{"id":2296,"date":"2009-11-09T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drslewis.org\/camille\/?p=2296"},"modified":"2009-11-09T08:00:35","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T13:00:35","slug":"perspective-by-incongruity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drslewis.org\/camille\/2009\/11\/09\/perspective-by-incongruity-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Perspective by Incongruity, #2"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Old South brushes up against this 2nd<\/sup>-generation Pollack like that<\/a>, I can\u2019t ignore it. It’s what Burke would call Perspective by Incongruity — two dissimilar “terms” shoved together that each change the other simply by proximity. And that\u2019s what happened a year ago when Bob Jones University produced a \u201cStatement on Race\u201d<\/a> to say it was \u201cprofoundly sorry\u201d for past racist policies.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no stranger to Bob Jones University and so-called fundamentalism. Not only have I studied the rhetoric of American religious separatism formally, I\u2019ve lived it. Having spent 20 years at BJU as a student, grad student, and faculty member, I am especially sensitive to their public discourse. Now that they fired me for being more scholarly than separatist<\/a>, I\u2019m looking anew at their public texts. While I was still inside the movement, I described<\/a> their frame of acceptance as less tragic or comic and more romantic. My purpose then was descriptive as well as prescriptive\u2014to explain to them, as an insider, how best to craft their message.<\/p>\n

We all see how that turned out. So I am honing a new critical voice\u2014one that\u2019s still within a Burkean comic corrective, but without the apologist bent. I no longer need to prescribe to fundamentalists. And I\u2019ve never sensed more strongly how incongruous it is to be a 2nd<\/sup>-generation Pollack stuck in an Old South morality play.<\/p>\n

The most recent example of a public text from Bob Jones University is this \u201cStatement on Race.\u201d BJU is infamous for its 1983 Supreme Court battle to maintain its policy forbidding \u201cinterracial dating.\u201d<\/a> The problems with their policy are so numerous and complex that we\u2019d be here for weeks discussing them. Not only is their definition of \u201crace\u201d problematic\u2014they limited their scope to only three races\u2014but the definition of a \u201cdate\u201d comes into play too. They lost that fight with the IRS, lost their tax-exemption status, but maintained this unseemly remnant of the Old South.<\/p>\n

And not until Campaign 2000 did BJU\u2019s racism rise again into public view. George W. Bush\u2019s rather routine visit to an old Republican haunt in South Carolina didn\u2019t seem too interesting until John McCain made it interesting. The media firestorm was so intense that BJU\u2019s president went on Larry King Live to lift the interracial dating ban.<\/p>\n

Alumni who had attended the school since 1983, however, didn\u2019t think that was sufficient. One particular 1998 alum, Jon Henry, was so irritated by the continuing defense of racism among BJU constituency that he started, of all things, a Facebook group to force BJU to apologize for past racism. That on-a-whim action snowballed into a full-fledged alumni effort garnering 506 signatures attempting to move Bob Jones University one step closer to reconciliation and culminating in BJU\u2019s 2008 \u201cStatement on Race.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Old South brushes up against this 2nd-generation Pollack like that, I can\u2019t ignore<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20,24],"tags":[107,362,364,414,579,641],"class_list":["post-2296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-remember","category-speak","category-write","tag-bob-jones-university","tag-interracial","tag-interracial-marriage","tag-kenneth-burke","tag-racial-reconciliation","tag-romance"],"yoast_head":"\nPerspective by Incongruity, #2 - A Time To Laugh<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.drslewis.org\/camille\/2009\/11\/09\/perspective-by-incongruity-2\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Camille Lewis\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.drslewis.org\\\/camille\\\/2009\\\/11\\\/09\\\/perspective-by-incongruity-2\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.drslewis.org\\\/camille\\\/2009\\\/11\\\/09\\\/perspective-by-incongruity-2\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Camille Lewis\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.drslewis.org\\\/camille\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e93a8c9ec8fb8b926471114158437f82\"},\"headline\":\"Perspective by Incongruity, #2\",\"datePublished\":\"2009-11-09T13:00:35+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.drslewis.org\\\/camille\\\/2009\\\/11\\\/09\\\/perspective-by-incongruity-2\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":475,\"commentCount\":1,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.drslewis.org\\\/camille\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e93a8c9ec8fb8b926471114158437f82\"},\"keywords\":[\"Bob Jones University\",\"interracial\",\"Interracial Marriage\",\"Kenneth Burke\",\"Racial Reconciliation\",\"Romance\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Remember\",\"Speak\",\"Write\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.drslewis.org\\\/camille\\\/2009\\\/11\\\/09\\\/perspective-by-incongruity-2\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.drslewis.org\\\/camille\\\/2009\\\/11\\\/09\\\/perspective-by-incongruity-2\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.drslewis.org\\\/camille\\\/2009\\\/11\\\/09\\\/perspective-by-incongruity-2\\\/\",\"name\":\"Perspective by Incongruity, #2 - 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