 것, 숨 쉴 수 있는 것, 아침을 비추는 햇살, 우리가 당연하게 여기는 경험들은 우주라는 범주에서 본다면 자연스러운 일이 아니다. 지금은 당연한 상식으로 받아들여지는 지동설이 천동설을 폐기하고 상식이 되었던 것은, 경험을 거스르며 과학이라는 것을 만들어간 과정이었다. 김상욱은 “우주의 본질을 본다는 것은 인간의 모든 상식과 편견을 버리는 것”이라고 말한다. 지구가 지금 돌고 있다는 것을 우리가 느낄 수 없듯, 세계는 우리가 직관적으로 이해할 수 없는 무수한 이야기들로 가득 차 있기 때문이다.
우리가 보고 느끼는 거시세계는 뉴턴의 고전역학으로, 아주 작은 원자 단위의 미시세계는 양자역학으로 기술한다. 양자역학이 대상으로 하는 것은 원자다. 원자는 전자와 핵으로 구성되어 있는데, 그 모양이 태양계와 닮아 있다. 전자는 더 이상 나눌 수 없는 물질의 최소단위이다. 원자 내의 전자는 특별한 반지름을 갖는 궤도에만 존재할 수 있다. 그렇다면 이동은 어떻게 하는 걸까? 전자는 한 궤도에서 사라져서 다른 궤도에 ‘짠’ 하고 나타난다. 물체의 이동이 연속적이지 않다는 것은 우리가 경험하는 거시세계에서는 이해하기 힘든 일이다. 우리 눈에 보이는 것, 우리가 경험하는 것은 정말로 ‘실재’하는 것일까? 김상욱은 놀라운 물리의 세계로 안내하며, 분명히 과학인 동시에 철학적인 질문을 던진다.

“시간에 시작점이 있다면 그 시작점 이전의 시간은 어떤 의미를 가질까? 시간은 우주의 본질적인 것인가, 아니면 보다 더 본질적인 것의 부산물인가?”(27쪽)

138억 년 전 빅뱅으로 시간과 공간이 생겨났다. 공간이 생겨났다는 것까지는 어림 짐작해보겠지만, 시간이 생겨났다는 것은 도저히 인간의 경험으로 이해되지 않는다. 인간은 ‘시공간’이라는 프레임으로 세계를 바라볼 수밖에 없기 때문이다. 그렇다면 다른 방식으로 세계를 바라본다는 것은 가능한 일일까? 시간을 한꺼번에 보는 존재가 있다면? 미래까지 한꺼번에 볼 수 있는 존재가 있다면, 그런 존재에게 현재를 산다는 것은 어떤 의미일까? 나에게 고백을 해오는 사랑하는 사람이 종국에는 이별을 고하리라는 것을, 태어날 나의 아이가 불치병을 안고 죽음을 맞이하리라는 것을 알지만 그럼에도 현재를 산다는 것은 무슨 의미일까? 김상욱은 물리의 세계를 안내하며, 이렇듯 우리 일상의 깊숙한 이야기를 꺼낸다. 생각의 타래를 열 수 있게 안내해준다.

● 과학은 지식이 아닌 태도

“우주는 빅뱅으로 시작되었지만, 그 이전에 무엇이 있었는지 모른다. 지구상의 생명체는 최초의 생명체로부터 진화했지만, 최초의 생명체가 무엇인지 모른다. 지구 이외의 장소에 생명체가 존재하는지 모른다.” (268쪽)

과학은 무지를 기꺼이 인정하는 것이라고 이 책에서는 말한다. 김상욱은 과학자로서 공부하며 “뼈에 사무치게 배운 것은 모르는 것을 모른다고 인정하는 태도”였다고 말한다. 무엇을 안다고 말할 때는 그것이 정확히 무엇을 의미하는지 물질적 증거를 들어 설명할 수 있어야 한다고 말이다. 이것을 그는 ‘과학적 태도’라고 말한다. “과학은 지식의 집합체가 아니라 세상을 대하는 태도이자 사고방식”이기 때문이다. 『떨림과 울림』은 이러한 과학에 대한 물리학자 김상욱의 시각에서 쓰인 책이다. 과학을 소재로 한, 영화와 책에 관한 같은 주제의 글들도 한데 엮어 읽을거리를 더했다.
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  • <도올학당 수다 승철>이란 프로그램에서 처음 저자를 보았을 때는 정형화된 말쑥한 생김새에

    호감은 없었지만, 깎듯한 예의와 폭넓은 관점에 기대감이 들고, 그래서 호기심 삼아 책을 구입했다.



    좋은 책은 꼼꼼히 읽어야 하는건지 읽는 속도가 빠르지 않다.

    주요 부분에 밑줄을 그어가며 모르는 용어를 찾아가며 이해를 하니 그런것 같다.



    유신 시절의 주입식 교육 때 무작정 외웠던 원자번호! '수헤리베염화....' 은

    양성자 수를 말하는 것이었고

    상대성 이론이 아인슈타인이 말한 이론이라는것은 알지만

    정지한 1초는 짧게 느껴지고 시간이 빠르게 느껴지지만

    움직임이 있는 시간 1초는 앞의 정지된 1초 보다 길게 느껴지므로

    시간이 늦게 가는것처럼 느껴진다 는 개념은 여기서 얻게 되었다.



    그리고 자연 현상의 99% 설명이 가능하다는 슈뢰딩거 방정식의 암대함

    흑체복사이론/ 광전효과/상보성/불확정성의 원리/등가원리/전자기력/환원주의/생기론/ 입자물리/응집물리

    통계물리/전일주의/뇌터정리/ 모두 차후 읽어보려 표시한 부분들이다.

    '금붕어가 상대성 이론을 상상할 수 없듯이 기계가 인간의 감정을 갖는다는것은 상상조차 하지 못할 모습이다'

    그리고 화두처럼 던진 '파동은 운동 방식의 하나가 아니라 물질 그 자체의 본질 아닐까?'



    <사피엔스> 나 <천국의 문을 두드리며> 리사랜들의 다른 저서까지

    더 읽다보면 다른 분야의 책은 언제 읽나 미리 걱정까지 되는 지식 세계의 방대함!





    쉽게 설명하는 능력은 상대의 관점에서 이해의 정도를 추정하는 능력이 있기 때문이라고 본다.



    이른바 눈높이 측정이 가능하기 때문 아닐까 !



     그런 독자들에게 손을 잡게 해주는 정도의 철학적 접근이 있는 책이라고 추천하고 싶다.




  • 네온불빛 2020-06-17 공감 (3) 댓글 (0)
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  • 무슨 말인지 이해가 잘 안가는데 참으로 묘한 매력이 느껴지는것이 물리인듯 하다! 그리고 물리의 시각으로 보는 세상과 특히나 밤 하늘의 이름 모를 별자리, 나아가 우주는 우리가 평소 사용하는 아름다움이라는 의미와는 또 다른 아름다움을 느끼게 해주는것 같다! 어쩌면 그건 신기와 신비가 묘하게 공존하는 아름다움인지도 모르겠다! 이토록 아름다운 물리라니!ㅎ
  • 막시무스 2020-05-22 공감 (64) 댓글 (0)
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  • 이 책은 이렇게 시작한다. '우주는 떨림이다. 정지한 모든 것들은 떨고 있다.' (5쪽) 정지와 떨림. 떨림은 운동 아닌가. 그렇다면 우주는 운동을 하지 않을 때가 없다는 말이다. 우주는 쉬임없이 운동하고 있고, 그것을 우리가 느끼든 느끼지 않든, 또 알고 있든, 모르고 있든 우주는 운동하고 있다는 말로 바꿀 수 있다.

    그런데 우리 눈에는 정지한 것들은 운동하지 않는 것으로 보인다. 우리 눈이 볼 수 있는 한계가 있기 때문이다. 이 한계를 넘어서기 위해서 수학, 물리학이 필요하다. 눈으로 보이지 않는 존재를 연구하고 그들의 떨림을 수치와 같은 방식으로 우리 눈에 보여주는 것이 바로 수학, 물리학이기 때문이다. 그렇게 우리들 삶에 수학과 물리학은 가까이 다가오게 된다.

    물론 이 책은 수학 이론이나 물리학 이론을 설명해 주지 않는다. 우주부터 시작하여 원자까지를 물리학으로 설명할 수 있음을 보여주고 있다. 우리 인간도 원자로 구성되어 있고, - 세포로 구성되어 있다고 주로 이야기하지만 이 세포 역시 원자로 구성되어 있으니 - 또 아주 거대한 우주도 결국은 원자들의 결합일 뿐이라는 것, 그러니 결국 만물은 원자로 구성되어 있는 것이다.

    따라서 저자는 물리학이 우리 삶에서 뗄 수 없는 존재이기에 '물리학이 인간적으로 보이길 바라는 마음'(7쪽)으로 이 책을 썼다고 한다. 물리학 하면 연구실에 있는 특정한 과학자라는 직업을 가진, 하얀 옷을 입은 그런 사람들의 것만이 아니라는 것을 알려주는 것과 더불어, 물리학이 얼마나 아름다운 학문인지를 다른 사람들과 공유하고자 하는 마음으로 썼다는 생각이 든다.

    그것이 발로 제목에 나타난다. 떨림이라는 말이 물리학이라면 울림이라는 말은 인문학에 어울리는 말이다. 공명한다고 해야 하나, 함께 울리는 것, 함께 떨리는 것, 떨림을 함께 느끼는 것, 그것이 바로 울림이라고 할 수 있다.

    이런 울림이 있으려면 물리학을 멀리해서는 안 된다. 강단에서만, 연구실에서만 물리학이 존재해서는 안 된다. 왜 물리학이 우리 곁에 있어야 하는가를 평범한 사람들에게 설득할 수 있어야 한다. 설득이라기보다는 알려주어야 한다. 그래서 그 사람 마음을 울려야 한다. 아, 물리학도 이렇게 아름답구나! 하는 마음이 들게.

    이 책은 우주부터 시작한다. 광대한 우주, 약 138억년의 역사를 지닌 우주부터 시작하는데, 빅뱅에서 시간과 공간의 탄생을 이야기하면서 결국 우주는 원자로 이루어져 있음을 이야기해준다.

    광활한 우주를 보면 신비한 마음을 느끼는데, 그것을 인간이 과학적으로 설명할 수 있다는 것, 매력적인 일이다. 본다는 것은 안다는 것, 안다는 것은 기억한다는 것, 기억하다는 것은 다른 사람에게 전달할 수 있다는 것이니, 우선 보는 것에서 시작해야 한다.

    그렇다고 본다는 것이 꼭 눈에 보이는 것을 본다는 의미는 아니다. 우리는 우주를 보지만 우주의 아주 적은, 또는 아주 작은 부분만 볼 수 있다. 또 우리가 보고 있는 것이 실체로 존재하는지는 알 수 없기도 하다. 그래서 본다는 것이 명확해지도록 해야 한다. 그게 바로 과학이자 수학이다.

    시간과 공간을 이야기하면 자연스레 미래가 나오고 미래가 나오면 예측가능성이 나온다. 즉, 불확실성을 확실하게 하고 싶은 인간의 욕구를 종교, 철학에서도 추구하지만 물리학에서는 원자들을 중심으로 추구할 수 있다고 한다.

    하여 다양한 이론들이 나오지만 그 이론들을 암기할 필요는 없다. 그런 물리학 이론들이 우리들 삶을 해석하는데 도움을 준다는 것을 알게 되면 된다. 뉴턴의 역학에서 아인슈타인, 그리고 양자역학에 대한 이야기도 나오고, 불확정성의 원리도 나오고 또 끈이론과 같은 말도 나오지만, 그것들에 대해 깊게 설명하기보다는 우리들 삶과 관련지어 설명하기에 과학이 우리들 삶에서 꼭 필요한 존재라는 생각이 들게 한다.

    다른 말로 하면 물리학이 우리 삶에 저 멀리 있는 것이 아니라 바로 우리 삶을 해석하고 더 잘 알게 해준다는 것, 그리고 우리 인간 자체를 설명할 수도 있다는 것을 이 책에 나오는 다양한 물리학 이론들을 통해 알게 된다.

    과학을 왜 배우는지 고민하는 학생에게 많은 도움이 될 책이다. 또 인간은 의미를 추구하는 존재이니 과학 역시 과학으로만 존재하지 않음을 생각하게 한다.

    이 책의 뒷부분에 나오는 말에서 그것을 생각하게 된다.

    '과학자가 자신이 하는 일의 사회적 결과에 대해 과학적 의심을 하지 않을 때, 그 과학은 재앙이 될 수 있다.' (266쪽)

    과학은 이렇게 우리 삶에 커다란 영향을 미친다는 것, 이 책을 읽으면서 계속 실감하게 된다.
  • kinye91 2020-05-19 공감 (17) 댓글 (0)
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  • [마이리뷰] 떨림과 울림 새창으로 보기
  • 무슨 말인지 이해가 잘 안가는데 참으로 묘한 매력이 느껴지는것이 물리인듯 하다! 그리고 물리의 시각으로 보는 세상과 특히나 밤 하늘의 이름 모를 별자리, 나아가 우주는 우리가 평소 사용하는 아름다움이라는 의미와는 또 다른 아름다움을 느끼게 해주는것 같다!어쩌면 그건 신기와 신비가 묘하게 공존하는 아름다움인지도 모르겠다!이토록 아름다운 물리라니!ㅎ
  • 막시무스 2020-05-22 공감(64) 댓글(0)
     
     
  • 사랑하는 딸과 아들에게 보내는 독서편지   0.  아빠가 좋아하는 김상욱 교수님의 책을 읽었단다. 그동안 아빠가 읽은 김상욱 교수님의 책들은 과학 본연의 주제를 담고 있었고, 특히 김상욱 교수님의 전문 분야인 양자역학에 대한 내용들이 대부분이었어. 이번에 읽은 책은 과학보다는 조금 멀고, 우리 일상에 좀더 가까운 글들이었단다. 떨림과 울림이라는 책 제목도 좋았단다. 가끔 책 제목이 <떨림과 울림>인지, <울림과 떨림>인지 헛갈린 때가 있지만 말이야. .. 가만히... + 더보기
  • bookholic 2019-07-31 공감(20) 댓글(0)
     
     



2020/08/11

Racism in America, Post-George Floyd – RECONCILERS with Chris Rice

Racism in America, Post-George Floyd – RECONCILERS with Chris Rice






RECONCILERS with Chris Rice


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Racism in America, Post-George Floyd
Chris RiceAugust 4, 2020Uncategorized
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Global Church/Public Square – August 2020 edition

A Continuing Survey of Faith, Public Witness, and the World

With this I begin a monthly post called “Global Church/Public Square” – an extended, essayish commentary on global issues and voices through the lens of Christian faith and public witness. The August focus is racism in America.
When black men die too soon

In recent years I’ve been haunted by the early deaths of a number of black American men, friends who were part of our interracial church community in Mississippi where I worshipped for 17 years. Most were in their 40s, the oldest was 62, all died of so-called “natural causes.” Our church was perhaps 150 members, half black and half white. But I know of no early deaths of any white members. Some anecdotes matter, they are symbolic. How could so many of our black men die so early and none of us white men? For me this makes painfully vivid the consequences of historic racial healthcare disparities seen in the disproportionate deaths of black Americans (as well as Hispanics and Native Americans) due to COVID-19 that are, as Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove write in TIME, “like contrast dye on an MRI, highlighting a malignancy in our body politic” (malignancy– remember that word). In this double U.S. crisis of COVID-19 and continuing legacies of racism revealed in the police killing of George Floyd, there is now a double mourning of both the too-soon loss of friends and early deaths for so many across the U.S. which are not “natural” at all.

Why America’s racism is treatment-resistant
Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, author of The Ordeal of Integration and Slavery and Social Death

The story above brings to mind the angry young person who recently asked me: “Why does racism still exist in America?” As in, “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”? A succinct answer is provided from one of America’s most penetrating racial analysts, Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson (see The Long Reach of Racism in the U.S. and Why America Can’t Escape Its Racist Roots). The key words are “racist roots.” Patterson writes in the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. is “the only modern nation that had slavery in its midst from the very beginning,” and gives a brief history of how inequality was woven into political, economic, and judicial systems from slavery, to state-supported segregation and violence, to federal housing laws, to today’s criminal justice system (the world’s largest prison system), with continuing harmful effects. Very importantly, Patterson also contends there have been periods of significant progress made possible by America’s other paradoxical founding reality: a system with potential to create change, seen in the current protests which he calls “a sign of societal strength” (quite different, for example, from Hong Kong protesters facing a mainland China system which does not allow protest or the vote). But here is today’s disturbing reality according to Patterson: America is as racially segregated in 2020 as it was in the 1960s, the black poverty rate is 2.5 times the white rate, the wealth gap is worsening, and more black children (two-thirds) grow up in high-poverty segregated areas than they did in 1970. In naming slavery of African people and the colonizing of Native American people as “racists roots” or, theologically, America’s “original sins,” we name a cancer of the kind civil rights veteran James Lawson called “malignant” – deeply rooted, capable of mutating into new forms, cells not easily dying, and infectious, with its consequences passed down generationally. Furthermore, unlike the intense treatments of national Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in countries like South Africa with apartheid and Canada with indigenous people, and Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past, there has never been a sustained national process of repair and healing related to black and Native Americans (see the new book Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah). This brings to mind peace studies sociologist John Paul Lederach’s sobering claim that it takes as many years to get out of a conflict as it took to get into it, which is why he calls for “decades-thinking approaches” when it comes to healing deep social wounds and injustices. Treatment must be long-term and tenacious, in multiple stages and at multiple levels (institutional, interpersonal, individual), and is resistant to success.
Just Mercy, the suffering of John Perkins, and criminal justice in AmericaBryan Stevenson and John Perkins in June 2020 online dialogue.

The murder of George Floyd starkly revealed the relationship of policing and criminal justice culture to America’s racial malignancy. A Wall Street Journal article by a U.S. military veteran contends that policing in America is a culture formed in a mindset and practices appropriate not to guardianship but to war – including a default to view certain communities as “enemy,” to dehumanize them, and to expect immunity for doing so. I thought of this as I listened to a remarkable online “bible study” conversation between Christian lawyer Bryan Stevenson of Just Mercy fame and Christian Community Development Association founder John Perkins (Stevenson first heard Perkins speak when he was a student at Eastern University). As Stevenson narrated the historical movements of violent control of black lives in America, I could not help but look at Perkins and think of his brother Clyde returning to Mississippi from World War II in 1946 as a decorated war veteran. Standing in line for a movie, Clyde objected to a police officer’s harsh words. The officer shot Clyde on the spot and he died on the way to the hospital. Then, 24 years later, Perkins became a threat due to his civil rights activism. In 1970 he was ambushed on a highway by Mississippi state police and nearly beaten to death overnight in a jail. Neither these officers or Clyde’s killer were ever punished. Then, 21 years later it was Rodney King’s beating by Los Angeles officers and the protests that followed. And now, 29 years later, the many incidents of police brutality leading up to George Floyd. This goes alongside political policies from Presidents Reagan to H.W. Bush to Clinton which resulted in black people being six times more likely than white people to be imprisoned for the same crime, like drug use, even though both groups consume illegal drugs at roughly the same rate.
One obstacle to white evangelical liberationFederal housing policies left African-Americans and other people of color out of new suburban communities — and pushed them instead into urban housing projects, such as Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass towers.
Paul Sancya/AP

The cure is not to focus on either “this or that racist officer” at one extreme or “good officer” exceptions at the other (see this inspiring New Yorker story of one black and high-ranking New York City officer whose grandmother told him black families never call the police, who is working for change from within). Addressing the malignancy of racism in America is impossible without thinking and locating oneself institutionally. Here we meet a major obstacle for many white American evangelicals. Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra recently wrote that “many of my white friends in the U.S. (and elsewhere, I should add) … cannot grasp the severity of the situation. Their view of ‘sin’ is individual, rather than structural and systemic. Because they themselves are not ‘racist’ in their attitude to others, they fail to empathize with the rage of those who suffer every day… And they are more offended by the ‘tone’ in which people protest than the situation which gives rise to such protest.” (Ouch. I remember the 1983 racial reconciliation meetings at our church in Mississippi, when I stood precisely in this camp, unable to receive any truth beneath the surface of black anger.) This Atlantic article maintains that many white evangelicals dismiss the category of systemic racism as a form of “cultural Marxism.” But here is the blindspot. In the landmark book by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, the sociologists assert that white evangelicalism – due to an individualistic, ahistorical, and anti-institutional captivity – does not have the resources to engage racism’s institutional reality:


… it is a necessity for evangelicals to interpret the [race] problem at the individual level. To do otherwise would challenge the very basis of their world, both their faith and the American way of life. They accept and support individualism, relationalism, and anti-structuralism. Suggesting social causes of the race problem challenges the cultural elements with which they construct their lives. This is the radical limitation of the white evangelical toolkit … … [for whom] there really is no race problem other than bad interpersonal relationships (italics mine).

Hard words, yes. But we cannot grow toward beloved community apart from hard truth. A worldview – even more a theology – which says that life chances, good health, and social mobility are earned and deserved (or not) solely by individual effort, and says racism is an ideology of those diminishing numbers who contend whites are superior to blacks, cannot account for racism’s institutional consequences. Ramachandra draws the critical distinction: “If I live within and benefit from a socio-economic-political system that has been constructed on such a premise, I share in the guilt of racism.” A Wall Street Journal article about the current systemic racism debate points to federal housing policy as being where lingering effects of past actions are most clear; via policies beginning in the early 1940’s, as one expert puts it, “houses were sold at a very, very cheap rate that allowed for generational wealth to be developed in the white population, and did not in the Black population” (see the 2017 book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America). If this race-based disparity cannot be understood as a kind of harmful institutional sin then, as author Jemar Tisby tells the Atlantic magazine, a “mainly intrapersonal, friendship-based reconciliation [is] virtually powerless to change the structural and systemic inequalities along racial lines in this country (see Tisby’s book The Color of Comprise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism). At Duke Divinity School Stanley Hauerwas taught us that, in the Bible, sin is more of a captivity than something you do or don’t do. To accept that the benefits I enjoy are not simply earned, but tainted by inequality by design? This requires a shattering change of identity. A conversion.
Thomas Jefferson statues and how America is only a 60-year old nationJune 2020: Thomas Jefferson statue torn down in front of Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon.

A critical challenge is moral wrestling with history. If I would recommend only one video, it’s this PBS interview with two top Jefferson scholars Annette Gordon-Reed and Jon Meacham (a black woman and white man) as they wrestle with the legacy of Thomas Jefferson as a slaveholder who authored the ideal of human equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Should Jefferson statues be taken down along with statues to Confederate leaders? Meacham says Washington and Jefferson were “wildly imperfect,” yet should be judged differently from those who took up arms against the Constitution to create a Confederate slave empire. “There’s a difference,” adds Gordon-Reed, “between trying to destroy the United States of America and having created it. And the people who created it… we have to grapple with the imperfection of their lives.” I find this kind of wisdom about human fallibility often missing in the left’s outright dismissal of any moral good in the American past, and the right’s outright blessing of American exceptionalism – with both cleanly dividing the nation into good people and bad people. Here is the two scholars’ critical claim, and for me it was a revelation: The United States which seeks justice for all is only a 60-year old nation. “There can be a tendency to say that [racism] is over,” says Gordon-Reed. “But you don’t get rid of hundreds of years of slavery in a century. Blacks don’t become full citizens until 1965. That is a blink of an eye in history.” And then Meacham: “The country we have right now, the polity we have, was really created in 1965. Not only with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act but with the Immigration Naturalization Act, which totally changed the nature of the country. So no wonder this is so hard. No wonder we’re having such a ferocious white reaction… It’s simply the lesson of history that we are in fact a better country than we were yesterday. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect. It doesn’t mean we stop. But there are enough of us doing all we can as citizens and leaders to create a country that more of us can be proud of.” All the more reason to press forward into a new stage of pursuing justice for all.
Kinds of white people: 4 emerging critiquesProtesters gather in front of Minnesota Governor’s Residence on June 1, 2020, in Saint Paul, MN. (Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

The new climate of anti-racism protest is offering up much analysis on the current state of white people in America, and I have seen four categories emerging which point to the work ahead. First is what sociologist Patterson describes as an estimated 20 to 25 percent who still hold white supremacist views and “have been encouraged and are leading a revanchist sort of movement.” I find this percentage alarming; when the U.S. president, for example, refuses to denounce the Confederate flag, he emboldens this group. They are the ones who many have traditionally limited the term “racist” to, as in “I am not one of them, so I am not responsible.” A second group of white people emerging is what Vinoth Ramachandra describes as those of “comfortable middle class lethargy.” They are said to remain quiet because they find charges of racism to be overblown and the Black Lives Matter movement to be divisive (see a response to these objections from professors at two predominantly white evangelical schools, Biola University and Greenville University: “How Christians Should – and Should Not – Respond to Black Lives Matter”). One white North Carolina Baptist pastor writes in the Christian Century that support for Black Lives Matter among these Christians may have accelerated in part because so many white churches have closed their buildings. Such churches’ traditional responses to racial unrest, he contends, have prioritized “civility” and forms of education, dialogue, and prayer which have “neutraliz[ed] the radical and more costly message of justice.” Now, however, “undeterred by the well-established responses they host, historically white churches have been less able to keep a distance. We’ve been less sheltered, less apt to respond in traditional ways, and… have had less power to moderate the tension and thereby neutralize the moment.” A third group of whites coming under scrutiny have liberal views yet are said to be historically unwilling to pay the price for deep change. While Patterson sees “extraordinary progress in the changing attitudes of white Americans toward blacks and other minorities,” many “are not prepared to make the concessions that are important for the improvement of black lives.” New York Times columnist Charles Blow states it more bluntly in “Allies, Don’t Fail Us Again”: “Many white people have been moved by the current movement, but how will they respond when true equality threatens their privilege?” The fourth group is what some call “woke whites.” They, too, meet skeptical voices, such as Blow’s concern that protests not become “an activist chic summer street festival … not systemic racism Woodstock.” The Biola and Greenville professors write that in this era of “virtue signaling,” whites can appear righteous simply by using the right words and attending the right protests with the right angry demeanor. A contradiction they see is that progressive whites tend to gather in cities that are at once diverse and also some of the most segregated and unequal places in American society. The danger is this:


… the rhetorical displays associated with protest culture give elite white people a chance to exhibit apparent solidarity ‘on the cheap.’ White enthusiasm for antiracist rhetoric may compensate for other forms of solidarity that would be too costly. Put differently, white performative solidarity may disguise a lack of deeper forms of solidarity.

Ironically, then, it may not only be white evangelicals who lack an adequate understanding of institutional change. New York Times columnist David Brooks critiques what he calls a “Social Justice theory of change” (an unfortunate turn of phrase by Brooks, detaching social justice from moral and biblical traditions) which emerged from elite universities and seeks to purify the culture, such as “canceling” people who voice contrary opinions. This approach, he argues, doesn’t produce much actual change. “Corporations are happy to adopt some woke symbols and hold a few consciousness-raising seminars and go on their merry way,” he writes. “Worse, this method has no theory of politics.” The four groups of white people I’ve described point to four obstacles to a new chapter of justice for all: Active resistance from white extremists. The comfortable and silent majority. Solidarity without sacrifice. All of which avoid costly political change. Blow squarely names the cost: “We must make ourselves comfortable with the notion that for the privileged, equality will feel like oppression.” I felt a painful jolt when I read that, muscle memory from the 1983 racial crisis in our Mississippi church. Black members began asking why we whites dominated positions of leadership and contended that whites needed to step back, and blacks step forward. I almost left during that painful summer. But I came to see that I was a big fan of justice for all – as long as it didn’t affect benefits for me. What I also learned was that our black members were staying step back, not step out. That is another way of saying let’s stay together – with equity. The way forward, writes Brooks, is reparations and integration, namely, “an official apology for centuries of slavery and discrimination, and spending money to reduce their effects.” This means that “racial disparity, reform [of] militaristic police departments and … an existential health crisis … is going to take government. It’s going to take actual lawmaking, actual budgeting, complex compromises — all the boring, dogged work of government that is more C-SPAN than Instagram.” And because much of the segregation in America is geographic, lasting change must include giving reparations money to neighborhoods. Brooks points to Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed, where “early-20th-century whites-only housing covenants pushed blacks into smaller and smaller patches of the city. Highways were built through black neighborhoods, ripping their fabric and crippling their economic vitality.” This resulted in “long-suffering black neighborhoods.” Brooks contends that the expertise to lift up such neighborhoods lies with the people who live there, giving examples from South Los Angeles in the Sisters of Watts and Unearth and Empower Communities.
White people and sacrificeEdwin King (left) and Aaron Henry, members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Tougaloo College Archives.

New York Times columnist Blow comes down hard on white allies in the 1964 summer civil rights movement who, he says, ultimately disappointed. Of 2020 he asks, “How will our white allies respond when this summer has passed? How will they respond when civil rights gets personal and it’s about them and not just punishing the white man who pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck? How will they respond when true equality threatens their privilege, when it actually starts to cost them something?” Critical questions, and with them, where do we look for hope? If hope requires sacrifice, what does that sacrifice look like? Where are stories of white people who illuminate the alternative? During the Mississippi summer of 1964, with their black Mississippi colleague James Chaney, New York City civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered and buried in an earthen dam. When I think of meeting white Mississippian Ed King I remember his facial scars from white violence and his work alongside Dr. King and NAACP chair Medger Evers. “Medgar became the older brother and teacher,” says King. “And Martin must have felt somehow that this white Southerner was worth redeeming.” In recent times I think of Glen Kehrein in Chicago and Allan Tibbels in Baltimore, who through Circle Urban Ministries and New Song Ministries bound their lives living and working for justice with black people who welcomed them into their communities. There, Kehrein and Tibbels themselves found liberation, and their lives enlarge our vision for what is required to build a new reality of justice for all. “The reason I believe in racial reconciliation,” Kehrein once told me, “is because it’s the best way I know of for a white male to die to self.” Deep work for racial justice is public and visible. But much of the time it is gradual, local, quiet, and long-term – the very opposite of “activist chic.” For white people writes David Goatley, Duke Divinity School professor and Director of the Office of Black Church Studies, this is about choosing to be uncomfortable. “White folks need to join communities that Black folks lead,” such as black-led justice organizations like NAACP local branches. And when it comes to white Christians, “I have said to friends who long for more multicultural churches, ‘Join a Black church’ … Black folks suffer non-Black cultural leadership all the time. It is time for white people to learn to be uncomfortable without their cultural leadership.”
More Than Equals, boundary-crossing relationships, and a theory of change

In the 1993 book I co-authored with Spencer Perkins (John Perkins’ son), More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel, we called for deep, honest, and costly boundary-crossing relationships across racial lines. That might sound sentimental next to today’s protests and calls to address institutionalized racism. Yet a great deal of conflict studies research about theories of change shows that the institutional and the relational have to be held together. A powerful example is two of today’s most important voices regarding America’s criminal justice crisis, Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Both lawyers, Stevenson and Alexander testify they were blind to this crisis for many years. What gave them eyes to see was unexpected interruptions – encounters with inmates inside prison walls. Relational encounters across a divide became ground for being persuaded by previously unseen truth, which evoked compassion, which led to passionate advocacy for change. The deepest, long-term work for change comes not from people who are forced to change but who become persuaded and passionate to change, and central to that is life-changing relationship and encounter on strange and difficult ground. As we mourn the recent death of civil rights pioneer and U.S. Congressional leader John Lewis, I think of his relational influence on Robert F. Kennedy. As a Netflix documentary tells the story, when Kennedy was killed in 1968 he stood to become America’s first social justice president. But that required a long journey of conversion, through encounters across divides with Lewis, in the Mississippi Delta with Marian Wright Edelman, and in California with Cesar Chavez and striking farm workers. Alexander, Stevenson, and Kennedy reveal the truth that deep work for social justice requires holding together relational and institutional change. And add to that a biblical understanding of spiritual change, revealed in the truth that “our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world (Ephesians 6:12). In choosing More Than Equals as our book title, by “more” Spencer and I meant a new and costly interracial reality of trust, justice, forgiveness, and mutuality – in short, koinonia. But it would be a serious problem to jump over “equals” to “more.” The title was not Less Than Equals, or Let’s Be Friends Now.
Anti-racism toward what?

Anti-racism is now at the forefront of calls for change. In Jesus’ first public words in the gospel of Luke, reading from Isaiah 61, he states emphatically that God is anti-oppression:


The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

If God is anti-oppression, then God is anti-racist. And anti-oppression and anti-racist toward what? The “favorable year of the Lord” says Jesus, a reference to the Jubilee year of liberation, of the setting free of prisoners and debts, and returning land to the original owners. God’s liberation is more than anti-this or that. It moves toward a goal, an end, a positive new reality. It moves, in the words of the Psalmist, to where “truth and mercy embrace, justice and peace kiss” (Psalm 85). It moves to tear down the dividing walls of hostility to create “one new humanity” (Ephesians 2). It moves to the end of time, the “vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language” gathered as one people (Revelation 7). At the end of the day, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, beauty will save the world. I glimpsed that in a column by Michelle Alexander (see America, This is Your Chance). Writing of the best of the recent protests – “people of all races, ethnicities, genders and backgrounds rise up together, standing in solidarity for justice, protesting, marching and singing together” – she says: “Our only hope for our collective liberation is a politics of deep solidarity rooted in love.” Then there is John Lewis, writing a few days before his death (Together, You Can Redeem the Soul Of Our Nation), “In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way.” The “toward what” question reimagines, yet must not lose sight of, what is most needed in the here and now. Certain biblical texts speak to certain times. (After the 9/11 attacks in 2001 I remember Duke professor Ellen Davis saying it was not the time for Americans to pray psalms of imprecation). In an online devotion in July, New York City pastor Rich Villodas mentioned a comment by Yale Divinity professor Willie Jennings in his commentary on Acts that prophetic boundary crossing does not happen after worship, but is an interruption on the way to the sanctuary itself and, if a road not taken, questions the authenticity of worship. Villodas then asked how many times we had heard the words of Amos preached from the pulpit (Message translation, 5:21-24):


I can’t stand your religious meetings.
I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

Listening to Amos, what is the word for this time? When it comes to the challenge of race in America, writes Duke’s Goatley, “destroying anti-Black racism is not the only work to be done. If we make progress on this stubborn and sinful reality, however, we will handle the rest.” The word for here and now, he suggests, is this: “I am weary about conversations and resolutions… Consequently, I challenge more of us to start working for liberation. Then we can work on reconciliation.” Like the comfortable religious leaders in Jesus’ Good Samaritan story, we dare not pass quickly by the murdered body of George Floyd on the other side of the Jericho road. As I wrote elsewhere, you cannot reconcile with somehow who has a foot on your neck. We dare not talk about reconciliation without getting feet off necks. For everything there is a season. In the spirit of Luke 4 and of Amos, this is the season to take down racial disparities. This is the season of liberation.
“We Need More”Paramedic Anthony Almojera (third from right) and his team: “The things we see are sometimes difficult to shake”

More Americans have now died of COVID-19 than in World War I, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. While for most Americans the pain of those 154,000 deaths is hidden, not so for the Bronx, New York family of beloved father and church deacon Nathaniel Hallman. After he died, his family was unable to find a funeral home to take his body, which was finally discovered in an unrefrigerated U-Haul truck. There is also dedicated New York City paramedic Anthony Almojera, his courage amid harrowing experiences, and truths learned. “One thing this pandemic has made clear to me,” he tells the Washington Post, “is that our country has become a joke in terms of how it disregards working people and poor people. The rampant inequality. The racism. Mistakes were made at the very top in terms of how we prepared for this virus, and we paid down here at the bottom.” For Mr. Almonjera and the Hallman family this pandemic has been shattering. Mindful of them, and all the 154,000 dead and counting, and their loved ones, and of countries which have brought the virus under control, where is our collective outrage about the failure of governmental leadership at so many levels? For God intends this pain to not only speak to us, but to activate us. As Vinoth Ramachadra writes with regard to COVID-19, “the Biblical writers know nothing of apologetics. In the face of innocent human suffering, they don’t defend God. They protest to God. And if the cause of that suffering is systemic injustice or political oppression, they confront those responsible.” Tears flowed when I first heard Taylor Fagins’ song of lament dedicated to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many other black people who have died. “We Need More” he cries out. May we all cry out. May we all be shattered. In this time of crisis, may we all become more.

Chris Rice is director of the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Office in New York City. He is co-author of Reconciling All Things and was founding co-director of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation.


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2 Comments

Nancy Rich
August 10, 2020 at 2:07 pm


So true and well said and documented. Thanks Chris, Nancy
Reply

Laura Truax
August 10, 2020 at 2:52 pm


What a terrific article. Thank you for your thoughtful compilation and analysis.
Reply

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About


Chris Rice (Doctor of Ministry, Duke University) is an award-winning author and was cofounding director of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation. From inner-city Mississippi, to Duke University, to East Africa, to Northeast Asia, he has helped give birth to pioneering initiatives to heal social conflicts and renew Christian life and mission. Chris currently serves as Director of the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Office in New York City. 

Amazon.com: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Audible Audio Edition): Ibram X. Kendi, Christopher Dontrell Piper, Novel Audio: Audible Audiobooks

Amazon.com: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Audible Audio Edition): Ibram X. Kendi, Christopher Dontrell Piper, Novel Audio: Audible Audiobooks



Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

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 The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.



Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America--it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.



In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.



As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities.



In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.



Praise for Stamped from the Beginning:



"We often describe a wonderful book as 'mind-blowing' or 'life-changing' but I've found this rarely to actually be the case. I found both descriptions accurate for Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning... I will never look at racial discrimination again after reading this marvellous, ambitious, and clear-sighted book." - George Saunders, Financial Times, Best Books of 2017



"Ambitious, well-researched and worth the time of anyone who wants to understand racism." - Seattle Times



"A deep (and often disturbing) chronicling of how anti-black thinking has entrenched itself in the fabric of American society." - The Atlantic



- Winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction

- A New York Times Bestseller

- A Washington Post Bestseller

- Finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

- Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Boston Globe, - Washington Post, Chicago Review of Books, The Root, Buzzfeed, Bustle, and Entropy



Editorial Reviews

Review

"An engrossing and relentless intellectual history of prejudice in America.... The greatest service Kendi [provides] is the ruthless prosecution of American ideas about race for their tensions, contradiction and unintended consequences."―Washington Post



"We often describe a wonderful book as 'mind-blowing' or 'life-changing' but I've found this rarely to actually be the case. I found both descriptions accurate for Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning... I will never look at racial discrimination again after reading this marvellous, ambitious, and clear-sighted book."

―George Saunders, Financial Times, Best Books of 2017





"A deep (and often disturbing) chronicling of how anti-black thinking has entrenched itself in the fabric of American society."―The Atlantic



"A staggering intellectual history of racism in America that is both rigorous and ...readable."―New Republic





"An intricate look at the history of race in the U.S., arguing that many well-meaning American progressives inadvertently operate on belief systems tinged with a racist heritage."―TIME



"Ambitious, well-researched and worth the time of anyone who wants to understand racism."

―Seattle Times



"Kendi upends many commonly held beliefs about how racism works, exploring the ideas and thinkers behind our most intractable social and cultural problem."―Boston Globe



"An altogether remarkable thesis on history, but, in ways that are both moving and immediately painful, it also reverberates with the post-election autopsy we're all conducting right now... Stamped from the Beginning is a riveting (and often rivetingly written) work, well deserving of the National Book Award."―The Stranger



"The National Book Awards show the way toward the America we want, not the one we're getting."―New York Magazine





"Kendi has done something that's damn near impossible: write a book about racism that breaks new ground, while being written in a way that's accessible to the nonacademic. If you've ever been interested in how racist ideas spread throughout the United States, this is the book to read."―The Root

About the Author

Ibram X. Kendi is a New York Times best-selling author and award-winning historian. He is Professor of History and International Relations and the Founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. A frequent public speaker, Kendi specializes in the history of racism and antiracism. He is the author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation, 2016), which won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction. He is also the author of the award-winning book, The Black Campus Movement (Palgrave, 2012). Kendi's writings have appeared in Black Perspectives, Salon, The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Daily News, Time, The Huffington Post, and The Root. Kendi has received research fellowships, grants, and visiting appointments from a variety of universities, foundations, professional associations, and libraries, including the American Historical Association, Library of Congress, National Academy of Education, Spencer Foundation, Lyndon B. Johnson Library & Museum, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Brown University, Princeton University, Duke University, University of Chicago, and UCLA. Before entering academia, he worked as a journalist. Kendi earned his undergraduate degrees from Florida A&M University, and his graduate degrees from Temple University. Kendi lives in Washington, DC.

Product details

Paperback: 608 pages

Publisher: Bold Type Books; Reprint edition (August 15, 2017)



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MrsG

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Book, Because Knowledge Is Power

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2017

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I bought this book for a class that I'm taking in the fall, and I started reading it this weekend. I just completed part one, and while reading it I had to put this book down and weep multiple times. They say we don't see the world as it is… we see it as we are. We wake up every morning and open our eyes to a world that has been created for us. We breathe in ideas, thoughts, philosophies, opinions that created the world we live in. We believe what we have been told to believe. We think what we've been told to think. And until we trace the roots of our human history and the ideas they created it, we will never understand the world we live in or the world inside our own minds. Thank you, Ibram X. Kendi, for helping me to begin to trace some of the roots of the philosophies that rule our lives today. It is only in knowledge and understanding that we can undo the damage that's been done. I am undone… This book is incredible, brutal, devastating, truthful… necessary. Read it… weep . . . and then change yourself and your world.

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Anthony Pignataro

5.0 out of 5 stars White people should read this

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2018

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This is one of the greatest history books I've ever read. I was highlighting passages on pretty much every page, mostly because so much of what's here was new to me. Hey, I'm an upper middle class white guy who's trying to examine my own privileges, understand more of why there's so much racism in this country and learn how I can do better. This book, which was undoubtedly extremely difficult to write, is an amazing resource, one I'll be referring back to probably for the rest of my life. We all owe Ibram X. Kendi a tremendous debt.

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Dojcin

1.0 out of 5 stars To a Hammer everything looks like a nail.

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2020

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Kendi pathologically cherry-picks his data. When discussing race and health, he laments that blacks are more likely than whites to HAVE Alzheimer’s disease, openly implying that this demonstrates clear anti- Black racism in the medical field. Of course, he neglects to mention that Whites are more likely to DIE from Alzheimer, according to the Center for Disease Control.



In the same vein, Kendi notes that blacks are more likely than whites to die of prostate cancer and breast cancer, but he does not include the fact that blacks are less likely than whites to die of esophageal cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, brain cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and leukemia.



By selectively citing data that show blacks suffering more than whites, Kendi turns what should be a unifying, race-neutral battle ground––namely, humanity’s fight against deadly diseases––into another proxy battle in the War on Racism.



The entire book is filled with this kind of imaginary stuff. Unfortunately, It would require 5 whole books to debunk all the errors in this publication. - This book was nothing but a rushed political propaganda published in an election year (2016). Unfortunately it did not work and it will work even less in 2020 as Trump has unprecedented black support for a republican candidate.

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Brent Young

1.0 out of 5 stars Biased and half truths. It was a good test of my knowledge.

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2019

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It is so simple to just claim racism for every disparity. If you look for racism everywhere, you will find racism everywhere. The author even has to re-define racism so as to support his theories. And most of the points he makes are very one sided and only half the story. Just one example, the crack cocaine penalties being more severe was pushed by the Congressional Black Caucus. Charles Rangle stood behind the president has he signed that bill. It was Clinton who refuse to change the standard after it was deemed racist. All of these facts are left out. The author just wants to blame the Republican president for being a racist.

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A. H. Wagner

5.0 out of 5 stars A very painful but highly illuminating must-read on how racism took root and persists in the US

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2017

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About halfway through reading this book, I realized I was highlighting almost every single page and had to start color-coding my highlights so as to make a little more sense of why certain passages struck me—a visual testimony of how illuminating Stamped from the Beginning is. With a primary focus on racism toward African-Americans and people identified as Black, this book is a thoroughly researched, sweepingly comprehensive survey of racism from its first traceable roots in ancient Greece when Aristotle said Africans had “burnt faces” to the start of the African slave trade in 15th century Europe, to the first recorded slave ship arriving in colonial America in 1619, all the way through the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws, the 1960s Civil Rights movement, and up to the present day. In order to help readers navigate this extensive timeline, author Ibram X. Kendi divides the book into five parts, featuring one historical figure as a sort of tour guide or anchor for each part.



Very few individuals or institutions mentioned in this book come off as completely free of racist thinking; even many abolitionists and civil rights activists are revealed to have held racist ideas that contradicted their cause. This made me realize the extent to which racism has ensnared the United States in its pernicious roots. In Stamped from the Beginning, Kendi presents two main ideas about racism that helped me understand its influence and progress over the centuries. First, he explains that “Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America.” The author admits, “I was taught the popular folktale of racism: that ignorant and hateful people had produced racist ideas, and that these racist people had instituted racist policies. But when I learned the motives behind the production of many of America’s most influentially racist ideas, it became quite obvious that this folktale, though sensible, was not based on a firm footing of historical evidence.” As Kendi explains further, “Racially discriminatory policies have usually sprung from economic, political, and cultural self-interests, self-interests that are constantly changing.” Now that I understand self-interest—not hate or ignorance—has been the driving factor behind racist policies, I can better understand why racism hasn’t died out with the Emancipation Proclamation or desegregation or any of the Civil Rights Acts passed in this country. Tragically, racism persists and continues to evolve according to the current self-interests of people and institutions in power. It’s why, after slavery was abolished, segregation and the Jim Crow laws rushed in to replace it, and long after segregation has been outlawed, African-Americans continue to be oppressed by disproportionate mass incarceration as well as disadvantaged by fewer, inferior housing and employment opportunities.



Second, Kendi points out that racism is not simply a debate between those who support racist ideas and those who oppose racist ideas. Throughout history, three–not two–viewpoints on racism have persisted: “A group we can call segregationists has blamed Black people themselves for the racial disparities. A group we can call antiracists has pointed to racial discrimination. A group we can call assimilationists has tried to argue for both, saying that Black people and racial discrimination were to blame for racial disparities.” As much as I would like to believe I am firmly in the antiracist camp, reading this book made me realize I have held a lot of racist ideas from an assimilationist viewpoint that I need to correct. Kendi gives many examples of well-meaning civil rights activists, including some African-Americans, who upheld assimilationist ideas. Some persisted with these ideas their entire lives, others realized their error and later self-corrected to an antiracist viewpoint, and still others upheld both antiracist and assimilationist ideas, often not realizing the contradiction. Thus, a tragic pattern that has repeated itself throughout American history is the persistence of many assimilationists in seeking to abolish racist policies and ideas with the same flawed strategies that never work.



Indeed, the African-American author admits, “Even though I am an African studies historian and have been tutored all my life in egalitarian spaces, I held racist notions of Black inferiority before researching and writing this book.” I think it’s crucially important that Kendi tells readers about his mistaken notions of race—not to make readers feel better about their own ignorance, but to demonstrate how deeply racist ideas have taken root in American culture. Hopefully this admission on the author’s part will ease readers out of their defensive mode and open their minds to the disturbing truth that racism is a lot more pervasive among us Americans than we would like to believe.



If you want to understand exactly how racism took root in the United States and why it has persisted through the present day, if you are prepared for a very sobering, very painful, and often highly disturbing look at the many flaws, hypocrisies, and atrocities in the American notions of democracy, exceptionalism, and “liberty and justice for all,” then Stamped from the Beginning is a must-read. Ultimately, what the author conveys with copious examples is that “Black Americans’ history of oppression has made Black opportunities—not Black people—inferior.” An absolutely necessary emendation to the traditionally accepted canon of American history.

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