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How We Got Over: The Moral Teachings of The African–American Church on Business Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Darryl M. Trimiew  and
Michael Greene
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Abstract:

An analysis of the business ethics of the African-American church during and after Reconstruction reveals that it is a conflicted ethic, oscillating between two poles. The first is the sacralization of the business ethic of Booker T. Washington, in which self-help endeavors which valorize American capitalism but are preferentially oriented to the African-American community are advanced as the best and only options for economic uplift. The second is the “Blackwater” tradition, which rejects any racial discrimination and insists upon social justice. The inability of the Washingtonian business ethic to address the needs of the Black underclass are explored. A new business ethic is called for, which would be committed to meeting the basic needs of the most disadvantaged members of American society and those of the “international poor.”

Type
Perspectives from Protestantism:
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , March 1997 , pp. 133 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1997

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References

Endnotes

1 E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957), 87.

2 Manning Marable, a noted political analyst, has noted real change in the African American community, writing, “It is now possible for a member of the present–day Negro elite to live in the white suburbs, work in a white professional office, attend religious services in an all–white church or synagogue, belong to a white country club, and never come into intimate contact with the most oppressed segments of the black community” (italics mine). Beyond Black and White: Transforming African–American Politics (New York, New York: Verso Press, 1995), p. 102.

3 Jay R. Mandle, Not Slave Not Free: The African–American Economic Experience since the Civil War (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1992).

4 Ibid, p. 21.

5 Robert Higgs, “Race, Skills, and Earnings: American Immigrants in 1909.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 33, no.1 (March 1973)]; Stanley Lieberson, A Piece of the Pie: Black and White Immigrants Since 1880 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); and Theodore Hershberg, “A Tale of Three Cities: Blacks, Immigrants and Opportunity in Philadelphia, 1850–1880, 1930, and 1970,” in Herschberg (ed.) Philadelphia: Work, Space, Family and Group Experience in the 19th Century (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 469–70.

6 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, series p. 23, no. 80, The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population in the United States: An Historical Overview 1790–1978, table 5.

7 August Meier, Negro Thought in America 1880–1915 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1963), p.44.

8 Most slaves did not feel morally bound to give their all or best for the benefit of their masters. Thus, during slavery, the incentive to work was not present and the notion of an “honest days work for an honest days pay” equally absent. Most slaves believed that they were wrongly enslaved, that their labor was stolen and that they had, therefore, no compunction about “taking” more of the proceeds of their labor or more time to perform routine tasks than was allotted by their masters. See Albert J. Raboteau’s seminal work, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 276. See also Milton Herscovit’s comments on the intentional procrastination in the performance of labor that he calls slowdowns. Of such, Herscovits writes, “Outstanding were the methods of slowing down work, and what seems to have been calculated misuse of implements furnished the slave by his master. These latter methods, though often commented on, have almost never been recognized as modes of slave protest. They are adduced as evidence of the laziness and irresponsibility of the African, when they are not merely cited without comment as an element in the added economic cost of slavery as against a system of free employment. Once the interpretation of such behavior as sabotage is employed, however, instance after instance comes to mind where contemporary writers tell how the slaves did no more work than they were compelled to do and had to be watched incessantly even at the simplest tasks; but how, when competent in skilled trades and permitted to attain worth–while goals, such as the purchase of their own freedom, they worked well without supervision. Similarly, where slaves cultivated their own plots of ground after hours, the energy they put to such tasks is remarked on again and again.” Milton Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990). p. 105.

While Eugene Genovese does not mount a full argument for extensive African retentions for African Americans, he does correctly note the persistence of some African cultural retentions that have important business ramifications. He notes, “The slaves’ attitude toward time and work arose primarily from their own experience on the plantations of the South. Comparisons with Africa suggest some important cultural continuities. Traditional African time–reckoning focuses on present and past, not future. Time, being two–dimensional, moves, as it were, backward into a long past; the future, not having been experienced, appears senseless. This idea of time, which inhibited the appearance of an indigenous millennialism prior to Islamic and Christian penetration, encouraged economic attitudes not readily assimilable to early bourgeois demands for saving, thrift, and accumulation.” Roll, Jordan, Roll, p. 289. Slaves, of course, had limited opportunities to earn “private wealth” and, therefore, little opportunity to develop systemically culturally persistent habits of thrift and rational long–term economic planning.

9 Ibid., p. 104.

10 William E. Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African–American Church in the South, 1865–1900 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University, 1993).

11 Ibid., p. 337.

12 Peter J. Paris, The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1985), p. 10.

13 Monthly Labor Review (January 1945), “War and Postwar Trends in Employment of Negroes.”

14 Mandle (1992), p. 93.

15 Manning Marable, Blackwater: Historical Studies in Race Class Consciousness and Revolution (Dayton: Black Praxis Press, 1981), p. 40.

16 Woodbey, an ordained Baptist preacher, became an active participant in California Socialist politics, serving as a delegate from California to the Socialist national conventions in 1904, 1908, and 1912, while Slater, during the winter of 1907–1908, attempted to establish a cooperative to insure that food was provided to those members of his congregation (Zion Tabernacle) suffering from unemployment and poverty. In Chicago in 1900, Ransom, among his many other activities, and with financial assistance from the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), founded the Institutional Church and Settlement House. A primary goal of the Institutional Church, as Craig observes, was to facilitate involvement in, “ . . . Chicago politics . . . “ and to agitate against “ . . . those structures, institutions, and persons who exploited the poor.” See Robert H. Craig, Religion and Radical Politics: An Alternative Christian Tradition in the United States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), p. 123.

17 Writing regarding this dilemma, Paris notes, “Blacks arrive at their moral judgments, in large part, by assessing the impact of specific policies, candidates, and programs on the race. Correspondingly, their loyalty to the nation has had an opposite effect. Rather than enabling the quest for racial justice, loyalty to the nation has often constituted a major constraint on the moral and political purposes of the race, because it has demanded a high measure of adaptation to the nation’s major political and moral values.” The Social Teaching of the Black Churches, p. 30.

18 For a good review of the deradicalization of the African American church by a Christian scholar, see Gayraud Wilmore’s Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of Afro–American People (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1983). For a good examination of serious African American conflict over the struggle for civil rights, see Peter Paris’ Black Religious Leaders in Conflict: Conflict in Unity (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991).

19 James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1992), pp. 72, 73.

20 Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” in James M. Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1986), p. 250.

21 King wished to revolutionize the values of Americans, writing:

This revolution of values must go beyond traditional capitalism and communism. We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, . . . The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I–centered than thou–centered. Equally, communism reduces men to a cog in the wheel of the state. Ibid., pp. 629, 630.

22 Thus, Boston, for instance, notes that structural transformations in the economy have contributed to a growing marginalization of African Americans. Thomas D. Boston, Race, Class & Conservatism (Boston, MA.: Unwin Hyman Publishers, 1988).

23 Philip Moss and Chris Tilly, “Soft Skills” and Race: An Investigation of Black Men’s Employment Problems (New York, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995).

24 There has been a long–term decline in the labor force participation rates of both working age African–American and white males; however, the decline is occurring at a faster rate among the former than the latter.

25 William A. Darity, Jr. and Samuel L. Meyers, Jr., “Family Structure and the Marginalization of Black Men: Policy Implications,” in M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell–Kernan, eds., The Decline In Marriage Among African–Americans (New York, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995), pp. 263–308. Darity and Meyers contend that structural changes in the economy (e.g., decline in the relative importance of manufacturing as a source of employment) has contributed to the employment crisis among African–American males and, as a result, has reduced the supply of “marriageable mates” for African–American women. Moreover, they observe that this reduced supply of “marriageable males” is compounded by high rates of institutionalization of African–American males (e.g., incarceration) and homicide. One result of this process is a growth in female maintained households. Thus, they state:

We contend that black men have become less useful in the emerging economic order; they are socially unwanted, superfluous, and marginal. Policies designed to contain or eradicate the unwanted or marginalized segments of the black male population invariably lead to reductions in the supply of marriageable mates.

26 Ibid, p. 263.

Of course, the internal logic of the new economy is equally dismissive of African–American women who are rendered, thereby, equally expendable and abandoned increasingly to grinding poverty.

27 Julius William Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Also see Wilson’s The Declining Significance of Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

28 Peter Paris also comes to this conclusion, writing, “Thus it is surprising that white America’s oppression of blacks is, in large part, a form of self–denial, because, in spite of their different circumstances, black and white Americans share all of the society’s fundamental values pertaining to individualism, capitalism, democracy, private property, liberty, freedom of speech and worship, and views of marriage and the family, to mention only a few.” (Italics mine). The Social Teaching of the Black Churches, p. 85.

29 Roger G. Betsworth writes most eloquently about self–deception, which he argues is usually employed as a duplicitous narrative that he calls a cover story. He notes, “The cover story is another way of interpreting our action; it is a way that is less painful, more honorable, and also plausible. The cover story is ‘cover’ because it must be steadily rehearsed to self and others in order to maintain its primacy and suppress the real story. The cover story may be a story that deals with a course of action already taken. It may also be a story that enables us to avoid spelling out some aspect of our relationship to the world even in the face of a situation that seems to demand that we make explicit what we are doing.” Roger G. Betsworth Social Ethics (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 22. The African–American Church has maintained a cover story with regard to both the enslavement of African Americans and the mixed success of capitalism. Repeating like a mantra, the rosy scenarios of Horatio Alger to succeeding generations, the Church has empowered and enabled a minority of African Americans to strive and succeed in America while offering scant comfort to the sizable majority of African Americans who remain mired in poverty.

30 Indeed, the authors are currently engaged in a project examining the relationship between social critical analysis and the praxis of the African–American Church. See: Darryl M. Trimiew, Randall Bailey, Marcia Riggs, Theodore Walker, and Mike Greene, What’s Goin’ On? Social Critical Analysis and the Black Church (forthcoming book).

31 Cornell West, Prophetic Fragments (Trenton, New Jersey: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988), p. 52.

32 As Marable observes, “Politically, this requires the social theorists of transformation to link their work to the actual social forces within the black community––including religious, labor, community–based, women’s and youth organizations . . . for example, this could mean helping to develop leadership–training schools which would identify young women and men from dozens of communities across the nation engaged in civil–rights struggles, and present a curriculum of economics, social, and political analysis allowing for discussion and mutual exchange from a transformative perspective.” Beyond Black and White: Transforming African–American Politics (New York, New York: Verso Press, 1995), p. 214.