Invitation to Live August 6 WTL Author Forum with Jennifer Harvey to Discuss Her New Book, "Antiracism as Daily Practice"

Plus, gratitude for the incandescent witness of James Baldwin

Dear #WhiteTooLong Readers,

Please scroll down to see an invitation to join me next Tuesday night (8/6) for our fifth WTL Author Forum, a live zoom conversation with Jennifer Harvey to discuss her new book, Antiracism as Daily Practice. See below for details.

But today, my mind is on James Baldwin. Today would have been the great American writer’s 100th birthday.

When my last book, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, won a 2021 American Book Award, I took the opportunity to pay a debt of gratitude to James Baldwin. Here’s the opening of my speech.

All writers have intellectual and moral debts, and I want to use this opportunity to acknowledge a large one. So today, I lift up, with gratitude, the work and life of James Baldwin, from whose writing the title of my recent book is taken.

It’s perhaps surprising that the writing of a black, gay author hailing from Harlem a generation before my time would resonate with me—a white, straight guy who grew up as a Southern Baptist on the working-class side of town in Jackson, Mississippi. But from the time my eyes first danced across the lines his hands first tapped out on a manual typewriter, I had an experience that is best described in a word from our shared Christian faith: “Communion.” I felt Baldwin speaking to me, and the power of his writing called for an answer. His living words compelled me, for the first time in my professional career as a social scientist, to learn to write in the first person.

I was moved by his unflinching perceptiveness. I was in awe that even in his more despairing moments, as White Americans and White churchgoers repeatedly spurned calls for Black equality, he refused to dip his pen into the well of hatred. I also found familiar his own deep wrestling with a Christianity that drew and disappointed him.

You can read (and watch) my full remarks here:

Happy birthday, James Baldwin. And thank you for your witness. I am still living in hope that folks like me have not been white too long.

Gratefully,

Robby

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INVITATION: Live Event with Jennifer Harvey on 08/06 at 7:30 pm EDT

On Tuesday, 08/06/2024, at 7:30 pm EDT, I’m hosting a live zoom event exclusively for paid subscribers: a conversation with Jennifer Harvey about her new book, Antiracism as Daily Practice: Refuse Shame, Change White Communities, and Help Create a Just World. I hope you’ll join us for this one-hour event. Jennifer and I will talk for 30-40 minutes and then take questions from Zoom webinar participants for the final 20 minutes.

My take on the book:

Book summary:

Antiracism as Daily Practice illustrates the many ways white Americans―those newly waking to the crisis of racism in 2020 and those already aware―can choose behaviors in our everyday lives to grow racial justice. Full of real life stories, this book shows how vital it is for white people to engage in and with our families, through our social networks, in our neighborhoods, and at our jobs to make antiracism a daily living commitment. We have real power in our relationships with other white people―and not enough of us have used it. Dr. Harvey explains why we white people struggle with knowing what to do about racism, and explores the significance of emotions like grief and anger (as well as the harmful role of shame) in really reckoning with the transformation and change needed in our communities to become the partners in justice that Black communities and other communities of color need and deserve. Not only is such transformation vital to the well-being of U.S. democracy. It’s vital to the freedom and wholeness of white people too.

About Jennifer:

Dr. Jennifer Harvey is a writer and educator long engaged in racial justice and white antiracism. Her books include the New York Times bestseller Raising White Kids and Dear White Christians. She has written for the New York Times and CNN. She also appeared on CNN’s Town Hall on Racism with Sesame Street, and has been heard on NPR’s "All Things Considered" and “It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders.” Raised in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Harvey served nearly twenty years at Drake University as both professor and Associate Provost for Campus Equity and Inclusion. She is now the Vice President of Academic Affairs at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.

How to register for the webinar:

*Note: access to live event limited to paid subscribers only; become a paid subscriber to get access to registration.