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tree. Turner was eight months pregnant at the time, but that fact elicited no mercy from the mob, who applied gasoline and oil to her pregnant body.
Antilynching crusader Ida B. Wells found that many lynchings were over economic disputes.
Attorney Bryan Stevenson put it this way: “The North won the Civil War, but the South won the narrative war.”43
Texas law at that time prohibited interracial schools, so Seymour had to sit in the hallway to listen to lectures while his white classmates sat in desks inside the room.
engaged in politics and reform in their communities in a theological tradition known as the “social gospel.”
twin pillars of black inferiority and white paternalism, pillars that were common beliefs among whites in general.”
between 1920 and 1930. Chicago’s black population grew from 109,500 to 234,000, New York City from 152,000 to 328,000, and Detroit from 41,000 to 120,066.27 These rapid and massive changes were not without problems. The influx of southern black people changed white perceptions of the city and increased interracial tensions.
In 1933 the federal government created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) to purchase the homes of people who were at imminent risk of defaulting,
“The HOLC created color-coded maps of every metropolitan area in the nation, with the safest neighborhoods colored green and the riskiest colored red.”41 Neighborhoods with any black people, even if the residents had stable middle-class incomes, were coded red, and lenders were unlikely to give loans in these areas. This practice became known as redlining. The HOLC policy was a form of government-sponsored racism.
King told reporters, “I have never seen such hate. Not in Mississippi or Alabama. This is a terrible thing.”57
very conspicuousness of white supremacy in the South has made it easier for racism in other parts of the country to exist in open obscurity.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I think we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.”
Christian moderates insisted on obeying the law, working through the courts, and patiently waiting for transformation.
trapped by the forces of poverty, incarceration, failing schools, and racism.
“Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. There is no other answer.”
“The cartoon awakened [Ali], and he realized that he hadn’t chosen Christianity. He hadn’t chosen the name Cassius Clay. So why did he have to keep those vestiges of slavery?”
many of these newly formed schools used the word “Christian” or “Church” in their name.
participated and often led the private school movement during desegregation.”
the civil rights movement, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall wrote that King has been “endlessly reproduced and selectively quoted, his speeches retain their majesty yet lose their political bite.”48 For many Christian evangelicals, he has become
prophet (or truth-teller)
what has become known as “color-blind conservatism.” By excising explicitly racial terms like “black,” “white,” or “nigger” from their language, practitioners can claim they “don’t see color.” As a result, people can hold positions on social and political issues that disproportionately and adversely harm racial and ethnic minorities, but they can still proclaim their own racial innocence.
evangelicals accept and promote four principles: conversionism, an emphasis on a personal decision to follow Jesus Christ; biblicism, an understanding of the Bible that interprets miracles as true and Scripture as divinely inspired; crucicentrism, a focus on the crucifixion of Christ as a sacrifice for his followers; and activism, an engaged faith whose adherents seek to work out their faith through evangelism and advocacy.6
. . vote like your whole world depended on it.”16 In effect, Nixon was pointing to the civil rights movement and its nonviolent direct action, not as the endeavor to secure long-denied justice to black Americans but as the tarmac to tyranny and disregard for the law.
United States has just 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its incarcerated persons.
racism, since it is socially constructed, adapts when society changes.
all the American church needs to do in terms of compromise is cooperate with already established and racially unequal social systems.
The only advantage many felt they had was their whiteness.
Fundamentalists espoused separatism from the modernizing culture and even from other evangelical denominations and churches considered too liberal in their beliefs.
“welfare queen” became a stand-in for the president’s criticism of an undeserving class of poor people, especially inner-city black women.
Christian conservatives carefully coded any change, especially those related to race, as “liberal,”
Legislation has rendered the most overt acts of racism legally punishable.
“racialized” society which they defined as a society “wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities and social relationships.”
“culture creates ways for individuals and groups to organize experiences and evaluate reality. It does so by providing a repertoire or ‘tool kit’ of ideas, habits, skills, and styles.”
importance of communities and institutions in shaping the ways people think and behave. Another belief in the cultural toolkit is relationalism,
failure to acknowledge the subtler ways that racism operates today.
Being complicit only requires a muted response in the face of injustice or uncritical support of the status quo.
tendency to positively and uncritically quote from white nationalist media sources,
The impact of the 2016 election cannot be underestimated.
telling black people and their allies that their attempts to bring up racial concerns are “divisive.”
Centuries of racism in the American church cannot be overcome by “pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities” that ignore the deep social, political, and cultural divides that persist across the color line.
The solutions are simple though not easy. They are, in many cases, obvious though unpopular. No matter their difficulty or distastefulness, however, they are necessary in order to change the narrative of the American church and race.
Public Religion Research Institute study revealed that in a one-hundred-friend scenario, white people had just one black friend, one Latinx, and one Asian friend. In that same scenario, black people had eight white friends, two Latinx friends, and zero Asian friends.
set aside preferences and prestige to take the side of the marginalized and despised?
Segregation denied black people opportunities for education, employment, and asset accumulation, all of which contribute to the wealth gap between black and white citizens. The wealth gap
Even among the richest people, the wealthiest 1 percent of black families have about $1.6 million compared to $12 million for the wealthiest 1 percent of white families.9 The
Germany has paid about $50 billion to Holocaust survivors and their families. Japanese-Americans confined to internment camps during World War II received an apology from the government and $20,000 per victim. Although far too few received far too little, some Native American nations received some recompense for the land stolen from them.
Instead of expending valuable energy transforming a school whose personnel may resist the very idea of antiracism, that energy could go toward starting a new seminary that is already racially aware and responsive.
The acquisition of knowledge should not result only in personal enlightenment but also the alleviation of oppression.
Juneteenth, a mash-up of the words June and nineteenth, remembers the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas finally learned about their emancipation.
Full freedom has not been achieved for all Americans. Too many people still struggle to break all kinds of gender, racial, ethnic, and economic bonds. The fight for the full equality and freedom of all Americans persists.
