Speaker 1: Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
Speaker 1: social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course, The Promised Land versus White Supremacy.
Speaker 1: We white Christians no longer represent the majority of Americans,
Speaker 1: writes Robert P. Jones, a white Christian. We are no
Speaker 1: longer capable of setting the nation's course by sheer cultural
Speaker 1: and political dominance, but there are more than enough of
Speaker 1: us to decisively derail the future of democracy in America.
Speaker 1: That's from Robbie's new book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,
Speaker 1: an exploration of the historical foundations of white supremacy in
Speaker 1: the United States. The book is wide ranging, incisive, and
Speaker 1: ultimately a call to action from someone steeped in the
Speaker 1: same culture and moras he examines, I'll read you another excerpt.
Speaker 1: At its heart, this book sets out to expose the deep,
Speaker 1: hidden roots of America's current identity crisis. He writes, this
Speaker 1: moment of reckoning with our fraught and contested heritage is
Speaker 1: spawning new practices of remembering. It is also generating a
Speaker 1: visceral and sometimes violent resistance. The fault Line's Robbie examines
Speaker 1: affect every facet of American life, individuals, families, communities, politics,
Speaker 1: the economy, and institutions ranging from courts to corporations. Robbie
Speaker 1: brings skills to this endeavor. He has a widely published
Speaker 1: and award winning writer, a well regarded polster, and president
Speaker 1: and founder of the Public Religious Research Institute. He has
Speaker 1: written two other books and is lavishly trained in religious
Speaker 1: studies and ministries. Welcome to Crash Course.
Speaker 2: Robbie, Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: We have got a lot to discuss, and since the
Speaker 1: theme of this one is white supremacy, let's just set
Speaker 1: the table right there. You know, it's a term that
Speaker 1: doesn't come easily to many people's lips. Joe Biden gave
Speaker 1: a speech honoring and remembering the Tall massacre of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one last year. It was the one hundredth anniversary,
Speaker 1: and I think he was the first US president to
Speaker 1: utter the term white supremacist or white supremacy. Why do
Speaker 1: you think that term is still so hard for some
Speaker 1: people to say.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think what happens, particularly with people
Speaker 2: who are white, is they think of perhaps the image
Speaker 2: that comes to mind is some black and white image
Speaker 2: of people in robes and hoods burning across in the
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds or maybe as late as nineteen twenty. But
Speaker 2: it's still a century back there in our minds, and
Speaker 2: so we tend to, I think, associate it with something
Speaker 2: quite extreme and quite long ago that pictures faded. It's
Speaker 2: black and white. But what I mean by it is
Speaker 2: actually something a little more familiar to us. And I'll
Speaker 2: borrow this actually from colleague of mine, Eddie Cloud, who's
Speaker 2: a professor at Princeton. But you know, he talks about
Speaker 2: what he calls white supremacy without all the bluster, and
Speaker 2: it really just means a way of thinking about it
Speaker 2: and much more everyday terms. It's one of those terms
Speaker 2: of art. But if you just take the words and
Speaker 2: flow them around and we talk about the idea of
Speaker 2: a commitment to the supremacy of whites instead of white supremacy,
Speaker 2: it gets closer to the meaning that I mean. And
Speaker 2: so that's very near to us, you know, in our history.
Speaker 2: You know, during my lifetime, for example, I grew up
Speaker 2: in Mississippi and went to Jackson Public schools in the
Speaker 2: state's capital, and the schools didn't get desegregated until I
Speaker 2: was in third grade. Right, I was born in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight, right, so this is nineteen seventy six before
Speaker 2: this happens, and that's you know, two decades beyond Brown v.
Speaker 2: Board of Education. And it was because you know, the
Speaker 2: simple idea that the best schools, libraries, parks, the best
Speaker 2: parts of town with redlining, all of these things, right,
Speaker 2: were very much driven with this idea that really white
Speaker 2: lives were worth more than others and the best things
Speaker 2: in our communities were to be reserved for their use only.
Speaker 1: For the best people, the best that's right for the
Speaker 1: best people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it wasn't just a you know, I think
Speaker 2: the thing that is clear, you know, I'm a religious
Speaker 2: studies scholar by training, but that these things were not
Speaker 2: just assertive in philosophical argument, but they were grounded in theology, right,
Speaker 2: They were really grounded in kind of teachings. And so
Speaker 2: there's not much of a stronger claim you can make
Speaker 2: than to say that white people were designed by God
Speaker 2: to be at the top of the social and political
Speaker 2: pyramid and everyone else is designated below.
Speaker 1: That it's the word of God. In that elocution you've
Speaker 1: written that previous book, White Too Long, about the intersection
Speaker 1: of race, racism, identity, and Christianity. What led you to
Speaker 1: this particular book.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks, You know, it's been a bit of a journey.
Speaker 2: You know, I grew up very much in the Southern
Speaker 2: Baptist Evangelical world in the South, so it's been partially
Speaker 2: a kind of chronicle of my own thinking and wrestling
Speaker 2: with these issues. You know, the first book I wrote
Speaker 2: with the word white and the title was actually in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen called The End of White Christian America, and
Speaker 2: it was really trying to wrestle with the demographics in
Speaker 2: the country and the ways that we had moved from
Speaker 2: being this majority white Christian country to one that was
Speaker 2: no longer a majority white Christian country. So trying to
Speaker 2: look at the demographics and how that was setting off
Speaker 2: I think a lot of reactions in our culture and
Speaker 2: our politics. Just to kind of give you the numbers there,
Speaker 2: you know, recently two thousand and eight, the country was
Speaker 2: fifty six percent white and Christian, as you put all
Speaker 2: you know, Protestants, Catholics, non denominational folks all together, a
Speaker 2: majority white and Christian. By the time Barack Obama gets
Speaker 2: out office, our first African American president, that numbers dropped
Speaker 2: to forty seven and today at numbers forty two percent. Well,
Speaker 2: the country just in a very short amount of time
Speaker 2: actually has crossed this milestone from being majority white and
Speaker 2: Christian to won the so longer majority white and Christian.
Speaker 2: And then the last book, called White Too Long, was
Speaker 2: really focused on It was part memoir history, memoir, and
Speaker 2: also kind of social science and attitudes in the country.
Speaker 2: But looking at really my own families history. My family's
Speaker 2: longer routes go back into Middle Georgia, six generations there,
Speaker 2: and so trying to tell the story of my own family.
Speaker 2: I have a family Bible from eighteen fifteen, you know,
Speaker 2: that was very valued possession in my family. But also
Speaker 2: found out that through doing some genealogical research on that
Speaker 2: family that owned that Bible, that they also enslaved people
Speaker 2: in Middle Georgia. So this Christian identity and enslaving other
Speaker 2: people was seen to be completely consistent. And my own denomination,
Speaker 2: the Southern Baptist Convention, which is actually the largest Protestant
Speaker 2: denomination in the country still today, was founded in eighteen
Speaker 2: forty five explicitly to make enslaving other people compatible with
Speaker 2: the practice of Christianity. All right, and so just kind
Speaker 2: of getting clear of that book was really trying to
Speaker 2: get it clear of those roots. But I realized that
Speaker 2: I really need to take the story back even further.
Speaker 2: And so this book is trying to really locate where
Speaker 2: does this come from. What's the kind of near proximate
Speaker 2: cause to this link between white supremacy and Christianity that
Speaker 2: really sets the moral compass in many ways in this country.
Speaker 2: And so I pull it back in this book historically
Speaker 2: back further. It leads back to fourteen ninety three where
Speaker 2: this thing called the Doctor of Discovery had emerged and
Speaker 2: really does again like set the moral compass for Europeans
Speaker 2: that land on these shores.
Speaker 1: That's a useful bit of historiography from you. For a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. Columbus Day is going to have been
Speaker 1: celebrated shortly before we air, and that has become a
Speaker 1: controversial holiday in the United States. It was historically celebrated
Speaker 1: as a moment of great discovery, the conjoining of Europe
Speaker 1: with the North American continent, and a door opening up
Speaker 1: to progress and prosperity. What we now know about Christopher
Speaker 1: Columbus himself and the introduction of slavery through the Columbian
Speaker 1: expeditions have provided us with a much more complex and
Speaker 1: troubling picture of enslavement, expropriation, and mythologies built to justify
Speaker 1: those things. And I think one of the really useful
Speaker 1: historical things you do with the book is say, you know,
Speaker 1: we tend to think about the arrival of African American
Speaker 1: slaves as the incenting moment around racial mythologies and racial
Speaker 1: suppression and exploitation of the United States, but in fact it
Speaker 1: began long before that tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: the doctrine of discovery in that context.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even that move to thinking about including the enslavement
Speaker 2: of Africans in the kind of colonial history is fairly new, right.
Speaker 2: We really got that with the sixty nineteen project, which
Speaker 2: just emerge over the last five years and not uncontroversially
Speaker 2: a lot of backlash over that, But you're right, I
Speaker 2: am arguing that we really need to broaden the aperture
Speaker 2: even more because by the time sixty nineteen arrives, we
Speaker 2: have more than a century of European interaction with indigenous
Speaker 2: people in this country. I think we often forget that
Speaker 2: the history goes back that far, and more importantly, what
Speaker 2: we have is a kind of moral and theological worldview
Speaker 2: that develops that guides the way that Europeans more broadly
Speaker 2: think about people who inhabit these lands. And I think
Speaker 2: that piece is still very much with us today, rooted
Speaker 2: in a set of fifteenth century someone arcane papal document
Speaker 2: that were developed, but they essentially boiled down to this
Speaker 2: idea that because essentially people were asking, well, what's our
Speaker 2: moral obligation to these people that we are encountering in
Speaker 2: these lands, And the theological and moral logic that developed
Speaker 2: basically came up with this one criteria and the essential
Speaker 2: question was are they Christian or not? If these people
Speaker 2: that they are quote unquote discovering were not Christian, then
Speaker 2: they could be considered, I mean this is the actual
Speaker 2: word in the document, they could be considered enemies of Christ.
Speaker 2: And as enemies of Christ, then they were legitimized in
Speaker 2: occupying those lands, taking possession of the land, stealing their goods.
Speaker 2: It actually like spells out in these documents that they
Speaker 2: have permission from the Church to do this. And then
Speaker 2: this one phrase has always really stayed with me from
Speaker 2: that set of papal documents actually says and not only
Speaker 2: those things, but that they have permission to reduce their
Speaker 2: persons to perpetual slavery and all spelled out. So if
Speaker 2: you think about the whole Transatlantic slave trade, genocide, dispossession
Speaker 2: of Native Americans, it's all sort of of a peace
Speaker 2: with this moral and religious worldview that gets developed, you know,
Speaker 2: out of the late fourteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: And very similar to some of the later codes, you know,
Speaker 1: the white Men's Burden and secular constructs that were used
Speaker 1: by the British and other European colonial powers to subjugate
Speaker 1: countries in Africa and populations in Africa in East Asia,
Speaker 1: and again the idea that you could put conventional morality
Speaker 1: to the side because you were dealing with the population
Speaker 1: of people who by definition were opposed to your own
Speaker 1: moral code, so it didn't matter what you did to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the idea was that, you know, the terms
Speaker 2: that come up over and over again in these documents
Speaker 2: and even in more popular construls, not just the legal construls,
Speaker 2: but are the idea that by giving these people again
Speaker 2: who are seen to be enemies of Christ or savages
Speaker 2: or pagans, the words that come up are by giving
Speaker 2: them Christianity and civilization, like those two were to come
Speaker 2: up all the time, Christianity and civilization, that these were
Speaker 2: seen to be such enormous goods were being bestowed upon
Speaker 2: these people that it justified everything else. They lost their land,
Speaker 2: their lives, their goods, their freedom, their sovereignty, all of
Speaker 2: that was seen to be justified because giving them the
Speaker 2: superiority of Christianity and the superiority of European civilization was
Speaker 2: seen to outweigh all of those losses.
Speaker 1: I think the other useful thing that you do in
Speaker 1: analyzing it this way is locate expropriation and racism within
Speaker 1: the Native American experience, the indigenous peoples of the United States.
Speaker 1: We have rich historiography around the black experience in the
Speaker 1: United States, but I think it's less front of mind
Speaker 1: how the genocide that was visited upon indigenous peoples in
Speaker 1: the United States and then it preceded this epical slavery
Speaker 1: period by a meaningful amount of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something I really got clear about just
Speaker 2: in the process of doing research for the book. You know,
Speaker 2: like in my home state of Mississippi, you know, we
Speaker 2: think about these vast farmlands and then kind of you know,
Speaker 2: still today it's some of the richest farmland in the world,
Speaker 2: and the Mississippi Delta and that alluvial floodplain kind of
Speaker 2: going from Memphis to Vicksburg. But prior to eighteen hundred,
Speaker 2: those lands were heavily forested swamp land essentially, and now
Speaker 2: the soil was very rich, but you couldn't get to it.
Speaker 2: But people realized that that was going to be very
Speaker 2: rich land. And Europeans basically had two problems. One they
Speaker 2: were occupied by indigenous people and two they didn't have
Speaker 2: the labor to clear all that land and then to
Speaker 2: turn it into farmland and the defarm it. And they
Speaker 2: solved it really with violence, by killing off many of
Speaker 2: the original inhabitants of the land by force and by
Speaker 2: diseases that were spread, and then with force removal. There
Speaker 2: was actually, you know, a whole period of the actually
Speaker 2: got called Indian removal. That was the official policy of
Speaker 2: the United States in the eighteen thirties. That resulted in
Speaker 2: what became known as the Trail of Tiers, was should
Speaker 2: be called the Trails of Tears. There were multiple waves
Speaker 2: of force removals where you know, as many as twenty
Speaker 2: five thirty percent of the folks died on the way,
Speaker 2: there were kind of forced marches in the dead of winter,
Speaker 2: in many cases over hundreds of miles that had to
Speaker 2: happen first in order for African labor enslave labor to
Speaker 2: be brought in to clear that land and to turn
Speaker 2: it into farmland. But again, the thing driving the engine
Speaker 2: is this idea. It's not that far from many of
Speaker 2: our device today, but this idea that these lands were
Speaker 2: intended to be a kind of, you know, divinely ordained
Speaker 2: promised land for European Christians.
Speaker 1: So let's bring it a little closer into the present.
Speaker 1: In your book, you focus on three case studies, as
Speaker 1: it were, the lynching of three black circus workers in Duluth,
Speaker 1: Minnesota in nineteen twenty, the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre which resulted
Speaker 1: in three hundred deaths in nineteen twenty one, and Emmett
Speaker 1: Tills murder in nineteen fifty five. What links those three
Speaker 1: events and why did you group them together in your book?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the truth is, I could have written
Speaker 2: fifty chapters, one for each state that told very similar histories.
Speaker 2: I wanted to get some kind of different kinds of
Speaker 2: states that had different stories, So you know, Mississippi is
Speaker 2: my home state, and wanted to start there for personal reasons.
Speaker 2: And really this is the more recent story and until murder,
Speaker 2: torture and murder of course, was the spark, really meaning
Speaker 2: talk about it as the spark that ignited the modern
Speaker 2: civil rights movement, So thought that was important. It's also
Speaker 2: a deep, deep south state. Oklahoma, you know, is essentially
Speaker 2: its origins are, to put it kind of bluntly, was
Speaker 2: to be a dumping ground for indigenous refugees that were
Speaker 2: being pushed off the land all across the southeastern seaboard
Speaker 2: and forcibly moved there to Oklahoma's has this very peculiar,
Speaker 2: you know history itself, and then also this history of
Speaker 2: white racial violence toward African Americans in Tulsa, and then,
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't want to just pick on southern state.
Speaker 2: Oklahoma was a very conservative red state as well. Politically
Speaker 2: it's I think it may be the only state where
Speaker 2: every county voted for former President Trump in the last election.
Speaker 2: So I want to go somewhere a little different culturally,
Speaker 2: and can't get us further north in Minnesota, so good
Speaker 2: kind of midwestern state hugs Canada pretty far north, and
Speaker 2: you know, tell the story there. I think by doing that,
Speaker 2: I think it helps make it clear, as it became
Speaker 2: clear to me during the research, this is not really
Speaker 2: a Southern story. It's not just a Red state story.
Speaker 2: This is really an American story. And again, I think
Speaker 2: you could tell these stories. There's comparable stories in every
Speaker 2: state in the country. But by telling it through three
Speaker 2: different lenses, I think the patterns become fairly clear. You
Speaker 2: see their echoes of the same kind of treatment of
Speaker 2: indigenous people, the same kind of treatment of African Americans,
Speaker 2: and these kind of violent outbursts that happen in all
Speaker 2: three places.
Speaker 1: Is the commonality. They're both the combination of violence with
Speaker 1: myth making and other excuses that justify the use of
Speaker 1: the violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, there's, first of all,
Speaker 2: this mythology we've been talking about that the US is
Speaker 2: of you know, divinely ordained promised land, specifically for people
Speaker 2: of European descent who are Christian, and so that gets
Speaker 2: the whole thing off the ground and drives it, you know.
Speaker 2: But then there are these outbursts of violence to protect
Speaker 2: that vision and myth making. And then there is you know,
Speaker 2: in each place there was this process of intentional forgetting
Speaker 2: of kind of sweeping it all under the rug after
Speaker 2: these violent events happening, and protecting a kind of myth
Speaker 2: of innocence that people continue to tell about themselves in
Speaker 2: each place.
Speaker 1: Throughout your book, and specifically towards the end, you talk
Speaker 1: about paths towards healing, and you focus in on reparations
Speaker 1: as being a very practical and tangible tool for addressing
Speaker 1: some of the wrongs of the past. It's a controversial policy.
Speaker 1: The African American community, the Black community the United States
Speaker 1: supports it wholeheartedly. Hispanics for the most part, don't support it.
Speaker 1: Asian Americans don't support it. White Americans don't support it,
Speaker 1: and around half or so of the Democratic Party is
Speaker 1: ambivalent to disapproving of it. And when I'm speaking of
Speaker 1: reparations for our listeners, it's simply trying to put a
Speaker 1: dollar amount on the damage that's been visited on these
Speaker 1: exppropriated populations. I imagine we will get there soon with
Speaker 1: Native Americans, but most of the dialogue right now is
Speaker 1: about the Black community and descendants of armor slaves, the
Speaker 1: argument being that cutting a check might address some of
Speaker 1: the economic and social fallout that came from slavery, oppression
Speaker 1: and expropriation. What do you do, though, Robbie, with the
Speaker 1: fact that there is such sort of popular mechanical opposition
Speaker 1: towards using something like reparations as a tool.
Speaker 2: You're right about the kind of ambivalence in the general
Speaker 2: American public about this, you know, I think that it
Speaker 2: is really linked to a real ignorance of our history.
Speaker 2: You know. I think that that's the link, is that
Speaker 2: if you ask about reparations in the abstract, people generally
Speaker 2: know there was slavery. There was, But I think people
Speaker 2: don't really know the links between slavery, reconstruction, tearing down
Speaker 2: of reconstruction, the erection of Jim Crow, and just you know,
Speaker 2: the systematic effort to disenfranchise African Americans even after the
Speaker 2: abolition of slavery. And I think when you get clearer
Speaker 2: about that history, the question of reparations becomes less controversial,
Speaker 2: and I think the resistance to is less. So I
Speaker 2: really think we're just at the very beginning of a
Speaker 2: process of truth telling around this history. And in fact,
Speaker 2: that's why we're seeing so much in the political battles
Speaker 2: they're over history. What's going to be taught to our
Speaker 2: kids in school. What isn't, what's appropriate, what's not, what's
Speaker 2: the real American story, what's not? Like all these kinds
Speaker 2: of questions, it's because there is this moment of reckoning happening,
Speaker 2: and that if we fully reckon, I think with the
Speaker 2: realities of that history, you know, the questions of reparations, repair,
Speaker 2: repairing the damage, put in theological terms, repentance, those kind
Speaker 2: of questions become I think, less abstract when you are
Speaker 2: more grunted in the history. So I think this is
Speaker 2: going to be an ongoing conversation. But as I see it,
Speaker 2: you know, if you think about a process of confession
Speaker 2: and truth telling that leads to repentance and repair, we
Speaker 2: are only at the very beginning of the confession and
Speaker 2: truth telling part of that process. And so I think
Speaker 2: as that goes on, that conversation will will develop, and
Speaker 2: I think it will need to include, you know, not
Speaker 2: just African Americans, but indigenous people. It'll need to include
Speaker 2: you know, we also had like a whole history of
Speaker 2: Asian American prejudice. I mean, we had an act that
Speaker 2: was just explicitly called in the nineteen twenties the Chinese
Speaker 2: Exclusion Act for goodness sake, so you know, we'll need
Speaker 2: to reckon, I think, with all of that history going forward.
Speaker 2: But the only other thing I'd say to this is
Speaker 2: that I think that sometimes people are thinking about this
Speaker 2: at a very high abstract like national level, but where
Speaker 2: I've seen things on the ground kind of working is
Speaker 2: actually at the local level. Right. So a place like Evanston, Illinois,
Speaker 2: had the history of redlining, and they've actually tried to
Speaker 2: set up a fund that allows for anyone who could
Speaker 2: show that they were denied alone in Evanston on basis
Speaker 2: of race, can then apply now for help with it
Speaker 2: down payment, help with house payments as a way that
Speaker 2: the city is trying to reckon with that history. So
Speaker 2: all of that to say, I think the tighter it's
Speaker 2: connected to kind of local histories, I think that also
Speaker 2: helps as well, because then there is a coherent story
Speaker 2: that people are understanding we're doing this because of these
Speaker 2: concrete actions in the past.
Speaker 1: Robbie, on that note, I want to take a quick
Speaker 1: break so we can hear from a sponsor, and then
Speaker 1: we'll come right back. We're back with Robbie Jones, author
Speaker 1: of The Hidden Roots of White supremacy. We were just
Speaker 1: talking about reparations and its challenges, So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about money. You've criticized James Carville, Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton's well known advisor, for recommending the politicians and policymakers
Speaker 1: emphasized class over race. Carvill's famous formulation was, it's the
Speaker 1: economy stupid. And I think your counter argument is, no,
Speaker 1: it's white supremacy stupid, and it's white racism stupid. And
Speaker 1: that if we're going to solve some of the divisions
Speaker 1: we're dealing with now that have come out of the
Speaker 1: history you and I were discussing earlier in the show,
Speaker 1: you have to prioritize racism and the mythology surrounding white
Speaker 1: supremacy to deal with that.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, you know, is certainly the case that these
Speaker 2: two things are inter woven in our history. And I
Speaker 2: don't want to overstate the point. You're right about my
Speaker 2: criticism of that. I think it does not fully explain
Speaker 2: the moment we're in, our deeper history, the deeper divides
Speaker 2: that we're dealing with now. It may have worked as
Speaker 2: a short term political slogan, but if we're really going
Speaker 2: to understand for the long term, the train has shifted.
Speaker 2: We actually did some kind of testing of this and
Speaker 2: some public opinion survey work. You know, my day job,
Speaker 2: I wear the present founder of Public Religion Research Institute.
Speaker 2: We do a lot of public opinion polling, and we
Speaker 2: partnered with the Atlantic in twenty sixteen and actually tested
Speaker 2: this out, this idea. So, what's driving the bigger partisan
Speaker 2: divisions and what was driving specifically support for Donald Trump
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen. Was it a kind of economic resentment
Speaker 2: argument or was it more of a cultural resentment argument
Speaker 2: around immigrants and whites being discriminated against and those kinds
Speaker 2: of things. And we basically found no surprise, it's both.
Speaker 2: So when we put it in a kind of fancy
Speaker 2: regression model and held a bunch of stuff constant, both
Speaker 2: of these things turned out to be independent predictors of
Speaker 2: support for Trump. But the cultural factors, this kind of
Speaker 2: anti immigrant sentiment, resentment against African Americans, denials of systemic racism,
Speaker 2: those things were three times as powerful as the economic
Speaker 2: resentment arguments for support for Trump.
Speaker 1: As a motivating force for a vote. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if you think about this as a recipe, it's
Speaker 2: three parts kind of racial resentment and one part kind
Speaker 2: of economic resentment that was kind of driving our grievances
Speaker 2: that we're driving support.
Speaker 1: So your lesson from that is your policy prescriptions and
Speaker 1: your analysis should follow a similar recipe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think we're going to get to the
Speaker 2: root of the problem and not just finesse it. We're
Speaker 2: really going to have to deal with this head on.
Speaker 2: And I think the other thing that's changed is the
Speaker 2: demographics of the country since the nineteen nineties. This is
Speaker 2: the first generation that has really been had to deal
Speaker 2: with the fact that white Christians country are no longer
Speaker 2: a supermajority. Can't just depend on overwhelming with numbers, right,
Speaker 2: the numbers just aren't there. And so the question of
Speaker 2: are we a pluralistic democracy when even when the outcomes
Speaker 2: may not go our way because we don't have the
Speaker 2: numbers anymore, do we still support democracy? Do we still
Speaker 2: support fair and open election? Those are I think questions
Speaker 2: that are very present for us today in a way
Speaker 2: that they weren't. And that's why I think race and
Speaker 2: ethnicity and these big debates over you know, we're debating
Speaker 2: less about policy today, I think, or I would argue,
Speaker 2: than we are about identity. You know, who gets to
Speaker 2: be an American? Who is America for? Who is this
Speaker 2: country for? And whose belongs and who doesn't. These are
Speaker 2: the bigger dividing lines today, and they're all wrapped up
Speaker 2: with these kind of ethno religious claims.
Speaker 1: Also, you know, informed in that conversation often by ethnic
Speaker 1: groups whose ancestors experienced discrimination themselves, whether it was the
Speaker 1: Jews or the Irish or the Italians, who at a
Speaker 1: distant but not so distant point in the past had
Speaker 1: to deal with the very same discrimination that they support now.
Speaker 1: And these random definitions of what does it mean to
Speaker 1: be an American? Let's talk about symbols to that. That's
Speaker 1: another part of your work that I think is powerful
Speaker 1: and important in the conversation we're having, especially given all
Speaker 1: the discussion of what to do with monuments to the
Speaker 1: Confederacy and various statuary and monuments that are sprinkled around
Speaker 1: the country that do enshrine a certain racial hierarchy and
Speaker 1: an oppressive racial order. In the book I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: White Too Long, which came out in twenty twenty, I
Speaker 1: believe you mentioned how some Southern churches had stained glass
Speaker 1: windows that had images of Confederate generals. Robert E. Lee
Speaker 1: and Stonewall Jackson embedded into the glass. And that was
Speaker 1: powerful to me because again it was this tangible and
Speaker 1: visible touchstone for what you've been addressing throughout your career,
Speaker 1: which is this intermingling of Christianity, racism, and brute force.
Speaker 1: How do you think about how important this kind of
Speaker 1: symbols and iconography and statuary monuments are in in this
Speaker 1: greater problem of white supremacy and racism.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks for that. No, I think they're hugely important.
Speaker 2: We could sort of argue using words and books and
Speaker 2: those kinds of things. But one of the things that
Speaker 2: after the Civil War, this group called the United Daughters
Speaker 2: of the Confederacy saw very clearly was that one way
Speaker 2: to educate the next generation and to stake their claim
Speaker 2: on their spin on history was to create these monuments
Speaker 2: and to put them in very public spaces a courthouse lawn,
Speaker 2: so that when people were going in to have a
Speaker 2: case adjudicated, there was a kind of statement on the
Speaker 2: lawn about whose law who was in charge? Essentially, you
Speaker 2: know still and they were Confederate soldiers often and I
Speaker 2: mean you know here in Virginia near where I live,
Speaker 2: still there is in Orange Virginia. There's Madison's grave, there's
Speaker 2: the courthouse, and there's a huge Confederate monument right on
Speaker 2: the lot of the courthouse, and engraved in there it
Speaker 2: says they died for the right all right ght you know,
Speaker 2: for the right there and this kind of declaration, the
Speaker 2: massive statute Jefferson Davis in Richmond on Monument Avenue in
Speaker 2: Richmond that has now been torn down, but was there,
Speaker 2: and it had this big column probably fifty feet high,
Speaker 2: with a gold statue of a woman with her finger
Speaker 2: pointed at the heavens, and under it in Latin it
Speaker 2: said God will vindicate right the Confederacy. So like these
Speaker 2: were things that stood for one hundred years, right, that
Speaker 2: citizens had to drive by every day and kind of
Speaker 2: educated them. So I think these symbols are hugely important.
Speaker 2: This is all very recent history, and I think certainly
Speaker 2: those wanting to kind of uphold the law's cause, you know,
Speaker 2: they had a textbook program, but they also had this
Speaker 2: monument program that they saw is really influential in shaping
Speaker 2: public memory, right, And if that's the history we're telling,
Speaker 2: it shapes how we kind of deal with others in
Speaker 2: the present.
Speaker 1: So I assume you think it's a healthy process that
Speaker 1: some of these minings were being taken down or people
Speaker 1: are either looking at them in contacts or getting rid
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: You know, I do. You know, I'd be straightforward about it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The one thing that changed my mind. So I grew
Speaker 2: up in Mississippi. I mentioned, and my high school was
Speaker 2: the Our mascot was the Rebels, like we were following
Speaker 2: the University of Mississippi. We had a Confederate colonel as
Speaker 2: the mascot, you know, kind of walk around on the
Speaker 2: football field. The band played Dixie when the football team
Speaker 2: scored a touchdown, and there was a cheerleader that ran
Speaker 2: up and down the sideline with a big Confederate battle flag.
Speaker 2: And it was a public school in Jackson. So I
Speaker 2: come very much out of this world and didn't understand
Speaker 2: like I was one of the people who thought about
Speaker 2: it as it's our heritage, that's what that's about. Right.
Speaker 2: People in my family fought on the side of the
Speaker 2: Confederacy in Georgia, and so that's part of my family's history.
Speaker 2: But what I realized is that I think the change
Speaker 2: that really helped me is realized is that the vast
Speaker 2: majority of the Confederate monuments that went up did not
Speaker 2: go up during the Civil War. They did not go
Speaker 2: up even in the years following the Civil War. Most
Speaker 2: of them went up in the nineteen twenties and in
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties. And once you kind of realize that,
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, well, what's that about. Well, it was
Speaker 2: the re establishment of Jim Crow and the response to
Speaker 2: Brown b Board of Education desegregating public schools that just
Speaker 2: led to this flowering of this kind of honoring of
Speaker 2: the Confederacy and this kind of revival of this lost
Speaker 2: cause mythology.
Speaker 1: Also, you know, when you mentioned earlier that the football
Speaker 1: team was called the rebels, I guess it would be
Speaker 1: too long a term to put on the football helmet
Speaker 1: to call them the domestic terrorists. But you know, a
Speaker 1: language that we use to describe what the Confederate Army
Speaker 1: d You know, they were insurrectionists, they took up arms.
Speaker 1: They meet every classic definition of domestic terrorism. But they've
Speaker 1: been shrouded in this sort of romantic gone with the
Speaker 1: wind pageantry of a noble order that was subjugated by
Speaker 1: the grinding industrial power of the Yankees.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, the word that I think flew
Speaker 2: around so much too, was honorable, like that was the
Speaker 2: term right. There was kind of this sense of honor.
Speaker 2: They served with honor right, and you see that on
Speaker 2: all the monuments they died for the right. All that
Speaker 2: stuff is about valorizing that worldview. Again, that was really
Speaker 2: about defending their right to own other human beings on
Speaker 2: the basis of race. Right. And so it's massive dissonance
Speaker 2: to try to hold those two things. You know that
Speaker 2: that's an honorable and by the way way to live.
Speaker 1: Let's also talk, since we're moving through these institutions, how
Speaker 1: this has informed the architecture of the law. There's a
Speaker 1: million different examples we could try to dig into to
Speaker 1: explore that in a kind of tidy podcasting way, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to reduce it to just raw simplicity.
Speaker 1: But one of the recent Supreme Court rulings, Halen versus Raquin,
Speaker 1: involved a decision around whether or not Native American adoptees
Speaker 1: children should be prioritized for Native American families. In other words,
Speaker 1: if Native American families are adopting kids, they have the
Speaker 1: first right to get in and try to have those
Speaker 1: children in their home. And there was a challenge of
Speaker 1: that law, saying it shouldn't exist, and the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: in a seven to two decision said no, the law
Speaker 1: should exist. It serves a good social purpose. But you
Speaker 1: probably can see where I'm going to go with this.
Speaker 1: I was very interest in Samuel Alito's descent, in which
Speaker 1: he described the reason for his dissent as essentially this
Speaker 1: arbitrary way of giving one group of people a preferential
Speaker 1: ethnic status that they didn't necessarily deserve. And then in
Speaker 1: I think during oral arguments, he also mentioned that besides,
Speaker 1: when the Europeans came to the United States, this was
Speaker 1: a very warlike culture, and the Europeans essentially did a
Speaker 1: great service in suppressing these savages, and they weren't really
Speaker 1: a community. They lived on very different sides of the country,
Speaker 1: and on and on. And it was very revealing because
Speaker 1: I think Alito, in a number of his judicial decisions,
Speaker 1: cherry picks history, rewrites history, and then uses it to
Speaker 1: define the law and his view of the law. And
Speaker 1: in the context of the law being such an important
Speaker 1: set of swim lanes around how we can live civilly together,
Speaker 1: the vestiges of white racism aren't far from that either,
Speaker 1: are they now that's right.
Speaker 2: It also is just shockingly ignorant of the history, particularly
Speaker 2: between the US government and indigenous peace people this country.
Speaker 2: To sort of argue that they shouldn't get special treatment
Speaker 2: flies in the face of the way that the United
Speaker 2: States has dealt with indigenous people from the beginning, that is,
Speaker 2: as sovereign nations, right, and then later as dependent peoples
Speaker 2: inside the United States. But nonetheless it's always been absolutely
Speaker 2: they get special treatment because of their special historical status
Speaker 2: and relationship with the US. So to even complain that
Speaker 2: that's a thing, I think is shockingly ignorant of the
Speaker 2: history here. Gorsich's opinion on this case is interesting to me.
Speaker 2: He's staunchly pro indigenous sovereignty and really understands this connection here.
Speaker 2: But you know, again, if we just kind of see
Speaker 2: the history where they.
Speaker 1: Don't want to stop you on that for one minute,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the reasons that Gorstch understands it
Speaker 1: is because it's part of his lived experience. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: he grew up around some of this, he had direct
Speaker 1: contact with it. That kind of humility and recollection of
Speaker 1: one's own lived experience as opposed to your academic or
Speaker 1: legal theories could inform more of what the court does.
Speaker 1: And I think that it is an argument as well
Speaker 1: for the thesis of your book that only by reckoning
Speaker 1: with our history and trying to live in that experience
Speaker 1: through history, can we fully understand what the best policies
Speaker 1: are or the best laws.
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right, you know, and it's refreshing
Speaker 2: to see it not just fall completely along ideological lines
Speaker 2: here that you've got actually corpse that taking in a
Speaker 2: very different tact than Aledo on indigenous cases here. But
Speaker 2: the reason for that law in the first place is
Speaker 2: because there was an over attempt really in kind of
Speaker 2: the United States posture toward indigenous tribes developed over time.
Speaker 2: You know, it was first put people on reservations, but
Speaker 2: it was then this kind of process though, destroy their culture,
Speaker 2: destroy family units, send children off to boarding schools. Many
Speaker 2: children were stripped of their kind of tribal identity and
Speaker 2: putting boarding schools where their hair was cut, they're putting
Speaker 2: European clothes, beaten if they spoke their native languages, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And so those adoption laws were actually passed in the
Speaker 2: wake of that kind of cultural genocide that had been
Speaker 2: meted out and trying to protect the integrity of Indigenous families.
Speaker 2: And so again, if you don't know that history, you
Speaker 2: could try to make some abstract arguments about they got
Speaker 2: to be treated the same as everybody else, but that's
Speaker 2: clearly not the case, either from a legal and kind
Speaker 2: of treaty obligation standpoint or from the kind of cultural history.
Speaker 1: And lastly, before we take another break in this tour
Speaker 1: we're taking through American institutions and racism, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the corporate world and businesses. We're in the middle of
Speaker 1: the woke backlash against corporate leaders trying to take a
Speaker 1: more ecumenical and open minded approach to how to recruit
Speaker 1: and elevate members of their own workforces. The role companies
Speaker 1: and businesses play in society. How much do you think
Speaker 1: that the business and corporate life in the United States
Speaker 1: has also been both informed and defined by white racism.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, clearly heavily structured. You know, if we
Speaker 2: go back to the middle the twentieth century, and not
Speaker 2: that far back, if you were the head of a
Speaker 2: fortune five hundred company, chances are you were white, you
Speaker 2: were male, you were Christian and probably Protestant, not Catholic
Speaker 2: or Jewish. You know, the rotary clubs were filled with
Speaker 2: white Anglo Saxon Protestants. Country clubs, for example, where a
Speaker 2: lot of business deals get cut right on the golf
Speaker 2: courses and mingling at the club after. You know, eighteen
Speaker 2: Holes explicitly excluded African Americans, but also Jews and Catholics
Speaker 2: from those institutions. So even at a cultural level, you know,
Speaker 2: it's been a deep, deep part of the structure of
Speaker 2: corporate America. But I do think what we have seen
Speaker 2: is corporations really leaning in to pluralism, to diversity. But
Speaker 2: you know, they're leaning in because they read the demographics
Speaker 2: of the country. So it's part the right thing to do,
Speaker 2: but it's also a very pragmatic thing to do if
Speaker 2: they really want to appeal to the rising you know workforce.
Speaker 2: You know, we're still another decade or so away from
Speaker 2: the country being majority non white, even though we've already
Speaker 2: passed a point where country no longer majority white and Christian,
Speaker 2: but that's on the horizon. And if you're looking at
Speaker 2: high schools today is a majority non white. So corporations
Speaker 2: looking at their next generation of you know, workforce and
Speaker 2: markets Frankly, they've really got to take this into account.
Speaker 2: And I think what we're seeing though, is a backlash
Speaker 2: against that movement again from this group, mostly white and
Speaker 2: Christian folks who are used to being, you know, at
Speaker 2: the center.
Speaker 1: Of all of this, and it mirrors the political backlash,
Speaker 1: the electoral backlash.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right, Robbie.
Speaker 1: I want to take another break and then we'll come
Speaker 1: right back up and pick this conversation up again. I'm
Speaker 1: back with Robbie Jones, historian and political analyst. We've been
Speaker 1: talking about the deep roots of racism in American life.
Speaker 1: So let's look ahead, Robbie. Racism and racial violence are
Speaker 1: animating forces right now in American life. I think it's
Speaker 1: very stark. I think people are I'm going to say
Speaker 1: they're surprised to see it, though I don't think they
Speaker 1: should be. But I think that the Trump era has
Speaker 1: pulled the band aid back on some of the myths
Speaker 1: we've told ourselves about racial progress and tolerance. How do
Speaker 1: you see this playing out as you look ahead over
Speaker 1: the next few years. The deep roots of white supremacy
Speaker 1: that you've analyzed so lushly, and then just the realities
Speaker 1: of how it exists in our daily life, which we've
Speaker 1: just been talking about.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I do think it's important to just
Speaker 2: point to the context. Again. We did have, you know,
Speaker 2: the confluence of the election of our first African American president,
Speaker 2: and I think importantly his re election as well, because
Speaker 2: I think many folks can conserve the white Christians maya
Speaker 2: thought that his election was something of a fluke, but
Speaker 2: then like when he was re elected in twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: I think that was a sign that something had clearly
Speaker 2: shifted in the culture. So we have that event, and
Speaker 2: then it does happen at the same time that we
Speaker 2: move from being majority white Christian country that wants no
Speaker 2: longer majority white Christian country. So I think that's a
Speaker 2: kind of perfect storm in many ways to kind of
Speaker 2: set off a cultural backlash, a big symbolic figure like
Speaker 2: Barack Obama, a coupled demographic change at the same time,
Speaker 2: you know, and then at the local level, like seeing
Speaker 2: things like Spanish language billboards and Spanish language radio stations
Speaker 2: and going to the grocery store and seeing a whole
Speaker 2: ethnic food rial that wasn't there ten years ago, Like
Speaker 2: there are all these kind of signs that the country
Speaker 2: is really shifting, and I think that that has like
Speaker 2: set off this kind of context. And that's the stage
Speaker 2: actually that Donald Trump walked onto, right. He didn't create
Speaker 2: those dynamics, but he walked onto that stage. You know,
Speaker 2: he had props that were pretty well set for him,
Speaker 2: a set that was constructed, but he skillfully was able
Speaker 2: to use that. I think particularly the make America Great
Speaker 2: Again slogan. You know, I've argued that the most important
Speaker 2: word in that is the last one. It's the again.
Speaker 2: It's the nostalgia for taking the country back right to
Speaker 2: a time really when it was a kind of white
Speaker 2: Christian country. And so I think I look forward, I
Speaker 2: do still feel like this is one of the biggest
Speaker 2: dividing lines, kind of two very different and diametrically opposed
Speaker 2: visions of the country. Who the country's for, who belongs
Speaker 2: those big questions. Is the country a divinely ordained promised
Speaker 2: land for European Christians or is the country a pluralistic
Speaker 2: democracy where everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity or religion,
Speaker 2: stands on equal footing before the constitution. And these are
Speaker 2: big questions we've never fully answered in this country. And
Speaker 2: that's why we're still here because we really never fully
Speaker 2: answered that question, and because the country is changing, it's
Speaker 2: really forcing the conversation out into the open in a
Speaker 2: way that I think it's tried to be finessed in
Speaker 2: the past, but we're really going to have to wrestle
Speaker 2: with this. So looking ahead, I do think the next
Speaker 2: year could be pretty challenging because we're going to have
Speaker 2: the big partisan machines revved up. And today our two
Speaker 2: parties are increasingly divided along ethno religious lines. The Republican
Speaker 2: Party self identified Republicans today are seventy percent white and
Speaker 2: Christian in a country again this forty two percent white
Speaker 2: and Christian. The Democratic Party self identified Democrats are only
Speaker 2: twenty five percent white and Christians. So you have this
Speaker 2: kind of race religion party all kind of pulling in
Speaker 2: the same direction. And we know from survey work that
Speaker 2: the pr I did with Brookings last year. You know,
Speaker 2: it's about thirty percent of the country that believes that
Speaker 2: former image that the country has a divinely ordained promised
Speaker 2: land for European Christians. About three and ten Americans believe that,
Speaker 2: but it's a majority of Republicans that believe that right,
Speaker 2: And so that's a battle line that's going to be
Speaker 2: fought out here with all of the resources that the
Speaker 2: party apparatus has over the next thing. The other thing
Speaker 2: we know is that folks who believe that view of
Speaker 2: America as a kind of divinely ordained promised land are
Speaker 2: four times as likely to support political violence to defend it.
Speaker 2: And so I think that's going to be a real
Speaker 2: challenge as we look ahead this year. The longer view,
Speaker 2: I'm more hopeful, and I think if we stay off
Speaker 2: of the kind of big national frame and we look
Speaker 2: at what's happening in local communities, like the National Cathedral
Speaker 2: changing its windows, like what's happening in the Delta with
Speaker 2: retelling the story of them at til what's happening in Duluth,
Speaker 2: what's happening in Tulsa, commemorating the Tulsa Race massacre. These
Speaker 2: things on the local level, the tearing down of Confederate
Speaker 2: monuments in Richmond do tell me that the win and
Speaker 2: is kind of blowing toward pluralism and democracy. So I
Speaker 2: think the longer term outlook for me is I'm more
Speaker 2: hopeful about it. I'm pretty concerned about the next twelve
Speaker 2: to fifteen months.
Speaker 1: When you were talking about Trump earlier, you mentioned make
Speaker 1: America Great Again as one of his pre eminent slogans,
Speaker 1: which it was, but let's not forget that before he
Speaker 1: ran for president in twenty sixteen, he went to school
Speaker 1: as a birther and that's voting Birtherism avidly to undermine
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, Barack Obama's legitimacy as a president, Barack Obama's
Speaker 1: legitimacy as an American as a human being. Any sort
Speaker 1: of road tested I think during that period, the themes,
Speaker 1: the emotions, the talking points that he then walked down
Speaker 1: to the national stage in twenty sixteen and then wedded
Speaker 1: all of that to this Carnia act he had engaged
Speaker 1: in for previous decades as a casino owner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's notable with Obama, he went after him both
Speaker 2: on race and religion. Yeah, it wasn't just about not
Speaker 2: being ableable to run for president not being born in
Speaker 2: the country, but it was about being a Muslim right
Speaker 2: as well. So it was kind of this two pronged
Speaker 2: attack that he was kind of testing out there.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the other realities of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is when asked about the various white national groups
Speaker 1: who have been either on the periphery of his candidacy
Speaker 1: and his administration or his public persona and his speechmaking.
Speaker 1: He's never really disavowed them. He was given a chance
Speaker 1: with David Duke at one point to disavow David Duke,
Speaker 1: the former leader of the KKK, and Trump just couldn't
Speaker 1: bring himself to do it. And in more recent iterations
Speaker 1: both with the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers, and we
Speaker 1: could probably go down a whole long road on Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and racism. I'm going to avoid that for the
Speaker 1: efficiency of this conversation. But one of the things I
Speaker 1: thought about in that is that, you know, the KKK
Speaker 1: is a certain kind of white supremacist organization. They're scary,
Speaker 1: they're dark. They actually in the past were actively involved
Speaker 1: in lynchings and then became in the post lynching era.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you would call them, a social
Speaker 1: organization for people to air their grievances, but they weren't
Speaker 1: openly violent. The Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers were all
Speaker 1: around the January sixth insurrection, and I think some of
Speaker 1: their former members stated that they thought it would incent
Speaker 1: to civil war, that they thought it was time to
Speaker 1: actually use violence overturn the election results, and of course,
Speaker 1: because it was this particular group saying it, it was
Speaker 1: to overturn election results in the interests of preserving white power.
Speaker 1: Do you see change organizationally as well in recent years
Speaker 1: or decades in terms of how white supremacy is getting
Speaker 1: both organized and then weaponized.
Speaker 2: You know, I do you know there's a famously Atwater
Speaker 2: quote where he says, you know, you can't use the
Speaker 2: N word anymore to motivate voters, but you can talk
Speaker 2: about bussing, right, So you kind of find these euphemisms
Speaker 2: for talking about it. There's certainly still some of that
Speaker 2: that goes on, but I think it's becoming more and
Speaker 2: more direct, talking about immigrants as rapists and criminals, straightforwardly
Speaker 2: demonizing kind of whole people groups, and even when they're
Speaker 2: clearly white supremacist groups, saying things like they're fine people
Speaker 2: on both sides.
Speaker 1: Right at Charlesville, Yeah, Trump who also said, you know,
Speaker 1: when we ranted about immigrants at their rapists, their murderers,
Speaker 1: but some of them are nice people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right. But there's not only not a disavowal by
Speaker 2: one candidate, but there's not a disavowal by the party.
Speaker 2: I think that is really significant, right that he was
Speaker 2: never punished inside the party.
Speaker 1: For for him ultimately, And I think.
Speaker 2: That's something that's new. It's sort of giving that permission
Speaker 2: for as long as the candidate is winning and has
Speaker 2: public supports polling well, to not have that be a
Speaker 2: disqualifying thing to happen over and over again, not just once,
Speaker 2: but multiple times. It became pretty clear. So I think
Speaker 2: that's something fairly new in our recent history and the
Speaker 2: kind of politics of white grievance. I think coming to
Speaker 2: the fore and not really being masked or using euphemisms,
Speaker 2: but just straightforward to out there. I think it's something
Speaker 2: you new that we're contending with.
Speaker 1: One of the things you've taught me through your writing
Speaker 1: that was really helpful to me is I used to
Speaker 1: be more mystified by this collision between Christian values and racism.
Speaker 1: It's overtly hypocritical. I grew up a Catholic. I'm a
Speaker 1: laxed Catholic. I don't practice any religion, but I believe
Speaker 1: deeply in Christian tenets, love and forgiveness as a useful
Speaker 1: philosophic approach to our fellow human beings. And I believe
Speaker 1: that if you then embrace Christianity and Christian values, it
Speaker 1: should preclude racism and certainly should preclude violence. And I
Speaker 1: think what your work has taught me is actually that
Speaker 1: the racism and the violence are part of the mix,
Speaker 1: that they were never a separate thing, That it's not
Speaker 1: a thing to be denied, it's actually a thing to
Speaker 1: be embraced. Because Southern white Christianity was built on the
Speaker 1: back of racial dominance, that raises another question for me
Speaker 1: is what's the way out? These are very deep seated
Speaker 1: things that the political process is and solving it's actually
Speaker 1: bringing to a boiling point. You mentioned earlier that corporations
Speaker 1: are really have been adroit in trying to address it.
Speaker 1: But corporations and businesses and families can often move more
Speaker 1: quickly than political institutions. And the battle we're having right
Speaker 1: now is over our political institutions, because they will shape
Speaker 1: our laws and our regulations and our I think public safety.
Speaker 1: And so what's the way out of that mess?
Speaker 2: Well? I don't have a grand ten point plan. If
Speaker 2: I did, you know, everyone should be suspicious of it anyway.
Speaker 2: But what I have seen though, is and I learned this,
Speaker 2: I think just from being on the ground, I have
Speaker 2: some hope in what local communities are doing. I mean
Speaker 2: in Mississippi, right, these were not wealthy people with postgraduate degrees.
Speaker 2: I mean in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi is fairly poor, rural county.
Speaker 2: And yet the descendants of sharecroppers and enslaved people and
Speaker 2: the descendants of enslavers decided to get together and tell
Speaker 2: the truth about what had happened in Mattel, try to
Speaker 2: tell more truthful accounting of how they got to where
Speaker 2: they were in they and you know, that little effort
Speaker 2: that began with a handful of people in a room
Speaker 2: has blossomed into just last month, a new national monument
Speaker 2: that's going to be the Emmett Till and made Me
Speaker 2: Till Mobile National Monument that President Biden just signed into law. Right,
Speaker 2: So that's a pretty big trajectory from people in a
Speaker 2: room in a rural county in Mississippi where you know,
Speaker 2: racial political tensions are really high, but yet found a
Speaker 2: way to kind of hold enough people together to kind
Speaker 2: of move forward there. I think similar story even in
Speaker 2: Tulsa and Duluth. They're messy stories, but there are stories
Speaker 2: of movement and progress and truth telling that leads, I
Speaker 2: think to the kind of repair and healing that we're
Speaker 2: needing in the country. I think, in fact, when we're
Speaker 2: reading the backlash, reading of the resistance is in fact
Speaker 2: a backlash to that movement in a more positive direction
Speaker 2: and a more pluralistic, democratic direction. But there is a
Speaker 2: kind of backlash that we're experiencing now, so you know,
Speaker 2: look ahead again. I think that's where I find I
Speaker 2: think some hope is that these local efforts aren't just
Speaker 2: following the headlines. Unusual, unexpected things are happening, you know,
Speaker 2: when people who are neighbors who are actually trying to
Speaker 2: get to know each other. And I think that's true
Speaker 2: for all of us, right, So, I think as these
Speaker 2: things get built at the local level, one of the
Speaker 2: things that did in all of these places is it
Speaker 2: put people in the room together that wouldn't normally be
Speaker 2: in the room together, and they tried to kind of
Speaker 2: wrestle it out and it changed everyone in the process.
Speaker 1: The show is about learning moments, even though we're talking
Speaker 1: about the roots of vast and intractable, seemingly intractable problems.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you, what did you learn from
Speaker 1: working on your book that you didn't know prior to
Speaker 1: engaging with that work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, the book started actually without including indigenous history,
Speaker 2: and it actually became a very central part of the book.
Speaker 2: But it was along the way that I realized, oh,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, I really not going to understand what
Speaker 2: happened to m until and let's say, understand what happened
Speaker 2: to the Choctaw before it's slaved Africans entered this. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to understand what happened at the Tulsa Race
Speaker 2: massacre without understanding what happened to the Osage. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have a whole movie about that coming out, Killers of
Speaker 2: the Flower Moon very soon. I can't understand really what
Speaker 2: happened in lynching these three African American men without understanding
Speaker 2: the mass execution of thirty eight Dakoda men and the
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, and so I think it's like seeing those
Speaker 2: stories together was what I think was really the biggest
Speaker 2: learning moment for me, because you know what little Indigenous
Speaker 2: history I knew, and it was very little. It had
Speaker 2: got very little for my formal education. And that's saying
Speaker 2: someone for someone of the PhD in American religion that
Speaker 2: I nonetheless got very little about Indigenous people. So I
Speaker 2: think that was one of the biggest things, is seeing
Speaker 2: that come through and just seeing those interconnections and helping
Speaker 2: to see a more holistic story about how it got
Speaker 2: to be who we are and where we are.
Speaker 1: Robbie, I could continue on and on with you, but
Speaker 1: we've unfortunately we've run out of time, and I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you coming on today.
Speaker 2: Thank you, knows I'm really happy to be here. Thanks
Speaker 2: for having me.
Speaker 1: Robbie Jones is the author of The Hidden Roots of
Speaker 1: White Supremacy and the president and founder of the Public
Speaker 1: Religious Research Institute. He also has a newsletter you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to Robert P. Jones dot substack dot com Here
Speaker 1: at crash Course, we believe the collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,
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