If God Still Breathes, Why Can't I?: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority

by Angela N. Parker

Maxwell and Shields argue that the GOP has, with great success, married ideas about women’s place in society, White evangelical Christianity, White racial grievances, and even issues pertaining to the economy. Because the strategy worked only temporarily (until the election of Georgian Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter in 1976), new coded messages had to be spread so that Ronald Reagan could secure his 1980 run for the presidency. Reagan advocated that the United States move past identity and become “color-blind” while also invoking the idea of the “welfare queen,” code for a Black woman driving a Cadillac while receiving over $150,000 a year in tax-free entitlements from the government as a result of her twelve social security cards. Reagan’s portrait of undeserving racial minorities as “takers” was successful. I would argue that by using language about Mexicans being “rapists and murderers” who are “bringing drugs” in caravans to the United States, the Trump administration utilized the same strategy as Reagan.