JemarTisby.Substack.com. Profile picture
Apr 6, 2020 8 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Mississippi Governor, Tate Reeves, continues the state tradition of declaring April "Confederate Heritage Month."
There's so much wrong with this...
m.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2020/apr/…
You can claim "heritage not hate" all you want, but you can never avoid the fact that the Confederacy, and all its supposed heroes, stood for the enslavement of people who look like me.
avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/c… Image
The celebration of the Confederacy is simultaneously a veneration of race-based chattel slavery. Whether one intends this or not (and plenty do), the two cannot be separated. This is also why other Confederate monuments, emblems, and statues need to come down. #TakeItDown Image
A month devoted to the "heritage" of the Confederacy that does not give a full-throated recounting and condemnation of slavery is just propaganda.

I wrote a day-by-day history that details the Confederacy's racism better than any "heritage" month will.
jemartisby.com/2016/05/03/cel…
Here's a modest proposal: Next year marks 20 years since the last referendum on changing the state flag. Let's do another referendum in 2021. But only if it's free and fair and the nearly 40% of African American residents can easily cast their vote.
ballotpedia.org/Mississippi_Fl… Image
There's already a popular option for replacing the state flag of Mississippi. The artist is Laurin Stennis, granddaughter of the late Mississippi Senator and well-known opponent of Black civil rights, John C. Stennis. Laurin wants to create a "positive symbol for all". Image
Learn more about an alternative flag for Mississippi here: declaremississippi.com.
#PutItUp
As Bryan Stevenson has said, "The North won the Civil War, but the South won the narrative war." We need to write a new narrative, and that can only happen if we remove the symbols of hate and replace them with symbols of hope, unity, and love. Image

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More from @JemarTisby

May 1, 2023
I never set out to write these stories of professors at Christian universities getting fired for teaching about racial justice, but they are becoming increasingly common and they are ominous harbingers of increasingly repressive cultures in Christian institutions. Image
It’s also becoming apparent that uniformed opinions of my work, especially The Color of Compromise, also tend to figure into these firings. While I lament that Christian administrators are firing their own professors for citing my work, I stand by it and the professors do, too. Image
These two professors who have both lost their jobs for teaching racial justice are calling the CCCU to condemn the actions of these universities and any other member institutions that fail to honor academic freedom and target professors for teaching about race. Image
Read 4 tweets
Feb 11, 2023
Organizers behind the “He Gets Us” campaign are set to spend $20 million in Super Bowl ads alone and $1 BILLION over the next three years. Let’s talk about the (mis)uses of a Christian/evangelical money.
apnews.com/article/religi…
Of course these multi-million dollar funds could go to support individuals and organizations already doing good work on a local or national scale. We started The Witness Fellows program to fund Black social entrepreneurs at $100K (‼️) each over two years. thewitnessfoundation.co/fellowship
But let’s say you wanted to use media and marketing to highlight Jesus for a generation who increasingly identify as having no particular religious affiliation. There are better ways to do it than what “He Gets Us” is doing.
Read 8 tweets
Jan 14, 2023
This is the book Coretta Scott sent to MLK while he was in seminary and before they were married. In a letter he wrote to her:
“By the way (to turn to something more intellectual) I have just completed Bellamy's Looking Backward. It was both stimulating and facinating.”
In the letter MLK goes hints at his ideas about an economic agenda for uplift.
“I welcomed the book because much of its content is in line with my basic ideas. I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.”
But MLK had his critiques of Bellamy’s book:
“On the negative side of the picture Bellamy falls victim to the same error that most writers of Utopian societies fall victim to, viz., idealism not tempered with realism.” kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/do…
Read 5 tweets
Aug 15, 2022
The tip-toeing, the coddling, the deliberateness…NO OTHER racial or ethnic group, much less Black people, would be afforded the kind of delicateness authorities and politicians are using with white people who threaten and enact violence against the government.
White supremacy doesn’t only look like people marching in robes and hoods (or polo shirts and tiki torches,). It is the privilege, the deference, the innocence with which white people are treated that gives them leeway that no other racial or ethnic group has in this country.
Racism is such a normal part of the fabric of the U.S. that white people storming the Capitol, attacking FBI agents, openly spreading lies and stoking violence in the name of white power and white people is treated as behavior to discuss rather than the existential threat it is.
Read 4 tweets
Aug 14, 2022
The erasure of the Black church tradition and Black Christians in the current public discourse around religion is *strong*. White Christians in the U.S. and their issues do not comprise the whole of Christianity. A 🧵...
For instance, how might the conversation about white Christian Nationalism be changed, shifted, or enhanced by analyzing and learning from a Christian tradition that has explicitly promoted and fought for antiracism and multiracial democracy for centuries?
What if we took people like Fannie Lou Hamer and initiatives such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as starting points for examining Christian engagement in public life and the interaction between faith and politics?
Read 8 tweets
Jul 8, 2022
I was discussing films like "The Help" and "The Blindside" (white savior stories) with some folks and one of the reasons some people love these films is they offer a narrative of redemption, a way out of this racial morass in our nation. Bu there's more...
The redemption narrative of these movies ("Green Book", "The Best of Enemies" + more) is highly individualistic and interpersonal--the friendship between two people, the benevolence of a white person. No analysis of systems or circumstances that lead to widespread injustice.
Stories that have "white savior" narratives let viewers off the hook for actually changing and taking action. If I, as the viewer, identify with the white protagonist who is doing "good" things, then I'm not racist. I'm not the one with the problem and I don't have to change.
Read 4 tweets

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