Thread by @WilGafney

My talk, White Supremacy in Biblical Studies Unhooded, at UVA in Charlottesville went well. No tiki torches.

A few excerpts: White supremacy in biblical studies, like its get, racism, has never been hooded...Racism has been thinly obscured by the tawdry yet seductive negligee of privilege-purchased naïveté. #unhooded

Those hoods have always been visible...Ironically, the hoods should be more visible to wearers looking at other wearers. But to comment upon someone else’s hood is to comment upon your own, and the negligee of privilege purchased naïveté is so seductive. #unhooded

Unhooding, or rather drawing attention to the unhooded and naked white supremacist history of biblical studies and biblical interpretation, is a necessary part of a of an education in the text and its interpretation whether for classroom or congregation. #unhooded

That work most properly falls to its maintenance engineers...those who have inherited the legacy of white supremacy. All too often that work is left to people of color. All too often I find myself addressing it. By all too often, I mean at all. #unhooded

Tolerance for white supremacist rhetoric, slogans, and salutes in the public square and at the highest levels of government has made white supremacy more visible. #unhooded

The negligee has slipped off; its wearer fully exposed, under the glare of spotlights–not all of which are the harsh lights of hostile interrogations, some are the soft lights of romantic adoration. #unhooded

White supremacy in biblical studies, like in the larger world, is not relegated to the past or breathing its last breaths waiting to die with the Birmingham church bombers. #unhooded

With the advent of post-colonial studies, critical biblical scholarship has begun to address imperialist contexts. Yet imperializing white supremacist cartographies remain largely undisturbed even as the privilege that obscure them becomes more and more tattered and revealing.

The perniciously persistent anti-blackness in biblical studies meets its most potent rebuttal is a portion of the two percent of the Society of Biblical Literature that identifies as being of African descent. #unhooded

Whatever the breadth and depth of our interests, many of us find ourselves required to exegete the Afro in Afro-Asiatic lest yet one more coat of whitewash be spackled on the text. #unhooded

Speculation about the name, origin, race, and ethnicity of Cushi (Zephaniah 1:1) reveals much about the assumptions and understanding of race that shape biblical scholars and our scholarship. [Fr my commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk & Zephaniah] #unhooded

Questioning whether Cushi (Zephaniah 1:1) is a gentilic and whether it indicates African identity is extremely freighted in a Western interpreting context, particularly in the Americas. [Fr my commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk & Zephaniah] #unhooded

Constructions of race and ethnicity read into and out of the Bible justified the colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the institutionalization of race-based slavery, and the dispossession and attempted genocide of indigenous peoples. [commentary on N, H & Z] #unhooded

Persons of African descent have looked for persons of African descent in the Scriptures to affirm their worth and dignity virtually from the introduction of the Scriptures. [Fr my commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk & Zephaniah] #unhooded

Seeking such affirmation in the Scriptures was tantamount to using the Scriptures against themselves—or, better, against their use against subjugated communities as an implement of domination, occupation & colonization. [Fr my commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk & Zephaniah] #unhooded

So, then what does biblical studies look like in an age of unhooded white supremacy? The lack of accountability for its racist, white supremacist origins and perpetuation of anti-black scholarship suggests that not all of the hoods and torches are in the streets. #unhooded