His bio succintly summarizes his mission: “Jemar Tisby is a New York Times bestselling author, national speaker, and public historian on a mission to deliver truths from the Black experience with depth and clarity.”
This conversation was exactly what I needed, and it exemplifies the type of conversations I want to elevate. Jemar Tisby, PhD diagnoses the threats he sees from white Christian nationalism—without giving up hope for a better America.
First of all, he’s blunt about the threat of white Christian nationalism:
“I always say the ‘white’ part out loud, because that’s the part that becomes easy for people to skip over—and yet it is integral to the project of nationalism in general…. If folks who ascribe to white Christian nationalist ideology have their dream of the nation completely fulfilled, what does it look like? Is it very racially and ethnically diverse, particularly at the top? No. If there’s a hierarchy, who’s at the top of that pyramid? It’s gonna be White wealthy men. And that’s actually what we’re seeing right now.” (7:00)
While studies have shown that Black Americans embrace general Christian nationalist ideologies at similar rates as White Americans, they manifest those views in vastly different ways:
“So, when you look at the Black Christian tradition and political activism, what tends to happen? It’s an expansion of voting rights, an expansion of civil rights, moving closer toward a multiracial participatory democracy. When you look at the political behavior of White Christian nationalists, it’s the exact opposite. It is a narrowing of voting rights. It becomes harder to participate as an average citizen. It is a more concentrated power among the few, tending toward authoritarian anti-democratic expressions.” (11:00)
Pointing to efforts in Tennessee and other Southern states to dilute Black voting power, Jemar sounds the alarm:
“It is an absolute five-alarm fire for democracy. What is happening now is all designed to tip the scales in the favor of a far-right contingent come midterms. And what’s happening with the voting rights stuff is they are scrambling mostly in the Southern states, the states of the former Confederacy, to redraw districts that will essentially dilute Black political power. It is beyond urgent. And whatever kind of ‘Chicken Little, sky is falling’ people think that activists are doing right now, they couldn’t be more wrong.” (14:38)
Yet, he still holds out hope:
“Most of us kind of categorize hope as a feeling. I think it’s more accurate to say hope is action. How would an enslaved black person in the 1830s or the 1790s have viewed their circumstances? They wouldn’t have seen on the horizon any sort of conflagration like the Civil War. It would have looked like, well, this is my entire life. And yet, they were somehow able to come up with music and dance and have families and laugh and find joy in the world. Everything they did to push back against their own dehumanization was an act of hope. Similar to today, everything we do to push back against the dehumanization of ourselves or our neighbors, to push back against anti-democratic forces, is a sign of hope.” (29:30)
Please watch the entire conversation and let me know what you think!
