"We Need to Talk About the White People Who Voted for Donald Trump": "Only Group in Which a Majority Voted for Trump"

KOAT Albuqerque, "Native man goes viral with downtown celebration dance"

Brandon Tensley, "Millions of White voters are once again showing who they are":

One thing that this week has clarified is the lengths to which many White Americans are willing to go in order to protect their Whiteness, to centralize it, even after a summer that saw unprecedented support for the Black Lives Matter movement.  

Valuable Recent Commentary about Link Between White Supremacy and White Christianity in the U.S.

I'm sorry to have been away for so long. As I noted in a posting some weeks back, we have been dealing with health challenges, and we're hoping that a surgical procedure today will put them behind us. 

Sarah Posner's Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump — Unholy Marriage of Alt- and Religious Right in the Trump Presidency

I recently read Sarah Posner's new book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump (NY: Penguin Random House, 2020). Reading it as Robert P. Jones's White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity comes out is in many ways a thoroughly depressing experience. I began reading Jones's book as I was finishing Posner's.

More Valuable Commentary about Robert P. Jones's White Too Long

New interviews with Robert P. Jones keep coming along after the recent publication of his book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, about which I blogged a number of days ago. New interviews and commentary about the book, to which I will keep pointing you as I spot these pieces …. 

Valuable Commentary about Robert P. Jones's White Too Long

As a companion piece to my recent announcement of the publication of Robert P. Jones's book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, here's some valuable commentary about the book, some of it by Robert P. Jones himself:

Robert P. Jones's White Too Long Published Today: A Must-Read Book about American Christianity and White Supremacy

No matter how distracted and enervated I may be at present as we cope with some health issues, I can't let today pass by without noting that a very important book is appearing in print today. This is Robert P. Jones's White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. 

"As the Nation Grapples with Demographic Changes and the Legacy of Racism, Christianity's Role as a Cornerstone of White Supremacy Has Been Largely Overlooked"

Germany confronted its racist legacy. Britain and the US must do the same | Susan Neiman https://t.co/VrmrtGM2x2

We cannot have a just and decent present as long as we refuse to face our pasts.

— 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝔻. 𝕃𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕤𝕖𝕪 🌈 (@wdlindsy) June 14, 2020

Want to Know Why, Even Now, More Than Half of US White Christians Stand with Trump? See Robert P. Jones on GOP's White Christian Strategy

1/ THREAD: For the second time this week, Donald Trump used a church as a photo op. This image released this morning shows the President and First Lady at Saint John Paul II Shrine. What follows is a partial #BodyLanguage#BodyLanguageExpert #EmotionalIntelligence pic.twitter.com/VOSERW2T2L

— Dr. Jack Brown (@DrGJackBrown) June 4, 2020

Three days ago on 4 June, the Public Religion Research Institute published results of a telephone survey PRRI conducted between 21-26 May. The PRRI report is entitled "Trump Favorability Slips Among White Catholic and Non-College Americans During National Unrest."

• Ahmaud Arbery, an African-American man out jogging, was killed in Brunswick, Georgia, 23 February by Gregory and Travis McMichael. Gregory McMichael is a former police officer. 
• Breonna Taylor, an African-American woman, was shot to death by Louisville police officers in her apartment on 13 March; no one has yet been charged in her killing.
• George Floyd, an African-American man making a purchase at a convenience store, was killed by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin on 25 May.

Quote for Day: "People Voted for Hitler as They Voted for Putin and Trump, Because They Didn't Want to Give up Their Own Privileges"

PRRI, "Despite Chaos and Controversy, Trump Favorability Stable Throughout 2019," 26 Feb. 2020

In her book Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019), Susan Neiman cites German philosopher Bettina Stangneth, author of Eichmann Before Jerusalem (NY: Knopf, 2014; German edition, 2011):

Is It That the Democrats "Lost" White Christians, or That Obama's Elections Re-Energized GOP's "White Christian Strategy"?

Yesterday's PRRI "Morning Buzz" email newsletter* discusses a recent article by Jack Jenkins' entitled "Democrats lost white Christians. Can they win them back?" As I read this article yesterday, the thought that kept running around in my head was this: But the Democratic party did not "lose" white Christians. White Christians have walked away from the Democratic party because US white Christianity is deeply racist.

"It Is Rarely Noted That Trump Was the Clear Choice of White America": Recent Commentary on White Evangelicals Continuing to Burn Hot for Trump

PRRI, "White Evangelical Protestants Attitudes Toward Donald Trump, 2015 – 2019":

White evangelical Protestant attitudes about Donald Trump have moved through three distinct phases since PRRI has been tracking them beginning in 2015: 

1. Before Trump became the official Republican nominee for president in mid-2016, Trump's favorability never reached the majority among white evangelical Protestants. 

2. Between Trump's nomination and the inauguration, Trump’s favorability among white evangelical Protestants advanced past the 60-percent mark. 

3. By the time of his inauguration in early 2017, Trump's favorability among white evangelical Protestants jumped to nearly three quarters (74%). While Trump has struggled to lift his favorability numbers among the general population above the low-40-percent range, throughout his presidency, favorability of Trump among white evangelicals has remained exceptionally high, between 65% and 77% with an average favorability rating of 71%.

"We Must Call the El Paso Shooting What It Is: Trump-Inspired Terrorism" — Commentary on White Supremacist Roots of Recent Mass Shootings

El Paso Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Parkland Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Tree Of Life Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Las Vegas Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Borderline Bar Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Sandy Hook Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Charleston Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) August 4, 2019

Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear, "El Paso Shooting Suspect's Manifesto Echoes Trump's Language":

Ruth Krall, A Considered Response to a Canadian Catholic Educator's Quarterly Review of the Covington Catholic Story

Ruth Krall was inspired by Paul2port's quarterly review of the Covington Catholic story last Saturday, and in response to it, she has offered some reflections, with a helpful bibliography for further reading. I'm very grateful to her for this thoughtful response. Ruth writes: 

A Canadian Catholic Educator's Quarterly Review of the Covington Catholic Story: "Get Serious About Living Your Faith"

Near the start of February, I posted commentary from a Canadian Catholic educator, Paul2port, regarding the story of the young men from Covington (Kentucky) Catholic high school and the controversy that ensued due to video coverage of their actions as they left the March for Life in Washington, D.C., this year, sporting MAGA hats. Paul2port has continued to think about this story as a Catholic educator, and has sent me a "quarterly review" updating his commentary of early February. 

Ed Kilgore on White Evangelicals as Heart of Trump Base: "Committed to a Common Desire to Take America Back to Its Days of Greatness in the 1950s"

In "White Evangelicals Are Still the Heart of Trump's Base," Ed Kilgore comments on new Pew Research Center data that some commentators are erroneously interpreting to mean that white evangelical support for Donald Trump is waning. As Ed Kilgore notes, it's not waning. To the contrary, it remains robust, especially among the most churchgoing and committed of white evangelicals, 70 percent of whom report strong support for Trump.

Covington Catholic Pro-Life MAGA Boy Threatens Wide Legal Action v. Journalists and Dioceses as "Operation Stand Your Ground" Rolls Out on U.S. Campuses

Yesterday these posters were found spread around ASU Tempe campus... Lmk break this down for you right quick pic.twitter.com/mnNH9UsxfI

— Komal Kaur (@fiercesoftkaur) February 4, 2019

 

And now there's this development in the story of the Covington Catholic pro-life MAGA boys, as Sarasi pointed out to us in a comment here yesterday: Carol Zimmerman writes,

Video Captures White Young Women Mocking Native People in New Mexico: People Make Connection to Covington Catholic "Pro-Life" MAGA Boys

Sami Edge:

Janelle Wong on How We Are All Evangelicals Now: "Evangelicals Embody U.S. Racial Attitudes on Steroids"

As I reminded us yesterday, it's not just white evangelicals: white U.S. Christians — of all confessional stripes, right and left, across the board — are chiefly responsible for preventing a much-needed national conversation about race that is necessary if American culture is successfully to negotiate its Trump-era political-religious crisis. 

James Cone, Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody, on What It Is to Be Black in America Today: What U.S. White Christians Refuse to Hear

Here is more from James Cone's book Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2018) which glosses what I posted earlier today about the conversation white American Christians, who are singularly responsible for the nightmare that is the Trump presidency, refuse to allow the nation to have:

Yes, More on Catholic MAGA Boys: Conversation White Americans (& Especially White Christians) Refuse to Have, or Why Trump Is in the White House

Nothing has changed, essentially, since Robert P. Jones offered us the analysis of our serious cultural-political-religious crisis in 2016 in the passages highlighted below.

This is a crisis in which white U.S. Christians are singularly, critically implicated. /1 pic.twitter.com/AObT14hixb

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) January 30, 2019