Still in insightful post
Do Witnesses Experience Racial Discrimination To Your Knowledge?
by minimus 31 Replies latest jw friends
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James Mixon
I don't recall any racial discrimination and I was in a congregation where the body of elders where 95% black and the congregation and our circuit was 85% white. That's why I was so surprised when speaking with an elderly black sister when she told me in the old days she and other blacks set in back or in the balcony in the meetings. I later found out that the JW organization was one of the last religious organization to integrate(what happen to Acts 5:29 we must obey God rather than man) and blacks may have to change his skin color in order to go to heaven.LOL
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humbled
Still in-
what did you understand when you left? Did none of the brothers talk about the problems you described until the CO came? Was there friendships between different races at that hall? How do you feel now?
here is a story this reminds me of:
l am a white haired white woman. I rode a bus from Fayetteville to Little Rock, Arkansas to see my sister this winter. A massive young man in sunglasses and a marine-style haircut, was driving us. He was perhaps 12 feet from me when my phone rang. I am a little hard of hearing and to hear the call l put it on speaker. l didn’t think it was so loud but then again lol—l don’t hear that well.
But this l did hear:
”Whoever has their phone on speaker is unbelievably rude. “ it was the bus driver bellowing at me”I don’t know where you learned your manners but that is about the rudest thing anybody can do on s bus. Whoever it is you better get that phone shut off right this minute”
If I had believed he did not know who he was talking to it wouldn’t have stung that much. Of course it was humiliating to be call down in such a demeaniing tone and loud! But the thing that was patently obvious was this young fellow had me in his crosshairs. There was no one else in the front rows of seats.
It was a pretty remarkable dressing down. I believe there’s no one on that bus that missed the lesson. Later at a rest stop a young woman stepping out to complained to me about his rude treatment of her st an earlier stop“ l don’t know why.” She said it really bugged her.
When l arrived in Little rock and waited for my sister to retrieve me, I watched this tall young man who had treated me like a third grader speak kindly and familiary to many of the people in the bus depot-and l realized they were all black.
I studied him sideways and saw that though he had pale honey gold skin he was “black” and, likely, had been treated “black”and seen his dear granny treated with unwarranted rudeness...as he had treated me.
l realized then that the young fellow had given me and the other aggrieved young (white)woman the Rosa Parks treatment.
I told that story to a my sister’s friend, a black woman a little older than myself when we got to her home in Hot Springs and we just shared those stories back and forth for hours. I felt it so briefly and she and her husband Paul were dealing all along the time l was there...but that’s another story.
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scratchme1010
I’m wondering if the Witnesses have changed due to the current affairs exposed by the media everyday. Are there discrimination issues in JW Land???
Where I grew up as a child, I didn't feel any racial discrimination, that is, different than the one I grew up with outside my family and the JWs.
In the congregation I went to as a young adult, there was racial and ethnic discrimination. However, there was a lot more discrimination based on social status. The haves and have-nots were completely segregated in the congregation.
It went to a point where some elder (who claimed to be the first agronomist in Puerto Rico) and lived in an upper middle class area, made a case for some territory that was supposed to be covered by his group (a poor area) not belonging to his group because it was "too dangerous" for them to go preaching.
It was disgusting to see all that hypocritical crap where people would judge others on social status.
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humbled
Scratchme- there was racial and ethnic discrimination. However, there was a lot more discrimination based on social status. The haves and have-nots were completely segregated in the congregation.
Class/cash does seem to transcend all. My mother used to say (we were a lot Irish): “ There are two kinds of Irish. There are lace curtain Irish and there are pig-under-the-bed Irish”.
The haves and the have nots—It really bothered you.
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asp59
They discriminate if you young, maybe you commiting secret sins. If you singel, maybe you have sex with someone. If you or not doing lot of hours, maybe you are materialistic. If you are not a elder and male maybe you or not spiritual. If you speculate on Bible teachings maybe you are apostate. It's all about discrimination in this organization. Why wouldn't they discriminate about race? I think there opinion about other races, they bring that up at home with family. Cause it's not socially acceptable. Well I know they do cause i been a JW for some time now😋
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smiddy3
I was a little surprised / disturbed when I learned that the J.W. religion had segregated congregation meetings of Blacks and whites back in the day.
But then again why should I have been surprised , didn`t they have a publication in the early days about black people `s skin turning white ?
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minimus
The bus driver story is interesting but there is a lot of conjecture going on. Perhaps you were rude to him and others because you spoke with your phone speaker on. I hate that too and I’m white! lol 😆
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humbled
The bus driver story is interesting but there is a lot of conjecture going on. Perhaps you were rude to him and others because you spoke with your phone speaker on. I hate that too and I’m white! lol 😆
that’s true, min. I completely get where you are coming from-and that is a difficulty in most these examples. I would have just been an embarrassed old lady except the young lady who felt so picked on mentioning it. You can see how these things work There certainly is plausible deny ability in this case. But that’s were cell phone video has made a difference. We have too many pictures of unarmed black man being shot not to believe something is going on. ( not to mention the monument to lynchings that was put up this spring down in Mississippi )
About plausible deniability, for instance Stillin’s examplesof white kids called down for behavior— lt is hard to know if it is really justified, right?because after all -they were not being well behaved. A lot of these things are difficult like when someone at work is on your case all the time it’s usually got some grain of truth to it. it’s just that after a while you start to notice patterns.
It was easy talking to the black woman in Hot Springs about it. The constant disrespect that would eat at you-
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snugglebunny
Dunno. In 18 years of being a JW, I never encountered a black person in any congregation that I attended. One Asian gentlemen and his family, that was all.