Sociologist George Yancey joins the show to discuss his new book Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism.

TRANSCRIPT

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Hey everyone. Welcome to Jessup Think and I'm your host, Mark Moore

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and your co-host Rex Gurney

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Rex on the show today we have Dr. George Yancey, He's professor at the Institute for Studies of religion at Baylor University. He specializes in race and religion. And his new book is entitled Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Anti-racism.

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And I found it one of the most helpful books that I've read recently on this subject. And so I hope you enjoy the conversation with George

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just excited to have you on the show to talk about your book. And and I really appreciate the approach you take in. In theology, I often find myself kind of looking for a middle ground between two extremes. And and so I'm always I always appreciate someone who takes an approach that wreck can see both sides maybe for what they are and seek a new path. And so I think this was really helpful for me as I was processing through. And I always love the work of a social scientists to that as you approach it, I just feel like you bring something that is so helpful for theologians and biblical scholars and others to, to look at kind of look at this kind of experiential data, along with the theological. as we as we kind of start, I'd love to love to clarify some terms for our listeners, in the sense of you're looking at this unifying alternative between colorblindness and anti racism. So maybe, maybe you start with colorblindness. How do you define colorblindness?

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Yeah, so colorblindness is basically when you when you say you don't see race. So the way in which you try to deal with racism, as you say, Well, I don't see race. And that is you don't see race, and you can't treat people differently based on race. So it's pretty straightforward in that way. Some of the people who talk about it will say what's not, we know that you can totally ignore race by trying to minimize the way you treat people by race, and it should not be a factor in how you treat them, or whether or not you get a job or anything like that. So those are some of the more extreme ones as well. dormers completely, some of the more realistic ones said, Well, we really can't do that we do see rights, but we're just going to try not to act based upon

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it, or what I hear a lot, it's like nobody was thinking about race until you brought the word up. Because I just don't think it's often an exercise in changing the subject I found but well, in a lot, you know,

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it's yeah, the the, the, the will argue a color blindness perspective will say, you know, if you if you, you racialize this, and that's what caused the problems, right problem is people who bring race into the subject from their point of view, right?

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Yeah, and I can, I mean, looking back at my experience, kind of growing up in the Midwest and 80s, early 90s. I often heard that argument or, you know, oh, these people maybe on the left are always trying to bring race into the conversation. Even as a kid I heard that and kind of heard maybe that that roots of, of colorblindness and, and in some ways on the surface. The idea sounds like

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a reasonable position. It's certainly a Christian position, actually.

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Yeah, you're going back to like, the 70s, the civil rights movement. And you know, it sounds a lot like that, right? A lot like, hey, why don't you just treat me the same as everyone else?

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Yeah, but there's definitely a different tinge to it. I mean, even recently, a lot of lot of politicians, particularly on on the right, have been drawn to that King quote, of right, Judge me not on the color of my skin, but the content of my character. But it seems to they seem to use it to mask what's really going on, right, and kind of changing