KTF Weekly Newsletter: Critical Race Panic, the Heights of Colorism, QAmom
June 17, 2021
Hi everyone,
Be sure to check out Jonathan’s recent, powerful piece on the blog if you haven’t already. And let’s get right to it! This week’s resources to help us leave colonized faith for the Kingdom of God:
Sy’s recommendations:
I’m a little hesitant about continuing to talk about the Christian panic over critical race theory (CRT). This is because most people are using CRT as a stand-in for any progressive idea about race that conservative Christians do not like, rather than discussing the specific stream of legal academia called CRT. And on top of that, there is some highly coordinated political action to muddy the definition of CRT in order to use it as an excuse to bury local government officials who express disfavored opinions under a mountain of complaints, letters, phone calls, and even FOIA requests. So good faith, neighbor-loving engagement is, to put it mildly, not what we’re dealing with here. But a great piece in Arc Digital this week put forward a quite convincing argument that precision in the meanings of terms like CRT is always important for several reasons (really, do read the piece), one of which is that the intent of the definition muddiers is to stagnate any progress in the country’s understanding of racism or its history, which we sorely need. So I will continue to send you all toward Wheaton College philosophy professor Nathan Cartagena, this time to his ongoing series of conversations with Bradly Mason discussing what CRT is and is not. Spoiler: it is not Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, or the 1619 Project.
For a lot of people, terms like BIPOC, Asian-American, Latinx, and many others that we use as short hand for demographic groups can seem a bit alien. Discourse about these words often revolves around political correctness and the (largely imaginary) threats to those who use terms that are out of date or considered offensive. But language shifts for a reason, many of them good. The most recent two episodes of the Chasing Justice podcast are a discussion on the use of these terms that is refreshingly free of the mainstream discourse, and focuses instead on the reasons and the ways that Christians can deploy this language in an attempt to be more faithful to Jesus. The hosts, previous Shake the Dust guest Sandra Maria Van Opstal and Kathy Khang, also discuss pitfalls of this language. It’s a conversation you don’t often get to hear if you aren’t having it yourself, so give it a listen! Here are links to part 1 and part 2.
Suzie’s recommendations:
This week’s episode of Shake the Dust touches on tragic divisions that exist within the immigrant rights movement due to anti-Black racism. This reveals that even spaces of liberation are not immune to the destructive impact of colorism and white-adjacent privilege downstream of white supremacy. One clear example of this is the controversy that arose this past week over the lack of Afro-Latino presence in the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s other acclaimed musical, In the Heights. While Miranda has since taken responsibility for this erasure and posted a public apology, it is telling that a work of visual art initially lauded for its authentic depiction of a prominent Latinx immigrant community still failed to fully rise above these painful layers of marginalization. Miranda was right to apologize, and this serves as a reminder that we all still have work to do, and humility and the willingness to listen and accept critique is what will help get us there.
Duke Divinity School’s Faith and Leadership online magazine recently published a great interview with Howard University School of Divinity dean Yolanda Pierce that contains so many pearls of wisdom from her book, In My Grandmother’s House. The collection of essays released earlier this year paints the contours of what Pierce describes as an everyday womanist theology- one that centers the lived experiences of Black women. As Pierce compellingly explains, “Womanist theology says, ‘First, start with yourself. First, start with what you observe around you, the people in your community and your neighborhood and your family, because that’s where you see and locate God.’ Yes, I would make the claim that any theology constructed for the least of these is everything that is needed for all of us.” Check out the brief interview and/or buy the book for more poignant and beautifully grounded insights.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a Georgia member of the House of Representatives, learned what the Holocaust was this week; multiple states are banning the teaching of critical race theory and the discussion of subjects in their curricula that might cause “distress”; and Mike Pence recently doubled down on the assertion that systemic racism doesn’t exist. One implication of these claims and actions is that we are living with and are therefore called to love people who speak, live, and believe very differently than us. Jesus invites us to engage our neighbors with Him at the center, and in Him, love for both neighbor and enemy is possible – with all things being pulled into the light. Clint Smith exemplifies this in the courage in his recent piece pressing into the dueling narratives behind plantation weddings. More intimately, filmmaker Sean Donnelly chronicles his mother’s slip into conspiracy theories with a short documentary called, QAmom. In an interview on Vox’s Today Explained, he implores listeners to press into the difficult conversations, stressful interactions, and tense moments to speak truth but stay in relationship. For followers of Jesus, lovingly disrupting false, destructive narratives is something we must practice and master. These pieces I think prompt us in the right direction towards difference instead of away from it.
Shake the Dust preview
This week, we talk to Milly Aquije, an undocumented pastor and immigration activist, and Gabrielle Apollon, a human rights lawyer who grew up undocumented (and also at some point after that married Sy). We speak to them about growing up in the US as immigrants, the many immigration advocates including Milly who choose to disclose their undocumented status publicly, Gabrielle’s recent article on racism in both the immigration system and the immigrant rights movement, solidarity between Black and brown communities, and a lot more.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week!
The KTF team