Fighting Over Truth

A Dad's Review of Passport 2 Purity

[3,100 words, 11 minute read] The sex talk is one of the most dreaded conversations parents anticipate having with their children. To make things easier, an entire industry exists to help parents with sex education. Dozens of books have been written to help parents navigate this treacherous topic with their progeny. One of the best known among evangelicals is called the Passport 2 Purity Getaway package . It is produced by FamilyLife, a division of Cru (former Campus Crusade for Christ) and consists of a five lecture CD package including a journal and exercises designed as a weekend retreat for a pre-pubescent child and his/her parent(s). Passport 2 Purity was not my initiative. Our trip came about because Judy had heard from several home-schooling mom friends how they had taken their daughters on a road trip to go through the CDs. She even heard how a mom took a trip with husband and two sons to through the curriculum. So a couple months ago, Judy suggested we take our two older boy...

Asian American Christians' Secret Affair with Whiteness

Sometimes ideas linger in the back of one’s mind like dirt at the bottom of a swimming pool - dormant, unnoticed yet hiding in plain sight. They are left lying at the edge of one’s consciousness for years because they’re too unsettling and difficult to articulate. Only when a cleaning implement rustles them that one becomes aware of how filthy the environment really is. For decades, I had suspected an affair might exist but the fact of it eluded me until a recent disruption. The problem with this tryst is that it ’ s hidden from one of the partners. The relationship functions at the subconscious level. The rustling started with conversations some friends and I had about race, ethnicity, and culture. This dialogue birthed a desire to read a book or study a curriculum together on the topic. One friend recommended Daniel Hill’s White Awake , a book about diagnosing the hidden cancer of white supremacy in American evangelicalism. Earlier this week some members o...

Asians, Intelligence, and Facts

Confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance about Asians being better at math Few topics stir up more debate than the discussion of ethnic differences in cognitive ability. One of my favorite books, The Bell Curve , has been and in the past year has become again a lightning rod of controversy. The book and its ideas are arguably more relevant today than when it was first published twenty-five years ago. The co-author, Charles Murray, has been labeled a white supremacist and his recent speaking engagements have been subject to violent protest at Middlebury College and my alma mater, UC Berkeley. I listened to Murray on Sam Harris’ podcast recently and he published the following summary from The Bell Curve in response to listener interest. Below is an excerpt of the chapter summary on Asian ethnic differences in cognitive ability: East Asians (e.g., Chinese, Japanese), whether in America or in Asia, typically earn higher scores on intelligence and achievement tests than white...

Rant of the Exiles

Search This Blog