A Higher Glyphic

Growing up, Michael Stevens saw black men as thugs, drug dealers, and players on TV and in the news. He rarely saw black men portrayed as intelligent, affluent, or even as the 'good guy'. He knew that it was wrong, but saw it as just another fact of life. Now it is something that he wants to see changed.

As he got up from his chair in an office filled with books, papers, and pictures of his wife and four children, Stevens explained that he prefers to be called Mike instead of "Rev. Stevens" or "Pastor Mike" because it sounded weird to him. His North Face jacket swished as he walked down the hall inside Vine Community Church with an athletic stride, joking about his crammed office that he shares with another pastor. He settled into a chair in the church's coffeehouse and laughed as he ate his less than nutritionally balanced lunch of leftover birthday cake from the freezer.

Stevens, 29, explained how he grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Deerborn housing projects in a family hit by hard times and poverty. He moved to Carbondale to attend SIU, later graduating with a degree in rehabilitation services.

While still at SIU, he started his career at the Center for Comprehensive Services as a program evaluator, working with and designing curriculum for patients recovering from brain injuries. In 2005, he was hired as an associate pastor at Vine Community Church to oversee the ministry to the poor, hospitality, and to fill in teaching at the weekend services.

"For me, growing up, I didn't see a whole lot of positive images of black people in the media," Stevens said. He recalled watching blacks' pictures come on the evening news for criminal charges far more often than whites'. "Black people have been labeled as second class citizens by our culture for generations and it shows," Stevens said.

On MTV and VH1 as well as in many movies, Stevens has seen black people depicted as gangsters, pimps, drug dealers, and violent criminals to a degree that he said is damaging to the culture. "In the past, art depicted life. Now it seems like art is defining life. It starts out as entertainment, but people buy into that image and try to become that. It's sad," he said.

Stevens said he also feels that the black community isn't in the news media as often as it should be. While he realizes that blacks are a minority group in the U.S., Stevens said he would still like to see an increased number of stories on blacks.

"The majority of the media is non-black, so the sensitivity or the effort that it would take in order to fix that situation probably doesn't rank high on a priority list," he said.

Scott Joseph, a pastor who works with Stevens, said he has great respect for him and shares his desire for racial equality, especially in Southern Illinois. "Mike has a huge heart, especially with racial reconciliation in this area. He just wants to love on people, regardless of their color, which is really motivating for the rest of us," Joseph said.

As he sipped his Dr. Pepper, Stevens explained that he does not just blame the media for the negative and inaccurate portrayal of Blacks. He said he sees it as a larger issue that is not due to any one person or organization, but has satanic roots. "When I am directly impacted by racism, I really work hard as a Christian to remember that it is spiritual," Stevens said.

"When I was in Kenya, there was hatred among groups of people, not based on color. Because it's spiritual, it could be the reverse. If the majority was black in the U.S., they would discriminate against the whites," Stevens said.

Because of Steven's belief that racism's roots are spiritual, he said he tries to find the good in people. "One of the things I learned in working in the rehabilitation field was to separate the behavior from the person. When you do that, you can not like the behavior, but still love the person," he said.

Stevens is optimistic about what can be done to change the way black people are depicted in the media. "The media has an opportunity to show people what they don't know and move people to act," he said. "When I turn on the TV, I want to see more things that celebrate the positives in humanity, the good things that we have to do and can do."