Discrimination-Racial Issue Page

Pope Benedict XVI warned that racism is alive in modern society, and he urged the church to help overcome all forms of racial intolerance. He said racism today is often tied to economic and social problems. Although such problems may be real, they can never justify racial discrimination, he said Aug. 17. While the pontiff did not mention specific countries, his words had an immediate echo in Italy, where a series of government actions against illegal immigrants have prompted strong debate inside and outside the church. Likewise, the pope said, the church today is made up of people of every race and culture, and part of its mission is to help forge bonds of communion between races.

The Church must lead in transforming social attitudes about gender inequality as part of the fight against HIV/AIDS, said a Christian agency on the closing day of the 17th International AIDS Conference. Gender and gender-based violence have been major themes at this year’s AIDS conference in Mexico City. Earlier at an HIV pre-conference, Kay Warren of Saddleback Church had also called the Church to action on ending gender-based violence. She said like gender-based violence, the Church is everywhere. She urged the Church to speak up for those who have no voice.

Founded during the segregated 1940s, Christ the King and St. Mary's once served two communities: one black, one white. But these days, white worshippers comfortably sit among the mostly black parishioners at Christ the King, and the once all-white St. Mary's attracts a multicultural congregation. That's because both congregations have worked in recent years to erode the racial barriers that once separated the two bodies of believers. The two churches now call themselves the Catholic Community of West Jackson. They share a priest, hold joint religious education classes and earlier this year consolidated their church offices at Christ the King. But Phipps stopped short of calling the cooperative effort a merger. Rather, he said, it's a step toward living like God wants us to - as one.

Nearly a million African-Americans are incarcerated in prisons and jails, and a black male born today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime, if current trends continue. People of good will disagree about the causes of these dramatic figures. Competing explanations include high rates of involvement in crime, differential rates of prosecution through the "war on drugs," racial profiling and inadequate family support. In fact, there is a good deal of documentation to support each of these contentions as at least a part of the explanation for the disparity. While the numbers are distressing, the good news is that there are growing efforts among policymakers at the federal and state level to provide constructive approaches to sort out the causes and address them.

If black America were a country, it would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with the AIDS virus, the Black AIDS Institute, an advocacy group, reported yesterday. The report, financed in part by the Ford Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, provides a startling new perspective on an epidemic that was first recognized in 1981. Nearly 600,000 blacks are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and up to 30,000 are becoming infected each year. When adjusted for age, their death rate is 2 1/2 times that of infected whites, the report said. Partly as a result, the hypothetical nation of black America would rank below 104 other countries in life expectancy.

Bishop Joseph A. Galante challenged leaders of Catholic pro-life, family life and social justice offices around the country to "tear down our cubicles" and "give up our turf" in order to model collaboration for the rest of the church. The bishop of Camden, N.J. called "Life, Justice & Family: Partners in the New Evangelization." Reminding his audience that the body of Christ includes everyone, from the moment of conception to the "the last breath breathed," the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned and the homeless, the bishop asked, "How can we dishonor, dismember, destroy that body? How can we kill the unborn, bomb the Iraqis, shun the one who is different from us?

Across the country, women in their prime earning years, struggling with an unfriendly economy, are retreating from the work force, either permanently or for long stretches. They had piled into jobs in growing numbers since the 1960s. But that stopped happening this decade, and as the nearly seven-year-old recovery gives way to hard times, the retreat is likely to accelerate. Indeed, for the first time since the women's movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.

It was common for pregnant single women in the 1800s to be called "lost, fallen, wayward, and depraved women." Fast forward to 2008 and spend a bit of time online and you'll read statements that refer to the 17 young pregnant high school women in Gloucester, Mass., as "sluts, idiots, harlots, and immoral." This is not progress. We need to move beyond name calling. Let's ask ourselves not only about how we look at vulnerable young women in our society, but let's use those answers to help make a positive difference for them.

The U.S. bishops' 1979 pastoral letter on racism, "Brothers and Sisters to Us," sets out the framework to address the issue in the Catholic Church. In it, the bishops call racism "an evil which endures in our society and in our church." The document calls upon Catholics to undergo conversion in their personal lives as well as in their faith communities to end racism in all its forms. The bishops as a whole have been joined by several local bishops in their admonition. Many have tied the issue of race to poverty and segregation.

This economic downturn is taking a particularly hard toll on women, according to some experts. The reasons: Much of the downturn is focused on the real estate market, where a disproportionately large number of women work, and substantially more women than men have subprime mortgages. But experts point to another cause: Women simply earn less than men, an estimated average of 80 cents for every dollar made by a man. A recent Senate report found that the number of unemployed adult women increased by 20 percent from March 2007 to March 2008, compared with a 17 percent increase among adult men.