The image of Donald Trump wielding a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, a snapshot that occurred immediately after protestors were penetrated with tear gas and rubber bullets in order to clear space for the President, quickly became a target of controversy. Some critics, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis, berated Trump for using the…
This essay was originally delivered as a speech at the annual dinner of Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries of Greater Boston on June 6, 2020. I am grateful for the invitation of Rodney Petersen and the Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries of Greater Boston to speak at this year’s annual dinner, this year a virtual event in a time of crisis. The crisis…
Civil unrest in Philadelphia, PA. June 2, 2020. / Rob Buhlman / Flickr / CC-BY-2.0 The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 triggered an unprecedented wave of protests in the United States and all around the world from Australia to the UK, France, Tunisia, and Iraq. This worldwide wave of protests…
The racialization of security currently playing out is nothing new. Security has often been racialized and racism has always been securitized. Historically, the incestuous relationship between these two issues has been anchored in a logic of instrumentalization. Definitionally, racism is essentially a threefold dehumanizing construct representing a vision of irreconcilable difference, a belief in human…
“Slave Ship: Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On” by J.M.W. Turner 1840 / Wikimedia This article is part of our “Race, Religion, and Law” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This is the the third installment of a three-part series that explores legal, religious, and racial…
“Slave Ship: Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On” by J.M.W. Turner 1840 / Wikimedia This article is part of our “Race, Religion, and Law” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This is the the second installment of a three-part series that explores legal, religious, and racial…
“Slave Ship: Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On” by J.M.W. Turner 1840 / Wikimedia This article is part of our “Race, Religion, and Law” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This is the first installment of a three-part series that explores legal, religious, and racial dimensions…
This article is part of our “Race, Religion, and Law” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This article is adapted from the authors’ forthcoming book: Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (2020) from Cambridge University Press. By the time the English settled Virginia in…