By Craig Geevarghese-Uffman
The podcast currently has 26 episodes available.
The issue of racism has become a real hot potato and political football this year, and Dr. Douglas Campbell returns from the last episode to help us break through the fog of the bipartisan rhetoric that we are currently experiencing so that we can begin to better understand the belief systems that perpetuate our struggles to ensure equal justice and equal opportunity for all citizens. In the last episode of the podcast, we began to talk about something that both sides of the argument say that there is much too little of – that being freedom. We talked about what it is and what it is not, and, along the way, came across an interconnected question – what is justice, and what is not justice? Dr. Campbell continues to touch upon and explore these questions from a Biblical perspective.
As a reminder, Dr. Campbell is a professor at Duke Divinity School where he has become, since 2003, one of the most respected and innovative New Testament scholars in the world. He specializes in the history and theology of the Apostle Paul, having published five incredibly influential books that have changed the way we Christians understand Paul's writings and large portions of the New Testament itself, and he also directs Duke's Prison Studies program. His latest book is titled Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love, a truly interesting and helpful book that I can't recommend highly enough!
He continues to discuss freedom and what he calls in Pauline Dogmatics quasi-freedom, or phony freedom that often masks itself as actual freedom. He also touches upon freedom in relationships such as marriage, what it means to regard someone as a neighbor and how to do so even if that person is very different from us, and why Christians should be more inclusive and accepting of differences. He also offers some insight regarding what next steps we as Americans should take to move closer toward achieving our country, a topic touched upon in the last episode, and he points toward grounds for hope.
Dr. Campbell has taught us so about freedom, love, and justice and what they mean and don't mean from a Biblical perspective, and he has given us a great Biblical account of these values. In our next episode, we are going to pivot to build on this discussion of love, justice, and freedom but will be applying these values to a discussion of our criminal justice processes. Returning guest Dr. Derek Woodard-Lehman will discuss what he has learned about this topic from teaching a course about it from a Christian ethics perspective. I hope that you'll join us, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!
Show Notes:
[3:53] – Dr. Campbell helps us understand how some people misunderstand what real freedom is.
[6:02] – Dr. Campbell gives an example of freedom in relationships.
[8:52] – Dr. Campbell discusses the freedom of obedience.
[10:04] – We receive an example of freedom around the world in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and being asked to wear masks.
[12:02] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Campbell return the conversation toward marriage in connection to Biblical freedom.
[15:02] – Dr. Uffman offers some summarizing insight on Dr. Campbell's discussion of freedom thus far.
[17:18] – Dr. Uffman shifts the conversation toward Dr. Campbell's discussion of structures in his book, Pauline Dogmatics.
[19:09] – Dr. Campbell reveals how he would respond to someone saying that they should have the freedom to choose who their neighbor is.
[21:40] – We learn how to regard people who are different from us as neighbors as Dr. Campbell encourages us to stop seeing people under categories but rather networks.
[24:45] – Dr. Campbell reflects on the Civil Rights Movement and how it was driven by deep friendships.
[26:05] – Dr. Campbell comments on how the military understands forming bonds over shared struggle.
[28:13] – Differences, Dr. Campbell asserts, create possibilities for new things to be learned.
[31:22] – Dr. Uffman directs the conversation toward the hierarchies of human value and Othering and what Dr. Campbell says about these topics in Pauline Dogmatics.
[32:16] – Dr. Campbell offers more insight regarding how God is at work in all of humanity.
[35:12] – We hear Dr. Campbell make an analogy between substance abusers and sinners.
[38:12] – Far too many people think that their problem is other people rather than themselves.
[40:22] – Dr. Uffman compares our differences to playing different notes in a symphony, with God being the conductor.
[41:27] – Paul wanted to foster the diversity within the communities that he founded, who were not strictly Christians.
[43:40] – We learn what next steps Americans should take to achieve our country, explaining how to put peace into action rather than just theory.
[45:56] – Dr. Campbell points toward grounds for hope and signs that peace is possible.
Links and Resources:
Dr. Campbell’s Website
Duke Divinity School - Our Faculty: Douglas Campbell
Douglas Campbell – Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love
Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:
Dr. Douglas Campbell joins us today to help us consider the proverbial elephant in the room whenever we talk about our struggles with racism. Whether you are White or non-White in America, it's something that we Americans claim that we want for ourselves and our neighbors even though if you listen to us talk about resolving our racial tensions, it's the thing that both sides seem to believe there is much too little of. What is that elephant in the room? Well, I am talking about freedom! Dr. Campbell is here to, amongst other things, discuss what freedom is and what it isn't from a Christian perspective.
Dr. Campbell is a professor at Duke Divinity School where he has become, since 2003, one of the most respected and innovative New Testament scholars in the world. He specializes in the life and history of the Apostle Paul, having published five books that have changed the way we Christians understand Paul's writings and large portions of the New Testament itself, and he also directs Duke's Prison Studies program. His latest book is titled Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love, and I highly recommend that you pick it up and read it!
He is here to discuss values that we tend to take for granted - values like love, justice, and freedom – especially within the framework of racial tensions. He believes that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to think about these values that can actually contribute to and perpetuate our racial tensions. He talks about the teachings of men like Martin Luther King and James Baldwin and how their perspectives can be tied to God's love, and he addresses what love means from a Christian standpoint and how we need to unlearn what we've been told love is and relearn what it actually means, which could very well include learning from others who are practicing it. He also talks about what happens in society when there is inequality and refers to what he calls social mobility being affected as a result.
Dr. Campbell has given us such a great Biblical account of values such as love, justice, and freedom. Join us next time as we continue this conversation, when Dr. Campbell will dig deeper into this issue and will explain terms such as quasi Christian freedom, a variant that masquerades as freedom but ultimately does more harm than good. He will also help us recognize some of the unhealthy ways that some of us sometimes think about freedom. This conversation has been so helpful, and I can't wait to have him back on to continue this talk! I hope that you'll join us, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested about the podcast!
Show Notes:
[2:41] – Dr. Uffman opens the conversation with a quote from James Baldwin from Baldwin's book The Fire Next Time.
[4:17] – People like Martin Luther King and James Baldwin, as pointed out by Dr. Uffman, believed that a lack of love was what was impeding us from achieving our country.
[5:18] – Dr. Campbell explains what he means in his book Pauline Dogmatics when he argues that we need to learn how to love.
[7:40] – Former President Trump, Dr. Uffman reflects, once stated that he couldn't understand why military personnel would lay down their lives in sacrifice – a form of love that is being discussed in this podcast episode.
[9:25] – Dr. Campbell makes the argument that we sometimes play justice off against love even though being loving is being just.
[12:20] – Dr. Campbell discusses the difference between the law and justice, using the Jim Crow laws as an example of the distinction.
[15:16] – Dr. Campbell argues that the only place where we can see a perfect reflection of God's love is in Christ.
[17:32] – We learn that true justice is transformational, reconciling, and restorative.
[20:13] – Dr. Campbell makes the case that justice is doing the right thing even if that isn't congruent with the law.
[22:34] – Dr. Campbell explains how love through sacrifice relates to our struggles here in the United States.
[25:31] – Dr. Campbell believes that Christians need to help democracy strive for love.
[26:40] – We discover what Dr. Campbell means by first having to unlearn love before learning it.
[29:54] – Dr. Campbell reveals how he defines freedom according to his book Pauline Dogmatics.
[32:10] – Dr. Campbell explains his distinction between positive freedom and negative freedom.
[34:54] – People who are being harmed, Dr. Campbell shares, need to be liberated.
[37:02] – Dr. Campbell makes a connection between structure and freedom.
[40:22] – Dr. Uffman offers insight on Dr. Campbell's emphasis on structures, nodding toward the Civil Rights Movement of 1963.
[41:27] – Dr. Campbell brings his home country of New Zealand into the conversation and refers to inequality as a zero sum game.
[44:05] – It's not our laws that make us free, Dr. Uffman summarizes, because there are too many other factors that impede freedom.
Links and Resources:
Dr. Campbell’s Website
Duke Divinity School - Our Faculty: Douglas Campbell
Douglas Campbell – Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love
Douglas Campbell – The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul
James Baldwin – The Fire Next Time
Richard Rorty – Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
Isaiah Berlin – The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas
Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:
In our last episode, Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh joined me to share his experiences as a boy growing up in South India as well as his experiences as a young priest engaging the consequences of caste serving communities of Dalits (formerly known as Untouchables), the lowest ranking on the caste system. In this episode, we will be picking up where we left off, although this time, we will shift our focus over to Bishop Singh's experience as a priest and bishop here in the United States.
As a reminder, Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh is the eighth and current bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, NY. He was born in the larger state of Tamil Nadu in South India where he served many congregations as an Anglican priest before coming to the United States. While earning his PhD in New Jersey, he served multiple parishes and became such a powerful spiritual force that the people of Rochester called him to be their bishop. He has spent decades leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he is here to help us reflect on caste and to share his experiences of wrestling with racism here in the United States.
Bishop Prince shares what it was like to move here to the United States as a man of color, where he was now a minority. He reminds us of two of the main components of caste – purity and pollution – and how those components also play a role in racism here in the United States as White is often socially regarded as pure. Bishop Prince also acknowledges his privilege as a man and discusses how he goes about remaining aware of that privilege, and he offers some incredibly inspirational and moving grounds for hope for the future – such as humanity's move toward beloved community (a term that he explains and exemplifies) and how the COVID-19 pandemic has made some of us realize how divided we were even before the virus made us quarantine and be literally divided.
Speaking with Bishop Prince was such an uplifting experience as it always is, and I thank him for coming on the podcast to help us think about caste from the perspective of someone from India who is now living as a leader here in the United States. In our next two episodes, we will pivot from our historical descriptions of the realities of our racial tensions to do a deep dive into the habitual thoughts that cause and sustain said racial tensions. New Testament scholar Dr. Douglas Campbell of Duke will be joining us to help us think about the values that we tend to take for granted – values like love, justice, and freedom. Dr. Campbell believes that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to think about these values that can actually contribute to and perpetuate our racial tensions. Join us next time to learn more, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested in the podcast about us!
Show Notes:
[4:26] – Bishop Prince reflects on what it was like moving to the United States where he was now a minority as a man of color.
[5:56] – Bishop Prince frames New Jersey as more progressive than Virginia but also more complex.
[7:43] – The South and the North, Bishop Prince argues, have the same iterations of racism that are just manifested differently.
[10:00] – Bishop Prince reminds us of how caste involves perceived purity and impurity.
[12:05] – Bishop Prince addresses his privilege as a man and how he works to become more aware of that privilege.
[14:57] – Dr. Uffman offers insight on the hierarchical worldview described by Bishop Prince.
[16:17] – We learn what it is like for Bishop Prince being a parent of boys of color in Rochester.
[18:54] – Bishop Prince reveals what benefits resulted from one of his sons finding a school that embraced how he learned.
[21:16] – Bishop Prince reflects on what he has observed and processed in Rochester regarding race.
[22:38] – We learn about the antidote to internalized racism.
[25:28] – The only hope to fight structural and internalized racism is to embrace community and break down the walls that separate us.
[26:50] – We discover what Bishop Prince means when he refers to beloved community.
[29:30] – We cannot have dreams without reparations, Bishop Prince argues.
[32:35] – It's not about being colorblind, Dr. Uffman interprets, but is rather about being color-sensitive.
[33:30] – Bishop Prince shares what pockets of the beloved community that he has observed.
Links and Resources:
Episcopal Diocese of Rochester – About the Rt. Rev. Prince G. Singh
Isabel Wilkerson – Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Program - Dalit Solidarity Forum in the USA, inc.
Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:
I am so happy to have Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh join me in this episode of the podcast not only because of the invaluable wisdom that he has to offer but also because he is such a dear friend. Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh is the eighth and current bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, NY. He was born in the larger state of Tamil Nadu in South India where he served many congregations as an Anglican priest before coming to the United States. While earning his PhD in New Jersey, he served multiple parishes and became such a powerful spiritual force that the people of Rochester called him to be our bishop. He joins me to share his personal experiences of wrestling with racism in both South India and here in the United States.
I met Prince ten years ago when I came to lead a parish here a year after he became the bishop. Bishop Prince has spent quite a long while leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he is here today to help us reflect on something that has been discussed several times in previous episodes of the podcast – caste. He reflects on his childhood and where he grew up, revealing that he grew up in a Christian family and that, as a young adult, he got his undergraduate degree in Zoology and his graduate degree in Public Administration.
Interestingly, Prince grew up as a boy not seeing the world through the perspective of caste. In fact, as he narrates in detail, he didn't have a great awareness of it and didn't really learn about it until later on when he encountered it for the first time. He theorizes as to why that is and admits to having been privileged because of his family's socioeconomic status and his parents having been college educated, describing his lack of awareness of the caste system as a child as a blessing but also problematic.
Prince also addresses the multifaceted nature of colonialism and how, from his perspective, it isn't all about domination and has actually had some positive impacts as well. He discusses the two components of caste and the intersectionality between caste and gender, ultimately ending here by pointing to the huge differences that he and his wife Roja Singh have helped make reality for many young girls who were otherwise victims of the caste system. In our next episode, Bishop Prince will be returning, and we will be continuing this conversation. We will follow his story to the United States and will learn how he experienced some of what we have been talking about in previous episodes of the podcast. Please join us, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested in the podcast about us!
Show Notes:
[1:09] – Dr. Uffman announces Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh as this episode’s guest and briefly touches upon his credentials.
[3:27] – Bishop Prince helps us visualize where he grew up.
[5:14] – We learn about Bishop Prince's educational background.
[7:38] – Bishop Prince talks about his family's economic status while he was growing up.
[8:31] – Bishop Prince describes what the weather was like where he grew up, sharing that it was very hot and humid.
[11:17] – Dr. Uffman alludes to caste and recognizes it as a tool that we can use to help understand our current racial tensions.
[12:49] – Bishop Prince reflects on his childhood and what his experience was like as a Christian boy in his state.
[14:05] – We hear Bishop Prince recount one specific encounter when he observed caste play a role via someone's behavior.
[16:12] – Bishop Prince discusses his observations of villages having two parts because of caste.
[18:08] – Bishop Prince reveals that he encountered the concept of caste the most after becoming a priest, and he explains why.
[20:06] – Bishop Prince posits theories as to why he didn't grow up with much awareness of caste division.
[22:47] – Bishop Prince discusses colonialism and how it is a multifaceted system with many layers.
[25:42] – Bishop Prince credits the missionary movement as having had positive influences within India.
[28:06] – We learn a little bit about Bishop Prince's time as an Anglican priest in India.
[31:00] – Bishop Prince describes his early engagement as a priest in South India as adventurous.
[33:51] – Bishop Prince points out the problematic nature of state-enforced prevention of people choosing their own religion.
[36:51] – We hear about the flaws within Christianity because of how caste is sometimes followed even within the Christian faith.
[38:57] – Bishop Prince addresses the intersectionality between caste and gender.
[40:45] – We learn what the term manual scavenger means.
[43:48] – Some children would drop out of school because of being treated as manual scavengers, even by teachers.
[45:23] – Dr. Uffman reflects on how the differences that Bishop Prince and his wife Roja Singh have begun to make for young girls make for grounds for hope.
Links and Resources:
Episcopal Diocese of Rochester – About the Rt. Rev. Prince G. Singh
Program - Dalit Solidarity Forum in the USA, inc.
Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:
Hello, folks! In the last episode, Dr. Kurt Culbertson joined us to help us understand some jargon from his life as a landscape architect – words and terms such as vacant land, habitat, and spatial justice. He also began to help us understand how historic government policies as well as local traditions have combined to limit the habitat choices especially of non-Whites and have constrained the flow of resources to the low income neighborhoods in which they have been allowed to live.
We concluded with a brief discussion of how land use and habitat choice are great examples that denote what we mean when we use phrases such as structural racism. We therefore finally dug into defining what structural racism means with some evidence and examples that are really hard to deny. We will be picking up where we left off in this episode, digging even more deeply into some persistent racial inequities in the domain of spatial justice.
As a reminder, Dr. Kurt Culbertson is a scholar and a practitioner in the field of urban renewal where he uses his expertise as a landscape architect to help cities imagine how to design landscapes that consider environmental, social, and economic factors so that they can best optimize spatial justice in the urban renewal efforts. Dr. Culbertson is chair and C.E.O. of Design Workshop, an international design studio out of Aspen, Colorado but with offices all over the world. They are most famous for their twelve projects that were selected as performance based case studies by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. In 2016, Kurt was awarded the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal which is the highest possible honor in his profession, and he is also the pastor of the ASLA Council of Fellows and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
Kurt returns today to continue discussing inequities in the design of our communities today. Dr. Culbertson provides us with countless examples throughout history of Blacks and non-Whites being displaced and relocated out of their habitats to make room for architecture, interstates and highways, and so on – examples of egregious disturbances within the world of spatial justice. He touches upon pollution and health and safety hazards and their links to spatial justice and also offers some hope for the future, pointing toward an eminent quote from Theodore Parker as inspiration. He even offers some tips on what actions that we as average citizens can take to help equity progress and continue to arc forward.
These past two episodes with Kurt have been such a blessing because they have made it very clear what some folks mean when they refer to structural racism, a reality that we still need to wrestle with today. He has given us concrete examples as someone who is actually observing things on the ground, examples that point toward how historic policies and practices continue to shape our present. We covered so much ground, and I thank Kurt for joining us.
In our next episode, we will pivot from this practical deep dive into spatial justice in order to hear the personal experience and wisdom of Bishop Prince Singh, a man who has wrestled with racism as a person of color both in India and here in the United States. Prince spent a long time leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he will be joining us to help us reflect on phrases like caste and hierarchies of value. Until next time, thanks for tuning in, and be sure to invite your friends to listen as well!
Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders
Show Notes:
[3:48] – Dr. Culbertson offers some egregious examples of disturbances in the domain of spatial justice.
[5:02] – Dr. Culbertson provides examples of population displacements and slum clearances in cities.
[8:02] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss Robert Moses and his move to intentionally design projects to exclude non-Whites and the poor.
[10:20] – Dr. Culbertson expands on how extensive the impact of the interstate highway system relocating Blacks and non-Whites has been.
[12:40] – Dr. Culbertson comments on how urban renewal legislation through the 1970s negatively impacted non-Whites.
[15:28] – Air quality and water quality affect public health which is another disturbance.
[18:25] – The projects in New Orleans leading to de facto segregation around the same time as Civil Rights legislation, Dr. Culbertson explains, was an unintended consequence.
[20:43] – Exposure to toxic pollution is correlated with class and race, and Dr. Culbertson elaborates upon that correlation.
[24:07] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss the phenomenon of flooding in cities and how it disproportionately affects non-Whites.
[26:30] – Dr. Culbertson expounds upon why natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina tend to disproportionately impact non-Whites.
[29:25] – Dr. Culbertson reflects upon management decisions made to address shrinking cities and what that portends for non-Whites.
[31:47] – Dr. Culbertson points to a parks and open space plan that he just finished in Vancouver.
[34:23] – We discover how fragmented metropolitan governance has negatively impacted our ability to deal with spatial equity.
[37:33] – Dr. Culbertson points to some locations as grounds for hope.
[40:22] – Dr. Culbertson explains why taking formerly polluted lands and converting them into open space gives him hope and offers more examples of reasons for hope.
[42:40] – We learn how we can get involved in moving equity forward.
[44:23] – Dr. Culbertson analyzes the meaning behind a famous quote by Theodore Parker.
Links and Resources:
Design Workshop - Website
Landscape Architecture Foundation - Website
ASLA Council of Fellows - Website
The Cultural Landscape Foundation – Website
Robert A. Caro - The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Environmental Protection Agency - EJSCREEN: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool
NPR – “Theodore Parker and the 'Moral Universe'”
Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:
We have a real treat for you today in this episode! Joining us is Dr. Kurt Culbertson, a scholar and a practitioner in the field of urban renewal where he uses his expertise as a landscape architect to help cities imagine how to design landscapes that consider environmental, social, and economic factors so that they can best optimize something that he refers to as spatial justice (which we're going to learn more about in this episode) in the urban renewal efforts.
Dr. Culbertson is chair and C.E.O. of Design Workshop, an international design studio out of Aspen, Colorado but with offices all over the world. They are most famous for their twelve projects that were selected as performance based case studies by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. In 2016, Kurt was awarded the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal which is the highest possible honor in his profession, and he is also the pastor of the ASLA Council of Fellows and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
Kurt was awarded a PhD in Landscape Architecture from Edinburgh College of Art for his research that helps us in thinking about how we ought to use - as a society - our vacant lands. Kurt is here on the podcast to help us understand the inequities that we see in the design of our communities today. The Great Recession of 2008 led to Dr. Culbertson moving a bit away from commercial work and balancing a bit with public renewal projects.
The argument that structural and systemic racism is a myth is an argument that is not new; it has been being made for years, but Dr. Culbertson presents us with physical evidence of its reality – how human value has a hierarchy culturally attached to it is literally manifested in physical structures such as buildings and bridges. He touches upon various topics such as redlining and how physical evidence can be presented that proves that systemic racism and spatial injustice are still major problems even today.
We cover so much ground in terms of management decisions and the economic impact on issues of inequity. In our next episode, Dr. Culbertson will return to talk about what he refers to as disturbances and how we have actually taken actions that have made some things worse. He will share with us what approaches that have been taken that appear to be working to help mitigate this problem. Thanks for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to tune in as well!
Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders
Show Notes:
[3:40] – Dr. Uffman opens the conversation by talking about structural racism and points to the recent massacre of Asian women in Atlanta.
[5:12] – Dr. Culbertson defines the terms vacant land and spatial justice.
[8:18] – Dr. Culbertson explains why we are concerned about vacant land.
[10:30] – Dr. Culbertson describes what he is able to influence and change in his field.
[12:35] – Dr. Culbertson provides us with a potential reason why non Whites don't have the same choices as to where to live as Whites do.
[15:11] – Cities began to implement racial zoning, which Dr. Culbertson defines and explains.
[17:16] – Dr. Uffman shifts the conversation toward management decisions made by the executive branch and refers specifically to Herbert Hoover as an example.
[19:24] – Dr. Culbertson describes what life might have been like for non Whites in cities and what habitat choices that they had following the Emancipation Proclamation.
[22:27] – Dr. Uffman provides insight about his own observations in his hometown in Baton Rouge.
[24:27] – Dr. Culbertson expounds upon mortgage lending and suburbanization, returning to the subject of Herbert Hoover.
[26:55] – The process of redlining, Dr. Culbertson details, excluded the flow of resources especially for low income neighborhoods where a lot of people of color resided.
[29:08] – Dr. Culbertson asserts that redlining caused impacts that still linger today, almost a century later.
[31:39] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss the inequities around wealth creation.
[34:23] – Dr. Culbertson touches further upon management decisions and executive decisions impacting spatial justice.
[36:25] – Dr. Culbertson reflects upon how he would respond to someone who would argue that structural racism isn't real or is no longer a problem.
Links and Resources:
Design Workshop - Website
Landscape Architecture Foundation - Website
ASLA Council of Fellows - Website
The Cultural Landscape Foundation - Website
Edward W. Soja - Seeking Spatial Justice (Volume 16) (Globalization and Community)
Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “How and Why We Birthed Jim Crow”
Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “Jim Crow: The Yankee Variant”
Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “Redline Reasoning: Why We Built Segregated Cities”
Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:
We covered a lot of ground in beginning to understand racial inequities in the housing domain in our last episode. Mr. Salin Geevarghese joined us in that conversation, and we will be picking up where we left off in this episode, drilling down even deeper into that discussion. What are some of the obstacles that are impeding our dream of truly becoming the diverse and inclusive society that values equal opportunities for all? Tune in as we begin to answer that question.
As a reminder, Salin is a man with many hats but is probably best known for being a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for President Obama and his administration. He is currently one of the world's foremost experts in the art of bringing opposing groups together to transform racially polarized pockets of urban blight into sustainably inclusive cities and communities.
Salin's credentials make him the perfect guest to help us with our exploration of the stories that have shaped the racial landscape with which we currently wrestle, and this episode dives further into what we talked about last time about inequity within the housing domain. We discuss how getting rid of the Jim Crow Laws and implementing the 14th Amendment might have been progressive movements but did not solve all problems and certainly did not put an end to structural racism. Salin shares with us what the situation is like where he lives and how there is a shocking 15-20 year gap in life expectancy depending on what part of town you live, but he also lays down ground for hope and how even though we still have a long way to go, there are already signs of progress.
We have been so privileged to have an expert in this field come onto the podcast and help us understand so much of what many of us might not have been aware of. I hope that you will join us in our next episode when we meet another expert in a related field, Dr. Kurt Culbertson. Dr. Culbertson is a prominent landscape architect who has built some places that you would probably even recognize. We will dig deep into these issues of racial inequity from the perspective of landscaping and architecture. Thanks for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to tune in as well!
Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders
Show Notes:
[2:22] – Salin reveals why he began walking the path that he is on now and how he hopes more people will be inspired to work toward building a more inclusive nation.
[4:06] – Salin links our current discriminatory land use policies to the Jim Crow Laws and the Civil Rights Movement.
[6:52] – Dr. Uffman has a close friend who doesn't believe that structural racism exists because of the 14th Amendment having been passed.
[8:58] – Salin expounds upon the difference between law and practice within inequitable community development practices.
[9:40] – Salin explains how urban density is an indicator of structural racism.
[11:42] – You can hear people using both covert and overt language that speaks of trying to avoid living near people with less means or who look different than they do.
[14:11] – Salin explains how we are doing concerning racial bias within mortgage lending.
[15:54] – Communities need various types of housing in order to thrive.
[18:30] – Dr. Uffman and Salin discuss maps that show data supporting Salin's argument and how listeners can access them.
[21:48] – Salin provides other examples of pervasive policies and practices that have led to negative impacts on people of color.
[24:00] – Dr. Uffman gives an example of the post office serving as a bank to many who use money orders due to inequity.
[26:11] – The hierarchy of human value is something that permeates society all the time through social signals that are sent.
[28:30] – Salin worked during the Obama administration on a tool to help us build diverse and inclusive communities.
[31:18] – The Trump administration, as Salin describes, immediately delayed implementing Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and ultimately rescinded it entirely.
[34:37] – Salin shares what he is currently seeing that seems to be promising.
[36:27] – It is important that we do something about the inequity of neighborhoods while also allowing people who don't want to move to stay where they are, and Salin details why that is.
[38:20] – Salin moves the conversation toward more concrete examples rather than abstract examples.
[40:38] – Salin reflects on the current state of the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore.
[44:05] – There is grounds for hope, and we can be a part of the solution. There are already signs of progress.
[47:03] – Salin encourages listeners to be open and willing to understand that society's sense of hierarchy of human value is prevalent everywhere.
Links and Resources:
Raj Chetty
Opportunity Insights
Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:
Returning to the conversation is Mr. Salin Geevarghese, whom you may remember having been a guest on the very first episode of the podcast. Salin, as a reminder, is a man with many hats but is probably best known for being a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for President Obama and his administration. He is currently one of the world's foremost experts in the art of bringing opposing groups together to transform racially polarized pockets of urban blight into inclusive cities.
Salin's credentials make him the perfect guest to help us start our exploration of the stories that have shaped the racial landscape with which we currently wrestle, and this episode particularly dives into discrimination and inequities in the world of housing and how we can begin to hopefully find solutions to such problems. Although we will talk more about the hope and the possible solutions in our next episode, Salin begins to touch upon that near the end of this episode, sharing that new coalitions pushing for progress and the celebration of diversity gives him hope.
Salin gives us such a great introduction into the racial inequities that persist even today in the domain of housing. I hope that you will join us in our next episode as we continue this conversation, drilling more deeply into the challenges that have been brought about by our history of discriminatory policies. We will also begin to talk more deeply about hope and promising solutions. Thank you for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!
Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders
Show Notes:
[4:18] – Salin begins by giving us an update on some of the challenges that still need to be confronted today when it comes to inequities in housing.
[7:16] – Salin comments on what goals that we should set and what success would look like, starting with physical transformation.
[8:55] – The second stage of success is the ability for new neighborhoods to attract and hold on to diverse residents.
[10:57] – Salin explains what the last stage of success is – addressing the unfinished business that we still actually have and questioning who is benefitting from what we are seeing.
[12:40] – We learn why it tends to be so difficult to reverse the situation for distressed neighborhoods.
[15:54] – Craig and Salin discuss hierarchies of human value and how Salin defines it.
[18:44] – Salin discusses what progress that we can celebrate that we have seen over the last several decades.
[20:22] – We have seen a rise in wealth in the United States, but the problem is that the wealth is concentrated.
[21:48] – Salin confidently asserts that implicit bias definitely plays a role in the problem of racially disparate housing.
[23:21] – Salin assures Dr. Uffman that implicit bias still plays a role a century after the 1920s and gives concrete examples.
[25:54] – Segregation continues to persist today, and the country is, in fact, resegregating.
[27:58] – Dr. Raj Chetty, the youngest professor to receive tenure at Harvard, has given us hard data that both sides of politics can agree on.
[30:17] – Where you grow up has a major impact on what opportunities that you have throughout life.
[31:53] – Salin encourages listeners to look at Dr. Chetty's research on Opportunity Insights.
[34:16] – Salin talks about his hope that we will see progress and change in our lifetimes due to progress that has already been made and unfinished business that we have yet to do.
[37:08] – Hope is very necessary right now because solidarity is constantly under attack.
Links and Resources:
Raj Chetty
Opportunity Insights
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We covered a lot of ground with Dr. Derek Woodard-Lehman in our last episode of the podcast as he helped us consider why it's so difficult for some of us to have conversations about race and racism and whether or not racism is still a problem today. We also talked about colorblindness and how even though some people who say that they're colorblind might mean it from a place of good intent, it isn't yet a sufficient standard for us, and we discussed why that is. We also began to try to understand what is meant by the controversial phrase systemic racism, and we will be continuing that conversation today.
As a reminder, Dr. Woodard-Lehman teaches at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, specializing in Christian Ethics. He is focused particularly on how Christian commitments have mobilized political resistance to racial injustice. We have been talking about situations on the podcast such as the American Civil Rights Movement, which is definitely one such instance of this having happened.
I hope that you will join us as we continue this conversation, discussing topics such as the also controversial phrase critical race theory and political commentator David French's take on it, lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw's take on intersectionality, white privilege and what it means, the distinction between guilt and responsibility in terms of white privilege and how we share that responsibility, and so much more!
I owe Dr. Woodard-Lehman so much gratitude for once again giving us so much to think about. I hope that you will join us in our next episode as we begin to look deeply at whether or not our racial disparities actually exist and whether or not they are systemic. Thank you for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!
Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders
Show Notes:
[3:07] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman provides us with a reminder of the geological metaphor that he used in the last episode, comparing the formation of the Finger Lakes and the water that they supply to people to racism and inequity.
[6:10] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman adds that his metaphor applies to not only social problems of historical times but to social problems of today as well, even if such problems are not immediately visible to us.
[8:29] – People on both sides of this argument generally agree that there are statistical disparities.
[10:15] – Dr. Uffman recalls a conversation between Chris Wallace and Donald Trump about systemic racism and why Trump ended the racial sensitivity training that addresses white privilege.
[12:31] – Dr. Uffman switches gears to the executive order dictating that we are not allowed to teach the idea that the United States is inherently racist or sexist.
[15:42] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman defines critical race theory and what it entails.
[17:08] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman defines intersectionality – a central facet of critical race theory – and gives examples of it provided by lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw.
[19:27] – Intersectionality is a tactic used to dismiss cases of discrimination based on one facet of a person's identity.
[22:38] – White privilege, as Dr. Woodard-Lehman expounds upon, has a broad spectrum of different meanings but does have an especially helpful and useful meaning.
[24:59] – White privilege oppresses not just Blacks but persons of color in general.
[25:29] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman provides us with an example of a time in college when something about him was wrongly assumed because of his race.
[28:16] – Dr. Uffman provides us with an example of a time in Times Square when he inadvertently benefitted from white privilege.
[31:03] – Dr. Uffman came to realize that white privilege, when it comes to how people are treated by police, is in part because of convict leasing in the south in the 1880s.
[32:42] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman emphasizes that experiences with law enforcement is one of the most important aspects of white privilege and provides further examples.
[35:45] – Dr. Uffman returns to the concept of inequity and racial sensitivity training.
[36:28] – One component of racial sensitivity training is sharing stories like Dr. Woodard-Lehman and Dr. Uffman have been doing and acknowledging white privilege as real.
[39:22] – An instructor crafting their syllabus with texts from white male scholars is not usually doing so out of ill intent.
[40:39] – Dr. Uffman reiterates how easy it is to see racial inequity and disparity as natural rather than socially constructed, something that he himself has done.
[43:02] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman stresses how white privilege can be blatant and obvious but can also be more subtle.
[45:57] – Dr. Uffman once again returns to Dr. Woodard-Lehman's water metaphor and emphasizes a distinction between guilt and responsibility.
[46:50] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman further explains the difference between guilt and responsibility and how we should be discussing responsibility rather than guilt.
[47:27] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman provides an example of responsibility over guilt coming into play when action needs to be taken to correct something that is wrong.
[50:10] – There are situations, such as in the example that Dr. Woodard-Lehman provides, when we must take responsibility for correcting wrongs even if we are not at fault.
[52:27] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman discusses our shared responsibility over social arrangements, responsibility that is ours even though we had little to no part in initially arranging them.
[53:45] – The difficulty that we have over having fruitful conversations about race and racism is partially because of how we wrestle with wondering who to blame.
[54:37] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman predicts what obstacles exist other than an inability to look past guilt.
[57:15] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman offers a potential explanation as to why some people might be inclined to disagree with antiracist ideology.
Links and Resources: Isabel Wilkerson – Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent Ibram X. Kendi – How to Be an Antiracist
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Dr. Derek Woodard-Lehman joins me today to help us make sense of a lot of the jargon that we tend to hear surrounding racial tension – words and phrases such as racist, racism, critical race theory, and racial formation.
Derek teaches at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, specializing in Christian Ethics. He is focused particularly on how Christian commitments have mobilized political resistance to racial injustice. We have been talking about situations on the podcast such as the American Civil Rights Movement, which is definitely one such instance of this having happened.
I hope that you will join us as we discuss important topics such as the recent rise in racial tension in 2020 that took place especially during the presidential election, why people seem to be bothered and pained by racism still being a problem being brought up in conversation, whether or not it is sufficient to identify as colorblind, how there is a difference between equality and fairness, what racial formation is and how we should best approach talking about racism, and so much more.
Derek gives us a great deal of information to process, encouraging us to think about how our society is structured. Join us next time as Derek and I continue this conversation, making sense of what we have learned so far by remembering the American story more completely, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!
Show Notes:
[2:04] – Dr. Uffman opens the conversation by discussing the rise in racial tension that permeated much of 2020 and the 2020 presidential election.
[4:36] – Dr. Derek Woodard-Lehman offers possible explanations as to why it tends to be painful for people to talk about racial tensions, explaining that some people take the suggestion that racism is still a problem as a personal attack.
[7:08] – There is a possibility, as Dr. Uffman and Derek both posit, that some people are bothered by the topic of racism because they see it not only as a personal attack but also as an attack on their culture or region of the country.
[10:06] – Derek evaluates the appropriateness of the term colorblind and whether or not it's sufficient to identify as such.
[12:18] – We hear Derek share a story of being in Upstate New York this past summer, offering the topology of the Finger Lakes as a metaphor for racism in current times.
[14:40] – Dr. Uffman provides us with insight as to why identifying as colorblind is not yet sufficient.
[17:15] – Derek gives us a metaphor for the appropriateness and sufficiency of identifying as colorblind – a metaphor involving being a coach on a soccer team in which your child is a teammate.
[19:32] – We should treat everyone fairly but not blindly. We have to account for various demographics and differences.
[22:19] – Derek touches upon systemic racism, offering his own definition of what it means when it's said that a community or a nation is systemically racist.
[24:39] – Derek uses a metaphor of water allocation as a link to systemic racism.
[25:45] – In Protestant tradition, there is a conception of sins as total depravity, and Derek explains what this means to him.
[27:52] – Derek ties the concept of total depravity to structural racism.
[30:35] – Derek begins to propose an appropriate way to discuss racism in, for example, a classroom setting.
[33:23] – We learn how Derek's pastor talked about racial formation as Derek was growing up.
[36:38] – Dr. Uffman offers closing insight on the conversation, presenting the possibility that speaking of racism should not necessarily be assessing one individual's motives.
Links and Resources:
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