Weekly Roundup: Ketanji Brown Jackson Under the White Christian Nationalist Gaze
Brad and Dan are joined by special guest host Dr. Sara Moslener, the professor for our May 2022 seminar: Purity Culture, Race, and Embodiment. The three of them begin by discussing the Senate hearings from SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to be nominated for the USA's highest court.
We dig into why GOP senators focused their questioning on pedophilia and sex offenders, the definition of womanhood, and whether or not children are born racists. As Dan and Sara explain this all comes from a history of trying to make Black women into something other than real mothers and wives--much less real women--and framing safety and purity in racialized terms. Brad also notes that these foci played right into the hands of the QAnon crowed--a constituency Republican Senators now actively try to woo.
The second segment examines the anti-trans and restrictive abortion laws in Idaho and TN. One law allows for the family members to sue a woman who decides to get an abortion. Another calls for life in prison if one leaves the state to get their kid gender-affirming care.
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AXIS Moondy AXIS Moondy 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 at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, associate professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, and I'll throw it over to our guest host, I guess would be the term for today, Sarah Mosliner.
Hi guys, I'm excited to be with you.
So yes, I'm Sarah Mosliner.
I'm a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Central Michigan University.
Sarah's here.
This is a first.
To my memory, Dan, I don't think we've ever had three of us do the Weekly Roundup.
I know we've had guests on the Weekly Roundup.
Dan, you've hosted with Blake Chastain and I've done that too.
But it's the first time we've had three folks, so it's exciting.
It might be a little clunky because we're not used to having three people share the mic space.
One of the things that we're doing we're more than excited about is a new Straight White American Jesus seminar with Sarah as our professor, and that is in May, every Thursday in May.
All the details are at StraightWhiteAmericanJesus.com.
You can sign up now.
You can see all of the info.
And basically, it is an amazing class on very light topics.
Am I right, Sarah?
Purity culture, race, and embodiment.
So quickly, would you just tell us what are some of the takeaways you feel like folks will get from the seminar in May?
Yeah, so my hope is to really encourage people to think, to develop an intersectional lens when thinking about purity culture, which, you know, as I'm sure you're aware, I've been paying attention to these conversations on social media, in academia, for a very long time.
And what I've noticed is that they often privilege the voices of white women.
And so I've been asking why that is and what that means.
And I've come to realize, especially reading the work of Monique Moultrie, of Kara Street, both Black women writing about Black purity culture, that the purity culture I study is a distinctly white purity culture.
And so I designed this So I designed this seminar as a way for us to think purity and race together.
So many of the conversations I see happening are just not doing that.
And they're focusing on white women's well-being, sexual health, and mental health.
And while certainly those are needs that other women have, they are not the full story.
So this is, you know, this is an attempt to kind of shift our conversations about purity culture further in that direction.
And of course, we've had people, you know, writing in this vein, but since white women still dominate the conversation, I want to try and make this intervention.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
I mean, I think one of the things that really catches me is that the very first week you're talking about the racist origins of peer-to-culture.
And so, you know, regardless of who you are, you'll have a chance to see how peer-to-culture was really developed out of a racist framework, which may be incredibly surprising to somebody who lived through it.
So on that note, we're going to talk about some things today, I think, that just sort of touch on the main foundations of your seminar and are really Kind of in the news, I will say, to put it lightly.
So let's jump in.
We're going to talk today first about the Senate hearings for President Biden's nominee for the Supreme Court, who is Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
We've seen a lot of grandstanding from Republican senators, and I'm sure if you've watched any news this week, You've seen Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham or Tom Cotton or someone else just asking Marsha Blackburn, asking questions that might seem a little bit like, what is going on here?
Why are they asking these things?
How does this have to do with anything?
Pornography, sex abuse when it comes to minors, sentencing lengths, so on.
We'll get to this.
Marsha Blackburn asked, can you define a woman?
You know, what's happening here?
And we want to kind of provide a decoder ring that also clues folks into how everything you just talked about, Sarah.
Purity, race, embodiment is part of all those discussions.
So let's start with something that is obviously part of the seminar, but has been part of the hearings, and that is race.
Black woman to be nominated.
I think everyone knows that by now.
And Senator Cruz went ahead and asked her about critical race theory.
And, you know, it might sound more just like GOP hysteria about CRT, but I'll just start with you, Sarah, and then, you know, we can go from there.
What what's behind Cruz's like thing about critical race theory?
Yes, and the phrase racist baby is going to forever be circling.
Yeah, he asked, he asked her, can babies be racist?
Can babies be racist?
Yes.
Right.
As I know you've discussed before, right, this, when Republicans talk about CRT, they're talking about it as a false flag.
And that is they are, they're not really talking about what critical race theory is, which Brown Jackson knew enough about to say, this is something that you learn about in law school.
What Cruz is doing is, is trying to assert that colorblind racism is
the is the correct way to think about race or that what colorblindness and of course he he actually went on to critique the critique of colorblind racism and but this idea that you don't talk about race right this is the first rule of colorblind racism and so when he's going through all of the books that he claims to have found at her at her school at the school that she's on the board of he is you know sort of
Responding with outrage because these are books that get young children to think about race and racism and that is, that is really the concern.
The concern isn't, the concern isn't about critical race theory based on what it actually is, but using But using children and parents' fears of not having control over what their children learn, right?
And we, you know, we heard a lot of language about parental rights, especially from Marsha Blackburn, and this is directly related to critical race theory.
And so, but it's interesting to me to see how You know, Cruz and others are really weaponizing, you know, colorblind racism and post-racialism as a way to sort of really reverse, you know, who is being targeted, who is being challenged by racism, and as a way to say like, oh, look at the white children who are being told that they are racist.
And so she had to say, I do not support any school that makes any child feel bad about who they are.
are.
And I think that was the goal there.
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