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Catholic
social teaching and racism conference: After two years of planning
By Michael Nataro '06
On Nov. 18 and 19, the Office for Mission
Effectiveness sponsored a two-day conference titled Catholic Social Teaching
and Racism which was held in the Villanova Room of the Connelly Center.
 This
event brought together an array of scholars from a variety of prestigious
universities and institutions including Harvard University, Princeton
University, the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown University. Their
objective: To discuss a variety of issues relating to racial injustice and
intolerance in our society from the perspective of the teachings of the
Roman Catholic Church.
The conference began with a continental breakfast
and a short welcome from Dr. William Werpehowski, director of the Center for
Peace and Justice Education. The first speaker was by Dr. Albert Raboteau
from Princeton University titled “Thomas Merton on Racism in America: A View
from the Margins.” Raboteau discussed how the Twentieth century philosopher
and theologian Thomas Merton was inspired by working with the poor in Harlem
to see Christ in the people he was able to help. Raboteau went on to explain
how Merton, years later, during the Civil Rights movement, wrote letters to
activists encouraging them to protest the racist status quo stating that
African Americans “are equal to whites in every sense of the word” and that
blacks and whites “complete one another” in society.
Later, a
second Princeton University scholar, Dr. Douglas Massey, gave a lecture
titled, “Why Housing Segregation Still Matters.” Massey discussed how the
barriers to residential mobility, among blacks and whites, represent
barriers to social and economic mobility because people need to be able to
move to get the full range of benefits and resources. He said that this
level of mobility has been cut off to many minorities, especially blacks for
the last 100 years. He said “black people also have a stronger inclination
than whites to have integrated neighborhoods. One-fifth of whites in 2000
said that their ideal neighborhood was all white, compared with 6.5 percent
of all blacks wanting to live in black neighborhoods. Similarly, 1/4 of
whites said their ideal neighborhood would contain no blacks, whereas 9
percent of blacks said their neighborhood would contain no whites.” |
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