Much ado about Maafa in Princeton
or “What we can talk about to avoid talking about abortion?”
The Princeton Theological Seminary was the site of a controversy (March, 2011) that was, at least on the surface, an issue of race.
A student had put up posters to invite people to a showing of “Maafa 21,” a movie that explains in great details the efforts that have been made in the past by the eugenics movement to decrease the population of African-Americans in the U.S. That those efforts continue today is the shocking point Maafa makes. In order to stop what is frequently called Black Genocide, we must first be aware that it is happening.
The local reaction was a distaste for the posters. They were called “racist” because the images on them were “racist.” It was regarded as clearly wrong to put up posters that hurt people’s feelings.
Pro-life, including black, student groups attempted to point out the reality of the abortion rate for African-American women and the need, therefore, for action on their behalf.
However, the reactions still seemed to focus on the hurtfulness of the images on the posters rather than the ultimate hurtfulness of the death of an unborn child. http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/1124816552.html
A forum was scheduled for March 23 to offer an opportunity for people to recover from the hurt caused by the posters. Sponsored by several campus groups, the forum featured faculty speakers who both spoke and answered questions.
Ashley Thorne attended the meeting. (www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1885) According to her very well written report, there was no discussion about African-American abortions. One speaker said, “The issue was not about abortion. It was about the images.” The discussion focused on all the ways that one might act in a racist manner. Through the many contradictions noted by Thorne, it was obvious that for this group if you speak against racism but you neglect to do it in a politically correct way, you will be deemed a racist.
However, one suspects that, contrary to the opinion of the one speaker, the issue really was abortion. For instance, it is likely that about half of the women present had had an abortion. For those women, discussing the abortion issue rationally would be difficult, maybe even impossible. The men in the room who had in some way been involved in an abortion could have had the same problem.
The elephant in the room was abortion. It was much more comfortable for the participants to discuss racism and get angry than to actually look at the issue that Maafa attempts to raise.
