Thread by @drchanequa

Yesterday I followed the convo about this Jennifer M Buck "Bad and Boujee" mess, and said I was going to keep quiet about it. But I woke up feeling messy.

I’m disappointed in my friends at Wipf & Stock for letting this one get through the cracks. They’ve been a great outlet for womanists and LGBTQ people who’ve had a hard time getting publishers’ attention. My first book “Too Heavy a Yoke” is with them.

It’s not that White scholars can’t write about Black women, but it has to be done with extreme care, a whole lot of cultural sensitivity and humility, and in relationships of accountability with Black women. And it would probably need a Black woman editor.

The optics of this book are just bad. The title reeks of cultural appropriation. The only endorsement is from a White man. The lack of Black endorsers is a huge red flag that Buck has no relationship with Black scholars AND that the book’s content couldn’t generate interest.

It’s especially telling that it’s been presented at AAR twice and she still didn’t have endorsements. She probably slipped thru the anonymous review process. I bet few womanists showed up for her presentation.

I’m baffled by the author meets critics CFP for this year’s AAR, but I also suspect that was never an endorsement. Knowing how CFPs are put together, it was probably offered in a “let’s see if anyone wants to engage this” manner.

AAR’s format last year means there were fewer people at the business meetings where these things are decided. It was an opportune time to get something in that otherwise might not have made the cut.

Frankly, the author is lucky that no one responded to that CFP. Because my guess is she would be showing up to a hostile audience. If y’all think this social media dragging is something, try being on a panel in front of dozens of pissed Black women faculty and grad students.

Wait...that might have been fun to watch.

The thing that frustrates me most about this is that White religious scholars have one job: figuring out how to repent from and repair the White supremacist theology that pervades the US. Literally, it’s the only thing they need to be doing.

Black women don’t need White women trying to explain us. They could NEVUH.

What White scholars can do is advocate for Black women to get more time and support from institutions and publishers to do the writing that only we can do. Take on extra committee and advising work to free us up for writing.

Financially support independent scholars and advocate for better pay for the Black women who adjunct for your institutions. Suggest that your institutions only invite Black women and other people of color as speakers.

Use Black women’s books as at least 25% of required texts in your classes. Reduce writings by White people to 25%. Consider it an effort to reshape the theological imagination that has been (de)formed by Whiteness.

Read our stuff. Cite our stuff. But stop trying to write it.