https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/economic-justice/the-mcdonalds-test
You also visited many churches. As an atheist, what was that like?
I was certainly an atheist when I began; it’s more complicated now. Initially, I went to church for the same reason I was going to McDonald’s: it was where the people I was speaking to were going. I didn’t discriminate, I just went to whatever church or mosque was there, whatever faith was reflective of the community.
Like McDonald’s, the churches worked. They were often the only institutions that were lit up and functional; usually they were storefront operations. You’d go down a street that was boarded up, derelict buildings, and then there was a church. Its doors weren’t closed.
There aren’t many success stories in my book – there’s almost nobody who got out of a negative lifestyle. The only people who succeeded did it through faith – through the church. And so I had at first a grudging respect, and then a full-blown respect for what churches are doing.
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You suggest that one thing which may have stayed more the same than people would like to admit is racism.
There’s awful racism in the United States, which cannot be denied or diminished. What’s forgotten, though, is that the most progressive towns are often the most segregated. We tend to focus on the ugly incidents of racism that happen among the white working class and ignore the racism of the elites, which is less overt because it’s structural. It’s a matter of zoning laws, of where the best schools are, who is more likely to be arrested or imprisoned, where good jobs are available.
My visit to Milwaukee, which is well-known for its progressive politics, illustrated this to me. Historically, the African American community was intentionally confined to a tiny neighborhood in the city, and it’s largely still concentrated there.