https://religionnews.com/2019/04/06/comments-about-whiteness-prompt-walkout-at-sparrow-women-conference/

The fact that she is a Westminster Theological Seminary grad is surprising. WTS was the spin-off by Machen, et al when Princeton TS was getting too "liberal".

dermdoc said:

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So where is it written "Thou shalt not be white".

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Exactly! Comments like the one below are rooted in extreme politics, not the Gospel:

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"Because we have to understand something whiteness is wicked," Uwan said. "It is wicked. It's rooted in violence, it's rooted in theft, it's rooted in plunder, it's rooted in power, in privilege."

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Or maybe the speaker harbors her own brand of racial hatred which she rationalizes as "social justice". Some of the most seemingly violent, personally aggressive people these days are social justice types, and strangely, especially those who lurk in academia or church circles.

UTExan said:

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JJMt said:

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All of these "woke" Christians make the mistake of thinking that Christ came to change society. He didn't; he came to change men's hearts. If you try to change society without changing men's hearts, you'll invariably end up with a dictatorship, since you'll only be able to implement change at the point of a gun.

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Thank you for that observation. Jesus never petitioned Rome, never led a protest demonstration and told his accusers that his kingdom was not of this world. Things won't change until Jesus returns to rule as King in the Millennium.

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Jesus is ruling as King in the Millennium right now.

Martin Q. Blank said:

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UTExan said:

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JJMt said:

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All of these "woke" Christians make the mistake of thinking that Christ came to change society. He didn't; he came to change men's hearts. If you try to change society without changing men's hearts, you'll invariably end up with a dictatorship, since you'll only be able to implement change at the point of a gun.

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Thank you for that observation. Jesus never petitioned Rome, never led a protest demonstration and told his accusers that his kingdom was not of this world. Things won't change until Jesus returns to rule as King in the Millennium.

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Jesus is ruling as King in the Millennium right now.

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I am not seeing any righteous king ruling with a rod or iron, lions lying down with lambs, nations being judged in righteousness or justice flowing down like waters.

I think thats an uncharitable way of interpreting her point. I don't think anyone should argue that your identity should be Christian first..but she is saying "white" as an identity is inherently divisive in a polarizing/negative way.

I'm not 100% sure I'm on board with her, but I think her words are being blown out of proportion

swimmerbabe11 said:

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I think thats an uncharitable way of interpreting her point. I don't think anyone should argue that your identity should be Christian first..but she is saying "white" as an identity is inherently divisive in a polarizing/negative way.

I'm not 100% sure I'm on board with her, but I think her words are being blown out of proportion

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Her point is uncharitable. White Americans are not culturally similar to what they left behind or the contemporary European societies. If you read Sowell, the irony is that 'black culture' now closely mirrors immigrant whites in the old south in speech and behavior (1600s).

She's trying to make a point in complete ignorance of history and exacerbating it by telling everyone they misunderstand her. If that's really problematic you'd think she'd simply relabel it to avoid it rather than have to overcome the objections of her racial animus every time. She's committed to the idea that white is evil.

Playing devil's advocate here.. but I think it is important to make the distinction that she isn't saying that white people are evil. The term and concept is.

If it would be more societally healthy to remove that term from your nomenclature and refer more to ancestry, would you be unwilling?

Like I said, I'm not really sure that at this point it would be effective or possible.

I think they should have heard her out. I'm not a big fan of racial studies, but there is some non-controversial, universally agreed information that is good for people to know. In the US, racial identity was basically a result of slavery. With rare exception, dark skinned people were enslaved and light skinned people were not. In areas with high numbers of dark skinned slaves, such as the South, national and cultural identities blended and meshed into a new entity called "white". Notice that this didn't happen in the North or even "remote" places like Texas. Specific cultural identities such as Jewish, Polish, Czech, Irish, Italian, etc are still very discreet in Yankeeland and in places like Texas as well. But the Deep South has amalgamated all of these into "white", and this was mostly done as a reaction to living in and around an enormous population of dark skinned enslaved people. Later this also began to happen on the West Coast as a response to Chinese and other Asian immigration.

And that's just in the US. When the European powers were dominating in the Imperial Age, light skin became a surrogate marker for "civilized Christian", though outside the US the definition of whiteness gets complicated. Are Egyptians white? What about Romanis or Turkish people or Jews? What about Albanians and residents of the various -stans? It's not like the Caucasus mountains are in Europe after all.

I certainly don't agree that "whiteness is evil", but it is an artifical construct that rose during the slave area and should left in history. I also don't agree we should all celebrate our narrow tribal heritages, though I can understand why an African American descended from slaves would want to connect to a lost history. I'm much more of the opinion that we were moving to a post-racial era until it became politically inconvenient for both sides.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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I think they should have heard her out. I'm not a big fan of racial studies, but there is some non-controversial, universally agreed information that is good for people to know. In the US, racial identity was basically a result of slavery. With rare exception, dark skinned people were enslaved and light skinned people were not. In areas with high numbers of dark skinned slaves, such as the South, national and cultural identities blended and meshed into a new entity called "white". Notice that this didn't happen in the North or even "remote" places like Texas. Specific cultural identities such as Jewish, Polish, Czech, Irish, Italian, etc are still very discreet in Yankeeland and in places like Texas as well. But the Deep South has amalgamated all of these into "white", and this was mostly done as a reaction to living in and around an enormous population of dark skinned enslaved people. Later this also began to happen on the West Coast as a response to Chinese and other Asian immigration.

And that's just in the US. When the European powers were dominating in the Imperial Age, light skin became a surrogate marker for "civilized Christian", though outside the US the definition of whiteness gets complicated. Are Egyptians white? What about Romanis or Turkish people or Jews? What about Albanians and residents of the various -stans? It's not like the Caucasus mountains are in Europe after all.

I certainly don't agree that "whiteness is evil", but it is an artifical construct that rose during the slave area and should left in history. I also don't agree we should all celebrate our narrow tribal heritages, though I can understand why an African American descended from slaves would want to connect to a lost history. I'm much more of the opinion that we were moving to a post-racial era until it became politically inconvenient for both sides.

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This explanation is a bit lacking. The race talk needs nice clean dividing lines and narratives to perpetuate because reality doesn't provide that. There's nothing to find other than a complicated mess. It's hard work to get one race on par with others without embarking on a generational project to change its culture. And it also relies on the premise that blackness presents a 'good' culture that would flourish were it not for whiteness (which violates the doctrine of original sin). All -ness is evil, no one is worse than another given the infinite history of the world (which she neglects to engage with btw, because it doesn't pay or give her power today).

Relying on sowell again, blacks in the south were culturally different than those in the north. There were integrated neighborhoods in the north. WEB DuBose makes note of this in his works - southern blacks that diffused to San Fran, for example, shocked the blacks living there with their behavior in public places. Southern black culture was distinct because it mirrored southern white culture, not because of some evil whiteness, whatever that means.

Just for clarity, here is the whole excerpt in question:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s285/client/snv?noteGuid=d2b1dbde-dec5-4b60-b824-e440dcc70d4d¬eKey=5f4ee2319dfd09c9cb717920f65dc4d9&sn=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.evernote.com%2Fshard%2Fs285%2Fsh%2Fd2b1dbde-dec5-4b60-b824-e440dcc70d4d%2F5f4ee2319dfd09c9cb717920f65dc4d9&title=Ekemini%2BUwan%2BInterview%2Bby%2BElizabeth%2BWoodson

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So then when we talk about white identity, then we have to talk about what whiteness is. Well, the reality is that whiteness is rooted in plunder, in theft, in slavery, in enslavement of Africans, genocide of Native Americans, we are sitting on stolen land, if you are in America, we are sitting on stolen land, everywhere in America, this is the reality of land that was stolen from Native Americans and we have to recognize and acknowledge that. It's a power structure, that is what whiteness is, and so that the thing for white women to do is you have to divest from whiteness because what happened was that your ancestors actually made a deliberate choice to rid themselves of their ethnic identity and by doing so they actually stripped Africans in America of their ethnic identity. So I can say sit here and say I will be Ibibio in the new heavens and new earth, but you Elizabeth can't yet say that, but in my sanctified imagination I believe that God will give you and MY sisters according to the flesh will be given their ethnic identities in the new heavens and the new earth, I believe that right deep down in my core, I believe that, and I pray to that end.

Because we have to understand something - whiteness is wicked. It is wicked. It's rooted in violence, it's rooted in theft, it's rooted in plunder, it's rooted in power, in privilege (which we just saw two weeks ago with the college scandal - I have receipts here) so that the goal for our white sisters is to rediscover your ethnic heritage so I am not pulling something away from you without telling you to replace it , so the goal for you all is to recover what your ancestors deliberately discarded - so that means return to whatever that ethnic identity is, are you Italian, are you Irish, are you Polish, are you Turkish, whatever that was, you have to do that work to find out what that is, pull into that, learn what that cultural heritage is, Celebrate that. It's going to be work on your part, but that IS the work. The work is to divest from whiteness and the work is also for people of color to divest from whiteness too. We do that by not centering whiteness, trying to actually begin to imagine a world where your whole identity is not bound to oppression, which I think is hard to imagine because we live in a white supremacist nation it takes a lot of work and you have to do a lot of unlearning, and I think what is sometimes so revolutionary, or at least one thing that might be revolutionary, about Truth's Table, myself, Michelle and Christina, is that we do not center whiteness, you will not hear an episode about white guilt, we will never do an episode on white privilege. We center the concerns and the needs of Black women and we in some ways are trying to dream up what Black futures might look like apart from oppression - in some ways, I think that's a glimpse of what the new heavens and new earth might look like. what would it mean to live in a society that is peaceful, to live in a place where we are not subjugated. So those are some of the things I'm thinking about.

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Words have power. Her words appear to be needlessly inflammatory and designed to induce a strong response.

Sounds like she doesn't believe slavery occurred in Africa prior to the trade. When white people's life expectancy there is measured in months it means someone else was doing the fighting and selling...

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This explanation is a bit lacking. The race talk needs nice clean dividing lines and narratives to perpetuate because reality doesn't provide that. There's nothing to find other than a complicated mess.

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You have my full agreement here. I don't see how the rest of what you said relates to her comments unless you are just opining on race in general.

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It also goes further to the point above that there is no Greek nor Jew nor gentile. Ethnicity as a concept and identity to claim has no place in the church.

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Can add national identity/patriotism to that as well.

JJMt said:

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Isn't she advocating for more and increasing divisiveness, rather than unity or identity as Christians?

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I took it as less "us and then" and more "us, them, those guys over there, the ones behind those guys, those dudes back there, etc" basically unity through increased fracturing and an understanding that no one is really white and that white is only really described as the absence of something and not the presence of something.