Review of Segregation and Desegregation -- Part 1
Thomas Allen
[Editor's note: Some of the endnotes have been replaced with links.]
The following is an analysis of Segregation and Desegregation: A Christian Approach by T.B. Maston (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1959). His words and my paraphrases or summaries of his words, I have italicized. My commentary is in roman letters. I have provided references to pages in his book and have enclosed them in parentheses.
Throughout his book, Maston deceptively argues that desegregation would not necessarily lead to integration. Like most other writer who attempts to use a Christian argument to promote or defend desegregation and integration, Matson is long on generalities and void of specific Biblical verses to support his argument. The segregation argument is much easier to support biblically and can be supported with specific verses.
Maston states that the objective of his book “is primarily an attempt at an evaluation of segregation and desegregation from the Christian perspective” (p. vii). From his subverted Christian perspective, segregation is evil, a great sin. Desegregation and integration are divinely good.
In Chapter 1, Maston discusses the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954. Maston states that the Supreme Court’s decision of May 17, 1954, “declared that school segregation was contrary to the federal constitution” (p. 1). How can school segregation, based on earlier Supreme Court rulings, be constitutional on May 16, 1954, and unconstitutional on May 17, 1954, without any change in the Constitution? Obviously, the Supreme Court’s ruling was more political than judicial. As it relied on sociologists and other social scientists instead of the Constitution, previous Supreme Court rulings, and historical understanding and intent of the Constitution proves that the decision was political. The Supreme Court, especially since Franklin Roosevelt’s appointments, seldom lets the Constitution stand in the way of political expediency.
Maston claims that the Supreme Court “has the final word concerning the meaning of the United States Constitution” (pp. 1-2). If so, it is because it has usurped such power and the President, Congress, and the States have let it get away with this usurpation. The Constitution grants it no such power or duty. President Jackson understood this when he ignored rulings of the Supreme Court. Having created and adopted the Constitution, the States should have the last say on what the Constitution means.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court relied on the extremely elastic, and thus meaningless, “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. First, the Fourteenth Amendment was never legally, constitutionally, adopted. Second, it was never intended to apply to public schools. Those who wrote it, promoted its adoption, and adopted it never pushed for integrated schools. If this amendment were intended to prohibit segregated schools, schools across the country would have been desegregated 85 years earlier. The Supreme Court admitted that those who wrote and adopted the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend for it to integrate schools (p. 4).
Maston seems to agree with the Supreme Court’s position that “new problems and particularly new insights require a new interpretation” (p. 11). The Court was not bound by the words of the Constitution or the intent of those who wrote and adopted it (p. 11). Thus, the Constitution is a meaningless piece of paper. The country is now under the rule of men instead of the rule of law.
Maston is probably among that class of theologians who change their interpretation of the Bible to mean whatever the current socio-political climate wants. Thus, sodomy becomes an acceptable lifestyle accompanied by homosexual marriages instead of a capital crime as the Bible declares. God does not really mean what He says in the Bible. The Bible means whatever twisted interpretation the likes of Maston can give it to fit “new problems and particularly new insights.”
Maston cites the great educational advancements made by Negro during the first 50 years of the twentieth century (pp. 12-13). Obviously, school segregation was not holding Negroes back. They were making great strides under “separate but equal.”
Maston remarks that being a world power, the United States needed to desegregate schools and integrate (p. 14). The United States became a world power under segregation. How destroying the race that made the United States a world power enhances them as a world power, Maston does not explain. Moreover, he claims that people in other countries know and are concerned about what happens in the United States (p. 14). To the extent that they are concerned, it is what they can get from the American taxpayer. They are too concerned about their mistreatment by their own leaders to be overly concerned about how Blacks or anyone else is treated in the United States. Furthermore, Maston claims that the United States are handicapped in world leadership because of their failure to apply consistently democratic principles to their minority groups (p. 14). Full integration in the United States where Blacks have special privileges denied Whites has done nothing to stop the horrible discrimination occurring in Africa, where one African tribe hacks to pieces other tribes within its country. Continuing, Matson states that the elimination of segregation had more to do with foreign relations than with the Constitution (p. 14). Thus, the Supreme Court mutilated the Constitution for the sake of foreign policy.
Maston asserts “that all men are equal before God” (p. 16). God is no egalitarian. According to Daniel 12:1, only those whose names are “found written in the book” will be delivered from the “time of trouble.” By inference those whose names are not found in the book are not delivered—hence, inequality of treatment and condition. Daniel 12:2 shows a three-tier treatment of man. First “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.” Not everyone will be awakened — again inequality of treatment and condition. Second, of those awakened, some awaken “to everlasting life” and “some to shame and everlasting contempt”— again inequality of treatment and condition. If all men were equal before God, would they not all receive the same treatment?
Romans 9:9-13 shows that God discriminates against people before they are born. Genesis 17:17-21 shows that God discriminates against people after they are born. If God were an egalitarian, would He not treat all people the same?
In Exodus 33:19, God says, “. . . I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” Therefore, God does not treat all people equally. If all people were equal before God, would He not treat them equally?
“Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). Would not all be chosen or none chosen if all people were equal before God?
According to Matthew 25:31-43, Jesus will separate the nations as a shepherd separates sheep and goats. Those on his right hand are exalted and inherit the kingdom prepared for them (verse 34). Those on his left hand are condemned and sent to the eternal fire (verse 41). If all people were equal, would not all be on the same hand and receive either the kingdom or the fire?
One may become a new person by believing in Jesus. However, people will witness great inequality in the hereafter. According to Jesus, people will not be treated equally in heaven. Some will rule over many cities; some, over none. Some will receive many crowns; some, few crowns.
Besides, if the Bible is as fluid as the U.S. Constitution as Maston asserts, God may be a respecter of person one year and not a respecter of person the next year. One year He may condemn a certain act, such as sodomy, as a sin and find it acceptable and not a sin the next year. After all, the Bible was written thousands of years ago. Times change, circumstances change, and man’s knowledge changes.
Therefore, the Bible needs to change to fit new times, circumstances, and knowledge whatever God’s original intent and words.
Using fluid Biblical interpretation, theologians like Matson can justify murder, such as abortion, forced vaccination, and euthanasia. They can justify theft, such as confiscatory taxation and civil forfeiture. Furthermore, they can justify fornication and adultery and all sorts of illicit marriages, such as homosexual marriages and interracial marriages. They can make God’s word support everything it opposes. Most likely, Maston would have supported most of these transgressions and would have claimed that the Bible supported them.
In Chapter 2, Maston discusses reactions to the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision. He discusses the immediate reaction, resistance to its decision, the reaction of Negroes, the reaction of the church, and the “New Reconstruction.”
Maston comments that the South did not “want to be a problem area for the nation as it faces the challenge of communism” (p. 20). Yet the Supreme Court, President, Congress, and much of the rest of the country wanted to force the Communist organized and led civil rights agenda on the South. The South, along with the rest of the country, finally did surrender to the Communists. (Not only did the United States surrender to the Communist-led civil rights movement, they surrendered to every plank in Marx’s Communist Manifesto.)
Maston identifies several religious groups that supported the Supreme Court’s desegregation edict. One of them was the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention (p. 21). Once it joined the Communist-led civil rights movement, it in principle agreed to all other illicit movements. Yet the Southern Baptist Convention has the audacity to object to and oppose the homosexual agenda, including rebelling against the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing homosexual marriages. Homosexuals have merely used the arguments that the Communists, Negroes, and negrophiles used to promote and force the integrationist agenda and interracial marriages on the rest of the country. For the most part, the recommendations adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention (p. 22) for following the Supreme Court decision on school desegregation in 1954 could easily apply to the Supreme Court’s decision on homosexual marriages in 2015.
Maston cites several governors of Southern and Border States expressing support for the Supreme Court’s decision. Most contain the phrase “obey the law,” “comply with the law,” and the like (pp. 22-23). In effect these governors were claiming that the Supreme Court was legislating from the bench. Under the Constitution, only Congress has legislative powers. These governors spat on the Constitution.
Maston notes that the Citizens’ Council was the primary leader of the opposition. One effect of the Council was shutting off debate and discussion about racial issues (pp. 25-27). The effectiveness of the Council stifling debate about racial issues pales to insignificance when compared with progressives, Marxists, negrophiles, Black leaders, etc. silencing any discussion by Whites about race — except about how despicable and loathsome Whites are. Seldom does any White today say anything about race, and most of the few who do apologize for discussing race. Only nonwhites can talk openly and candidly about race. “Racist” and “racism” have surpassed “anti-Semitic” and “anti-Semitism” and “fascist” and “fascism” as the most feared smear or slur word in America. If a person is labeled as a “racist,” he irredeemably becomes persona non grata. Most likely, Maston would not object to this outcome of desegregation.
Maston quotes Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel for the NAACP and later Supreme Court Justice, saying about the Supreme Court’s decision, “This decision gives the lie to communist propaganda” (p. 29). To find greater lying hypocrisy than Marshall’s statement would be extremely difficult. The civil rights movement was organized and led by Communists. Communists and their fronts wanted such a decision from the Supreme Court. Marshall was as close to being a Communist as one could be without being a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. Moreover, he was a racist, who said during his confirmation hearing for his appointment to the Supreme Court, “I want you to understand that when the colored people take over, every time the white man draws a breath, he’ll have to pay a fine.”[1]
Maston notes that although most Negroes approve the Supreme Court decision, they were not overly enthusiastic about it. Now they would have “to accept the full responsibility that first-class citizenship” places on them. They “must measure up to higher standards than they have in the past.” No longer “could they explain away or rationalize their failures by saying that they were Negroes and did not have a chance” (p. 29). Sixty years later, many Blacks either refuse to or are incapable of accepting the responsibilities of first-class citizenship. They blame their failures on Whites, racism, slavery, the Confederate flag, etc. — everything but themselves. They still use the excuse that they are Negroes and do not have a chance.
Matson cites endorsements given by various religious organizations approving racial integration (pp. 31-37). Many of these same organizations have endorsed and promoted the homosexual agenda. Most likely, they will endorse and support the pedophilia agenda as proponents of that agenda move forward to legalize pedophilia. The arguments that they used to support racial integration can just as easily, and have been, used to support the homosexual agenda and the up-and-coming pedophilia agenda.
Matson notes that many church members oppose the statement approved by their general denominational bodies (p. 33). This opposition shows that the typical church member has a better understanding of the Bible than ministers, theologians, and other church leaders.
Matson wonders whether the “New Reconstruction” or the Second Reconstruction will fade away like the First Reconstruction (p. 37). The Second Reconstruction has not faded away. It has grown and metastasized. Not only has it gone a long way in destroying the South and Southerners, it has brought down the White race and the United States in everything but name as its cancerous effects have spread across the country. The founding fathers would no longer recognize the federal republic that they founded. The Supreme Court has subverted the Constitution so much that it is now a meaningless scrap of paper. With the police state, Marxist, fascist, plutocratic government that seeks to micromanage every aspect of life; with open borders flooding the country with nonwhites; with perpetual wars to transfer ever more wealth and power to the ruling elite, the Second Reconstruction has brought down the United States. If Whites are going to sacrifice themselves on the altar of racial integration within the country, why not sacrifice themselves on the altar of racial integration of the world. Then they will kill those hideous White cancer cells that inflict America and the world.
Maston would be happy at the success of opening the borders to nonwhites. He favors an integrated world, which means the death of the White man, who has, or at least his inventions, discoveries, institutions, etc. have eliminated much of the world’s poverty. Without him, the world would not have advanced beyond that which existed before the arrival of White traders (circa 1490).
One thing that Matson and most other integrationists of the late 1950s failed to see, or refused to acknowledge, was that once the civil rights movement ignited, it would burn across the States outside the South much more furiously than it would in the Southern States.
Although the real movers behind the desegregation-integration-civil-rights movement were mostly Northern White and disproportionately Jewish, the worst race riots occurred outside the South. Blacks came to realize the cowardice and hypocrisy of Northern Whites who were pushing them to hate Southerners. Blacks took advantage of the riots to destroy White, mostly Jewish, businesses, which they perceived as overcharging them in the ghettos.[2]
Endnotes
1. Francis X. Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left, I (1969), p. 439.2. Wilmot Robertson, The Dispossessed Majority (Cape Canaveral, Florida: Howard Allen Enterprises, Inc., 1981 ed., 1981), p. 220.
Copyright © 2015 by Thomas Coley Allen.
Part 2
More articles on social issues.
![[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwRE44OXqJTYACzZo6NODXrm5WqB180thzAB4LZf4GWehYSwAl394aENU51ZO0Dcj_zFx9F5HwpJ1ZzwMXIHSa7F_i1qtaEXd9AQN-P1k8rwolT5bwVlf9VUswbpseX4kcBwvyJ2JsH4yo/s1600/img922.jpg){kind=link}