Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Jemar Tisby 0:08
So the power of history is, I think, in specificity, and one of the things that we often say is, history has the receipts. So I mean, it's powerful on multiple levels, the quote you read is important because people can say anything (but) history shows what people actually did. And you can often discern what people truly believe by what they do more than by what they say, right? So, you know, we have all these Christians saying, I believe this, that, and the other about you know, God about other people, and then they think they can enslave other people or segregate other people or pass laws to oppress other people. And it's like, no, you're telling me your theology very clearly, not by what you say (but) by what you do.
Seth Price 0:57
Here's the thing. There have been many books that have been released this year, and one of them was released January 5, on racism. And it's fantastic. It's written by Jemar Tisby. And then right after that, was the insurrection on the Capitol. So Jemar and I try to dance around that a bit. Now, you're probably thinking, wow, Seth is really getting into it here. Like he normally rambles a bit. And talks about lord knows what, but I'm that excited for this conversation to get out into the world. And so right now, I'm going to stop talking. And here we go. With Jemar Tisby.
Jemar Tisby 1:50
Man, let's rock and roll.
Seth Price 1:51
I should have been recording earlier when I said I got dressed up because that was that was nice. I didn’t plan to say that.
Jemar Tisby 1:56
Just for the record, you look quite sharp.
Seth Price 1:58
I was gonna take it off. But now I can't because you know, now like, now you can't do it. Almost doctor in like, the next 15 years, Jemar Tisby how are you, man? Welcome to the show.
Jemar Tisby 2:12
I'm excited to be here. And you know, a lot happening. So I'm eager to dive in.
Seth Price 2:18
I want to drill down on that. I just got a couple side thing. So every time I've ever heard you on a podcast, you've been working on a doctorate. It feels like as long as I've listened to podcasts, so like, when is that a thing?
Jemar Tisby 2:29
This is year five. So I'm actually on schedule. But it takes a minute. So yeah, 2021 is the hope. So if you're the praying type, you know what to pray for, that Jemar focuses and finishes dissertation this year.
Seth Price 2:42
So you're just binding Color Compromise and How to Fight Racism together. And that's your dissertation and turning it in.
Jemar Tisby 2:46
Can you make some calls to my professors, because then we could get this puppy and just be done.
Seth Price 2:53
Yeah. And you can defend it because you've been doing it for years. So just for anyone not familiar with you. And honestly, I told two friends I was talking with you. One of them is like, “Can I get a question” to which I was like, “sure, man get a question”. And the other was like, “Who is that”? (Jemar laughs)
Jemar Tisby 3:07
Yes, good!
Seth Price 3:09
Who are you? What are you? What's going on there?
Jemar Tisby 3:13
So I am historian in training studying race, religion, and social movements. I am the founder and CEO of The Witness, Incorporated, which is dedicated to black uplift from a Christian perspective. And I am a speaker and an author. And I've written two books. My first book is the Color of Compromise the Truth About the American Churches Complicity in Racism that came out January 2019. My second book is How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice. That came out January 5 2021. Just before January 6, which is a day that might stick out for some people. (Looking at you insurrection)
Seth Price 3:53
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, oddly enough, I released an episode called America's on Holy Ghosts right around there from Doctor from not from Doctor from Joel Goza, I don't know if you've ever read that or not. It covers some similar veins as the Color of Compromise but a lot of them. Here's kind of the psyche that went into the American church, and we got some work to do. And but it goes through a kind of a different vein. Like it takes the Adam Smith and here's how he influenced the church. And then ugh…(I can’t remember) I have that I could take it down, but then we get sidetracked. It's really good book. However, that's okay. Not while you're here.
So I want to probably weave back and forth between the two. But it's been a while since I read the Color of Compromise. But it seems to me as I began this book, because I read them back to back but over like six months, so yeah, it feels almost like How to Fight Racism is just like chapter 26 of the Color of Compromise, like roll credits. Oh, I had actually I wasn't done with that last chapter. I still have like 500 pages to give. So I hope you liked that last chapter. Was that like intentional? Did you write them together? Or was it more like oh, I wasn't done, or how did that kind of come about.
Jemar Tisby 5:02
So How to Fight Racism is the book I had in mind to be my first book but along the way through various conversations and circumstances, decided I needed to lay some groundwork about the problem of racism before we talked about solutions to racism. So the Color of Compromise, which is a historical survey that one came out first. But my goal was always action. And so I say, even just the Color of Compromise as a standalone book, my whole plan was to set you up for the last chapter of the book, which is about ways to fight racism. And the historical survey was just to get you mad and amped up and ready for action. And then How to Fight Racism comes along, they can be read independently of each other, but they do work together really well.
Seth Price 5:57
Is it all right, if I'm overly sarcastic and tongue in cheek in some of these questions, is that fine?
Jemar Tisby 6:01
(laughs) Let's do that.
Seth Price 6:03
There are some questions that I wanted to ask that are not in like the, you know, have the publisher like sends along those questions, pardon me? This thing won't stop running around. (new dog) bothering me, I just have to make sure he's not like destroying children's toys and whatnot. So I don't I've talked about this with a couple of my friends. And I've gone back and forth. So I personally believe that we are in like another civil rights movement. I just don't know what it's called, like, literally in the middle of it. And I could screw up and damage it and maybe my kids not have any impact in that, which I think would be awful, or the inverse. But part of me almost feels like I have to be thankful for the past administration for overtly going blinds open, y'all see all the dust!? Do you see it all? But I don't want to be thankful for any of that. Right? How do you sit with that?
Jemar Tisby 6:55
Certainly, Donald Trump, didn't create the the rifts or the dynamics that we're seeing racially in the church or beyond, but exposed it and forced people to take sides and expose themselves in a way that I haven't seen in my lifetime. And so it's one of those things where I'm you, in the attempt to survive, you use whatever conditions and circumstances you have around you in as best possible way you can. So we had a horrific, racist, sexist, narcissistic, previous President. And the best we can do with that is to say, “Well, at least I know where people stand”.
Seth Price 7:41
This is another one of the questions that isn't in the approved questions. So those all get bandied about together. And I'm cautious because I see as I've read so many people that push for social change and social justice, like they burn out, it takes a lot of energy, I think to be a prophetic voice, or your voice is silenced in other ways. So is racial justice, should that be part of like sexist justice and all the other injustices for the social movements? Or can it stand apart? Like does one have to happen first, is one more important, or are they all equally commingled?
Jemar Tisby 8:24
The way I think of it is that they are distinguishable but inseparable. So, the fact is, they're sort of mutually constituent of race, class and gender, right. And if you look at the way racism is gendered in the antebellum era, is just, you know, some of the clearest examples where women were valued, black women, were valued not just for their productive labor, but their reproductive labor. Not just for the work they could do in the fields, but for literally the reproductive capacity they had as women, which would increase the ”property” of a slave holder. Right.
So in those ways, you know, you can't separate the two, but I think you can, and you should, distinguish between them, both in terms of analysis, trying to sort of wrap our brains around what's going on with each of these things. And in terms of, sometimes in terms of, approaches, right, like I do see the potential for mission drift if an organization which was founded around fighting racism, tries to do everything. Like in this sense, there's space for multiple organizations and entities, doing similar but different things and coordinating, but you know, if you try to major on everything you end up flunking.
Seth Price 10:00
Yeah, which one of these two books was harder to write?
Jemar Tisby 10:03
They were hard in different ways. So the Color of Compromise being a first book, there's all of this anxiety, I suppose. It's somewhat akin to being a parent for the first time. What if I break it? From what I remember when we had our kid, and it just, it was the strangest feeling like my wife had our child, and then they just put them in our arms and told us to go home. Yeah! Where's the manual? What do we expect? So it's a bit of that and the anxiety, the nerve wracking, part around the Color of Compromise was, as a historical survey, I knew trained historians would read it. And I was just finishing my coursework in the grad program.
So like, I wasn't, “credentialed” like they were. So I was so afraid of getting it wrong; getting one of the facts, or details, or footnotes wrong. So that was part of what was hard about the Color of Compromise, How to Fight Racism was hard, because it's more speculative. It's more proposing solutions, and future oriented. And it's also in that sense, a lot more personal, where I'm talking about my experiences and my insights that I've gained through firsthand experience. And so putting myself out there in a way that I didn't have to with the Color of Compromise, because I was just marshaling this historical data to do with what you will, but How to Fight Racism is much more my own voice and thoughts.
Seth Price 11:39
I want to stay on history for a second. So is it alright, if I quote your book to you is anything that I can do?
Jemar Tisby 11:45
Please do because I really don't remember some of it. (I laugh)
Seth Price 11:49
What's yeah, I mean, you're, I'm sure you're reading 18 books a month for your dissertation and all the other stuff. So I don't remember what chapter it is because I read the digital version of the book. And so I don't have it to reference. So there's a part here, though, you say,
learning about the history of race, potentially has transformative power, because it shows us not simply what people believe to aspire to, but what they actually did.
But I'm curious as to why that matters. And I say that with a bit more context. So I live in Charlottesville, we're right outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. And so I get a lot of #HeritageNotHate things. I saw one yesterday, right of being right past my house, with as the POW-MIA flag on one side and the #HeritageNotHate - Rebel Flag on the other side. And then I always have to explain to my kids why it's not okay. But I'm really not good at that. So in a minute, I want to talk about that, because you also referenced that in your book as well. But why does the history matter? And then, how do you talk to someone when you begin to talk about, you know, Daughters of the American…what was it Daughters of the American rev…? What's it called?
Jemar Tisby 12:50
The Daughters of the Confederacy?
Seth Price 12:52
Yeah, where they did, like, you know, Lost Cause and all that stuff. Like, a lot of people, myself included, for a good amount of my life didn't even know what that was a thing. Like, so how do we study history? Why should we had and then what do we do with that?
Jemar Tisby 13:05
Yeah, so the power of history is, I think, in specificity, and one of the things that we often say is, history has the receipts. So I mean, it's powerful on multiple levels, the quote you read is important because people can say, anything, history shows what people actually did. And you can often discern what people truly believe by what they do more than by what they say, right? So, you know, we have all these Christians saying, I believe this, that, and the other about you know, God about other people, and then they think they can enslave other people or segregate other people or pass laws to oppress other people. And it's like, no, you're telling me your theology very clearly, not by what you say, but what you do. So that's one.
But then the the power of specificity for me, it's like, you know, we have this vague impression that racism was “bad” and that the US “was” racist, past tense, right. But then when you get into it, and you learn names and dates and places, and you hear about, you know, Luther and Mary Holbert, and how they used a corkscrew to torture them while they were still alive. When you hear about Mary Turner, who was lynched and hung, while eight months pregnant, right? When you hear about Ronald Reagan opening his presidential bid in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered and buried in an earthen dam, say the words
amid Confederate flags at the fair, I follow that specificity hits different, I think, and then history tells us (and)n history is context, right? Like if you want to study the Bible, for instance, you want to know Old Testament, New Testament, who's the author, who's the audience, what time period etc. Why? So you can read discern the word of truth. Well, if you want to rightly discern our times, you got to know the context. And that's what history is. So that that Confederate statue that's in the center of town that nobody pays attention to, because it blends into the landscape, because it's been there so long. But when you get up to the base of it, and it says, you know,
And you realize, well, that's way after 1865. In the Civil War, this wasn't to memorialize the dead, this was to reinscribe white supremacy. And I recently read an article (Note from Seth* not sure if this is the article that Jemar is referencing but I found it interesting) that goes even further, UDC wasn't just about building statues. They wanted to to alter public school curriculum.
Seth Price 15:39
Didn't want to…they did, they did. I can remember growing up in Texas, and like, it implied that slaves were mostly okay and they were glad for the opportunity. Like they were excited for the opportunity to be employed in Texas.
Jemar Tisby 15:55
We gave you shelter and some work.
Seth Price 15:58
Yeah, which is a bit tongue in cheek, but also not that far off base, like, you spend like a week on slavery a week on a badly plagiarized version of Thanksgiving. And then let's just talk about Texas and the Mexican Wars. So no, they definitely have done so I get a lot of pushback, I got some pushback with someone the other day, and I actually spent the time to dig into their history of the city that they live in. Because they said that we shouldn't rewrite history books. And I was like, but the problem is they weren't history to begin with. It was like, half, a third have some of that history, because those people did those things. I don't know, maybe I'm not saying that well. But it's frustrating. And it's exhausting. Honestly, I don't know how you do this. How many of these do you do? And where do you get the energy to do as many of these?
Jemar Tisby 16:47
Well, I mean, you know, it's something that just like, you know, doing your podcast, you're passionate about it. And you think it's important, you want as many people to access it as possible. So you do the work.
Seth Price 17:00
Okay, so how do I then talk to my kids? Like that flag drives by in a massive truck, nice looking GMC truck, by the way, good looking truck. But I struggle with that, especially where I'm at here in Virginia. So like, just a little bit south of me is Washington and Lee school. And they're talking about like doing some stuff with Stonewall Jackson, I've got a couple, Lee-Stonewall Jackson stuff in Charlottesville, not far from my work that people keep painting and it gets…it's a mess. So like, I don't know how to. So I have a 12 year old and eight, almost 12, an eight year old and a five year old. And I feel like it matters, that I model better conversations. But I also know that I'm the white guy in the room. And so I'm sometimes a little bit trepid in doing that, like, what's the best way that we should approach talking to our kids in this topic?
Jemar Tisby 17:49
I think the biggest hurdle we face is our own trepidation, right? Like that's real. And so relieving some of the pressure and saying, number one, you don't have to get it perfect. And number two, it's not a one shot deal. You have lots of these conversations over the course of years to sort of shape, even disciple, you know, young people into racial justice. So I hope that relieves some of the burden.
You can get it wrong and circle back and say, you know, what I should have said it this way, or I found out some more stuff and this is what I learned. But you've got the right idea in the sense that like, you're already thinking in terms of everyday life: we pass this truck, we pass this flag or whatever, and weaving it in organically, and finding those opportunities are important. The other thing, as we know, with kids, and it's so pertinent to adults, as well as tangible and concrete as we can make it. So this idea of race, which is a social construct, right, which has roots in you know, faulty theology, faulty biology, and science, and pseudoscience and all this stuff. It can be very abstract, right? So your advantage is living in the South and actually having some physical places you can go to that illustrate it. So I took my son, he's been several times to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, which is built onto Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated. And you know, he doesn't get the significance yet, I probably took him for the first time when he's five or six, but he'll never forget the wreath that is hanging in the place where King was standing when he was shot. And for years after that, he would see a picture of Dr. King and he would say, “That's that man from the balcony, right” and remembered it and just the fact that it goes so far back he's gonna grow up with that infused. And so can we take them places once we get outside this pandemic and everything like that? And then lastly, you know, um, we do have multimedia and as much as we want our kids off of screens or you know, doing constructive things, why not use that to our advantage? What about you know, there are documentaries there even animated movies, there are series that can capture their attention are designed to capture their attention, but on informative topics.
Seth Price 20:18
One of the documentaries I've been watching. I don't know if I want to watch it but my son yet maybe. Is that Amend documentary on Netflix? I'm almost done with it. I don't know if you've seen it or not.
Jemar Tisby 20:27
I've read about it.
Seth Price 20:28
Yeah. So, you should watch it. But I like the way they're going. Because honestly, that was gonna be one thing. And then every episode, I'm like, oh, and now we're talking about women. Oh, and now we're talking about inclusion. Oh, and now we're talking about gay rights. And oh, and now we're like, Oh, this is nice. So I want to reference something that you alluded to at the very beginning, because often the politics of this comes up of it's too political to talk about race. I don't need to talk about race, which is just a ridiculous answer. Like it's not going away. And so the question I alluded to my friend, he said, you know, the question I would ask him is, as a historian, we've seen violence wax and wane. And he's like, you know, to me, the news and the headline tells me that there's about to be a bull market coming for white violence. And you know, so we look at January 6th and sedition in the Capitol. And all of that is, what's your take on that, you know, as it relates just to that, like the waxing and waning of that?
Jemar Tisby 21:26
White supremacy never goes down without a fight. So whenever you see a historically marginalized group pushing for more rights, more inclusion, there is a backlash or as some people call it a whitelash.
Now, obviously, we saw this after the Civil War and Reconstruction comes the hauntingly named period called Redemption and the Jim Crow era. During the Civil Rights Movement, you get a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which had been dormant for a couple of decades. And now, you know, sort of as a response to Black Lives Matter and protests against anti-police brutality, actually, even before that, you're getting the Tea Party movement and things along those lines. And now you're getting the rise of other groups like the 3 Percenters and Proud Boys and the Department of Homeland Security in their annual threat assessment named white supremacist extremists, as the biggest domestic terror threat in the United States. And even the raft of laws at the state level of restricting voting rights is a response to historic turnout of black and brown voters, which, you know, elected democrats at the federal level and some Senators in Georgia and all of that. So you're definitely always going to see attempts to re inscribe white power in various sectors.
Seth Price 22:47
Yeah, I hear you start a lot of these episodes in, I've listened to a few that you've done. And you know, you say the most frequent question that you get is, okay, so now what do we do, which is kind of the genesis for the book? So I don't really want to ask that question. Because you've answered it many times. I'd like to pivot it from there. So what do you hope and maybe 10, 15, 20 years, like my kids are adults and functioning adult, God willing what should be the question that we ask then? Assuming we've made progress, sadly, as slowly as that's been like, what do you hope for? Okay, when we can replace what do we do? And we're actually doing it? What should be the question that we're asking?
Jemar Tisby 23:26
What was your witness during the civil rights movement of the 2010s, and 2020s? Because I think we can look back at the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and one of the things we most lament is the absence of a strong, positive, and unified witness among Christians. Now, plenty of black Christians and a few allies were part of it. But so much of the reckoning that has to happen is why weren't more people, in general, and more Christians in particular part of it? So the way I look at it, you mentioned this at the top of the show, and I agree, I think we're living in the civil rights movement of our day. And the question is, what will be our witness? What do we want to be true 20, 30, 40 years down the line, at least of our behavior, and our networks or churches, whatever we're part of right? We may not change the tide of anything. But where are we witnesses in the midst of it?
Seth Price 24:23
So can you give me a kindergarten understanding of critical race theory? Because it's a thing in the SBC? It's the thing that I'm not very well at understanding. I always feel stupid when I leave a conversation about it. And I'm fine with that. I am totally fine to feel stupid. And then how does that roll into what you've written about in some of the actions that people should be engaging in as we are struggling collectively against racism?
Jemar Tisby 24:49
Well that’s the thing about Critical Race Theory it's this label that has been thrust upon people who've never practiced or studied it. So I can't give you a definition because I only became more familiar with it when I started being accused of. So it's it's this Boogeyman. And if folks want to research it, Bradley Mason has done incredible work and has a series of blog posts on it. Primary Source, folks would be Kimberlé Crenshaw, Derek Bell, and there's a host of others who I have just come across because other actual critical race theorists, at least people who have studied it, have mentioned these folks. So you're going to have to Google it. But what I can say is, don't let that distract you too much. Because what we should be studying and thinking about and working against is Christian nationalism.
Seth Price 25:36
Okay, so where's my question here, hold tight. I'm discombobulate, because this dog jumped in my lap again. Alright, so coming on Christian nationalism, I read the Bible in a way, and I sit on and I pray on it, and I try to dig into the history of it. Which side note, I often find the people that seem to be the most bigoted are the people that also read the Bible the most flatly. I don't know the demographics of that. But I enjoy ripping apart the Bible and realizing, oh, here's what was going on at the time. And why that matters, like, so what do we do when we're in a faith community like that, that's not going to pivot? It's pushing back. And then we leave and we realize, oh, there's not a church, like, in my area, there's what am I…I don't think humans, especially in faith are built to be siloed off. So where do we go?
Jemar Tisby 26:29
So I think what this pandemic has forced us to think about is what is the church? And who is the church, right? Because if it's assembling on Sunday, then most of us haven't had church for a year. But I don't know that that's true. Because church isn't simply a place, it's a people. And so for me, it's looks like basically gathering a Bible study, right? Both of like minded people. I am fortunate in that they happen to be at my congregation, but I'm also in a congregation where not everyone is on the same page about politics or justice. You know, we've got Trump voters we had an elected pro life democrat was one of our pastors, you know, it spans the gamut. And we were talking at the top of the show how Trump has sort of forced people to declare themselves and choose sides. There are deep deep rifts in churches, some of these churches, are a congregation, you're going to have to leave. But that doesn't mean you've left the church, church, universal capital C church. And we're going to have to be proactive about it, right.
Like, I think we're used to going places, and there's a community there. And we sort of get in where we fit in. What we're having to do now is actually sort of scan the landscape for believers who we can gather with, and it's almost like that wilderness wandering, right. We're intense now! We're not in the promised land. We're not even in Egypt anymore. We are in the desert, but we are together.
Seth Price 28:01
Yeah. Are you familiar with some of the work of Mark Charles? He's written a book, but yeah, so I asked that because his book last year that he wrote with Professor Rah, is among the best that I've read in a long time. Do you feel like the church can either survive a conversation and actual remorse and moving away towards shalom from racism, or if the church can't survive it? Because like, so much of the churches I read the history of it is also just as much as our country laced in and wrapped in, in nationalism, empirism, and especially racism, with the papal bulls, you know, as I learned about through Mark Charles, and all that other stuff. So do you as a historian or just as a Christian, honestly think that the church can even surprise like, can survive that fracture or will not be even close to the same church that existed today?
Jemar Tisby 28:59
I do think it'll be reconstituted in some ways that we're still you know, unpacking. It is not clear what it will be yet, because it's still in process. I think institutionally, there will be some denominations and congregations that continue to persist, but they persist in their racist white supremacist ways. And they are going to bleed off people who don't want that anymore. Then the question becomes, like you were asking before, you know, where are those folks who leave these organized institutional places end up? That's what's in flux, but I think it's going to be reconfigured in novel ways, whether that's a another wave of house church movements, whether that's forming churches within churches, so to speak. So if you can't separate from the larger congregation that may believe some unhealthy things, is there a subgroup within there, that becomes your lifeline right. What does technology do in terms of church you know, there are people who are becoming members of churches that they've only visited online. So it's a shifting landscape for lots of different reasons. But, you know, the church as it has persisted, I would say, since the rise of the Religious Right in the late 70s, is being shaken up.
Seth Price 30:16
And what…I want to find the best way, so one of the things that I've learned from from Drew Hart over the last year is, as white people kind of come to a realization of, oh, man, I got work to do. And I fall in that category. I find myself often afraid to say something for fear of saying the wrong thing, or saying too many things, because I learned some things on the internet. I listened to a podcast with Seth and you. So what should be a good practice of when you're taking in new information? Here's how you should sit with it, weigh it, measure it before you begin trying to tell other people what you're processing or should it just be immediate, like, I learned to think here we go. You people are all wrong?
Jemar Tisby 30:59
Well, I think having lots of different sources, so you can sort of triangulate data and opinions. Somebody put it to me this way yesterday, they used the analogy of football. This guy I was speaking to was a football player, and he said, I was a great football player but then I was the coach of my son's football team. And I was a terrible coach. Right? So you can be a great football player, but a terrible coach. And in a similar sense, you can be a black person, a person of color, that doesn't necessarily qualify you to teach and lead other people. So that's why I say multiple sources. So you can cross tabulate, and triangulate, and form a more robust opinion. That's one thing.
Another thing is definitely a lot more listening than speaking. And when you do speak, it should be primarily or at least initially toward other white people. Because the folks that you're talking to, as little as you know, or as new as it is to you. They probably know less, and it's even newer. So you still are a step or two ahead, which is fine. I used to be a teacher, as long as you stay a chapter ahead of what you're teaching.
Seth Price 32:13
(chuckles) Nobody knows!
Jemar Tisby 32:14
Yeah, exactly. So depending on what you're talking about, it doesn't always have to be you. In fact, it probably shouldn't always be you, but pointing them to other people, other sources, especially people of color can be helpful practice.
Seth Price 32:27
Yeah, pro tip, that's also the trick for podcasting is to just be slightly ahead of where the conversation is. Just barely, unless it's just like a conversation between like, we're just riffing here. And then that's those, those are terrifying, but they're also really fun.
Jemar Tisby 32:35
Really good.
Seth Price 32:47
So there's a part and I want you to…I'm trying to find my notes. And I might not be able to, there's a part where you talk about, like writing your own racial autobiography is a practice. And I feel like it's like, right, like chapter two, or maybe chapter one, or maybe in chapter three, like, what is that? And how do I go about it? Because that was the biggest thing. When I read it. I was like, Huh, I can do that. And then I tried it. And I was frustrated, because it is deceptively hard, because I honestly don't want to admit some of these things about myself, right? Or about my family, mostly about my family where I'm like, well, this is…I'm ashamed. Just ashamed. So what is that?
Jemar Tisby 33:19
Then you are doing it right?
Seth Price 33:21
I guess.
Jemar Tisby 33:21
Again the sense of not, you know, you shouldn't be ashamed, but in the sense of you're broaching topics and feelings that you otherwise wouldn't, right. And so writing your own racial autobiography just means, you know, exploring your own racial history, your own personal experiences with it, which we tend to overestimate how much we understand because there are memories. And so we think, well, if I remember it, I know what it means. Not until you sit down and choose what words to use to describe and choose to remember certain people, places, events, do you actually really get to process right? That's one of the reasons I love writing is because by writing, I figure out what I think, you know, I don't know many times going into writing what I think I have to figure it out as I write. And so it's the same with our racial autobiography. And you ask yourself questions like, you know, what's my first memory of race? Have I ever used or been called a racial slur? What did my parents teach me about it? When this big racial event happened how did folks in my circle respond? How did I respond?
And for black folks and people of color, this is a valuable exercise because in some senses, it allows us to reclaim our voice and shape our narrative in the midst of a society that, you know, promotes our own silence or gaslights us about these experiences. For white people it's really important because so often white people don't think of themselves as having a race. They just think “I’m John. I'm Mark. I'm Suzy. I'm Karen”. Right. But they don't think of themselves as maneuvering the world as a “white” person. So this forces white people to think about how race has impacted them in a way they probably don't on the regular basis.
Seth Price 35:09
You quote a pastor that I've had on the show back in the first year of the show. So for those listening that want to dig more into what you just said, So Daniel it’s Daniel Hill, right?
Jemar Tisby 35:22
Thats right.
Seth Price 35:24
Daniel Hill. Yeah, basically, where whiteness is the default? Like all the books, all the courses are, there is no coursework in European whatever in my school, like it's, it just is what it is. So my most fun question, and I think people have begun hopefully you haven't listened any episodes, because then this will be more fun. I'm assuming that you haven't. So when you try to explain to people what the God or what the divine is, like, what do you say to that? Like, how do you wrap words around that?
Jemar Tisby 35:47
You know, people don't straight up ask me that.
Seth Price 35:53
Right.
Jemar Tisby 35:54
(Laughs)
Um, I think I try to model it, in the sense of the God I serve loves the…what Howard Thurman called the disinherited. God is for the people who the world seems against. And also has written this incredible narrative of ultimate triumph that gives me hope in a very, very dark and difficult world. And it's not a pie in the sky, once I'm dead, things will be fine—hope. It's a hope that says that kingdom come thy will be done on Earth. And it's because we have that ultimate hope of what the kingdom is going to be like, that I actually know what this world should be like. And I press forward to make it as close to that heavenly vision of the kingdom as I can, right now.
Seth Price 36:55
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's become my favorite question. I think I've asked it like, 100 times now.
Jemar Tisby 37:00
Yeah! How interesting.
Seth Price 37:02
I like it. Somebody said, “Well, that's existential. That's not like you should have warned me”. I'm like, no, that defeats the whole purpose. Why would I warn you? That's no fun. Well, good. Yeah. I'll end it there man. I really appreciate you coming on and working with me for scheduling and, and vice versa.
Jemar Tisby 37:20
Working with me!
Seth Price 37:22
I really appreciate it.
Jemar Tisby 37:23
Well, great questions, keep up the good work and I appreciate the conversation.
Seth Price 37:41
We have a tremendous amount of work to do, don't we? You, I, all of us, we. And sometimes I don't even know where to begin. Right? Like, I have no clue. I'm going to have to learn to listen more. If you haven't yet, decided to support the show you should do. So you can do that a couple of ways. You can hop on over to Patreon and pick the level that works for you. You can also just rate and review the podcast because that matters very much. So you just share the episode right on social media. There you go. I hope that you have a blessed and amazing week. I'll talk with you soon.