If any cultural factor predisposed blacks to fall for risky loans, it was one widely shared with whites ”” a penchant for “positive thinking” and unwarranted optimism, which takes the theological form of the “prosperity gospel.” Since “God wants to prosper you,” all you have to do to get something is “name it and claim it.” A 2000 DVD from the black evangelist Creflo Dollar featured African-American parishioners shouting, “I want my stuff ”” right now!”
Joel Osteen, the white megachurch pastor who draws 40,000 worshippers each Sunday, about two-thirds of them black and Latino, likes to relate how he himself succumbed to God’s urgings ”” conveyed by his wife ”” to upgrade to a larger house. According to Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, pastors like Mr. Osteen reassured people about subprime mortgages by getting them to believe that “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and bless me with my first house.” If African-Americans made any collective mistake in the mid-’00s, it was to embrace white culture too enthusiastically, and substitute the individual wish-fulfillment promoted by Norman Vincent Peale for the collective-action message of Martin Luther King.
But you didn’t need a dodgy mortgage to be wiped out by the subprime crisis and ensuing recession. Black unemployment is now at 15.1 percent, compared with 8.9 percent for whites. In New York City, black unemployment has been rising four times as fast as that of whites. By 2010, according to Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, 40 percent of African-Americans nationwide will have endured patches of unemployment or underemployment.
One result is that blacks are being hit by a second wave of foreclosures caused by unemployment.
I hate to say it, and I don’t mean it as tritely as it might sound, but there is a reason for the old adage, “If it sounds to good to be true…it probably is.”
Sad story, it’s true…but it’s been years since I took anything Ms. Ehrenreich said at face value. Time are tough all around. I hope everyone makes it through.
Also, let’s not single out just the theological crowd for pushing “positive thinking”. My guess is that they picked it up from the secularists. Part of the article reads like an attack on religion. Just sayin’.
…oh, and one more thing. The criticism that African-American culture picking up on “positive thinking” from, let’s be accurate here, European-American culture, was a bad thing sounds a tad racist to me.
he himself succumbed to God’s urgings — conveyed by his wife — to upgrade to a larger house
Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
-Gen 3:12-13 (RSV)
Does Mr. Osteen really think God urges people to buy bigger houses?
Osteen is something of a spiritual predator, is he not? Selling the dream of more $$ as the path to Christ?
[blockquote]Does Mr. Osteen really think God urges people to buy bigger houses? [/blockquote]
My thought exactly. Maybe it’s just me, but as I’ve been drawn closer to God and more active in my church, I’ve become more conservative with money, especially when it comes to buying things for myself. I just don’t seem to find as much meaning in the latest electronic geegaw or prime rib dinners anymore. We’re making do on less, saving for our kids’ college so we don’t have to rely on loans or grants and saving for returement.
1) Joel Osteen can afford just about any house in Houston. The man is a money making machine. I have been told that as a child (when his dad ran the family concern) that they frequently shoped in Switzerland for clothes.
2) The subprime mortgage crisis was in large part because of banks efforts not to be targeted by the feds for “redlinning”. Many minority owned buisnesses ie realtors and mortgage brokers’ customer bases were minority also. The portion of the black middle/professional class which was built around the subprime mortages has of course been destroyed as a result.
3) Because subprime mortages no longer exist new “affordable housing” is no longer being constructed and there are few buyers of existing “affordable” homes because the customer profile/base cannot get the financing.
4) Living beyond ones means is not limited to any one culture.