People have begun to publically worry that the world is forgetting what happened in Ferguson, Missouri over a month ago. I haven’t forgotten. I was praying for the families there this morning.

I could say many things about the Michael Brown shooting, how the police have handled it, how the community has handled it, the demonstrations, and the militarization of civil police forces. My perspective on these things has been stretched, and I don’t want ignore it. So let’s talk about “white privilege.”

You can see it in videos like this, showing a social experiment. A white guy tries to break into a car for thirty minutes, alarm blaring, without being questioned or stopped. A black guy does the same for less than five minutes before police show up. You have to assume witnesses believed the white guy had lost his keys (or something legit), but the black guy was obviously committing a crime. (Here’s a man’s reaction to the video, blaming blacks for legitimizing the stereotype they dislike.) I’m told the same kind of experiment has been tried with two men and a woman, each pushing a car up a street. Witnesses ignore the white man, question (or call police on) the black man, and offer to help the white woman.

In these cases, white privilege—no matter what the term may imply when pundits and professors use it—means being able to get on with your life without harassment, even when your car has broken down. Dr. Jarvis Williams describes other ways the term applies: getting a job or promotion, hailing a cab, or walking around a department store on your own merits, not being judged by the color of your skin. As a white man, I have never thought I could look suspicious while browsing a store, but that has been the experience of many respectable people who are judged regularly by their skin color. The absence of that public suspicion is what “white privilege” means.

Continue reading What Privileges Come From Being White? →

Many families and individuals are weighed down with graduate or under-grad debt while national theorists continue to recommend higher education as the solution to boosting the economy. These growing concerns have lead two authors to ask whether students are expecting too much from a college degree. One of two story trends that emerge from the research is seen in this student called Nathan.

His sputtering progress after college was foreshadowed by his choices during it, Mr. Arum and Ms. Roksa write. Nathan coasted, focusing more on socializing than on academics. He studied mostly with his friends, doing so alone for just five hours a week. When asked to name a significant academic experience, he at first couldn’t think of one. Still, Nathan graduated with a 3.9 grade-point average.

If he had received a 2.1 grade-point average, would he have changed his trajectory and tried to raise it, or would his final record simply reflect his work accurately? (He was given a Business degree, by the way.) Is it the college’s fault in even a small way that he has trouble finding a good job within a few years of graduating?

On another topic in higher education, Gregory Thornbury of The King’s College in New York City, says we must continue to cast a vision for the next generation to run with.

I think we’re guilty of assuming that young people have signed up for the evangelical project or that they’ve signed up for democratic capitalism. We definitely get students who have signed up for that, who come from homeschooling backgrounds and so forth. They’re all charged up and ready to go. But there are also many who have never heard the case for the truthfulness of Christianity, for the things that caused flourishing in Western civilization. When people ask me, “What’s your personal mission?” I often say to them, it’s to re-enchant this generation with the animating ideals that made Western civilization in general and America in particular great. We are legatees of a great intellectual inheritance, and we have to make that case again.

Bob Smietana suggests we may want to fact-check our pastor’s sermons, but don’t do it during the service.

(Did you know that the father of the inventor of penicillin did not save young Winston Churchill from drowning? The things you learn!

Robin Williams greets the troops on a USO tour.

You’ve probably already heard the news that Robin Williams is dead at the age of 63. I sat thinking about which of his movies I’ve seen, and I realized I’ve only seen one – Popeye, a film of which I am, as far as I know, the only fan in the world (it helps to appreciate it if you know about the original comic strip, not the animated cartoons).

But the man had an unquestionable gift. Nobody ever did “off the wall” improvisational, stream of consciousness comedy like he did. He always admired Jonathan Winters, but he was better than Winters. He hit the bullseye more often.

Reports are that he died by his own hand, having struggled with depression and substance abuse for many years. One always suspected that he needed artificial stimulation to maintain that manic comic delivery. But he also seemed to be able to work just fine when he had dried out. Still, we don’t know the pressures he was under. I can speak from experience about the pain of depression. Someone like me can always tell himself that if we achieved this or that we’d feel better. What do you do when you’ve reached the top and still don’t feel good about yourself?

I had always assumed – stereotypically – that Robin Williams was Jewish. But his Wikipedia page says he was raised Episcopalian, and remained a member of that church.

We sacramentalists put great faith in the keeping power of God’s grace in baptism and holy communion. Let us pray that Robin Williams has found his long-sought peace in the grace of the Lord Jesus.

James K.A. Smith sets up the next issue of Comment by asking, “What if secularism is loudest precisely because it is a final cry before it is unveiled as implausible and unsustainable? Doesn’t the emperor shout loudest about the beauty of his raiment precisely when he least believes it himself?”

I am given to understand that the Minnesota Vikings pre-season game tonight will feature a new attraction: Viking reenactors in authentic costumes doing… something or other between plays.

These reenactors will in fact be members of my own group, the Viking Age Club and Society of the Sons of Norway. We’ve been discussing this deal for some time, but I didn’t want to announce it before I had definite confirmation.

However hard you look, however, you won’t see me. My mobility problems, plus my looming study schedule in the future, make it imprudent.

Still, just so you know, these are my friends. Maybe when they’re rich and famous they’ll remember me.

Yale now offers a digital edition of the works of Samuel Johnson, which include this prayer recorded in 1752:

“BEFORE ANY NEW STUDY.

“NOVEMBER. Almighty God, in whose hands are all the powers of man; who givest understanding, and takest it away; who, as it seemeth good unto Thee, enlightenest the thoughts of the simple, and darkenest the meditations of the wise, be present with me in my studies and enquiries.

“Grant, O Lord, that I may not lavish away the life which Thou hast given me on useless trifles, nor waste it in vain searches after things which thou hast hidden from me.

“Enable me, by thy Holy Spirit, so to shun sloth and negligence, that every day may discharge part of the task which Thou hast allotted me; and so further with thy help that labour which, without thy help, must be ineffectual, that I may obtain, in all my undertakings, such success as will most promote thy glory, and the salvation of my own soul, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.” (via Thomas Kidd)

“When Truman Capote called In Cold Blood a ‘nonfiction novel,’ he meant something very specific: that the book used the techniques of fiction but was completely factual,” explains Ben Yagoda, but today many people appear willing to talk of fiction or nonfiction “novels” as if that word means a bound work of any form. In high school, this usage is everywhere, and it’s prevalent in college too. Have you ever done it or seen it done? (via Mark Bertrand)

Earlier this morning, I read some a piece on how smart phones and similar tech have banished boredom from our lives and caused the very same problem for us. We don’t know how to be bored, or better said, we don’t know how to go without entertainment. Some say it comes from having small minds, but more than that, it trains us in small instant pleasures that will not build us up.

Have you ever asked yourselves why no one notice something wrong, perhaps something horrible, happening right under our noses? Whatever the reasons may be, we are polishing up our blind spots so that we will miss even more of those problems with our mobile tech and other distractions.

We don’t have to check email while waiting on the cashier. We don’t have to give our kids movies while we do errands around the city. It isn’t that children shouldn’t play when they are essentially waiting on us. It’s how we are training them to play–what we’re telling them is important.

Patrick Kurp wrote about this last year. He said, “T.S. Eliot claimed most of the trouble in the world was caused by people who want to be important. I would add a corollary: Most of the people in the world who want to be important have convinced themselves they are bored and that life is boring.”

These self-important people do not see the value in small things or quietness. They want the exotic orchid, not the difficult research and travel to obtain it. But then, am I any better?