The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism | Jemar Tisby

there has never not been a time when racism wasn't a part of American expressions of Christianity well thank you for watching another episode of the Jew 3 project podcast as always I'm your host Lisa fields the founder of the g3 project and today I'm joined by a very special guest who's no stranger to the g3 project soon to be dr. Jim our activity Gemara how're you doing we're gonna hope we're gonna go ahead and claim that we got many miles before I sleep but we're gonna persevere and get that PhD one day yes but before we start about what we're going to talk about today just give our listeners or viewers who who don't know who you are just a little bit of background sure my name is Jim art is B I'm the president of the witness a black Christian collective which is a website you can visit at the witness be cc.com the witness BCC comm and I'm also the co-host of the podcast pass the mic you can follow us on twitter at underscore past the mic we've also got a private Facebook page so you can search for us on Facebook and then be granted access there for a community of folks we call a dynamic voices for a diverse Church in addition to that I am a PhD student in US history at the University of Mississippi working on race religion and social movements in the 20th century and what we'll be talking about today I guess I can say I'm an author that still sounds weird to say but I wrote the book the color of compromise and various odd hustles as we all got to do to make ends meet though I'm glad to have you here to talk about the color of compromise just tell our audience kind of what inspired you to write the book the book is really a culmination of a lot of things if I can boil it down it would be I wrote the book because I love the church but I hate racism so I have been part of predominantly white institutions for a lot of my life whether it was the college Studies program in high school or being part of a 3% minority of african-americans undergrad and then in the church as well I came to faith in high school through a white evangelical youth group all great people instilled in me a love of the Bible but there were only a handful of people of color and even fewer African Americans so I was always sort of conscious of racial dynamics but then going on through it was really when I became a teacher in the Delta area that I started to think about issues of faith and justice because I was in a high poverty area we had kids coming who couldn't afford dress up day clothes we had parents who didn't have a job or were incarcerated we had terrible health care in the area and so I was getting all of this face to face in person through my students and their families and I started to ask what is our what is my faith have to do with justice and honestly in the sort of Christian traditions I was in they they just didn't have a whole lot not that they were completely silent but it but it wasn't as robust as I thought we needed and then fast forward to the 2010s in 2011 I started seminary and it's the same story I'm one of a very very small number of African Americans so we start the reformed african-american Network what is now the witness and and try to gather people who believe these things but we're scattered about we're out there but we're not connected and so that was a great experience but I I speak and I write about race and religion and justice and things really started to come to a head in the mid 2010 there was just a slew of events from Ferguson and Mike Brown to the Emanuel nine to of course the election and so in February 2017 I gave I gave a talk called the fierce urgency of now and it was it was a distillation of everything I was thinking and feeling in in that moment this was just a month after the inauguration of the car president this is still in the midst of a cascade of cellphone videos showing unarmed black people getting killed and I was frustrated I was honestly frustrated because not only was I looking at these current events but I was also reading history and throughout all these books you're you're seeing the blatant racism that this country's leaders and the the rank-and-file have promoted including church folks and and so I was like we need to be doing more and we need to be doing more now and it was out of that that the basic skeleton for this book arose and you know that was some of my passion the other reason I rewrote it relatedly is I love black people and that doesn't mean I hate white people it just means that I'm cognizant of the ways that that society D values blackness and black people and how much we need to consciously and it intentionally disco rediscover and recover the image of God in ourselves and the fact is racism still hurts people racism still kills people and I wanted to contribute this volume hopefully as a way to start revealing those ugly truths about racism so that we might feel the pressure and the burden to change right now and that's so important we can't deal with the present until we look at the past and a lot of people have questions about what do they say well why is there a black church and then you can take them to the past yeah and in when you as a historian engage people that like to talk about things and present tense only kind of what are the ways in which you have seen that has been effective to take people back well so so I think we're dealing with a spiritual battle here and so at the end of the day and I used to get very very frustrated because I felt like we who advocate for racial justice we have an airtight case we have an airtight case historically theologically socially whatever but even in light of all of that there were still so many people who were resistant to the idea who were defensive about it who outright rejected it and I came to realize that you could pile facts from the floor to the ceiling and it won't do anything if hearts are not softened to receive and hear the stories and experiences of other people to empathize and experience solidarity so all of that is to say there are some people who no matter what historical facts I give no matter how I frame it or even how sort of gentle and soft I am trying to walk them along they just will not have it and I say that in the introduction to the book I said there there there there are some people for whom the very premise of this book is objectionable and nothing I say in no way I say it is going to please them and I simply say to those folks um this book is here ready ready because I'm not gonna persuade or convince you in the words of pages or a podcast or a blog that I do that something God has to work on their hearts about now that being said there are plenty of people who are open to learning I interact with a lot of white Christians a lot of white evangelicals what I find is that the bulk of that group especially on the younger side you know mid 40s and lower they don't want to have the sort of culture war type of relationship of their forebears or their parents but they've also been brought up in there so they they don't quite know where to go who to trust what to learn from and so I find history is really a powerful tool because these are just verifiable facts this is stuff that happened these are narratives and stories and when you uncover what happens with history is the things you assumed to be natural and just sort of universally true in the atmosphere we find out that that has been specifically shaped and intentionally shaped by people and sometimes you're just you're surprised to discover the roots of what you believe yes that's that's so true when we think about your book the color of compromise if you had a starting point for compromise in American Christianity I know that the loaded question what do you thought what is the starting point for you one of the reasons I think we need to act with such urgency is there has never not been a time when racism wasn't part of American expressions of Christianity so that's all the way from Columbus and I start the firt the second chapter starts in the era of European discovery of North America and how Columbus from the very first moment he laid eyes on Native Americans or indigenous people he conceived them only as servants suitable to serve Europeans he conceived of them as empty vessels to civilize and to write European civilization and even Christianity upon so there was always this sort of looking down on people who were different one of the events that always stands out to me is in 1667 the Virginia assembly which was a group of Anglican white men they passed a law saying that baptism does not free an African native american or a mixed-race person and so right there you've got religion race and politics all blended it into one and what's interesting about that is the date so this is more than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence more than a hundred years before the Constitution so these ideas of white racial superiority and black inferiority they were baked into the very culture and society even before the political entity known as the United States came about so to trace it back it goes all the way back it's hard to say there's a starting point but there are landmarks 16 19 20 and odd Negroes are brought to British colonial Virginia that's not the first time people of African descent are in North America but it's widely recognized sort of the beginnings of what would become race-based chattel slavery there are all kinds of markers even in the Constitution itself the word slavery is never mentioned but they do have a clause that says if a slave escapes to a free State they can be returned to the slave state which essentially means there's no place in the country that's safe for a person of African descent it also means that if you are dark skinned and you're someplace where white people think you shouldn't be doesn't matter if you're actually free or not they can enslave you so it's always been there's the idea yes it is ingrained in the foundation of the US and that's uh that's what I think most people don't understand in the present um they assume that you know going back to the mag ahead we got to go back to a place where it was where we had ethics and morals yeah but there was never a time where we had that as a nation and that's a fundamental issue that that I was always wrestled with is you know the foundation of founding documents talk about We the People I talked about all people all people being able to pursue life liberty and happiness and that all people was never all people that we the people was never all the people and so I think a lot of the impulse for change nowadays is to make those words actually inclusive and actually mean all people and everyone black white young old able disabled uh immigrant you know native English speaker or not all of those groups for whom America is supposed to be this great democracy how do we actually realize that and that's been the impulse of the black freedom struggle all along what are some key things in the book that you want people to walk away with what are some kind of those points that you like I really want you to get this from chapter one I really want you to get this okay you don't have to work through all this yeah yeah so I think number one the structure of the book is really important so chapter 1 lays out the the kind of philosophical framework I talked about the fact that I'm in the church and I want the church to be healthier this is not just throwing stones at brothers and sisters in Christ I talked about I talked about the idea of complicity which is gonna be really tough for some people to grasp because most of the time when people in the majority think of racism they think of hurling the n-word at people or planting dynamite at the base of a church or burning a cross that's not happens and no doubt there's racial terrorism and extremism but the in terms of quantity that's still the minority of people most people though they didn't do those things but what they did do is they sort of co-signed it by their silence they exercised complicity by cooperating with the status quo instead of resisting it and that's gonna be really hard for some people to hear because you sort of think of yourself and it's like I've got people who are friends of different races they may even be in my family through marriage or adoption or something you're like how am i part of a system and I've never done anything bad to someone of color and I say that's good like you don't want to have malice in your heart toward different people but at the same time the system has been deliberately set up what system politics economics health care residences education you name it advantages certain groups of people namely white people and that didn't happen by accident and so simply by going along with things as they were set up and intended to do you sort of perpetuate racial divides so this idea of complicity is one huge one and it goes back to something that social psychologists and and people who do race were talked about all the time they talk about this spectrum and you can be racist you can be non racist or you can be anti-racist and racists are the active ones you know the the most obvious examples right there carrying tiki torches and and calling people names and they don't like black people all that stuff um most people are not racist so they're not you know intentionally contributing to a racist atmosphere but simply by being passive in it they're sort of upholding it what we need our people to be anti-racist to actually go against the grain so one idea is the idea of complicity I mentioned the structure of the book the rest of the chapters nine more chapters lay out a historical survey from the colonial era on up to the 21st century in the era of black lives matter and what I do is just give a brief snapshot of each era and show how Christians sort of reinforced or even created a racial based racially based caste system and and and the the idea there is like we were saying before there's never not been a time where this wasn't an issue where this wasn't a problem in the church it just looks different throughout the different decades and eras and then I end with a chapter on practical steps in that chapter I focus on more systemic and institutional things I think even in today's climate most people would would be okay with the relational aspects of reconciliation let's shake hands let's have coffee let's even go to church together they might even might be okay with like interracial marriage but those are all interpersonal things and what they're not doing is is between any of the systemic or institutional practices that perpetuate inequality of divided along racial lines so that last chapter includes some practical steps on how to do that yeah two things that kind of really stuck out to me when you're talking about complicity because that's the question when I'm around white evangelical folks if I didn't do think like well I understand the history but that wasn't me I didn't do anything and so it's like you might not have done anything but you'd benefit from those who have done something that I agree Oh kind of what does rip what do you think were principles like for those who benefit but weren't necessarily engaged in it yeah you know what I think as far as black church folk go the door is pretty wide for reconciliation most of the folks I interact with and I myself one of the things we're looking for is quite easy it's just acknowledgement it's it's it's an affirmation and that what we're saying and what we've been through is really real no we know it's real but often times when we talk to our white brothers and sisters because they haven't personally experienced that they're like not can't be true they'll sort of dismiss discount sidestep our experience and it's somehow someway diminish that and that's one of the most painful things of all so whether you were personally involved or not you can be involved in my experience simply by acknowledging that it's true by expressing empathy about the pain and the trauma and the heart of it all I don't think that's asking much at all of spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ for sure beyond that we're looking for more than lip service right you know there's a certain sense in which I'd almost rather pastors not preacher talk about race and racism at all if that's all they're going to do in other words I don't I don't know how much value it is to talk about racial reconciliation on you know Martin Luther King jr. Day or during Black History Month if that's basically the only time it substantively comes up what I would look for I think I think racial justice is is not an occasion it's a disposition it's not a moment it's an attitude and so it's hard to say do this do that to the other because it's in your whole outlook where you are developing a sensitivity for racial issues and eh-eh-eh-eh and agility to be able to address racial issues as they come up that only comes with experience that comes with a commitment that comes with making mistakes and I think a lot of people a lot of white people in particular are afraid of making mistakes I get it home it's its it if you make a mistake you can really hurt people and they could really come after you too depending on the venue but that's actually part of the process so though the one word of encouragement I said is your mistakes will actually build your capacity to be an ally and you can't actually be a very good Ally if you don't wait into it make missteps trip and stumble get up and keep walking mm-hmm yes that's so so helpful when you talk about practical tips one of the main things I think about is reparations us being a minority led nonprofit or running both being presidents of nonprofits that are minority legs what can reparations look like for those in majority culture to serve nonprofits there are minority lit yeah I'm so glad you brought that up number one of what I say in the book is that reparations as part of that chapter on practical steps and I say reparations is the only other R word that's more controversial than calling someone racist and I don't know why that is if we actually look at it what slavery was at its base was an exploitative economic system which meant that literally for centuries you had millions of people of African descent who worked without pay and then after the nation's bloodiest war finally brought legal emancipation they were still in effect enslaved because of poverty nobody ever got their 40-acre in a mule on a broad-based basis so you emancipated slaves and left them with nothing which also meant that for the vast majority of black people in the rural South they went back to picking cotton they went back they developed a system called sharecropping and I live in the Delta and I can tell you that generational poverty is real there are black people whose families have been here for decades upon decades and the only everything they've known is poverty because first they were sharecroppers then they were maybe domestic workers maybe they had a job but the jobs are left and there's just nothing there's nothing here and that's a direct result of race-based chattel slavery which was an exploitative economic system so here we are in 2019 and the racial wealth divide is enormous by 2082 it's predicted that that median family wealth which is your your debts and your assets combined whatever you have a left that that that the net median wealth of a black family will be zero dollars by the year 2080 - should we last that long and so why is that that's the question and you are either left with saying well black people are just really bad with money or there's something systemic institutional generations old that's wrong with the way things are set up so all our that's to say money is going to have to be part of this equation because money was behind this exploitive system and what you bring up is great because a lot of people think that reparations in which involves money is writing a cheque to some random black person okay I don't know maybe you know if you figure that out I'm not gonna say no but what you can do especially Christians is support ministries like ours we were just talking about this on social media today where there's a difference between having a ministry that's writing about black people to white people in a ministry that is writing to or for black people specifically and when you write or podcast or you know video for black people and not a lot of money in it we could be connected with you know these larger white evangelical institutions which were various reasons corporate eyes large churches even connections to slavery in the case of some seminaries they got money they got mad money and we could be connected to that but it often comes with strings attached and so part of reparations might look like writing a check not to an individual but to an organization whose work you trust so definitely we need six seven figures up in this mug talk about acting urgently like that that was part of the frustration I don't want just the you know playing around the edges of racism in the church how do we flip the tables you know how do we like Jesus in the temple and and driving out the money changers driving out the racism that's in God's house and and really make this a house of prayer for all people mm-hmm and one of the things I think is a vital that we know when you talk about giving money there's money that we've turned down as an organization because of the history of that organization yes and it's not that you know we we we talk about all kind of all money it's not good money and so there's this aspect that sometimes when white organization just want to give you money they want to put their name on it because it becomes good PR for them and I think organizations that have had problematic histories one of the things they have to note is the fact that their history is problematic and if we are called to serve those who are minorities in in our community being associated with them saves our name is will yes their name actually undercuts me being associated with them undercuts my ability to reach the contact I'm trying to reach you hit the nail on the head yeah we've had to leave some money on the table because it's it's it's too connected to whiteness and to be quite honest and and and that's a real cost and so we've not been able as the witness to grow or travel or build the infrastructure like we might have been able to do it's something that we're not sort of like in sack cloth and ashes about we're grateful for what the Lord has done and for the many people who have generously provided just out of the abundance of their hearts and we're grateful that by being very careful with with who we get money from we're able to be a little bit independent and be able to say what we think needs to be said particularly about issues of race injustice we don't want to be muzzled or muted on those topics especially because we're trying to serve black folks and so we need to be honest about these things and then one other thing I'll say is there are a lot of people who resist the idea of reparations because I think it's my money I earned it you don't have a right to it I certainly get that impulse I mean yeah I certainly get that impulse but if you actually think about it historically you had a helping hand more than likely you had a helping hand we have people today who inherit money because they have generational wealth we have a person in the White House who inherited millions to get a start and many other people in the elite class but beyond that for the everyday people if you just go back to World War 2 not that long ago and veterans coming home and the GI Bill or the servicemen's Readjustment Act as it was formally known those benefits went disproportionately to white men those benefits included loans for homes and this is when suburbs are cropping up so you could buy a single-family home with your white picket fence and it'd work and buy a home those were those loans were not given to black people moreover black people were not out in those neighborhoods to where the the home prices actually appreciated in value and when black people moved into a neighborhood home values would depreciate so even the value of the same space was undervalued because of black skin the GI benefits included loans for higher education so that could be advanced training or that could be a college degree that meant that you had a leg up in the workplace because you had training and skills in an education to help you get a better job black people did not have those advantages in fact the GI Bill actually some some of FDR's New Deal bonuses and benefits prior to the GI Bill explicitly excluded two categories of workers domestic workers and agricultural workers and guess who comprised most of the domestic workforce and most of the agricultural labor force black people so they couldn't even get some of the New Deal benefits and and and on and on it goes and the reality is even the government through laws policies and practices has subsidized the wealth that many white people currently have now I'm not an economist I'm just speaking from a historical standpoint and the way these benefits were disbursed was not fair and equal and so the where people are in 2019 in terms of wealth education job status that didn't just come from you working hard that came from you having certain advantages and benefits from a system that was set up to serve you mm-hmm yes definitely and I think one of the even with organizations that are seeking to to give money to organizations like Jutra project the witness Bill veterus whatever organization if you're if you have problematic ties but you still won again you can still give that money just give it as a a check that doesn't require any public documents if you're committed to reparations now if you want it to the PR stunt then that's a different thing of what you just want to give the money quietly and say hey I trust what you're doing and I want to give this to you I don't want anything and in return I just want to give it to you don't tell anybody I gave it to you the ways in which Jesus helped people don't tell anybody I did this for you watch oh um yes that could be a way that you could do it and so I think that's that's helpful too it's not like if you give it and say there's no strings attached don't tell anybody I gave this to you I just want to be a blessing that's the strategy um jamar how can folks one of your last words how can people get your book and how can they get connect to you on social media so the easiest way to get the book is go to the color of compromise com the color of compromise calm and it'll list Amazon Barnes and Noble support your local bookstores if if you have one in the area patronize patronize it is that right and then go to that store and then uh if they don't have it they can order it is pretty easy to get and so Zondervan is the publisher if they want to reach out there the other thing you can do is I'll be on a book tour these next couple of weeks so we've got our book launch party January 25th in Chicago January 31st I'll be in Atlanta coming to Cincinnati and Indianapolis in February gonna be in DC in March I'll post all those dates follow my facebook author page is is where I post those events and then of course on social media at your Mart is be at the witness BCC @ underscore past the mic all of those channels will keep you up to date on the latest happenings and the last thing I want to mention is the witness National Conference it's going to be our very first national conference it's October 4th and 5th in Chicago it's if you google the joy and justice conference that's the theme it's uh it's it's commemorating 400 yet of 400 years of black joy and justice this is the 400 year anniversary of that date in 1619 which we talked about earlier in the in the show and it's been a struggle for justice from the moment people of African descent have these shores but it's not just a man just been about justice and this sort of like you know woe is me and we got to fight for our rights and dignity that's been it that's been part of their struggle but there's also been incredible joy you know we have incredible music like by Aretha Franklin we have incredible art the the costume designer for Black Panther just got nominated for an Oscar we have incredible laughter if you look at black Twitter it can just be a joy sometimes the way people use humor on there so we also want to celebrate the joyous parts of what it means to be black in America so join Justice conference October 4th empty that's dope well thank you so much tomorrow and I hope everybody goes to get his book the color of compromise is out now so support Jamar and the witness and make sure you check out the conference and all the things they have going on and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the g3 project podcast remember we're helping you to know what you believe and why you believe Oh [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Jude 3 Project

Views: 8,738

Rating: 4.52 out of 5

Keywords: Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise, The Witness

Id: fc7Iedg3HV4

Length: 34min 41sec (2081 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 24 2019