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America's First Religion - The Religion of Race
25 Plays5 years ago
Today’s episode features Dr. Audra Savage, an expert in law, religion, and human rights, talking about what she sees as America's first religion - the religion of racism.
Though this talk was given by Professor Savage a little over a year ago at Emory University, her insights are relevant today amidst ongoing movements for racial justice.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Audra Savage and America's 'Religion of Race'
00:00:06
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You're listening to Interactions. I'm Hailey Stevenson. Today's episode features Dr. Audra Savage, an expert in law, religion, and human rights, talking about what she sees as America's first religion, the religion of race. Though this talk was given by Professor Savage a little over a year ago at Emory University, her insights are relevant today amidst ongoing movements for racial justice.
Impactful Conversation on Rights of Native and African Americans
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A few years ago, I had a conversation that has stayed with me ever since.
00:00:39
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It was before I went to law school that I was speaking to a supervisor of mine while we were working. And she said to me, Native Americans are the only group in America that are worthy of sympathy and government protection. Most particularly, she said, blacks have their rights. Slavery ended 100 years ago. And if blacks cannot achieve the American dream, then they are the ones to blame. Now, instinctually, I thought this was wrong.
00:01:10
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but hadn't gone to law school yet. So I didn't have the words of rights and civil rights laws to even refute that. And in a certain way, she was right. There's a large framework of laws protecting black Americans, providing for anti-discrimination and protection. I mean, even now, we have those laws, and we have the two O's, Oprah and Obama. Proof positive, the American dream must work.
00:01:39
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But then when she said that, again, I knew something was wrong, something else was going on. And I was troubled, and I'm still troubled today. And I don't know if I was troubled because of what she said, and thinking that it was wrong, or because I didn't say anything at all. Well, fast forward 18 years, and I got my law degree, and a few more to boot. And now I have a response for her, and this talk is my response.
Founders' First Amendment Violation and Establishment of 'Religion of Race'
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Thus begins the First Amendment and the first freedom, freedom of religion. But wouldn't surprise you to know that the Founders violated the First Amendment before the ink was dry.
00:02:30
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And I don't mean an establishment of the Protestant religion as a dominant form of religion in this country. No, no, something much more pernicious than that. By drafting the Constitution the way the Founders did, they created a national and civil religion, a religion built upon the worth of people that they can give to other people. They created what I call the religion of race.
00:02:59
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In this religion, whiteness is sacred and blackness is profane. But I get ahead of myself. Let us go back to the beginning.
From Indentured Servitude to Slavery: Constitutional Racism
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400 years ago, in 1619, Africans were introduced to this country for the first time when a Dutch ship
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shall we say, conquered a Spanish ship, then brought the ship to the Virginia colony, and thus Africans were introduced. From that time until the drafting of the Constitution, Africans transitioned from indentured servants to slaves.
00:03:43
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They became the free labor class upon which this new country and at the time the colonies would have their economy fueled by this free labor. The law treated them as chattel property, not worthy of human rights.
00:04:03
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But sometimes they were human beings when being punished for not doing the desire of whites. So based on this history, I create a definition of racism. Racism is the use of black people to achieve the aims of white people without regard to the personhood, humanity, or agency of blacks.
00:04:26
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And it is with this understanding that the Founders entered the Constitutional Convention and they drafted the Constitution, negotiating between North and South.
Constitutional Compromises on Slavery
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The South was ready to protect the peculiar institution at all costs. The North wanted the wealth, the promised wealth, of building a new nation.
00:04:49
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Now, at this point, you may ask me, Dr. Savage, there's no mention of slavery or slaves in the Constitution. And I would say to you, yes, you're right. But I promise you, the protection of slavery is there. For instance,
00:05:07
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Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, the three-fifths compromise. It allowed the South to count their slaves in the tally representations of the House, but the slaves were not given any rights of the new nation.
00:05:23
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Consider Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1, which prohibited any ban on the importation of slaves until 1808. That meant that America would participate in the Atlantic slave trade for 20 more years.
00:05:40
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Also consider the Fugitive Slave Clause of Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3. It turned every state into slave captors, whether they agree with slavery or not. And there were other provisions and clauses that protected these clauses or protected slave owners. Take, for instance, the provision on the Electoral College, how we vote and elect our president to this day. The framers use words like such persons
00:06:11
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all other persons, no person that shall labor or service to mean slaves. And that was part of the compromise. Include slavery, but just don't name it. And that set up a very dangerous presidents that we follow to this day in America, where you can subjugate and suppress blacks as long as it looks better on paper than it is in reality.
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With these compromises made, the Constitution was created and then ratified. And what did the Constitution do?
Codification of Racism in the Constitution and Legal System
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The Constitution takes the understanding of society of itself and freezes it into permanent law. By drafting the Constitution the way they did, the Founders privileged white people and denigrated black people. They established racism into our country.
00:07:06
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Now, you may ask me, Dr. Savage, how do we get from that to a religion? And I would tell you that religion, whether or not you agree with it or think it has a place in society, religion is a way of ordering life. It is a way to understand the ultimate meaning of life. And the founders ordered American life in a very specific way at creating the Constitution the way they did.
00:07:32
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Based on the work of sociologists Emile Durkheim, we know that there are four basic elements of a religion. Sacred text, consecrated persons, beliefs, and rituals. In the religion of race, the Constitution is a sacred text.
00:07:49
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The consecrated persons are the Supreme Court. Beliefs, whiteness is sacred, blackness is profane, and the rituals are the regular adjudication of cases and controversies before the Supreme Court, what I call the ritual of law. Now, that's been a few minutes talking about this ritual of law.
00:08:11
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The law maintained the boundaries between black and white, the sacred and the profane. And it began after the Constitution was created. And from that time until the Civil War, you had a series of cases containing that belief that whiteness is sacred and black is profane. Amistad, Prigg, Van Zandt, and the dreaded Dred Scott decision all maintained that belief. They confirmed altogether
00:08:41
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That Africans are human beings, just not in America. That states are slave captors and slaves are property. And most infamously, the cases confirm that blacks are not citizens in this country. The cases told us why whiteness is sacred. Whiteness is sacred because whiteness is free.
Persistence of Systemic Racism Despite Amendments
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Now, there was hope once the Civil War was over that blacks would be raised to a higher status of citizenship. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which we call Reconstruction Amendments, and the laws created pursuant to those amendments, permanently ended slavery and gave full citizenship rights to blacks, including the right to vote, to hold property, and to make contracts.
00:09:36
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There was hope that this constitution that was amended would be a new light ushering in the new status of a black man and a black woman in America. But this was not to be, because the religion of race could not countenance such error, such blasphemy.
00:09:56
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The high priest of the Supreme Court had the opportunity to review this new light soon after. From the Slaughterhouse cases of 1873 to Plessy versus Ferguson of 1896, the Supreme Court ensured white supremacy would remain intact. No matter the words of the new constitution, the court would remain true to the original intent of that most sacred text as of 1989.
00:10:23
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The court gathered the promises offered by the new light, ending in the infamous and the most odious doctrine as separate but equal. And we know that there was separation, but it was by no means equal, because whiteness is sacred and blackness is profane.
00:10:42
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With the error of the Jim Crow, systematic racial violence against blacks by lynchings, and suppression of black flourishing and black advancement, blacks may have had their rights on paper, but not in reality.
00:10:56
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And that began to change a little in the early 20th century, and later on, and culminating in the Brown versus Board of Education decision. You might say, Dr. Savage, that's very nice. But we are in 2019. We live in a post-racial world, and blacks have full expression of their rights. And that's a fair thing to say. I mean, look at me. I'm a black female professor at an elite law school. But I want you to consider this.
Supreme Court's Role in Hindering Civil Rights
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The Constitution has been amended further since 1870, and there have been many, many laws created giving full expression to the human rights and citizenship rights of blacks.
00:11:38
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And yet, and still, according to multiple sources for the various indicators, blacks are in the same socioeconomic status as before the Civil Rights Movement. And that's not to mention mass incarceration or the extrajudicial killing of black people by the police. And this advancement in the law that we talk about, well, there's been a retreat
00:12:07
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Consider, for example, some of the decisions from on high at the Supreme Court over the past few years.
00:12:14
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2007, in the Seattle Louisville decision, the court undid a lot of the work towards desegregating our school system. They said that it was unconstitutional to use race to remedy past discrimination. There are currently over 200 schools in this country that are still under desegregation orders, but yet we can't use race to remedy that.
00:12:43
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Also consider the most notorious of cases, Shelby County decision in 2013. The court removed restrictions on certain states and counties ability to change the laws regarding voting.
00:12:58
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Beforehand, these jurisdictions had documented history of denying the enfranchisement to blacks by blocking it by any means necessary. But now with this decision, they can make whatever changes they want. And they are. Across the country, there are laws being created to make it harder to vote. And these laws disproportionately affect black communities. And we saw this on display fully last year here in Georgia.
00:13:30
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And these are but a few examples of the advancement and then the retrenchment of current civil rights laws.
Call for Reformation and True Racial Equality
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Why this advancement and retrenchment? Why is an American dream still an American nightmare for blacks? Because the religion of race and its evangelist, the law.
00:13:54
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As a country, all of us are at the altar of this religion where whiteness is sacred and blackness is profane. The founders hooked this in to our DNA as a country. It is who we are. If we really want to end racial injustice, we will disavow this religion, our first religion.
00:14:16
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We need a true reformation that sacrifices white privilege for the full equality of blacks. If we were to do this, the racism would end and the Church of America would truly be a post-racial community of believers. And then finally, and only then, can we be comfortable in saying that blacks have their rights. Thank you.
00:14:48
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That was Dr. Audra Savage's talk about the religion of race. For further reading, click the link to canopyforum.org in the podcast description. The Interactions podcast is produced by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and in collaboration with canopyforum.org. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to learn more about how law and religion interact in today's world.
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