A Jewish Rabbi Challenges Whether Ancient History Supports The Biblical Account Of The Exodus And Why Blacks In America Should Be Interested In The Controversy (Part 6)

According to the recent Census there are 35,509,000 Blacks in this country and 193,633,000 Whites. Of those amounts there are 16,581,000 Black men and 95,049,000 White men and 18,927,000 Black women and 98,584,000 White women. Put differently, there are 16,581,000 Black men and 18,927,000 Black women and 95,049,000 White men and 98,049,000 White women. In addition forty six percent of the overall prison population is Black. Young Black males in particular continue to be incarcerated at a much higher clip than their White counterparts. It has been reported from studies that nearly 10% of black males age 25-29 are in prison on any given day.

If that is true, that would mean that 10% of the estimated 1,102,000 Black men, who are in between the ages of 25-29, are in prison at any time – leaving less than 1 million Black men from ages 25-29 free to walk in the society. At the same time, there are a total of 1,418,000 Black women in the 25-29 age group. Of course, some of the women are imprisoned as well and much more frequently than their White peers.

These statistics and many more are worth reflection and further investigation. They remind me of the stories that I would hear of the ratios between Black men and Black women in innercities and in colleges. In the early 1990s it was frequently noted that there were more Black men in jail than in college. And we can remember being told by students who attended North Carolina Central, for example, in 1992, that there was only 1 Black man for every 25 Black women on campus. And, in 1999 we were told that in the city of Washington D.C. the ratio of Black females to Black males was 11:1.

What is at the root of these numerical disparities (revealed when comparing Blacks to other population groups in the U.S. and around the world)?

Keeping in our view that the correspondence between what Blacks in America have experienced and what is written of in the scriptures, of a people being enslaved in a land that was not their own, for 400 years, we find instruction in an aspect of the conspiracy of Pharaoh and the Egyptians against the Children of Israel to be worthy of consideration - as we line up the Biblical and Qur’anic narrative, with what has happened to Blacks in this country.

Last week, we asked for people to think about J. Edgar Hoover and his work as head of the FBI, in terms of what is written of the work of Pharaoh in the Old Testament and that which was commissioned by Herod in the New Testament. From 1918 to the 1970s J. Edgar Hoover opposed Black organizations across the ideological and political spectrum. We also stressed that it was J. Edgar Hoover who was the field agent largely responsible for the imprisonment and deportation of the Honorable Marcus Garvey. His work against Black organizations and Black male leaders spans over 5 decades.

Here is part of what is written in the Scriptures about what Pharaoh and Herod and those with them did:

Exodus 1:15

And the king of Egyptians spoke to the midwives of the Hebrews; the name of the second, Phua. And he said, When ye do the office of midwives to the Hebrew women, and they are about to be delivered, if it be a male kill it; but if a female, save it.

Surah 26: 3-4 reads:

3: We recite to thee the story of Moses and Pharoah with truth, for a people who believe.

4: Surely Pharoah exalted himself in the land and made its people into parties, weakening one party from among them; he slaughtered their sons and let their women live. Surely he was one of the mischief-makers.

Surah 2: 49 reads:

“ And when We delivered you from Pharaoh’s people, who subjected you to severe torment, killing your sons and sparing your women, and in this there was a great trial from your Lord.”

Matthew 2:16-17

16
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
17
Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18
"A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."

Now look at the following excerpts of articles written about the condition of Black men:


Study: Southern Black Men More Likely to Die From Heart Disease
by Staff Writer
NNPA News Service

(Special to the NNPA)--Rural Southern Black men are more likely to die from heart disease than other parts of the country, reports a new study.

The Centers for Disease Control found a 26 percent difference in heart disease death rates between African-American and White men, and nearly double the death rates between African-American and Hispanic men.

The study's lead author, Elizabeth Barnett, director of the Office for Social Environment and Health Research at West Virginia University, said obesity, lack of physical conditioning, poor quality and availability of food, and the lack of access to quality health care facilities all contribute to the disparity...


Black men's pay in top jobs lags

By Quynh-Giang Tran
Tribune staff reporter
Published August 15, 2001

Even when they enter highly paid, prestigious professions, black men typically earn less than their white colleagues, according to the most comprehensive study yet on occupations and wages.

The research, published Tuesday in the American Sociological Review, tracked more than 1 million workers and found that even as black men get into better occupations, they are paid as little as 72 cents for every $1 white men earn.

The high-income, high-prestige occupations included lawyers, physicians, dentists, securities and financial service sales reps and managers.

"The study points to a source of disadvantage that people don't ordinarily think about. It says that individual skills and choice are not the entire explanation for black and white inequality, " said Arne Kalleberg, a sociologist with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Previous studies that examined differences in incomes looked at black and white workers but did not closely look at differences in incomes within the same occupations. The new study analyzed data about male workers only; a study on female workers is forthcoming, the researchers said.

Of more than 470 occupations studied, black workers in securities and financial sales saw the greatest pay disparity. Black men working in that field earned 72 cents on the dollar compared with white men.

Black dentists and physicians earned 80 cents for every dollar earned by their white counterparts. Black lawyers earned 79 cents for every dollar earned by white lawyers.

In these professions, the researchers found the disparities even among workers with the same education and work experience.

However, the researchers found that in jobs with lower status--including upholsterers, cooks, cabbies and bus drivers--blacks earned virtually the same as their white co-workers. Wages in these jobs are typically based on production, and there is less room for race-based judgments, the authors said.

"A popular misconception is that if there is upward mobility, there is no discrimination. This is a new form of racial discrimination," said Chris Tilly, a labor market economist at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. "In America, as you move higher and higher up the occupational level, you are in a whiter and whiter world. It's not surprising you would face more discrimination."...




FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1998
Black Men Hit Hard by Voting Bans for Convicts

 In some states, one-quarter have lost - for good - the right to vote, new study shows.

Warren Richey
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
As campaign workers toil to get out the vote this election season, there is a large and growing constituency across the United States they can pretty much write off: convicted felons.

It has nothing to do with the fact that many of these men and women live behind bars and are unable to get to the polls. Rather, the problem is that most automatically lost their right to vote when they were found guilty.
For many, it is a right they will never regain.

Close to 4 million Americans will be excluded from the political process this year, including roughly 13 percent of the country's black adult men.
In seven states, 25 percent of African-American men are permanently barred from casting a ballot. In two states - Florida and Alabama - nearly one-third of all African-American men can't vote.

These are among the findings of a report released yesterday by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch that calls on lawmakers to repeal felon-disenfranchisement laws.

"Disenfranchisement laws in the US are a vestige of medieval times, when offenders were banished from the community," the report says. Instead, laws should attempt to facilitate full rehabilitation of felons as productive taxpaying citizens who have a stake in the democratic process.
Current policies, the report warns, are creating a huge pool of political outcasts in America. "We know of no other country in the world that permanently disenfranchises ex-offenders," says Jamie Fellner, coauthor of the report and associate counsel at New York's Human Rights Watch...


Worrisome gap in education for black men

By BILL MAXWELL
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 30, 2000

The National Urban League's annual report on the state of black America is ready for shipping. As it does each year, the survey contains sobering observations and much positive news showing that African-Americans -- as a group -- are increasingly enjoying the nation's broad wealth.

The overview also draws conclusions, as it does each year, that should make the most of the nation's black leaders at all levels re-evaluate their priorities and begin an era of tough introspection. These leaders should be greatly concerned about the vast education attainment gap between black men and black women, and they should be concerned about the long-term implications of this disparity.

Specifically, according to the report, from 1977 to 1997, the number of bachelor's degrees earned by black men increased by 30 percent. During the same period, the number earned by black women rose by 77 percent. The picture for the master's degree is just as dismal: Increases for black men were 8 percent; for black women, 39 percent.

Another study, conducted by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, corroborates the Urban League's findings. It shows that in 1997, 454,000 black women had master's degrees. Black men had 222,000.
Why such a large gap in education attainment?...


State cops more apt to search black

Study by police doesn't settle profiling debate
July 21, 2000

BY AMBER ARELLANO
and DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

Black men in Michigan are far more likely to be searched than white men when stopped by Michigan State Police, a state landmark analysis of the department's traffic stops shows.
The first-time study by State Police, released Thursday, also shows that men are far more likely than women to be ticketed by state troopers. There's one piece of good news for all drivers: Drivers have a 56-percent chance of getting a warning when stopped by State Police...


Study: Black male gays, bisexuals hit hard by HIV
May 31, 2001 Posted: 4:16 p.m. EDT (2016 GMT)

From Christy Feig
CNN Medical Unit
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Black gay or bisexual men who took part in a new AIDS study were five times more likely to become HIV-infected than their white counterparts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday.

But the CDC stressed that there were not enough participants in the study for it to reflect national trends.

The new AIDS study of 2,942 young men who were gay or bisexual was released to mark the 20th anniversary of the CDC's first report on the deadly, incurable disease.

It also cites U.S. progress in fighting AIDS but calls for further reduction in infection rates for HIV -- the virus that causes AIDS.

The report is based on a CDC study of infection patterns of young gay men ages 23-29 in Baltimore, Maryland; Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; New York City; and Seattle, Washington, from 1998 to 2000. It found that the rate of new infections among all study participants was 4.4 percent: 2.5 percent among whites, 3.5 percent among Hispanics and 14.7 percent among blacks.

The 14.7 percent rate means that 100 of these men would start the year uninfected and, by the end of the year, 15 of them would test positive for HIV.

"Young gay and bisexual men are at the highest risk for HIV in this country," the CDC's Dr. Helene Gayle said.

Most Americans now in their 20s are too young to remember how frightened many Americans were during the early 1980s when the first reports of AIDS surfaced in the United States. Many are too young to remember how fear of the disease prompted a strong push by activist groups to raise awareness about safe sexual practices aimed at reducing the spread of the disease.

Although the U.S. AIDS epidemic began among white, gay men and intravenous drug users, the CDC says that currently, black men and women and Latinos are being hit disproportionately hard.
Eighty-two percent of a survey of 550 black elected officials across the nation said AIDS is a more urgent problem in their communities than it was a few years ago.

The Kaiser Family Foundation study also showed that 56 percent of respondents feel that the federal government is doing very little to combat AIDS in the African-American community.

There are between 800,000 and 900,000 people in the United States living with HIV. The CDC estimates nearly a third of them (300,000) don't even know they are infected. Almost 450,000 people nationwide have died of AIDS and each year an estimated 40,000 more are infected.
However, at a news conference on Thursday in Washington...

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Has something been done to Black men? If so, is God doing something for Black men by what he has allowed to happen to them? How did Jehovah reverse the circumstances for the male population of the Children of Israel? How did Jesus reverse the situation of those men who were the target of Herod's plot to kill them as he (Herod) looked for the Messiah, among them. Has God done anything special for Black men in America, in light of their circumstances?

Although the Million Man March was an enormously popular event, many people in America opposed it. Some who opposed the event were White Jewish leaders and some who opposed it were Black leaders – many of which were males.

Were any of the reasons given for such opposition rooted in, based on, or supported by what is written in the Torah, Gospel and Qu'ran? Were their arguments against the Million Man March consistent with the plan and narrative of how God is written to have repaired the condition of the male members of the Children of Israel?

And lastly, how many Christians, Jews and Muslims – Black or otherwise – considered the Million Man March juxtaposed to Jehovah’s command to Moses that he gather the males of the Children of Israel together?

Exodus 23: 14, 17 reads:

14:“Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.”
17: “Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord.

Take A Deeper Look at all of this...

Cedric Muhammad

Sunday, August 26, 2001