Black Christology And The Quest For Authenticity

Black Christology and the Quest for Authenticity: A Philosophical Appraisal constitutes a philosophical inquiry on Black Theology and its attendant Black Christology. Explicitly, the philosophical examination of Black Theology conceptually maps its quest for establishing Black Christology as an authentic form within Christian theology. This text critically expounds on the methodologies and arguments, which guide how Black Theology specifically affirms Black Christology as the definitive paradigm for authentic Christianity. Significantly, the racialized character of Black Theology immediately sets this discourse within the context of philosophy of race. Clearly, the philosophy of race in terms of its substance and scope is continually expanding. Notably, the philosophy of religion in its conceptual association with the African American experience considerably enriches the content of the philosophy of race. Therefore, Black Christology and the Quest for Authenticity: A Philosophical Appraisal stands as a unique contribution to philosophy of race. Summarily, while this book tackles the formidable problem of Christian theological subject matter, nonetheless, the reader must be aware that this is not a work executed methodologically in any theological manner, inclusive of Christian theology. Subsequently, while the object of our investigation substantively remains theological in character, the method of investigation is guided by philosophical inquiry, which is based on secular principles. Furthermore, although, most mainstream works in philosophy of religion, along with theology neglect to exam African American theologians and philosophers, the subject matter of Black Christology substantially facilitates in filling this intellectual void.

Seeking Common Ground is a dialogue between an atheist philosopher and a Catholic theologian. It is about religion and nonreligion, as well as about dialogue itself. The book provides a framework for dialogue grounded in seven key values: Harmony, Courage, Humility, Curiosity, Honesty, Compassion, and Honor. Unlike typical “debates” about religion and atheism, Fiala and Admirand show that atheists and theists can work together on projects of mutual understanding. They explore the terrain of religion and nonreligion, discussing a range of sources, topics, issues, and concerns, including: adventures in interfaith dialogue, challenging ethical issues, problems interpreting biblical texts, the growth of secularism, and the importance of ritual and community. The authors show that it is possible to disagree about religion while also seeking common ground. The book includes a foreword by Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the U.S. Interfaith Alliance.

The Black male scholars within this important book are painfully aware that the brutal murder of George Floyd was not due to a few "bad apples." They understand that they are perceived as "threats" and "criminals" within a distorted white imaginary that is embedded with processes of mythopoetic construction, racial capitalism, and a deep anti-Black male social ontology. Edited by prominent philosopher George Yancy, Black Men from behind the Veil: Ontological Interrogations emphasizes the importance of Black male epistemic agency and the courage to speak the truth regarding an America that values Black male life on the cheap and that attempts to control the movement of Black men, their capacity to breathe, and their being through anti-Black technologies of surveillance, confinement, policing, and white nation-building. There is no single monolithic Black male voice that dominates this crucial and necessary text. Each voice speaks of pain behind the Veil, revealing narrative specificity and an important recursive truth: Black men, within the white American psyche, are both necessary and yet disposable. The existential and sociohistorical weight of this truth is made painfully clear through the voices of these Black men.

This book explores the relations among blackness, antiblackness, and Black people within the discourse of the blackness of black. This critical discourse developed during the last two decades as scholars explored what Saidiya Hartman describes as the afterlife of slavery. Hartman’s concept, which argues for a troubling continuity between the status of enslaved and emancipated Black people, is the pivot between discursive tributaries and trajectories. Tributaries of the discourse of the blackness of black comprise five foundational concepts: Frantz Fanon’s “phobogenic blackness,” Orlando Patterson’s “social death,” Cedric Robinson’s “racial capitalism and the black radical tradition,” and Hortense Spillers’ “flesh.” The book traces three trajectories within the afterlife of slavery: Frank Wilderson’s “ Afropessimism,” Fred Moten’s “generative blackness,” and Calvin Warren’s “black nihilism.” This ensemble of concepts enable us to understand what is at state in how we understand the relations among blackness, antiblackness, and Black people.

Using Heideggerian tool ontology to investigate antiblack racism in the United States, Ontological Branding: Power, Privilege, and White Supremacy in a Colorblind World provides a novel account of race and racial justice. Bonard Iván Molina García argues that race is best understood as a tool to brand persons of color, particularly Black persons, as subordinate in order to privilege whiteness as the proper state of persons in a world created by and for persons and in which all (and only) persons are equal. Persons of color, particularly Black persons, are thus excluded from full participation in the rights and privileges of personhood and instead relegated to ways of being in service to the white world. This white supremacist system was created through law, and despite significant changes, U.S. law’s current approach to racial justice through colorblindness only serves to safeguard white supremacy. Racial justice instead requires a critical race consciousness that accounts for the ontology of race. Racial justice requires ontological justice.

Iranian Identity, American Experience: Philosophical Reflections on Race, Rights, Capabilities and Oppression is a multidisciplinary study of oppression using the Iranian American community as its case study. In current studies of oppression, there is little philosophical analysis or a theoretical framework to think about race from the perspective of an immigrant community in the United States that appears to be educated and affluent. Iranian Identity, American Experience fills this gap. Alavi discusses a theory of oppression that addresses not only the external oppression inflicted on people of color but also the everyday actions that leave them in oppressive situations. The book ends with suggestions for addressing oppression both individually and as a collective and for fighting to minimize its harms.

While there is a proliferation of research on white educators who teach courses around anti-racism, White Educators Negotiating Complicity: Roadblocks Paved with Good Intentions focuses on white educators who teach about whiteness to racially diverse groups of students, and who acknowledge and attempt to negotiate their complicity in systemic injustice. Scholars continue to remind white people of the paradox through which their endeavors to disrupt systemic white supremacy often reproduce it. In this book, Barbara Applebaum explores what it means to teach against whiteness while living that paradox. Rather than an empirical study, this book offers insights from recent scholarship surrounding critical whiteness and epistemic injustice and applies them to some of the most trenchant challenges that white educators face while trying to teach about whiteness to racially diverse groups of students. Introducing the concept of a vigilantly vulnerable and informed humility, Applebaum both illuminates what theory can tell us about praxis and offers guidance for white educators in their attempts to negotiate the effects of white complicity on their pedagogy.

Hip-hop as survivor testimony? Rhymes as critical text? Drawing on her own experiences as a lifelong hip-hop head and philosophy professor, Lissa Skitolsky reveals the existential power of hip-hop to affect our sensibility and understanding of race and anti-black racism. Hip-Hop as Philosophical Text and Testimony: Can I Get a Witness? examines how the exclusion of hip-hop from academic discourse around knowledge, racism, white supremacy, genocide, white nationalism, and trauma reflects the very neoliberal sensibility that hip-hop exposes and opposes. At this critical moment in history, in the midst of a long overdue global reckoning with systemic anti-black racism, Skitolsky shows how it is more important than ever for white people to realize that our failure to see this system—and take hip-hop seriously—has been essential to its reproduction. In this book, she illustrates the unique power of underground hip-hop to interrupt our neoliberal and post-racial sensibility of current events.