Generally speaking, as a species, people wear their hearts in our pockets.
As Jesus said:
For where our treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6: 21)
Our leaders (even the atheist ones) know this. Why do you think we wage wars for "hearts and minds" in a nation whose 3rd fundamental principle is "the pursuit of happiness" which in Thomas Jefferson's original draft read "the pursuit of property"? Because hearts and minds lead to dollars an cents.
The United States of America is a capitalis republic, for us, more perhaps than for any other nation all social change is actually economic change.
So, let me explain to you how our government changes our feelings about a group or practice that the masses had previously considered socially or morally illegitimate.
Funding.
Look at what the Montgomery Bus Boycott did. It made the white chamber of commerce realize "We need those Negroes on our buses to feed our families," and bam! integration.
On tv it looked like a moral and legal victory (which it was). But on the ground, in Montgomery, it was an economic victory.
Lawsuits and laws change the technical (de jure) status of a group or practice. But to change actual behavior (defacto) toward the new system, you have to reach into folks' pockets.
Economic integration causes social integration.
Once municipalities, and agencies, and companies start getting money to serve "them" and those organizations then start hiring "us" to work on funded projects to serve "them," it means that "our" jobs/ our money depends on "them" being part of "us."
The government (which is led by some of the most astute historians in history) knows that people will modify their politics and their theology to fit their what's in your wallet.
And don't get it twisted. Don't look at who gets the money. Look at whom they get the money to serve.
When a previously immoral lifestyle or a previously undesirable demographic become economically profitable to large numbers of us, then we will summarily declare that the immoral is holy and the undesirables are our equals and brethren,
The principle of hearts and pockets has been used for great good (Refer back to the Bus Boycott example.) but the concept is equally applicable to anything (even what you think now is just obviously wrong, sinful, or "unAmerican").
So, notice whom your government pays people to help. Notice whom corporations target for "services" and get used to having them around.
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry,
and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse
Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and
director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human
Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
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