"The Origin of Race" - Dr. Willie Jennings

I am so thankful to be here with you I bring you warmest greetings from the Dean the faculty and staff of Yale Divinity School I am thrilled to be in the Northeast now I have been in Durham North Carolina for almost 30 years and I'm married to a wonderful woman she's Bermudian so I took her from the warmth of the Carolinas to New Haven Connecticut and I pray that she'll fall back in love with me at some point in time so I'm thankful and I want to thank Jill and Roy for inviting me and for doing this courageous important work eat you don't know how excited I am anytime I hear from pastors and leaders in the church you really want to think seriously about these matters and things he and logically about them it's so blessing and I am deeply deeply honored and thrilled beyond measure to be here and I'm excited to be with my colleagues we'll be sharing the panel tomorrow morning we enjoyed a wonderful dinner this evening we almost didn't make it but what we did and so thank you all for for coming at this this urgent hour that we're in this is uh this is an exciting time and I'm glad to be alive in it so I feel the need because this is such a sacred moment to offer brief word of Prayer as we begin may I do that and then begin to offer my lecture but I sense the presence of the Spirit with us tonight and I want to honor that presence so please play with me we are thankful God for your presence you lead us never by accident you lead us purposefully and we are thankful that you have brought us together tonight we expect to hear from you even in the context of a lecture we expect that you will speak to us because we are your servants one and all many of us here this evening are tired our anxiety and our worry has been heavy over these last few weeks and so I ask that you would refresh us strengthen us for the long journey because we know that you are a God that never tires and we pray that you would grant us your strength your wisdom your insight so that we might run this race with strength and most importantly with joy and hope we pray this in the name of the one who rose from the dead and in his power we pray and in his name Amen so I want to follow my assignment that my dear colleagues gave me and I'm given a little bit of a title to my comments tonight the love work of the people of God that's what I want you to be thinking about as I'm talking the love work the people of God in 1967 jr. wrote the words famous words where do we go from here chaos or community he wrote those words as he contemplated the future of this country and its dogged refusal to address its racial present this is very much our question now as we contemplate this extraordinary moment in this country we are witness things we are witnessing a fuller exposure of the interweaving of Christianity and whiteness that has flow through this national consciousness of this country from its beginning and now we are faced with the difficult task of addressing what is first and foremost my sisters and brothers a Christian dilemma by calling this moment a Christian dilemma I am in no way excluding anyone else from sharing in this difficult moment at all nor am i trying to boil down any number of complex problems and issues to a problem in Christianity the current moment is a dilemma for us because we created we created the racial logic that now shapes the Western world we all know all of us here know that the world is not simply black and white and cannot be understood as though it were simply black and white but we cannot understand this world this racial world without understanding the paradigmatic and parenting realities of black and white blackness and whiteness are not simply shorthand terms for the historical struggles between Europeans and Africans or peoples of African descent and European descent whiteness and blackness point to the history of a world turned upside down and then unfolded in a new way of being a new way of being it was and is a way of being that distorts the creation and denies the full reality and mystery majesty of the creature the racial wound as window berries so elegantly termed it many years ago happen because of Christian action this is the inescapable truth of our history we were at the potter's wheel rooting the clay that was in our hand the historical we as Cuccia here my friends because we are part of that cloud of witnesses that number that no one can number many of whom drew the conceptual physical and geographic lines within which racial logics and racial reasoning came to life they gave us the dilemma of whiteness and blackness the dilemma was formed in the transformation of bodies and land Christians who came to the new worlds they did something unprecedented they separated peoples from land separated identity from place separated connectivity from relationality and turned the world and it's multiple beautiful peoples turn the land and it's multiple beautiful forms of life all into commodity form they turn the world into possession in an absolute sense that may not only made the world and its people people sellable but they taught the world they taught the world to see itself in fragmentation and enclosure in fragmentation and enclosure think about this for a moment what is private property if not the victory of fragmentation and enclosure what is race if not the victory of fragmentation and enclosure they are two sides of the same coin racial vision profoundly distorted our sense of connection and relation allottee with the earth with animals and with each other racial vision has made it almost impossible for us to sense a boundedness to other creatures and to the earth itself it has hollowed out our sense of beat belonging to one another by replacing that sense of belonging with a vision of racial belonging far more palatable and powerful than Christian belonging we are in desperate need now of a spiritual practice that would draw us into a reality of belonging stronger than racial belonging a spiritual practice strong enough to reshape the power of racial belonging we need a spiritual practice of belonging that we can commit our lives to that is rooted in the triune life of God that is rooted in a pattern of belonging that takes seriously God's desire to draw us together into the divine life to partake of God's own body and blood and to be filled with the Spirit of the Living God God invites us into an intimate reality of belonging so powerful so revolutionary that we continue to struggle to capture the life together God is calling for us to enter and embody we need a spiritual practice that would counteract racial practice a spiritual practice that would anchor our political work and our ecclesial vision we need such a practice now that only to help us navigate the racial winds blowing against us but also one that will address the ways our lives and identities continue to be shaped by the racial antagonisms that structure life in the u.s. and in many other places in this world we can feel you can sense the structural antagonism in this country now more than ever that spiritual practice that we need must involve at least three things this will focus on tonight must involve at least three things first the renunciation of whiteness the renunciation of whiteness second the humility of a learner the humility of a learner and third a desire for life together that must be registered geographically it's very important a desire for life together that must actually touch the ground together these things constitute the love work the love work that we must be about as the people of God for this urgent moment so you got those three good good good all right so let's let's come back let's start with the renunciation of whiteness early Europeans inherited theological visions that already housed the symbiotic tropes of whiteness and blackness that trafficked in the ideas of good and evil light and dark life and death within theological language however with the colonial period that reciprocity of white and black would also house a theological way of seeing that formed ideas about the good the true and the beautiful around bodies designated as white whiteness emerged as the ground for the universal by the universal I mean the ability of the one to represent the many the ability of the one to represent the many as well as the ability of the one to present reality on behalf of the many if you get that the daily one to represent the many the ability of the one to present reality to the many right the reality on behalf of the many white bodies were established as the primary site for the human in all its weakness or Majesty whiteness emerged out of Christianity as we have to keep in mind and unleashed a power that is yet difficult to comprehend unless one understands that Christianity always invokes comprehensive vision what I mean by that so anyone and everyone may be seeing through the lens of Center and saying it isn't that right anyone can be seen through the lens of faithful or faithless right whiteness moves irreflexive irrepressibly in the same direction now only because it urn relenting lee generates white body exemplars of beauty of goodness of truth but it also carries carries forward housing capacities housing capacities that is patterns of thinking and ways of being patterns of thinking and ways of being that invite multiple people's to imagine their worlds through white bodies a dear friend of mine who passes the church in Durham he has a wonderful adopted daughter from Burma from Myanmar and he would he would back took her back to see her family and to see her people and he went through there was a kind of downtown area in the village near where they lived and he sent me this picture it was this massive picture of an advertisement for lightening cream this is in Burma Myanmar lightening cream MV the sign said white beauty so the question is why is a sign like that in a place where nobody looks like that unless you understand housing capacities that you can imagine yourself inside of approximating if you will with that body for for a myriad of historical reasons we have not had the conceptual ability to name whiteness for what it is listen very carefully not a particular people not a particular gender not a particular nation but an invitation a becoming a transformation and accomplishment it was an accomplishment sought after by immigrant group after immigrant group coming to these shores hoping to strip away their ethnic path and claim an American future there was a time in this country when immigrants coming would have never ever called themselves white ever it would call themselves Italian or polish the call themselves like whiteness was and is a way of being in the world and a way of seeing the world at the same time whiteness is not a given no one is born white it is a choice it is a choice whiteness is not to equal an opposite of blackness whiteness is a way of imagining oneself as a central facilitating reality of the world the reality that makes sense of the world interprets organizes and narrates the world and whiteness is having the power to realize and sustain that imagination you get that to achieve whiteness is not to become European or the strange designation called Caucasian and after all you historically called casian is an aesthetic category the gentleman who invented the idea a guy named blumenbach he got the idea because he believed that the Mount Caucasus produced the most beautiful people in the world literally this was science the science and so Caucasian represented an aesthetic decision these are the most beautiful people also let's call them Caucasian anyone can form their life toward the goal of achieving whiteness whiteness positions people to imagine themselves to imagine themselves from the plateau of Imperial possibility what I mean by that Imperial possibility that is that they may have what they want and be in control of their world suddenly how is it possible then to renounce whiteness the real question is why would anybody want to renounce whiteness if it is the achievement that so many in this world strive to have and maintain that's the real question but that is the point whiteness must be maintained for it to exist it must be maintained and are for it to exist it must be sustained economically politically militarily and geographically it's an energy that must be sustained the renunciation doesn't begin with a speech act it does not begin by saying I am NOT white or I don't want to be or become white that's not how the renunciation begins the renunciation begins for us with proclaiming our identities as Gentiles who have accepted the story of another people as true we have accepted the God of another people as our God this is at the heart of our faith and it has been denied to most of us of the faith it begins with the recognition that we are what the great theologian M Shawn Copeland calls a thinking margin we remember as the writer of Ephesians tells us to remember that we were outside the covenants of promise made to Israel we were without God and as the Apostle says without hope in this world but the gracious God of Israel may know to us in Jesus has brought us near renunciation begins with remembering what we never fully learned that we are a people we are a people who came from the margins we were never in control of the story and and we remember and we remember what it feels like to be included it is that feeling that is so important what does it feel like to be included brought into sparked into the center only by the life of one of Israel's children renunciation means that we choose to remember the reality of inclusion that is at the heart of our faith and that inclusion is our way of life we include because that's what our faith is about inclusion we not only choose those at the margins of society because from the margins our faith came to life but we also pay careful attention to the ways whiteness constructs the margin renessa renunciation must also include careful analysis a careful analysis of the particular ways whiteness sustains itself in and around us you see whiteness always aims at racial invisibility and ignorance for the sake of control whiteness aims at ignorance pay attention it aims at invisibility it wants to be invisible and it wants to not know it aims at ignorant and invisibility why for the sake of control you need invisibility and you need to claim that you don't know in order to sustain control it aims to create here's what's a crucial phrase it aims to create neighborhoods schools religious experiences excuse me educational experiences Lipton's that religious experiences related of and social settings and social settings that normalize the control and or absence of non-white bodies it seeks to structure ignorant and in disability renunciation means that we press against precisely next we press against invisibility and ignorance we press against that control and that absence it means we push against those processes economic political social intellectual and Geographic that helped to preserve a world where whiteness is at the center and everything else exists in its service to move against this energy to center whiteness and that's what it is to move against this energy to Center whiteness requires we allow ourselves allow ourselves to sense it you have to sense it and then choose a different place to imagine our work and our lives we must always remember that wonderful passage the wonderful passage from Hebrews chapter 11 verse 24 I know you have to all memorize but I'll just tell you once again that it is a marvelous passage there in the middle of that wonderful chapter it says that Moses when he was grown up refused to be called a son of Pharaoh's daughter choosing instead choosing instead ill-treatment with the people of God and here's what the passage says and in this way was following the Christ that's an astounding passage he chose not to live out the trajectory of his identity having been formed in Pharaoh's house who was remembered that was made a race racial vicious of harm in his country it is very powerful in compilers and buttons as to polls if it is possible to place all of your features think of it as two polls and generating field of energy within which people from vastly different weighting life different places on earth are seen and taught to see there existed between margin-right they are not necessarily taught to be black or white the pedagogical power of this field of energy is that it teaches them to evaluate their life and their light projects on a scale of a derogatory and nobody aiming towards any sort of laurels or life it also teaches that we should inhabit a way of being in this world that imagines our identities completely collapsed onto our bodies and our connection to land space and place and animals only may real and consequential economically that is only through ownership and possession so our love work of renunciation aims at collapsing that field of energy by offering us an alternative vision to racial vision that is the vision of a Gentile the vision of Gentiles who live by the grace of Israel's God come to us in Jesus Christ and whose very way of living is shaped in inclusion we want to include we remember what it was like to be at the margins so along with renunciation of whiteness and the desire to be white that anyone can have there must be also the humility of a learner so the humility of a learner now in order to combat the racial condition of the West as I said we need a spiritual practice that takes on the humility of a learner as a way of life we are the inheritors of what I call what I have called a pedagogical Imperial imperialism pedagogical imperialism excuse me very deep in our Christianity and it is buried deep which has denied to us it has denied to us a crucial aspect of the reality of God the reality of a God who delights in learning we just said it again a God who delights in learning God delights and learning of God's own creation and in Jesus God learns Jesus learns and he teaches his teaching however is embedded in his learning it is precisely this deeper reality of the Incarnation in relation to making disciples that we not only have lost but many of us have never even been introduced to we have preferred to impose theological knowledge denigrate indigenous knowledge and present a God who knows everything and wants to know nothing which means we have presented a Christianity that knows everything and wants to know nothing because the Christian God is not found in the learning in this way of thinking only in the teaching see Imperial Christianity gave birth to this pedagogical imperialism which turned the entire world outside the colonial West and to perpetual students perpetual learners and those in the West as eternal teachers this pedagogical imperialism gave birth to Western imperialism it also introduced a form of modern Christianity into the world that is not open to learning to changing to adapting becoming new but one that assimilates people and/or segregates peoples into their own versions of Christianity who often enter those versions out of the simple desire to be recognized and respected we need a vision what we need is a vision of the humility of the learner that is akin to the kind of vision of humility we find in the rule of Saint Benedict while we know that the monastic gesture that we see in st. Benedict's rule has often been used to underwrite oppression slavery patriarchy the rule also has an important history in helping people rethink their identity and refashion their subjectivity we fashion the way they understand themselves in his powerful presentation of humility in Chapter seven Benedict presents the 12 steps of humility a monk must take and with each step bless you Benedict is not only presenting a life in self review in self-examination but a life profoundly open to others and to the world humility is the key to being a learner and a teacher and the kind of humility we need today is one that would enter more fully into the way of our incarnate God who took on the way of the creature and RNA is said in Jesus God lived out the contours of the creature great phrase God lived out the contours of the creature God lived out the shape of the creature the kind of humility we need today is one that embodies the desire to learn the deep histories of the place where we live it means being open to the expansion of our identities toward the life worlds of those around us the people around us the people around us are a call not just to get to know them but to open ourselves to them to be to the expansion transformation of our very identities the kind of learner necessary now is not one who just wishes to learn a few more facts about their surroundings and the people around them but as one who imagines their world and their work their world and their work from within gestures of incarnation that is of intentional journeys constantly entering into the worlds of those we are honored to know in the expansion of our lives into their lives now such expansion is not a new colonial conquest but an embodied desire for life together we are disciples of God's only child who desired to learn that's exactly the reality of God's desire that must shape this third element of a spiritual practice of belonging necessary for this moment and that is a desire for life together that must be registered geographically you also with me if I suppose I could thank you for playing you see any spiritual practice that would help us in this moment must speak to the Reformation of our desire the commentary in the book of Acts this is one of the things I'm clear now on having spent so much time looking at this book and we can talk a bit about this more about this tomorrow but in the book of Acts what you notice is that almost no one is doing what they want to do everybody is being pressed by the Spirit to do exactly what they don't want to do think about it go back and look at the book and what the Spirit is always pressing people to do in the book of Acts and start to the finish is to desire people they don't desire right invited back in time we'll talk about the book of Acts I'm just so excited so any spiritual practice that would help us at this moment must speak to the Reformation desire yet the Reformation of desire necessary now is one that follows the direction of the Spirit of God in challenging our cultural aesthetic nationalist and geographic sensibilities one of the most devastating effects of whiteness is that it has been the energy that has driven its opposite cultural nationalisms everywhere peoples have been subjected to the formative powers of whiteness they have been forced into protective gestures to sustain identity cultural integrity memory story indigenous knowledge and practices people's the world over have been forced into the strange work of negotiating racial and cultural assimilation which is burden people with worries over cultural authenticity or betrayal with loss and the fear of loss of identity and with real struggles over self-loathing and self-love this has rendered Christianity as a segregationist religion that encourages racial cultural and intellectual cul-de-sacs little corners for my own kin color and kind as we say in the south yet the reformation of desire necessary for us now follows the work of the Spirit who always presses us toward those we would prefer not to know not to love and certainly not to join the joining citizen brothers you'll get anything else today the joining is everything is everything at the sight of Gentiles being joined to Israel at the site of ah constructing Jerusalem regarding the new that God was doing in the world we come to see God's desire embodied in us where people's are sustained upheld and loved through the joining it is through the joining that a world is framed in love and faith is presented in its most intensely inclusive reality the point is not that I know my people and love my people in their by love myself but that you know my people and love my people and then I come to know yourself in a new way did you get there the point is expansion of identity through love and life together segregationist ways of being can map cannot be overcome by thought alone they must be addressed spatially in space and time the final and most important thing I must say to you in this regard is race is a matter of geography and we will not be able to overcome our racial dilemma until we get serious about the geographic formation and sustaining of racial identity racial calculations and spatial calculations have always flowed together in the history of the colonial west and we live in the powerful undertow of that history what haunts me is the way Christianity has been and continues to be complicit with and subject to this underflow undertow Christian faith and life Christian faith in life continues to be driven by the geographic winds created by land developers city planners civil engineers real estate agents city government officials and architects we are however not simply passive spectators to the constant Geographic turnings of contemporary life we have performed our faith right on top of these developments often presenting them as natural and normal ways of forming life and living in the world when in fact they have never been natural or normal there is nothing natural or normal about the geographic patterns of our country of our cities of our towns there's nothing normal about that friends you must never make it normal it is deeply sick place and space for us are always designed always designed the spatial placement and configuration of land property in life land property and life roll out together and shaped by a racial past and dictating a future like most of you in this room I was taught not to see what was in plain sight that my world was configured by segregated spaces oh there was a lot of language about economics and prices you know just driven by the market but we know better that's by design the church has for the most part been oblivious to this reality and oftentimes supportive of it we have been the high priest of segregated spaces service to the economic desires that create them but economic desire alone is not the only driver of what I call our violent geography we live always in the wake of that energy that drives what I call Geographic whiteness with its desire to create communities that normalize white dominance by creating communities that structure ignorant and invisibility you have to have space to have ignorant if you don't control space you cannot control the word ignorance does you have to have it we narrate our spaces with the distribution and arrangement of racialized bodies always as an anam ik and emotional backdrop are thinking about the places we live and work the places in which we learn and play the places that are built up or torn down anticipate patterns of movement of racialized bodies our geographic senses are always haunted by racial anxiety the struggle to control land and spaces and establish Geographic whiteness is the untold story of American history and especially of this past election but that history marks almost every square mile of this country of course we be clear it is not that this country City after city town after town was developed and then enacted racial segregation segregation has been a fundamental engine that informed and informs yet informs the planning building zoning and organizing of life flows and places we yet live in the geographic history that we did not create we follow the patterns that have established habits of fragmentation and isolation that teach us to be oblivious to what is going around us we have normalized the absurdity of go test disparity in quality of life separated by only a few miles or a few yards we have been trained we have been trained that if there is death and destruction and poverty and sadness half a mile from us we imagine it's not connected to us that is the strangest thing in the world we have to understand how strange that is that we that we don't realize that it's the same space but the answer sisters and brothers is not a few more mixed neighborhoods what is needed is a new way of imagining social life by reimagining Geographic life a new way of challenging racial belonging by Rhee geographically so as I like wherever I go I like to say this I think there are three things there are things that there are three things that need to be done first let us learn and tell the true story of space wherever I go ever I go I encouraged churches and church leaders to learn the history of their space what was here before this church building who lived here who was moved in order for this church to be built here but there's a wider story that we must learn and that is the story of the city or town that we live in we must learn the history of the ratio geography of our town or city what has been the geographic history of non-white people in this town where did they live where were they told they couldn't could not live when did that change how did it change has it changed how was and is geographic whiteness organized and established spatially here how was resistance to minority presence deployed here these are the kinds of questions we want to ask because we believe in a God who creates and that we are that God's creation we not only want to know but we need to know we need to know this history because the social history of a place is always inside its geographic history always more importantly the root of most of the problems of any city or town comes back to this geographic history which shows us the history of the flow of good insert goods and services opportunities and disadvantages what is crucial here is to learn the truth and tell the truth we cannot begin to address the racial disparities on the racial antagonism in this country until we acknowledge and even confess the geographic construction of it all we need something like a truth commission for every city or town that lays out in as much detail as possible the way life has come to be shaped in particular community neighborhood by neighborhood we need that second churches must involve themselves in the geographic shaping and reshaping of communities we can no longer afford to be ignorant about these matters I would love to see Christians start asking questions about it all about the placement of buildings the formation of neighborhoods the designation mapping and pricing and pricing of spaces zoning policies which are never natural they are never natural what time they are never natural somebody made that stuff up right the zoning policies real estate operations real estate operations you need to understand what real estate people understand those of you do real estate you know what I'm talking about the plans of land developers which most people in the community have no idea about and those are the people who decide the future all of that all of that I would love to see Christians start asking questions about such questions and reflection should be a fundamental part of what we learn in church and of course in the Academy but I'll fight that another night we should invite everyone into discussions about the morality of geographies asking whether we are perpetuating a violent geography by seemingly benign land development decisions immediately these are very complicated matters but the absence of a moral compass in these matters continues to have devastating effects on the lives of so many people the compass that drives these matters now is controlled by local political economies calibrate to race and racial Ecology's calibrated to the market we need to invite people to imagine and build toward new forms of community and habitation that reverse violent geographies and challenge Geographic whiteness and finally thank you for your patience finally it is important to see the connection between space and discipleship the connection between space and your vision of belonging your vision of the longing system but it has to hit the ground it can't just be in your head it has to hit the ground the great Native American religious scholar and theologian vine Deloria jr. who not enough people know about and I know people read once said that Christians think temporally but they do not think spatially what vine deloria jr. was pointing toward was the historic problem of a faith offered to indigenous peoples that told them that time was far more important to God than space the terrible heresies that time all God cares about is the future time not the present space terrible heresy so was told to indigenous peoples and they they found that to be absolutely absurd after all they were told we wait for a new heaven and a new earth it was and is a phase that believes strongly in the time of salvation but has never understood fully the space of salvation space of salvation we do not yet understand the redemption of space the redemption of space space and place matter to God God waits on us to touch the space because space is the arena of divine meaning not just time but space you must think space before you think time he must think space where is my body in relationship to your body we'll find the time if we have the space but if we don't have the space the time will always be just episodic always be fleeting because space is not there there must be space right I'm sorry I'm get too excited about this the tragedy we inhabit the tragedy we inhabit is that our visions of discipleship it's reach its quality its character are all controlled by the shape of our geographic imaginations we imagine the building of the church as the horizon of the calibration of our discipleship and it is not the issue here is how people imagined space and create living spaces how people seek to know and love their real neighbors not their theoretical neighbors and my hope is that you will start to correct this in your own life correct the goat s absence of spatial awareness within the Christianity you and I have inherited so a desire for life together must be registered geographically and the character of our witness is found and precisely the form of spatial life we are striving to live so we need a spiritual practice that teaches us to yield to the Spirit of God in the joining one that invites us to ask the question who are we avoiding being drawn to and in what ways are we resisting the spirit of God's desire to join us so I am suggesting a spiritual practice or set of spiritual practices that cultivate a sense of belonging that might challenge the power of racial belonging for us these three aspects the renunciation of whiteness the humility of a learner and a desire for life together registered geographically are crucial for new spirituality of belonging I am convinced we urgently urgently need to take on this important love work thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

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Length: 55min 6sec (3306 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 25 2017