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Dr. Kelly J. Baker (she/her)

@kelly_j_baker

31 Jan

Any time folks call white Christian nationalism a fringe movement, I end up screaming, "IT'S ACTUALLY MAINSTREAM" while dying a little on the inside.

I have spent over an effin' decade trying to convince folks that white Christian nationalism is mainstream.

It doesn't matter how much evidence I bring to the table. There are still folks that insist loudly that it is a fringe movement.

And I'm not just talking about the people who are white Christian nationalists but the ways in which their ideas about faith and nation are common place.

White Christian nationalism isn't contained by a movement or movements. It's a mistake to think that it is.

Read 11 tweets

Dr. Kelly J. Baker (she/her)

@kelly_j_baker

29 Jan

My therapist reminded me today that when people are on their deathbeds that they don't think "Damn, I should have written more op-eds."

I've been having big feelings about not writing like I normally do because of virtual school and my paid gigs.

And my therapist brought down the hammer.

My therapist told me exactly what I needed to hear today, even though I didn't want to hear.

Honestly, I am still shook.

Read 5 tweets

Dr. Kelly J. Baker (she/her)

@kelly_j_baker

10 Jan

So, I was asked to write down my thoughts on the coup for a major newspaper earlier this week.

I told them no, and let me tell you why.

In 2016, after the election I wrote an op-ed on white nationalism and the alt-right for a major newspaper and appeared on MSNBC.

I was hyped to have the opportunity to share my expertise with a wider audience.

I wasn't prepared for what came next.

The op-ed was shared pretty widely. It is probably as close as I've come to a viral piece.

I wrote for a prestigious pub, and people were reading about my scholarly research.

Cool, right?

Not quite.

Read 30 tweets

Dr. Kelly J. Baker (she/her)

@kelly_j_baker

8 Jan

It seems that we are going to get the "if more people went to college, they wouldn't participate in deadly ideologies" take.

What I would note is that there are white supremacists with undergrad & grad degrees.

Going to college is not a cure-all.

This is part of a long standing narrative that white supremacists are backward and uneducated.

But my research on white supremacists, particularly the 1920s Klan, showed that they were middle class and had jobs that required college degrees.

One of the most shocking things to audiences when I gave talks on the Klan or the alt-right was that these folks had degrees and were teachers, lawyers, bankers, pastors, etc. And some had degrees from elite schools.

Read 8 tweets

Dr. Kelly J. Baker (she/her)

@kelly_j_baker

6 Jan

I'll never forget or forgive all the people who told me, in 2016, that I was overreacting about Trump's violent, white supremacist rhetoric because they were "just words."

Listen, my scholarship is on white supremacist movements and white Christian nationalism. I knew that Trump's rhetoric would lead to violence because that's what happens.

But so many folks just didn't want to believe it.

So, these folks decided that a scholar of white supremacy was "overreacting" when instead I was drawing from my research to say Trump's rhetoric was never, ever "just words" but always held the potential and likely possibility of violence.

Read 10 tweets

Dr. Kelly J. Baker (she/her)

@kelly_j_baker

6 Jan

Our school board sent out a letter to parents today to say that county's virtual school academy will no longer exist for 3-12 grades as of the 25th of this month.

All of those kids will put in one of two completely different virtual options not run by the county.

For K-2, our school district will still have district teachers for their virtual classrooms, but it won't necessarily be the teachers that they have now.

My 1st grader could get a brand new teacher, and I didn't know about it until the first day of this semester.

It seems that our brand new superintendent realized that having teachers do both face-to-face ad remote teaching SIMULTANEOUSLY was bad for both the teachers and the kids.

I completely agree that it was a terrible idea.

Read 18 tweets

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