Reading List: Parenting, The Kennedy's & Discrimination

 

Finished since last post:

 

Grace-Based Discipline by Karis Kimmel Murray

This was an excellent book! On top of having a great gift and style in writing, Karis Murray shares a lot of very practical advice when it comes to dealing with your child’s bad behavior. Many important reminders include: Don’t take your child’s behavior personally, your child is a sinner so “we shouldn’t be surprised if they act that way”, “you must separate your child’s behavior from their heart” and what the book really boils down to: How does God parent/discipline us? This is crucial because “Parents are the primary reflection our kids see of God’s heart and His grace.” How you parent and discipline teaches your child more about God than anything you could possibly say! As parents we ought to seek to parent as God does His children, and for that we need wisdom. “The only way we’ll be able to discern whether to give our children consequences, mercy or anything in between is if we’ve built a close enough relationship with our kids to afford us some perspective. That’s the only way our discipline will truly be for them.” (emphasis hers)

Karis differentiates between grace and mercy, punishment or retaliation and discipline, shame and remorse and gives practical examples. She also helpfully lays out the type of discipline and/or consequences that are most effective for different ages. Throughout the book there are great stories and examples from Karis’ own experience under her parents (who modeled this well) and with her own children.  

 

The Kennedy Curse by Edward Klein

 

This was a very interesting biography of the Kennedy family. Really good read! As in, I had a hard time putting it down! It explores the lives and deaths of various members of the Kennedy family (from JFK’s great-grandparents to JFK Jr.) and gives a lot of very insightful information into their family traits and patterns. Traits of narcissism, perfectionism and a weakness towards alcohol and sex led to destructive patterns and many times early avoidable deaths. Is there a “Kennedy curse”? More accurately we should call this sin’s curse, and the reality is that in some families, these kinds of sinful traits leave patterns of destruction than curse its descendants in more unique ways. A sad book in many ways because of this, but again, a very interesting read.  

 

Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell

 

This was a really excellent book on understanding economics, discrimination (not just race-based) and disparities among people. Definitely recommend anything by Thomas Sowell, who is a well-known economist. 

 

The chapter “Discrimination: Meanings and Costs” distinguished the different kinds of discrimination and showed how things like minimum wage laws and making it illegal for employers to do criminal background checks were actually hurting the black community – not helping promote equality which was the original intent. Employers who did background checks were actually MORE likely to hire blacks than those who didn’t – because the fact remains that more blacks tend to have criminal records so those who didn’t do checks made assumptions rather than hire based on facts. Another interesting thing was that while some people in America do have some discrimination against blacks, in the end cost/benefit will win. For example, Harlem used to be a very white neighborhood and landlords didn’t want to rent to blacks. However, as things changed and more blacks moved into the general area and at the same time whites were moving out – the landlords shifted as well. The cost to not rent to a black was too high. One point from this is that laws are not as effective in changing things as plain “cost/benefit”. Most people will trade their discrimination for something that benefits them. Another example he gave was in the south when the segregation laws were passed. Many of the trolley companies fought these laws because they realized that not only would it offend many of their customers (who were black) it would cost them more money since they ended up needing more trolley cars to seat everyone in the “appropriate” section. They lost in court but even then, many companies didn’t enforce the law at all until the government started fining them. Again – cost/benefit affected discrimination more than laws did.

 

His chapter on “Sorting and Unsorting of People” was very interesting. People naturally “sort” themselves into like-minded groups. Indeed, where the government has attempted to “unsort” people (move people around to make communities more “diverse”), while it helps a few people, in general it has not helped the majority of people (either those already in the community or those brought in). In fact, it has tended to hurt the community/people already there. While most whites have not complained out of fear of being called “racist”, many blacks who were residents of communities where the government was moving poorer blacks in complained and resisted about “those people” being brought in. They knew that it would not benefit their community – in fact they were very concerned about the likely increase of crime, devaluing of property (because poorer people don’t tend to take care of their property well), etc.

 

“The net result of police backing off [because the don’t want to be called racist] is often a rise in crime, of which law-abiding residents in black communities are the principle victims. Some people think that they are being kind to blacks by going along with unsubstantiated claims of ‘racial profiling’ by the police. But, as distinguished black scholar Sterling A Brown said, long ago: ‘Kindness can kill as well as cruelty, and it can never take the place of genuine respect’.” (p. 85-86)

 

“As obvious as this may seem, it is often forgotten. Nothing that the Germans can do today will in any way mitigate the staggering evils of what Hitler did in the past. Nor can apologies in American today for slavery in the past have any meaning, much less do any good, for either blacks or whites today… The only times over which we have any degree of influence at all are the present and the future – both of which and be made worse by attempts at symbolic restitution among the living for what happened among the dead…Pretending to have powers that we do not have, in fact, have risks creating needless evils in the present while claiming to deal with the evils of the past…. To admit we cab do nothing about what happened among the dead is not to give up the struggle for a better world, but to concentrate our efforts where they have at least some hope of making things better for the living.” (p.127)

 

Up Next: Q and Social Justice.... should be interesting!