Brad and Dan connect the threads of the Chauvin murder conviction, the proposed America First caucus, and racialized violence across the country. They use historical instances from the Civil War, the 1920s, and other moments in the nation's history to explain how we are still living in two countries with two sets of rules. They conclude by examining how Sikh individuals were targeted in the Indianapolis mass shooting and use this instance to explain how religion is raced in the United States and what that means for both White Christians and BIPOC from all religious traditions.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundy Axis Mundy You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty in religion, Skidmore College.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB, and I'm here with my co-host.
My name is Dan Miller.
I am associate professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Brad, as always, it's nice to see you.
You too.
I know that both of us are on fumes, as is everyone teaching and learning right now.
And so we we're doing our best.
It's been a monumental week in a number of ways, Dan, but I need to say this, friends, at the start, we could really use your help.
So as many of you know, over the last couple of weeks, we have been, I will say, mentioned by Jim Daley, Focus on the Family, Al Mohler, Southern Baptist Convention, and Timothy Keller.
Uh, and that's been great.
It's been fun to, um, have what I would call those debates and other things.
What it has led to though, is, uh, fanboys and others from those, uh, those, uh, silos, basically giving us a bunch of one-star reviews on Apple Podcasts and other places.
So we could really use your help.
If you're listening to this and you can take 10 seconds, 30 seconds to go give us a review, write something out, uh, subscribe on, on Spotify and or Apple Podcasts.
That would really mean a lot to us and it would really help us.
So that is what we're going to ask.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I was going to say, because the enemies of cancel culture, the famous advocates of not canceling anything, want to cancel straight white American Jesus.
It's true.
And if American history tells us anything, Dan, is that straight white American Jesus will never be canceled.
Yes.
Double entendre intended.
So.
All right.
We want to talk about some things that I believe are linked and some threads that will hopefully make that clear.
So that is police brutality.
That is the Derek Chauvin conviction.
That is some reactions from right-wing media and pundits.
That is the launch and then sort of backing away from the America First Caucus.
That is a number of things.
And so, Dan, I want to start with going back into history a little bit to the period just after the Civil War.
And this is from a great, great article by Toulouse Olorunnipa and Griff Witt at WAPO this week.
So let me read this to you, Dan.
Hillary Thomas Stewart Sr.
spent the first eight years of his life enslaved in North Carolina, where tobacco fields financed American dynasties.
Stuart was freed in the mid-1860s, the result of a bloody Civil War that led to the emancipation of nearly 4 million black Americans who had toiled under a brutal system of chattel slavery.
Despite having no formal education, teaching enslaved people to read and write was deemed illegal by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1830.
Stuart acquired 500 acres of land by the time he reached his 20s, according to Angela Harrison.
Stuart lost it all when white farmers seized the land using legally questionable maneuvers that were common in the post-war South.
Stuart's state-mandated illiteracy left him powerless to mount a legal defense.
It was not an uncommon occurrence, according to a 1982 report by the United States Commission on Civil Rights that documented the steep decline of black-owned farms from the Civil War through the 20th century.
The frequent pattern is for land to remain in minority hands only so long as it is economically marginal and then to be acquired by whites when it is valuable and when its value begins to increase, the report said.
Dan, I bring that up because Hillary Stewart was George Floyd's great-great-grandfather and I think it's important to note
One of the things that is always at play, and I try to explain this to my students, and I know you do too, is that essentially for 400 years in this country, the game has been rigged in favor of white folks, usually white Christian folks, usually white Christian men, and then, as we see in this account, white Christian landowning men, or men who want land to own and take it from others, okay?
George Floyd was born, Dan, in the years after the Civil Rights Movement and after the sort of extinguishing or expiration of Jim Crow.
The authors of The Peace and Wild Poe put it this way, By the time Floyd was born, his family had spent more than a century toiling under the unforgiving Carolina sun, with little to show for it.
That dynamic is at the core of the 10 to 1 wealth disparity between whites and blacks that has persisted since the Civil Rights Movement, said Melvin Oliver, co-author of Black Wealth, White Wealth, A New Perspective on Racial Inequality.
So Dan, what we have in that account is a tracing of George Floyd's lineage to the end of the Civil War, to the promise of freedom, to what I would take to be a relative who, by sheer American ingenuity and hard work, was able to become a landowner, only to have by sheer American ingenuity and hard work, was able to become a landowner, only Now, I want to articulate another lineage and another history, and that is the history of the slogan, America First.
So, this is according to Sarah Churchwell.
I've interviewed Sarah Churchwell.
She's written a great book on this called Behold America.
And so, if you would like to dig deep on this, Sarah Churchwell's interview is on our feed, and her book is amazing.
This is from an interview she gave at Vox.
It was a Republican campaign slogan in the 1880s, which means it appeared much earlier than most people think.
But it didn't become a national catchphrase until President Woodrow Wilson used it in 1915.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our Swadge episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire Swadge archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
