NDE and the race problem: a retrospective, and some new thoughts

Some interesting comments by prominent NDE researcher P.M.H. Atwater, at http://pmhatwater.blogspot.com/2012/05/race-and-near-death-experience.html :

"Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, who wrote the incredibly powerful book Cosmic Consciousness (back in the late 1800s and early 1900s) was puzzled as to why intense spiritual transformations (similar to some NDEs) never happened to Blacks. I believe he never found any because of where and how he was looking. I can assure you Black people have just as many NDEs as do those of any other race, but such cases are harder to find.......because most Blacks will not talk about them!!! Fortunately, many did talk to me and for that I am grateful."
 
Thanks for providing the obvious answer to this thread.

Funny...because I saw that some time ago. I am the person spoken of in that thread, and the poster that posed that question to Atwater did so as a result of the problem that I raised originally, on another forum. It should be plainly obvious that she is completely caught out by the question, and that she both DOES NOT answer and CANNOT answer the question. She can provide no evidence to back up her claim, or, really, that the population she refers to actually exists.
 
You have the uncanny ability to make a mountain out of a molehill and a molehill out of a mountain.

This is not a molehill.

Of course, the absence of black NDEs des not necessarily invalidate Caucasion NDEs, and I am not saying any such thing. But perhaps NDEs are just not a universal experience after all.
 
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Oh brother.
Ian...have you actually *watched* any of these videos you are linking? Seriously...try it.
Yup, there's a "phenomenon" there...no doubt about that.
 
I've watched five of them, Kai. I don't know what your issue is with them.

I found this in the Holden-Greyson-James Handbook of Near Death Experiences:

Research re: incidence of NDEs by race is scant but... "Ring's (1980) and Richard Bonenfant's (2004) retrospective studies, together with the prospective study of Janet Schwaninger and associates (...), and Alan Weiss (2002), also included African-Americans and Asian-Americans" (p. 116).
 
I've watched five of them, Kai. I don't know what your issue is with them.

Well, my issue Ian is that they are transparent vehicles for 'Jesus-'n-Hell' Evangelism...fake evangelism in my opinion, for the most part.

Let me help you out a bit.

Your first video: Uploaded by "A New Light Dawning" (check out their other videos to get a feel). The experiencer is a minister and is married to a minister. Has been a minister for 18 years.

Your second video: Uploaded by "Last Call of JesusChrist" entitled "Man sees Satan in Hell."

Your third video: Uploaded by "truthrabbit" (see other videos to get a feel). Dean Braxton and wife both evangelical ministers. Minister for 15 years (i.e. long before his "experience").

Your fourth video: Uploaded by "Hell, Fire & Brimstone." More evangelical Hell apologetics.

Your fifth video: Uploaded by "Heaven visit" (check out their other videos...ALWAYS do this!!) Tony Davis. A gospel singer (before his 'experience')

Your sixth video: Interesting, but this is a Melanesian person, not an African American.

Your seventh video: Yes, this might be a genuine case. Doesn't speak much about her experience here, and it would be good to have confirmation of ethnicity.

Your eighth video: Uploaded by "TrueSpiritWorship" (check out their other videos)

Your ninth video: Barely intelligible. Obviously a poor re-upload of a bad evangelical documentary.. Uploaded by "Owasplayer" (check out their other videos).


"I found this in the Holden-Greyson-James Handbook of Near Death Experiences:

Research re: incidence of NDEs by race is scant but... "Ring's (1980) and Richard Bonenfant's (2004) retrospective studies, together with the prospective study of Janet Schwaninger and associates (...), and Alan Weiss (2002), also included African-Americans and Asian-Americans"

I don't care about "asian americans"; there is not a problem with respect to Asian Americans. My claim is that AAs (African Americans) are not represented in these experiences at ANYTHING LIKE their demographic level in American society.
 
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Kai, good on you for going through those videos, or their sources at least. I know a bunch here are evangelical type NDEs, but in that they're not much different from similar fare among white Americans - you find plenty of Hell apologetics among those, and I"m sure at least some of them are legit NDEs (how are those all that different from the Howard Storm, Ian McCormack NDEs, etc.?). Whatever we make of them (their metaphysical or mundane meaning, and so on), I see no reason to automatically dismiss them as "fake". You seem to want to do so from the get-go, you're extremely suspicious of them, and that's your prerogative.

The 9th video, btw, is a pastor from Nigeria, so not an AA - his story (whether true or not) has been related a few places -, by Atwater in her Big Book of NDEs, among others.

Regarding your claim as stated, even if it has some basis, I don't know why that would be different than, let's say, how Hispanic American NDEs are represented. Are they represented in relation to their demographic proportion? And we're speaking really of videos, and those that are online. Maybe this speaks to issues of persisting (race, and class) segregation in American society. How many black people attend (I would imagine to be) heavily-white-middle-class--predominant IANDS conferences, say, and have their testimonies taped and used in the "famous speaker" videos we end up seeing a lot of the time? I would say cultural segregation is at least one factor that explains your claim, if it has any basis.

The 7th video I really would see no reason to think is not legit. It's from one of those IANDS-type conferences where speakers each take their turn. It's on my computer somewhere with the rest of them, but I'd have to go through that stuff to find it and see what conference it was.
 
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Just to add these points, Kai:

Re: your fake-by-association with the videos I posted: quite a few are old and could have been posted elsewhere originally. But even if some of them were really posted first in the channels they're currently found in, then so what? We've all seen dozens or hundreds of NDE videos of white people without ever questioning them on the basis of the channels that showed them. What are the legitimate channels for white NDEs?

Also, black Americans may be more religious than white Americans, and may be more involved in the fundamentalist ones, percentage/ratio-wise. If so, then they might tend to report them NDEs less frequently, for fear of being expelled from their local church community, and their larger religion-heavy community as a whole. Maybe whites have less to lose because their ties to the local secular and church communities aren't as strong or necessary for survival.
 
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I just thought of this too. Mormons have a rich "history" of NDEs, and a lot of literature has been devoted to them, books almost exclusively devoted to them. But how many of those are represented in online videos? There's another kind of cultural segregation issue going on there.
 
Kai, good on you for going through those videos, or their sources at least. I know a bunch here are evangelical type NDEs, but in that they're not much different from similar fare among white Americans - you find plenty of Hell apologetics among those, and I"m sure at least some of them are legit NDEs (how are those all that different from the Howard Storm, Ian McCormack NDEs, etc.?). Whatever we make of them (their metaphysical or mundane meaning, and so on), I see no reason to automatically dismiss them as "fake". You seem to want to do so from the get-go, you're extremely suspicious of them, and that's your prerogative.

Yes...there are plenty of Christian apologetics in white NDE stories too. In brief, there are plenty of fake NDEs out there, there are plenty of sincere Christian NDEs out there, and there are plenty of fake Christian NDEs out there. Howard Storm is a legitimate Christian NDE. Don't even get me started on McCormack.

But...there is an identifiable phenomenon among your videos, imo. It can be described as the attempt to annexe the success of the NDE anecdote to traditional savior and hellfire narratives. It's not difficult to see, and its fraudulent DNA is detectable in the histories of the people involved, imo.

Regarding your claim as stated, even if it has some basis, I don't know why that would be different than, let's say, how Hispanic American NDEs are represented. Are they represented in relation to their demographic proportion? And we're speaking really of videos, and those that are online. Maybe this speaks to issues of persisting (race, and class) segregation in American society. How many black people attend (I would imagine to be) heavily-white-middle-class--predominant IANDS conferences, say, and have their testimonies taped and used in the "famous speaker" videos we end up seeing a lot of the time? I would say cultural segregation is at least one factor that explains your claim, if it has any basis.

Those are good questions. They are probably under-represented in each of the ways that you mention. However, I've never had the impression of as strong a dearth of NDEs with Hispanic origin, or even from Spain itself. Still, yes: to some degree the same questions apply. At this point, I would say that the burden of proof is on the claim that NDEs in the AA community exist at the level of their North American demographic. And if that is the case (I do not myself think that it is...though there might be more of them than there appears to be) then a study needs to be done of that which concludes, with accurate and authentic anthropological data, why that supposedly hidden population of experiences is actually hidden.
The 7th video I really would see no reason to think is not legit. It's from one of those IANDS-type conferences where speakers each take their turn. It's on my computer somewhere with the rest of them, but I'd have to go through that stuff to find it and see what conference it was.

Yeah, as I said. I don't see a problem with that one.
 
Here's another (non-evangelical, non-ministerial) AA NDE account:
http://ndeaccounts.com/near-death-experiences-stories/life-review-nde-donna-potts/


I've seen this one before, and while I am prepared to count it a genuine one (one of the few)...there are a couple of things. First, biographical details are absent. Second, it is highly minimalistic as an NDE. In broad terms, it barely qualifies. As I said though, I'm happy to count it (especially if bio details could confirm she was AA and not Polynesian for example).
 
Who knows why blacks don't make videos about NDE's the way whites do ? If you ask me I'd guess that the reasons are probably cultural, certainly in Africa I can definitely see why an individual might want to keep it to himself.

The comments from this blog discuss this topic.

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2011/06/goin-home.html


Hello Steve. Again, an assumption that blacks "don't make videos about NDEs" while actually having NDEs needs to be backed up with actual data.
The blog you point to is yet another internet location discussing my original posts on another forum, so I am familiar with it already.
 
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