Theology in the Raw - The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistence: Dr. Jemar Tisby

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Dr. Jemar Tisby (PhD, University of Mississippi) is the author of the New York Times bestselling The Color of Compromise, the award-winning How to Fight Racism, and the recently released The Spirit of Justice. Jemar is a historian who studies race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century and serves as a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black college. Jemar is the founding co-host of the Pass the Mic podcast. Find out more at jemartisby.com. In this conversation, we talk about his latest book, The Spirit of Justice, and issues related to race, the church, and society.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology. And around my guest today is Dr. Jamar Tisby, who has a PhD from university to Mississippi. He's the author of the New York times bestseller, the color of compromise and the award winning book, how to fight racism. And the recently released book, the spirit of justice, which forms the background for our conversation today. Jamar is a historian who studies race, religion, and social movements in the 20th century. And he serves as a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college. Jamar is the founding cohost of the Pass the Mic podcast. And you can follow his work through his sub stack newsletter, footnotes, and on social

media at Jamar Tisby. This conversation was awesome. I just love Jamar's, not only his historic knowledge and wisdom, but just his humility, as you'll see in how he goes about these really difficult conversations. So please welcome to the show, back to the show, the one and only Dr. Jamar Tisby. Jamar, how are you this wonderful September morning? Well, I'm doing well. As we record, it is the official book launch day of my latest book, The Spirit of Justice, true stories of faith, race and resistance.

And I got to say yours was at the top of my list of podcasts to hop on in this season. So I really appreciate you having me. Well, my audience has a love hate relationship with me because they're very bookish and I often have authors on and they say they, they just keep buying more and more books. Well, I want to add a personal, I started this a few days ago. So I haven't read the whole thing, but I am in for my YouTubers. This is the book right here. A spirit of justice. It is very, very good. It's extremely readable and yet very well researched and wise. And that that's people don't understand how hard

that is to communicate with scholarly precision to an audience that's not just clear but also engaging and you weave in personal stuff, practical stuff, deep history stuff and it's a fantastic book. I would highly recommend people picking it up. So I mean, I, you didn't ask this, but uh, to the, to the writing part, um, history is so hard to write because you can spend three hours just researching a footnote just to make sure you have the reference right. Because I'm thinking as a historian, I'm thinking of other historians reading it and you're sort of a little bit intellectually traumatized by the whole peer review process and knowing

that people can read your work, drag you. It's usually better spirited than that in my circles, but you still have that kind of gaze, if you will. And then, but what I would really try to do is give more primary sources in this book. So you hear their voices through letters, autobiography, speeches, and really wanted the personalities of over 50 figures who are profile in this book to come through. That's just a little bit of me nerding out for folks, for the five people who might be interested in that. What was the impetus for this book? Did this grow out of your doctoral research, ongoing research?

Was this fresh research that you just did just for the book? I really felt like my first book, The Color of Compromise, was the beginning of a story. So, you know, the Color of Compromise is mostly about, you know, just to be honest, white Christians behaving badly when it comes to race. And the entire time I'm writing it, I'm like, but there's another side. There's this side of what black Christians did with the gospel and how through the power of the Holy Spirit, I believe believe they heard a message coming from enslavers, coming from racist people, but they heard Jesus through it and they heard freedom through it and they heard liberation through it. And I wanted to tell that side of the story. So,

you know, where the color of compromise is mostly about compromise and complicity with racism, the spirit of justice is mostly about people who courageously confronted racism. Give us some of the highlights from the book. I mean, and this isn't in place, people buying the book, but maybe to whet people's appetite. What are some, I guess more, maybe lesser known stories that should be more known, if I could put it like that. That was the funnest part of this whole thing.

Just learning more about these people, some of whom I'd never heard of before I started researching, some of whom I knew a little about, but learned more about. I'll start this way. I framed the story and I introduced the book with this firsthand eyewitness encounter I had of Merle Evers Williams giving a talk at the grand opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, December 9th, 2017. She spoke publicly and then, and by the way, she had just gone through this museum. Folks will remember Merle Evers-Williams as the spouse and widow of Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in front of their home in Mississippi for his work with the NAACP.

fascinated in front of their home in Mississippi for his work with the NAACP. So she goes through the museum and she sees on display the actual gun used to kill her husband. Like I can't, can you imagine? And so she gives a speech and then afterwards she has this smaller press conference, which I was privileged to be able to attend. And it was just a God moment because I was recording on my cell phone when a journalist asked her this question, how does now compare to then, the 21st century in terms of civil rights and justice compared to the civil rights movement that you lived through?

And she said, frankly, I'm seeing stuff now that I hoped I'd never see again. There's a lot of echoes in the present of these really dangerous days of the past. And she said, I quote, I'm weary at this point. And it was like the understatement of the century because she's 84 years old back in 2017. And I'm like, well, of course. So I expect her to go on and say, but I'm passing the torch to the next generation. I'm going to enjoy my family, my grandchildren and see what y'all can do. But she doesn't even go in that direction.

She does something completely unexpected. She says this line that I'll never forget. She said, but it's something about the spirit of justice. Then she talks about this analogy of a war horse being put out to pasture and its back is sunk in, but then it hears this bell and she calls it the bell of freedom and the back gets stiff and straight. And then she ends with this line, and you become determined all over again. And just the weight of that moment from this woman who lived through it and kept on going after her husband's murder, after all this stuff she's been through, she becomes chairperson of the NAACP, the same organization her husband worked for and has this life of activism and then in her ninth decade of life, and she's still

alive today. She's like, you become determined all over again. She's not quitting. And I said, that's the story. That's what the spirit of justice is. You describe her wheelchair that she was sitting in as her throne. Just that image of the seasoned old woman that is more resolved than ever. This is insane. I mean, it's so inspiring and also convicting too. It's like, I want to be like that. You know? If I could become a good enough writer to describe what it's like, I spent most of my

adult life living in the deep South. And what was so powerful about that to me was encountering living witnesses of the civil rights movement. So this isn't in the book, but I used to teach Sunday school at my church in Jackson, Mississippi when I was going to seminary. There was this older black man who would come most of those Sundays and he would never say a word. And matter of fact, it was very kind of quirky. He would sit with his eyes closed, kind of rocking back and forth, and he had a hand up and his finger going like he was like ticking off lists of things.

And I could tell by the way people interacted with him, like before and after class, he was known, but I didn't know it. So finally after class one day, I'm like, hey, I asked one of my friends, hey, who's that? And he says, that's James Meredith. He was the first black person to integrate the University of Mississippi. Oh my word. And he was still alive. He was in his 80s too, right? And I've had several conversations with James Meredith

and to be in the presence of these living history makers, there's a gravity and a respect there that I can hardly describe. Marlee Evers was that same way. She's sitting in a wheelchair, but she was literally regal. Regal. And there's just a gravitas, I think, that comes with pursuing justice in the hardest of situations that changes and shapes you as a person, that you literally change the energy in a room when you enter. That I had encounter after encounter, famous people, anonymous people, most folks wouldn't know, but it's that living in the spirit of justice that I think does that.

Your book, it's a historical book, but it's also, again, I've gotten too far into it, but it seems like it has a strong kind of prophetic, one might say application or like, you know, go therefore and do likewise, flir to it. Would that be accurate? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. What would that go therefore and do likewise message be? What do you want

people to walk away from this book with? I want people to understand that the Spirit of Justice is not just about the past, it's about the present. That the same Spirit of Justice that these heroes of the faith tapped into, we have access to today. And so I talk in the introduction that we can think about the Spirit of Justice as people of faith as the Holy Spirit. And we can really get deep into it, right? Because there's the passage from Ephesians that our battle is not just material, it's spiritual, right? And understanding that we have to fight spiritual battles with spiritual weapons, the spirit

of justice. And also that same spirit gifts us with gifts for building up the kingdom. I mean, that's mind boggling. The Holy Spirit of God that created the universe, right? Like the word, it's there at creation. Also, that moment we say yes to Jesus says, boom, now I've got something for you. It's your special gift of teaching, encouraging, faith, prayer, whatever it might be for building the kingdom, for the common good, for building up the body. And I just want folks to feel empowered through that, but I didn't want it to be just this didactic step one, step two, step three.

I did that in How to Fight Racism, my second book. I wanted an inspirational tone to it. This idea that here are regular, everyday people who often in conditions far more oppressive than the ones we're facing now, found a way to tap into that spirit of justice and resist injustice in their day so we can do the same in ours. You mentioned a concept in the first chapter I thought was pretty fascinating, historical appropriation.

Now, most people are familiar with cultural appropriation. Most, I think most people are not familiar at all with historical appropriation. When you described it, I'm like, okay, I'm a little bit familiar with that. I've never heard it explained exactly the way you did it. Can you unpack what his story, and maybe begin with cultural appropriation

since for those who may not know what that is and then explain historical appropriation. I am so glad that stood out to you. That's one of the things that I hoped people would latch onto. Cultural appropriation, like Halloween is a perfect example. People will dress up, unfortunately, as people from a different culture, from Asian backgrounds, or blackface is a common trope. Basically what you'll do is take on a caricature of the culture without actually understanding

or respecting the culture. You'll do it in such a way as to exploit the culture, actually understanding or respecting the culture. You'll do it in such a way as to exploit the culture, whether for laughs or entertainment or whatever it might be. That's cultural appropriation. In a similar way, I contend there can be historical appropriation so that we take on the feats and the activities of historical figures as if they are our own or part of our own tradition. The reason I thought that important to talk about in the introduction was, honestly, there

are a lot of white Christians who come from traditions or branches of the church that historically were not on the right side of racial justice. But they'll point to exceptions, whether white or black people or anyone else, and say, but those were Christians too, and so this is my story. Yes, it's your story in the universal sense of this is the church, this is part of the Christian story, and we all share that. But you also have to acknowledge and take responsibility that the particular branch of the church that you're on, the people who stood up against racism were the exception,

not the rule. And so people take on or appropriate these histories as a way to sort of dodge accountability and swerve around their role in repairing the issues of racism that their tradition may have been part of causing. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Can you get, when you were talking about it, I don't think you even gave the example of MLK, but my mind went to how white Christians, I'll give one caveat and then I won't belabor the point. I'm not talking about every single white Christian. I'm not talking about, you know, but just as a generic kind of observation, white Christians can sometimes seems like appropriate, like MLK, you know, during February, they'll post all the, you know, you can Google like top five MLK quotes, you know, and then they probably have never read anything by MLK, but they'll, they'll find the quote, post it to show I'm not a racist. I'm not a racist. I'm not a

racist. I'm not a racist. I'm not a racist. I'm not a racist. I'm not a racist. I'm not a racist. I have a black friend, you know, I love that. Exactly what I'm talking about. Would that be an example within come out March, you're kind of not talking about MLK, let alone any other major historical figure. I mean, yes, exactly. Like, like part of that came from the color of compromise where people were, we're like, well, what about the abolitionists? And then you're like, well, I'm not talking about the abolitionists, but the abolitionists, the abolitionists, the abolitionists, the abolitionists, the abolitionists, the abolitionists, the abolitionists, the abolitionists, the abolitionists, major historical figure. I mean, yes, exactly. Part of that came from the color of compromise

where people were like, well, what about the abolitionists? I'm like, yeah, there were Christian abolitionists. Matter of fact, Christians, people of faith, led the way in saying, yo, slavery is wrong. The slave trade is wrong. But those really weren't your people. When you look back at the theologians that you're learning from, the church traditions that you're part of, they weren't either in the same

denomination or same churches, or they were, but they were also ostracized. They also paid the penalty. And also I talk about John Newton, for example, wrote Amazing Grace and famously went from slave ship captain to abolitionist. And I say, okay, you want to claim John Newton, then go all the way because he wrote a public tract saying that we should abolish slavery. So he wasn't just sitting silently in his room, writing songs and not saying anything about his abolitionist stance. He went public with it and encouraged many other Christians to be abolitionist as well. So if you're going to claim someone like John Newton as part of your historical legacy, then follow in his example today. I heard somebody say, I don't even know the context or who said it, but I think this is similar to what you're saying. When, when people today, especially younger people look

to people who are fighting for justice in the past and like, see, yeah, those are my people that that would have been me. I think it was a professor. He asked, well, what are you doing now? That is earning public ostracism, social ostracism from your tribe? Not, not from the people who vote differently, whatever, but like, what are you doing now to stir the pot that is, that is not earning you social credibility, but as actually you're getting now persecuted by people close to you, you know? That's exactly right. I, I, I, I often say in my public talks around racial justice for the people who said, well, you know, if I was alive in the civil rights movement, I would have marched,

I would have boycotted, I would have protest, I would have gone to jail, you know? And I say, well, what you're doing right now is exactly what you would have done then. Because we're living in many ways in the midst of another wave of the black freedom struggle, another wave of a civil rights movement. And so the time is now to actually demonstrate what you would have done then. And it's so easy to look at the past and see this so-called heroes and villains and say, well, I would have been on the right side of justice. And that's easy to say in the abstract, but it really matters when it comes to your actions right now, because it's hard to do this stuff. It's always a minority of people

who are involved actively and faced real repercussions in the struggle for freedom. If it was easier, we'd be a lot further down the road. And so I think learning this history helps us understand a couple of things. One, anybody can do it. These are normal, regular people. They're from all kinds of backgrounds, often not a lot going for them from an earthly standard. But two, they did demonstrate exceptional courage. I think that's really the big difference. They tapped into that spirit of justice and they took steps that were risky and they were afraid and they did it anyway.

Okay. So I have a question on, on that, on that note. And I want, I just want to say to you publicly, if I were things that are like a little off and we're like, Hey, good question, but maybe you say it this way, or if I show any kind of ignorance, I would, I welcome any kind of feedback. So I just, yeah. Appreciate that. And sometimes I might have a genuine question for me. Sometimes I might try to represent what I think my audience might be asking. So here's, and this one might, I think it comes from me, but also other people too. Um, when it, so I look at the past, I look at like people who oppose safe slavery or even Jim Crow's like, these seem to be so, at least from our vantage point, just blatantly so

in your face wrong. Like, and we look back and we're like, Oh, I, I know people didn't push, you know, didn't, didn't stand up against this the way they should. Some people did. And you know, but it just seems like from my vantage point, that that seems such a clear thing. What are some things now that would be things that we should be opposed to? Cause it seems like now, and even if, even if we say, no, racism is just as pervasive now, it's just kind of gone underground. It's more sinister. It's built into systems that are kind of hard to pinpoint. It's just kind of maybe there. Well, that's makes the fight a little bit tougher.

It's like, well, what exactly am I opposing right now? Does that make sense? So what are some, for people like, okay, I don't want to be that person. I don't want to, what can I do now that would stand up against? This is, this is a critical question and I'm very glad you brought it up. Number one, I often say racism never goes away, it adapts. And for people who struggle with that statement, racism goes away, never goes away, it adapts. Number one, theologically, we're not going to see an elimination of all sin until Jesus

returns. There's no other sin in the 10 commandments that we can say has gone away, because it's just not going to happen until Jesus comes back. The second thing I'll say is if that statement, racism never goes away, it just adapts, rubs you the wrong way, then put a date on it. just adapts, rubs you the wrong way, then put a date on it. What law, what date on the calendar, what event did away with racism in our nation or around the globe, right? You can't name it because it doesn't exist, but it does adapt. So, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith and their classic book, Divided by Faith, talk about racialization in that we live in a racialized society, by which they mean it's not as obvious as the physical chains of slavery. It's not as obvious as the signs over drinking fountains or in restaurants that say whites

only, colored only in the segregated Jim Crow era. But a racialized society is a society in which any major quality of life factor falls predictably along racial lines. Any major quality of life factor falls predictably along racial lines. We shouldn't be able to look at the color of your skin and tell if you're going to have a longer or shorter lifespan. We shouldn't be able to look at the color of your skin and tell if you're going to have a longer or shorter lifespan. We shouldn't be able to look at the color of your skin and know that you will have a higher rate of maternity related deaths. We shouldn't be able to look at the color of your skin and know your average level of educational attainment.

That's how race is embedded in our society. So what do people actually do concretely today? Well, there's a bunch of stuff and it is more subtle than before, right? So this was actually the same historical struggle we saw in the 1960s. The primary theater of the civil rights movement in the 60s was the South and it was segregation, right? South, and it was segregation. So it was very visible of trying to integrate lunch counters, stores, buses. Once the 1964 Civil Rights Act passes, it becomes a little bit harder to enforce legal

segregation. Then you have this black power movement, which says, number one, racism is in the North. Number two, it's in cities. And number three, it's embedded in the way we've structured societies, in tenements and redlining and education and all those things. Those things persist to today. So some issues, just broadly speaking. Supreme Court rolled back racial considerations in college admissions.

In other words, rolling back affirmative action. The critique from the far right, if you will, was, well, this is reverse discrimination. No, no, no. It's positive discrimination to remedy historic discrimination. Another one, you are seeing a wave of defunding diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Now these programs have their issues in and of themselves, but they were gestures by organizations to say, this is important in our institution. And now they're shuddering. They're defunding them.

They're dismissing the employees. They're dispersing them either out of the organization altogether or in different departments. The same with CRT and Woke. Well, the scare labels that folks are using. So it's all out there, but it is adapting it in a different form. One of the highest values I have in life is living in, learning from, and experiencing other cultures. There's no better way to think globally, and every Christian should think globally, than to actually experience the globe. This is why you need to check out the English Language Institute in China, or it's called

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from two to four weeks to nine months to even more than a year. I didn't even know this at the time, but I actually had a former ELIC teacher, Dr. Brad Vaughn, as a guest on the podcast back in June, 2023. It's episode 1083, if you want to check it out and hear more. So if you want to explore a very meaningful overseas experience, then go to ELIC.org forward slash TITR. So they even created a special landing page for our listeners. Again, that's ELIC.org forward slash TITR. Check it out. So they even created a special landing page for our listeners. Again, that's E L I C dot org forward slash T I T R. Check it out.

I don't know too much about DEI trainees because it's so politicized. I've only seen kind of the sound bites on either side that tries to pick the worst or the best or whatever, you know? And I just, and I know we should probably get into politics at some point in this conversation, but like everything is so highly politicized and polarized with two left, right sides that it's hard to even know what's real anymore. You know what I mean? Until you do a deep dive and whenever I do a deep dive investigation on whatever the latest talking point is, I'm like, Oh, it's a lot more complicated than these soundbites that are, you know, invading my social feeds or whatever. So, um, what, what would I, I dunno, since I brought it up or since you brought it up and I responded, what, what, what, what, what does a healthy DEI training look like? And you mentioned that they're not all perfect or some that

are not, what, what, what, what's an example of like, this is a, this is a, this is a, what does a healthy DEI training look like? And you mentioned that they're not all perfect or some that are not, what's an example of, like this is actually an unhealthy, ineffective version of this, is that fair to ask? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so there's no single DEI, right? Cause every organization is sort of gonna approach it differently.

What it is broadly speaking, diversity, equity, and inclusion, some people will add the letter B, belonging as well. And it arose in the past couple of decades as a way of addressing the fact that institutions and organizations weren't built to actually include and welcome people who differed from the norm. In general, that's a sort of white male norm. Now DEI has become an umbrella term for any efforts to make an organization more welcoming and inclusive to all kinds of people.

It's a broad umbrella that includes physical disability, it includes sexual identity, it includes race and ethnicity, all kinds of things. So it is really hard to execute well because the reality is, if you go to a DEI training, it's probably required. There's probably a bunch of people who don't want to be there. There's certainly a political spectrum within an organization of some folks who outright oppose it. And there are better and worse kind of facilitators who do it. If you don't set up these conversations well, they can actually do more harm than good. And I think there's genuine critiques that can go on around the implementation, even the goals of some of these programs. But you can't just say, let's do away with them altogether. You've got to propose something better.

The principle that we should be proactive about making our workplaces, our schools, our churches, even more welcoming and inclusive to all kinds of people that remains. And so even if you want to have a different label or different approach to it, let it be just that different. Don't just do away with it. That's good. That's really good. And I, I've, man, I've learned so much.

It's still the beginning stages of a long learning journey of just, just being, when I am in the majority, you know, so like I am, there was a majority, a very pervasive majority culture in Idaho and just being like aware of all the many, um, almost said blind spots, even that I'm not by by by, but I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,, um, almost said blind spots, even that I'm not, my disability theologian friends said, why are you using blind as a net perjury? Wow. Wow. Yeah. No, no, I know. And I still, they told me that two years ago and I've, I've set up many times since and I keep catching myself anyway. Anyway, all the ways in which I am ignorant toward a majority culture that has just been created and how that can explicitly or implicitly

ostracize, dehumanize, or maybe more subtly just not include or welcome somebody who's not part of the majority culture. We have in the best preacher in town, has a doctorate. Most pastors in Idaho don't have a Bible college degree, maybe a Bible college, but seminary, it's not a very educated place. This man has a PhD or a D man, but he's a Christian. He's a Christian. He's D man. He's written books. He's a phenomenal preacher. And yeah, he says, in Boise, yeah. And he's been here 25 years. And I asked him, I said, when, so how, do you get invited to preach a lot at other churches? I think he said like once in 25 years. Really?

I'm like what? You're the best preacher in town, hands down. One invitation. Yeah. So just things like that are just like, I remember several years ago talking, I'm like, I wouldn't know honestly, what is it like being a black guy in Boise, Idaho, dude? I want to know too. Oh, it was, you know, it was not super positive. It wasn't, he said, it's, it's, it's do I encountered that explicit interface racism sometimes, you know, he's heard the N word a few times, but he's, it's not, it's not typically that it's, it's just that hard, that just that subtle stuff, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know exactly what he means. I mean, people are polite enough and it's still enough of a social faux pas to be overtly racist, But here's the way it comes across to me in a lot of ways. It's a sense, a very subconscious sense from a lot of white people that this is ours. Whatever the this is, church, even an ideology like a theological tradition, a neighborhood, whatever. And the subconscious sense among many is we belong here. You are here at our grace, by our largesse. And we're allowing you to be in our space, right? Going all the way back to the colonial era, Mark Charles, a Native American author and activist says, you can't discover lands already inhabited, right? So there's a sense in which North America, the United States is none of ours, unless you're indigenous to this place. But then in a more modern sense, I was at Airbnb once.

There's too many Airbnb stories, darn it., I was at Airbnb once. There's too many Airbnb stories, darn it. But I was at an Airbnb once. So it was in San Francisco Bay Area, relatively diverse, not a lot of black people, but a lot of different ethnicities there. And we were there for a week on vacation. I think it was our last full day there. We're in the backyard, which you can,

it has like a side yard. You can see the backyard from the front. And so the neighbor who we had seen come in and out a few times stops and sees me and my son playing in the backyard, doing nothing suspicious or anything, right? And he's like, who are you? He was like, we're guests here. Actually, I are you? And he's like, we're just, we're guests here. Actually, I don't know if I said that because you know, some of these Airbnb

places, they don't say they're Airbnb because zoning or whatever. So I'm like, we're guests here, just staying for a little while. And he immediately jumps to, do the owners know you're here? You're not supposed to be here. I'm calling the cops. I was like, okay, go for it. And it's the sense that this is my neighborhood and you don't belong, now, you know, you can come up with all kinds of reasons. Well, he didn't recognize us. He's lived there for a while.

Okay, okay. But as a person of color, you always have to question, was it, was there something in there? Yeah. Because of what I look like, you know, white liberal racism there. I'm telling you it's there. It is absolutely there. Oh, yeah. My backyard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fine out there. I'll post on my Instagram, you know, black squares all day long, but not in my, not in my neighborhood. Exactly. NIMBY is real.

All right. So here's, here's another question along Long news live. This is, this is good. Um, speak to well intended, humble, well intended white Christians who are like, okay, w what are some ways in which I approached the race conversation that is less than helpful. Maybe it's not bad. Maybe it's not terrible. But it's just, ah, just kind of missing it, you know? And this is a genuine for me too. Like I'm like, you can speak to me directly. I would love to know like, what are some areas that I need to improve? Cause I feel like I want to improve. I want to be racist. I know there's hidden things in all of us and social environments and all these things. So I would love to, what can I, yeah. What are some well-intended things that I should stop doing?

I appreciate that question. First of all, I go back to the framework I developed in my second book, How to Fight Racism, The Arc of Racial Justice. And that stands for awareness, relationships, commitment, awareness, relationships, commitment. And I think we need all three, right? No matter what our race or ethnicity. Awareness is like, you got to study this stuff. It's not enough to read the occasional headline or article. You should make a concerted effort, at least for a season, to really do a deep dive into the dynamics of race in our country especially. Now, that could be a historical dive, that could be more current events, it could be just getting your book list or having a list of documentaries, whatever it might be.

We really have to understand... I mean, there's entire fields of study dedicated to understanding racism. We need to tap into that a bit. Where to start? I really would start with books like The Color of Compromise, The Spirit of Justice, historical surveys that give you an overview that are really just a hallway, and then you can branch off into doors and go deeper into any subject that kind of piques your interest. I'll skip relationships because I think that's going to be the crux for the question that you talked

about, so I'll come back to it. Commitment means not just staying the course, but committing to dismantling systems, laws, policies that lead to racial inequality. This is the systemic racism part. This is what goes beyond racism is just an attitude kind of a thing. It's actually embedded in structures. And we can look at the ways voting precincts or districts are gerrymandered. We can look at how far voting precincts are from certain populations. We can look at mass incarceration and the fact that black people

are incarcerated at nearly 40% of the prison population, but just 13% of the overall population, et cetera, et cetera. Pick, choose, and go after it. Or even more locally, your church, schools, all of them have policies that can help or hurt racial justice. And then lastly is, I think, getting to the heart of your question. It's the relationships part. Fighting racism is not just about relationships, but it always includes relationships. And one of the biggest areas I find, even among well-meaning people, white people, is that they don't actually know black people. So what they know of race, what they know of black people is abstract and theoretical. It's at a distance. It's disembodied like a term you used earlier,

I think is really good. It's online. It's through a book. It's through a video. All of that can be helpful. But unless you can actually sit with and listen to black people, and not just your one black friend, sociology tells us it's got to be a network of people. And not just your one black friend, sociology tells us it's got to be a network of people. So you get a sense that black is not monolithic and that what people are going through and the perspectives they have, they're different just like with white people, just like with every human being. And so it's hard to do that in a state that's 92% white. It's just a practical reality. But it is possible, especially now in this technology age where you can text people, you can zoom, you can video call folks. But

white people have to be intentional because the segregation that we now see was intentional historically. So you have to be just as if not more intentional to break down those walls and build bridges as when they were constructed. Would you say the burden of initiating those relationships does rest on white people? I think so. I mean, this is Jamar talking, but there is... Folks are not going to want to hear this and some will take it the wrong way, but there is an earned skepticism on the part of black people toward white people.

Because when I meet you, if I don't know you, it's not that I hate you. It's just, I don't know what kind of white person you are. I don't know what your background is, what your beliefs are, whether I'm invisible to you, because you want to cultivate this well-meaning, but I think off-kilter colorblindness, not to be ableist. Or are you somebody who's woke in a positive sense, right? Somebody who gets it, somebody who can be gentle and gracious and understanding. So until I know that, I've got to be a little bit self-protective, especially someone like me who talks about this stuff all the time, because you may know me or you may not know me, but once you learn my work, there's going

to be a response, right? It's like telling people you're a pastor. You don't know what they're going gonna respond with. So that's why I think the burden is on white people to an extent to cultivate those friendships. And by the way, even some black people will disagree with what I'm saying. But I'll say this though, from personal experience, literally my best white friends are people who initiated a relationship with me.

Is it partly because of the his, the, the historical power differentials? I mean, if that is, yeah, just that there's a history here that, and even if I'm like ignorant to it, feel like I didn't participate in that, that was my granddaddy, the data disconnected from that. Um, but there's just culturally's just culturally a historical power differential. I mean, power always comes into play. I would say in terms of interpersonal relationships, it's more of that trust factor. It's more of demonstrating, proactively demonstrating that you are for this person and not leaving them to guess or feel you out in a way, that's a bigger

sort of interpersonal friendship dynamic. But in organizations, institutions, societies as a whole, power is huge. So this is one reason why I use the shorthand definition that comes from social psychologists that says, what is racism? Racism is power plus prejudice. Power plus prejudice. So a lot of us understand the prejudice part, not liking someone because of their skin color, their background, their culture, the language they speak, whatever it might be. That in and of itself is bad. And that in and of itself can be practiced by people of any race or ethnicity.

Some black people are prejudiced toward white people, Asian people toward black people. You get it. It's the power piece that's different. So white people in this country are the only ones who had the power to put their prejudice into policy. It's a lot of P's. They had the power to put their prejudice into policy, Preston. So that's why these accusations of reverse racism fall flat. Because true enough, you may experience racial prejudice from someone else, but they don't have the power to put that prejudice into policy.

So, they don't pass 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson, separate but equal. They don't pass a racially restrictive covenant in the neighborhood, so you can't sell to any person of color. They don't have even the institutional power of a network that's all white and don't even consider applicants or prospects of a different racial or ethnic background. So it's that power differential that really makes a difference when it comes to systemic and institutional inequality. So you're making, this is helpful. You're making a distinction between racial prejudice versus racism. Cause I've often, yeah, and I've heard both sides of this debate, you know, can racism go in white, black, black, white, some people? Yeah. So you're saying racial prejudice,

certainly on an individual level, that can happen with anybody, but racism because somebody doesn't have the power to enact a law. Exactly. I'm trying to. Yeah. I mean, part of it's defining terms, right? If I'm defining racism as prejudice plus power, then if you take power away,

then it's not really racism in the ways that we understand it or the ways that have affected society in the United States. But racial prejudice for sure, right? This is the language that I think many white people struggle with is if a black person is mean to them because they're white, that's racial prejudice. And you can say that. You might even in a certain sense could say it's racism, right? But I don't think that language is as precise as we need it to be because it implies that all racial prejudice is equal. And it's not in terms of the ability to impose your racial prejudice on entire communities, on an entire nation. Black people

have never had that power. White people have. What other India? I'm just trying to think of any exceptions I can make it for an interesting conversation. Like what about like I just read the other day that like of all the Ivy league schools, white people are disproportionately underrepresented. Like they make up less than 50% of the student body. Some schools, some Ivy league schools are 40%, some are 50, but none of them, it doesn't represent the white population or Stanford university is 25% white. Could somebody say, well, that's the use of institutional power. And somebody could make their, I'm not saying this because I think

there's complex, many complexities here, but somebody could say that like somebody is using some kind of power to keep white people out of these elite schools disproportionately. Um, and I know there's some stuff that went on as a Harvard against Asian American students because they were so overly represented and I don't know all the details there, but could that, what would you say? Yeah, I don't know. I'm just trying to think of it. Yeah. So possible exception to the rule. That's the case.

A lot of folks on, like I said, the far right, if you want to put it that way, are bringing up, well, what about discrimination toward white people? And actually what about discrimination toward people of Asian descent in particularly Ivy League schools? Right. discrimination toward people of Asian descent in particularly Ivy League schools. Interestingly enough, you got to dig a little bit. The lawyer who really spearheaded this case about discrimination against Asian people in higher ed admissions, the Harvard case that the Supreme Court recently ruled that

race couldn't be a consideration in admission. There's a white guy behind that. It turns out he's behind several different cases where he's explicitly trying to roll back affirmative action in higher ed in general. If you look at the motivations and the organizations that he's part of, you kind of wonder whether this is really good faith. Like, does he really just care so much about Asian Americans?

He cares so deeply. Or is there some other kind of motivation or agenda there? So we have to look at that. And I would also think about, MLK has the phrasing and I'm not going to get it right, but he's basically saying we do need affirmative action because if a people has been specifically discriminated against, then you have to do corrective action which involves a kind of corrective discrimination for that group. If you look at any of these institutions, historically they've been very white, predominantly white all up to the highest levels even to the present day.

And certainly if you look at the faculty of these places. All of that to say, what do we do? Because history has a momentum to it, right? So even if legally no one is saying only white people can be in these positions, there's still a momentum of decades, if not centuries of tradition that you have to kind of interrupt with new policy. And I think that's what a lot of these higher ed institutions are trying to do. Let's talk politics.

You've already gone on 45 minutes now. So shift gears a little bit. And I don't know how to set this up. I, well, offline, I was, I was telling you that Chris Butler from, well, he's cohost of the church politics podcast. Shout out to church politics podcasts. Love those guys. Justin Gibbony and Chris Butler. They give a very, uh, level headed. Um, I think both are registered Democrats, but they get, I would, I would say their podcasts and their approach to politics is very nonpartisan in

the sense that they, they, they criticize all sides and are just, just give a very gospel centered perspective on things. Anyway, long story short, Chris gave a 15 minute talk at the recent conference, excels Babylon conference that I hosted on why, uh, the majority of black Christians who are maybe more socially conservative are predominantly Democrat. And I can't re you know, people can go look it up. But it was so eye opening because I think white people get so hung up on abortion. And he's what were the highlights? Well, he's yeah, you know, he's he in his context is urban Chicago. And I, I would have to go back and look at my notes. I, the one thing he, he said, look, that you can be Democrat and pro-life. In fact, there is a fairly,

you know, minority voice, but I mean, a pretty loud voice of pro-life Democrats in the black community, you know? But there are also many other things that, that we see that the Republican party is doing and enacting and trying to enact it is harmful toward the black community, you know, so It's not that and so it's not that it's like hey, we agree with everything that Democratic Party is doing It's just like add it all up We see more social Good coming out of the policies not the leaders necessarily but the policies that are being advocated for by Democrats on the whole. But again, he would be the first one to critique anything Democrats do that he find is illegitimate. So anyway, that's it in a nutshell, highly

recommended people go check it out, theologyjournal.com. I think you can get access to that. Anyway, politics, do you want to, yeah, how would you respond to that? Like how, you as a gospel center, Bible believing Christian, and I believe a registered Democrat, how would you explain why you will vote in that direction? Well, I just looked up my registration to make sure I was registered. And I am a registered independent. My bad.

But I was on the evangelicals for Harris call. So folks will recall after Biden stepped aside and endorsed Kamala Harris, there was this slew of Zoom calls from all these different demographic groups. There was led by black women for Harris or win with black women, black men did it, white women, white men, South Asians for Harris, you name it. And then there was evangelicals for Harris call, which of course courted a little bit of controversy. Now, number one, I introduced myself as a Christian for democracy, not an evangelical for Harris. They explicitly marketed this toward evangelical adjacent people, which is what I would call myself. There's

a whole other story there. But the reason why I felt compelled to do it, number one, I'm not a pastor representing a church or a denomination. I would not advise that pastors do that. Muddies the water for the people they're shepherding, I would say, but it is done. Sorry, to get clarity, you wouldn't advise somebody like a pastor to be supportive of a political candidate? Publicly supportive. I wouldn't advise somebody in a pastor to be supportive of a political candidate?

I don't know. Publicly supportive. I wouldn't tell as a blanket statement pastors. Let me put it that way. I would say if I was a pastor of a church, I probably wouldn't. I probably wouldn't. Just because it makes it a little bit tougher to shepherd the whole flock, right? You can still do it as a private citizen, so it's not illegal. It's just a pastoral wisdom thing, right? So, I'm not representing a church or a denomination or anything. So, I'm doing this as Jamar Tisby. And I get on the call and I talk about thin theology versus thick theology. A thin theology is very binary. By the way, Republican or Democrat can have a thin theology, political theology. It's very binary.

It says that there's only one truly Christian party to vote for. It attaches your ultimate salvation to who you vote for. It holds up a political party or candidate as a sort of salvific figure or movement. Right? And then there's a thick theology that essentially sees nuance and honestly holds politics in its proper place. You are not the sum total of your being as a Christian and a human person is not in who you vote for. It's literally an assessment of whose policies and proposals do I find more helpful, right? That's where it should be. What it has become is an idol for a lot of people. And we got, oh my gosh, we got such vitriol for being on that call,

man. There were these people who make a living doing this stuff, but they have really big platforms. Lara Loomer was one, Megan Basham was another, Eric Metaxas, right? As soon as they put out the list of speakers, they did takedowns. Just came after each one of us and basically said, you are not Christian. A Christian Democrat is an oxymoron, all of this stuff. And then if you got on that call, which was two hours of different speakers, it was none of that. There was nobody who said, if you don't vote for Kamala Harris, you're not Christian. There was nobody saying that America is going to hell in a hand basket if you don't vote for this candidate. What there was, literal people in tears over immigration and how we treat people at the border.

Literal people getting choked up about having the privilege to vote and seeing one party vote, having the privilege to vote and seeing one party curtailing that to a degree and another party promoting that. And the broadest, the loudest message was we are here to preserve the peaceful transfer of power, that our votes would actually be the determining factor about who leads as president and not some show of force like we saw on January 6th, 2021. So that was the overwhelming message on that call. There's another layer I can go into around the history that gets into why do so many black people and honestly a lot of marginalized and oppressed groups, why do they vote democratic? But just to sort of clear the air on what that call was and wasn't. And I did a whole

substack post on this that goes into more detail, but yeah. Well, I said something on Twitter that I don't disagree with, but Twitter is just a terrible place. Terrible place. You know? So yeah, I,, I would have to get an old, my, my whole political position, which is complicated to say the least. Um, I just, I, I, for me, it's my say, I don't see a problem the way you're explaining it. Now it's causing me to rethink some stuff. I mean, that it's the idea. It's not an idea of voting a certain direction. It's just a concept of support for either, for any, uh, I would say leader of the demonically empowered empire. We call Babylon as you wear the exiles in Babylon. So it is more of a

deep rooted theological problem I have with the idea of support. I don't know. I, I, you peek behind the curtain and I think that there, there is a ton of money, power, corruption, big corporations, unelected people, lobbyists, the military industrial complex that is basically in control of so many things. And then you have this veneer of rhetoric of candidates being set forth to kind of like give the impression that, you know, come vote for me and give me power. I don't know. I even joke was kind of falling into that. And it's so easy on the right. Like for me, it's just such low hanging fruit to attack the, the idolatry of Christians on the political right.

And that's, it's just so easy. And it's so pervasive. Well, so, and in my book, I actually probably numerically attacked that side more, you know, but when I see, and I'm not saying you're doing it, I especially have to explain that when I see Christians kind of go the opposite side, I'm like, it just seems like your, your, your anti-Trumpism and allegiance to this other side is going to take out Trump as almost manifesting some of the deep seated problems I see that are so on the surface with the political right. Anyway, my, my, my kind of thoughts on that. Yeah, that's, that's good. That's it. Look, this, these are the kind of conversations that we need to be

having as Christians, as people of faith about politics. And we can disagree, but I appreciate the fact that it's like thought out, it's good faith and whatnot. And I don't even know that we disagree. But what I would say is that you're in line with a lot of historic Christians. I mean, Anabaptists, right? And Quakers, you know, just very famously, not really involved with empire and politics, right? I'll just speak from a black and a historical perspective. Number one, if you are a Christian in sort of the evangelical or conservative tradition, you have been discipled

to think that the only truly Christian way to vote is Republican. That's been going on for the better part of 40 years, at least since the rise of the religious right in the late 70s. There is a lot of messaging that white Christians, particularly evangelicals, have gotten about voting, which brings it up to abortion is the issue that we vote on without considering the interconnectedness of issues that lead people to choose abortion, right? Which is how Democrats who are Christian would talk about it. And then with black folks, politics has often been existential. It has had to do with whether

we were enslaved or free. It has had to do with whether we could get certain jobs, go in certain buildings, buy houses, right? And so there was an AME pastor in the 19th century, who was an abolitionist named Charles Pierce. And he said this, he was a pastor. And he said, a man in this state cannot do his whole duty as a minister except if he but looks out for the political interests of his people. If he but looks out for the political interests of it. Why would he say that? Because he knew as a pastor who was faithfully shepherding his flock, what issues were affecting them. And a lot of them were legal issues like, do you have the right to vote? Right? And then it's so interesting, the first presidential election after the civil War, there was a ticket called the Seymour Blair ticket. Seymour was the presidential candidate, Blair was the VP candidate.

You want to know what their motto was? Their motto was, this is a white man's country, let white men rule. So if you're black, which I'm not even sure they could vote yet because the 15th amendment granting black men the right to vote was until 1870. But if you are black, are you supporting the Seymour Blair ticket? And then here's the question, right? You can say, well, that was the 1860s that we're long past that now. Actually, are we? Racism never goes away, it adapts. So there's always a political calculation that each party has. Do we have a big tent and try to appear to a bunch of people or do we appeal to a relatively smaller group

but that votes in lockstep? Right? Okay. So we have 1954 Brown v. Board passes, right? What's the response of Congress, white Congress people, particularly in the South, they write the Southern Manifesto, which says, we are going to do everything we can to resist the Supreme Court ruling desegregating public schools. Then in 1964, March on Washington, the Birmingham church bombing, Kennedy assassinated, all in 1963. On the heels of that, Lyndon B. Johnson is able to squeak by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And the apocryphal phrase is, I just lost the South for a generation. What is he saying there? By passing the 64 Civil Rights Act, which says he cannot racially discriminate basically, right? He says, I've

lost half the country's votes because I promoted this fair and equal racial act. And then I can keep going, right? Like Reagan, who's often a hero for conservatives. Early 1980s, he goes to Neshoba County, Mississippi and says the phrase states' rights. Neshoba County, Mississippi is the same place where three civil rights workers were abducted and killed. Just 15 years before? To use that language of states' rights in Mississippi, had very strong racial overtones.

I think it was George H.W. Bush when the black welfare queen trope came out and uses that as a campaign ad. We can go on and on and on. Democrats have their issues too. But when I talk about black people voting, you know, there's always a- That's so helpful, Jamar. So just to kind of summarize, like historically it is beyond dispute that political decisions disproportionately affected black people. That's an understatement. Um, historically that is not disputed in the present. Maybe

that's a little more disputed. I think people do. I can probably get a black conservative who would say how Republican policies help the black community more. And you know, I don't, I don't, it, it's beyond my pay grades. To that, to that, I say you have to explain why the majority of black people are still voting for Democrats, right? We can always find an exception, right? But, but in the past, over presidential elections, black people, black women, especially have voted over 90 percent democratic. Okay. So you can bring in the 8% who voted Republican, but explain to me the 92%.

What about this though? And Craig, I've seen a few polls where the black support for either Republicans or Trump has doubled in the last, since the last election, or since 2016 maybe, or 2020. It has increased. The reasons for that generally focus around, let's try something different because we don't see a tangible real life change with Democrats in office or some belief that Republicans

and Trump in particular are better with the economy, which you can show is not the case when you look at like debt, national debt, job creation, all of that stuff. So in my view, these are kind of like, if you know the person who's just always takes the opposite view, these kind of contrarian people, a lot of times. That's what we're running up against. And a lot of them are black men too. They're facing a lot of cynicism and disillusionment with the political process. And yet, and still, like beyond a...

This is not a squeaking by. The overwhelming majority of black people, both men and women still vote democratic. And I'm not saying that you have to agree with that or that's always all right. I'm just saying that we got to contend with that, especially the people who say you can't be a Democrat and vote Christian because black people by and large are Christian. Right? So when I see that, that is just, is that just blank? You know, that, that is a subtle racism, blatant racism. I'm like, Oh my word, you sound, do you hear yourself? Yeah, that's, I apologize on behalf of my white brothers and sisters for that racist trope.

Very good. Yeah. But this is, this is an important conversation, especially as we lead up to an election. And I'm not saying that every Christian needs to come down in the same place. All I'm saying is let's have a thick political theology, one especially that takes into account history. In the spirit of justice, I talk about Shirley Chisholm, who is in many ways a forerunner of Kamala Harris because she had a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. I talk about other folks who were elected or pursued elected office. As a matter of fact, Merle Evers-Williams ran for political office after her husband was assassinated.

She moved to California, ran for political office. Fannie Lou Hamer, who I often talk about, was part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party trying to unseat the all-white delegation from Mississippi. So you have a lot of people who we look up to as examples of standing against racism who are also very politically active and the party they were a part of was always consistent in those senses. So- What do you say about, I'm going to let

you go here just a minute. But, um, one of the counter art and that kind of arguments, but maybe the other perspective is that more and more black people are seeing how the democratic parties sort of like panders to the black community or will use like, we'll do what they say, what needs to be said to get black votes again, to stay in for these majority white elites to stay in power. And you get glimpses of this that are just on the nose. Like when Biden famously told, was it Charlamagne, the God, you know, if you don't, if you don't vote for me, you ain't black. You know, like that's the most white liberal racist, but, and that's a quiet part out loud and he's not all there. But I mean like,

but that, that kind of was like, that's, that perspective is kind of more pervasive than it feels. And again, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not signing off on that necessarily. I from, from looking off the outside, it feels like I see some of that, but there, there are definitely politicians, white politicians in particular who are really clumsy with it. They'll look at the pattern of black support for the Democratic Party. And what we really get upset about is taking our vote for granted in the sense that they feel like they can count on it without working for our communities in any sense, any meaningful sense. So I go back to history. Frederick Douglas is an incredible writer because he just tells it like it is. And there was somebody who

asked him about the race question and politics. And he writes back this letter in the newspaper. And he says, vote for the party of freedom. He said, for the life of me, I cannot see how any honest colored man who has brains enough to put two ideas together can allow himself under the notion of independence, I'm a free thinker, to give aid and comfort to the other party. And so he said, my advice to colored men everywhere is to stick to the party of freedom. And then he says this, tell your wants, hold the party up to its profession, but do your utmost to keep it in power in state and nation. So that's the accountability part. Tell the party your wants, hold it up to its profession. And I think there's no stronger critics of the Democratic Party than Democrats. You can look at the Democratic National Convention, right?

There's protests outside of it because of Gaza and other issues. So there are internal critics and as Christians, I think we should be faithful Christians in either party, which means in many instances being a voice of conscience, being a gadfly within those parties, calling it back to what we consider virtuous and what is best for the common good. Jamar man, I could talk to you for hours, really appreciate your voice and your wisdom and your grace to you by the way, uh, the spirit of justice, true stories of faith, raced and resistance.

It would highly encourage people to pick it up. Uh, it just came out today on the time of recording, but it's already out at the time of when people are listening. So Jamar, where can people find you and your work? Do you have a website? Yes, so if you want to order the book it's available wherever you get your books or you can go to thespiritofjustice.com Also it's a years-long process to get a book out there, so if you want to keep up with my more frequent writings go to jamartisby.substack.com go to jamartisby.substack.com. That's jamartisby.substack.com.

And of course, follow me on the socials at jamartisby. Thanks, Jamar. Really appreciate you. Thank you. Great conversation. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Greetings and God bless. This is Tyler Burns. And this is Dr. Jamar Tisby. And we want to invite you to check out our podcast, Pass the Mic, Dynamic Voices for a Diverse Church.

Pass the Mic has been speaking directly to the core concerns of black Christians for over a decade. On our show, we've got interviews from theologians, historians, actors, activists, and so much more. Not to mention heartfelt, open dialogue on some of the heaviest issues facing the church in the United States. Be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. We'll see you there on the next Pass the Mic.

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