Last fall, I had the great honor of serving as a visiting fellow at the Oxford Center for Religion and Culture, headed by the renowned Black liberation theologian Anthony G. Reddie. Anthony and I became fast friends, and we had…
The truth about assimilation
Many people believe our racial problems would all go away if we all would simply focus on being “unhyphenated Americans.” This assimilation argument is wrong. In America, assimilation into the default ethnic culture means becoming white. The birth of a…
PRRI’s Structural Racism Index attempts to quantify racist beliefs
How do you measure racism? In the contemporary American battleground of politics, culture and religion, people often call out others for being racist, and those accused often reply, “I’m not a racist.” Still others proudly wear the label “racist” as…
Whether blind, blurry or oblivious, failure to see whiteness distorts God’s image in others
When people think about and discuss race, they often fail to see and acknowledge whiteness, distorting the image of God stamped upon all people, Erica Whitaker told participants in a Baptist News Global education conference on hidden racism in Colonial…
Moving lightly through this world: Reflections on the weight of white Christian innocence
In the wake of recent travels, I’ve been thinking about the novelty of the experience against the backdrop of the pandemic. What was routine now seems exotic; what was comfortable seems unsettling. I’ve seen a lot of discussion about the loss…
Putting the white in witness since the 1940s
Now is the time to bring our conversation about whiteness and world-viewing into the present tense. The language and concept of worldviews are somewhat clear in many corners of evangelicalism today, but how does whiteness figure into these concepts? And…
A short history of the roots of colonialism, racism and whiteness in ‘Christian worldview’
The state of the conversation around race in many corners of America, including too many churches, is a mess. And before we get too far down the road, I want to register my hesitation about trying to abridge what I…
A lowdown, dirty shame: Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and the unrenounced racism of white Christians
I do not desire your tears, pity, lip service or guilt. What I, and I think many black Christians, are looking for from white Christians is renunciation. And only the genuine kind that includes a pledge to consistent advocacy and action for racial justice.
A white Jesus can’t save a brown child
I was raised in a brown evangelical church in a small, predominantly white town in central Texas. Our “mother” church was one of the many First Baptist Churches in the Texas Bible Belt. Our congregation was composed mainly of poor, uneducated, largely undocumented migrants from rural Mexico. And while we were a brown church, the Jesus we worshiped was white.