Full Description
White Lies considers African-American bodies as the site of cultural debates over a contested "white religion" in the United States. Rooting his analysis in the work of W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin, Christopher Driscoll traces the shifting definitions of "white religion" from the nineteenth century up to the death of Michael Brown and other racial controversies of the present day. He engages both modern philosophers and popular imagery to isolate the instabilities central to a "white religion," including the inadequacy of this framing concept as a way of describing and processing death. The book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in African-American Religion, philosophy and race, and Whiteness Studies.
Contents
List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. Introduction: Sighting White American Religion in Twilight Times. Part One: Learning to Die. 1. In the Shadows of Whiteness: Giving Life (through Death) to a White Lie. 2. The White Man's God Complex: Most Americans, the (White) Power of Theism, and Beginning to Believe in Twilight. 3. Battling White Lies: Exaggerated Identity and the Twilight of American Religion. Part Two: Learning to Die with Others. 4. Accepting the Hell of Death: Narrating Sources, Methods, and Norms of a Limited Religious Outlook. 5. Rejecting the 'Gift of Death': White Social Responsibility in Twilight Times. 6. Requiem for Whiteness: Mourning, Freedom in Uncertainty, and the Final Embrace of Twilight. Postmortem: A Warning. Index.
