{"id":4818,"date":"2022-02-28T23:34:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-28T23:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=4818"},"modified":"2022-03-31T22:42:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T22:42:40","slug":"another-version-of-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/28\/another-version-of-the-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Version of the Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Another Version of the Story<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Justin R. Phillips\u2019s book helps a young Southerner think about her memories, culture, and race.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Annie Joy Williams<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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When pondering the concept of collective American memory, white, Southern Evangelicals often recall church potlucks, Sunday afternoon truck rides with the windows down, the joys of coming home to your mother\u2019s chicken and dumplings after a long day, and ritual bedtime prayers that often quickly evolved into something like a Christmas wish list. It might sound clich\u00e9, but as a White Tennessee native who was brought up in a Southern Baptist church, these are my childhood memories and the memories of many other Southerners I\u2019ve met.<\/p>

I deeply admire the stories of my mother \u201cpulling herself up by her bootstraps\u201d from a very low-income farm, to medical school, and eventually into the suburbs (with the help of the Lord and a deep dedication to her studies, as she reminds me). It\u2019s the epitome of a realized American Dream. I knew I was born in a place of much greater privilege, as my parents both had secure, well-paying jobs, meaning I was able to worry about what I was eating for dinner each night instead of if I would be eating. But I never thought of race as a part of that privilege or my life at all. The school I attended was predominantly white, but there were a lot of Black, Asian, and Hispanic students whom I considered my friends. The church I attended was almost exclusively white, but I never really noticed, as white was the norm. I floated through my childhood, into my teenage years, and onto the University of Mississippi campus thinking we were all pretty much the same, that we all pretty much had the same Southern upbringing.<\/p>

It was during my time in Mississippi that I began to \u201csee color\u201d consciously. I recognized a deep divide between the Black and white student experiences. I started to hear people actively use the word \u201cwhite\u201d as if it were the assumed superior. Meanwhile, my Black friends voiced their feelings of \u201cotherness.\u201d Many said this feeling fell on them the second they pulled onto campus, where a domineering statue of a saluting Confederate soldier greeted visitors in the main campus circle. That statue had been there when I first arrived and remained in its prime real estate spot for three subsequent years. I had never noticed it until the student government started discussing moving it. It was then that I realized I had the privilege of not seeing American history as a personal threat. I was never previously upset by the statue because, odds are, that Confederate soldier would have never harmed me or my family. The soldier didn\u2019t signal a warning of \u201cYou\u2019re not wanted here\u201d to me in the way it did to my Black classmates. It was during my time at Ole Miss that I realized I had always had the privilege of being what was deemed normal\u2014I was blessed with the freedom of not thinking about my race because I was white.<\/p>

In Justin R. Phillips\u2019s book Know Your Place: Helping White, Southern Evangelicals Cope with the End of The(ir) World<\/em>, Phillips recounts a number of his own memories that shaped his views of race and God and made him aware of his own whiteness. Through his stories, readers can witness the author\u2019s journey of enlightenment through scenes from his childhood playground to interactions at his Southern Baptist church to hardly organic or fruitful conversations on racism that his own instructors prompted among his high school peers during the 1990s. Each of these memories is described through highly effective imagery, sending white readers like myself who experienced the collective memory of growing up in Southern, Evangelical churches right back to their roots, simultaneously striking chords of conviction and nostalgia.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Phillips, like me, had previously had the privilege of simply not being aware of his physical being.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Perhaps most poignant and effective of the memories recalled in the text is of Phillips\u2019s own bout with cancer. He describes his struggles with extreme physical ailment as the first time he found his \u201cbodily sovereignty to be out of [his] control.\u201d Phillips, like me, had previously had the privilege of simply not being aware of his physical being. It rarely hindered his ability to do any everyday task; it rarely warranted unwanted attention, pity, or prejudice. Reflecting a few years into full remission, he says,<\/p>

I hated coming to the realization of what people of color potentially faced every day: I was a body; I experienced the world as a body now. In turn, others expected me, first, as a body\u2014a failing body\u2014not as a soul, an intellect, or a conscience. My illness thrust me into a vulnerable space, and in that space I became a little more human. When I finally noticed my own body other bodies came into focus.<\/p><\/blockquote>

He explains that white individuals can forget their bodies because \u201cWe white folks do not think of our physical existence, because we are rarely required to do so. We don\u2019t think about whiteness because our world is designed for us to not have to think about it in the same way lungs were designed for breathing.\u201d When the world is designed for us, we can go along assuming our experiences are the norm.<\/p>

Throughout the book, Phillips notes that his own memories, recalled through the lens of a white, Southern male, are not singular; none of our memories are. He recognizes the importance of hearing and telling all sides of each story or historical event, as singular memories are confined to the limitations of personal nostalgia: \u201cMemory is a communal endeavor, creating crucial bulwarks against misremembering. After all, to be embedded in a particular place with others prevents, in Charles Pinches\u2019s words, \u2018memory from being cheapened into nostalgia.\u2019 There are always two sides to every story, and too often we never hear the underside, or even teach it well.\u201d*<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Southern, white evangelicals must be willing to relinquish our seat at the head of the table and seek to understand the conflicting half of the American memory that has gone untold for far too long.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The accountability of the dual, conflicting memory is inescapable and critical. Much of Southern, white Evangelical America looks fondly upon its past, anointed with tradition and an idea of \u201csimplicity.\u201d We hear cries across the American South begging to return to the glory days\u2014the Golden Ages when things were not so incredibly complicated and convoluted by the \u201cpolitics of race.\u201d When Southern, Black America looks over its shoulder at the same \u201cGolden Ages,\u201d their view is far from the rose-colored white memory. Black Americans recall the pain of ungodly oppression, the spilled blood of their forefathers, and the constantly binding chains of existing as the \u201cother\u201d in a white-centric society. We see this conflict of memory play out in protests for and against the removal of Confederate statues, justifications for the flying of the Confederate flag, and how we teach younger generations about America\u2019s brutally racist history. Memory is about the present and future as much as it\u2019s about past.<\/p>

Additionally, Black Americans have not been allowed the same luxury of memory as their white counterparts like Phillips and me. While many white Southerners began passing down stories about their family as soon as they built their porches, Black Americans were robbed of this possibility. The intentionally dehumanizing process of the slave trade ensured that families were often separated, the place from which the individual unwillingly came was forgotten, and the simple human characteristic of ancestry and lineage was erased. This forced forgetting was part of an attempt both to control a population that was unsure from where or whom it came and to dehumanize the human subjects to justify the mistreatment they would face. Phillips describes this phenomenon, saying, \u201cThe slave population came from various nations, tribes, and spoke different languages. Such diversity contributed to their fracturing in America.\u201d Phillips goes on to quote writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman:<\/p>

In every slave society, slave owners attempted to eradicate the slave\u2019s memory, that is, to erase all the evidence of an existence before slavery. This was as true in Africa as in the Americas. A slave without a past had no life to avenge. No time was wasted yearning for home, no recollections of a distant country slowed her down as she tilled the soil, no image of her mother came to mind when she looked into the face of her child. *<\/p><\/blockquote>

In each of the book\u2019s three parts, Phillips helps synthesize his arguments with a simple equation: \u201cDisembodiment + Division = Disorientation.\u201d He provides a convicting critique of the Southern, white Evangelical church and the disparities between its claim to love everyone and its active exclusion and even hatred of \u201cothers.\u201d But Phillips doesn\u2019t serve condemnation alone. He goes on to offer tangible advice for his Southern, white Evangelical audience as they come to terms with a past that is hardly flattering and a present that is plagued with hypocrisy and cowardice, as well as a confrontation with their own whiteness. By referencing passages and verses from the Bible, he is able to speak to them in the language they were born hearing. He offers passages that relate directly to the love Christians are called to show, passages that offer direct evidence contrary to the common American Christian misconception that we are biblically promised power and comfort in this lifetime. This book meets Southern, white Evangelicals right where they are\u2014not as a mere scolding, but with enough love to confront the ungodly nature of their actions, both current and past. And it challenges people like me to do the same. Through his words, Phillips lives out 2 Thessalonians 3:15\u2014”Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.\u201d Calling out sin should be an act of mercy, even if a painful one.<\/p>

Yet it\u2019s tempting for some of us white, Southern Evangelicals to speak to our communities in a self-righteous rage designed to deflect others\u2019 judgment of our own acts of racism, all while clinging to the privilege we say should not be ours. If we truly want to bring our Christian neighbors to fight for racial justice alongside us, we\u2019d better start talking like it. In order to reimagine our well-established and generationally reinforced memories as Southern, white evangelicals, we have to do something much more counterintuitive and personally difficult than a fire-and-brimstone sermon. We must be willing to relinquish our seat at the head of the table and seek to understand the conflicting half of the American memory that has gone untold for far too long. This requires Southern, white evangelicals to adopt the true stance of Jesus\u2014one of humility, love, and empathy, one that takes the back seat and willingly gives up their position of power.<\/p>

Justin R. Phillips is a great example of this. Know Your Place <\/em>offers a rare balance of personal narrative, expert voices, and historical evidence. With nods to and quotations from great contemporary voices like Ibram X. Kendi, in addition to the necessary Martin Luther King Jr. passages, Phillips does not allow his own white voice to drown out the voices of those who have lived as the sufferers of racism. Rather, he uses his privilege and credibility to get his intended audience\u2019s attention, to admit that he is not an expert but a brother, and to pass the mic to those whose stories we need to hear. He reminds us that white, Southern Evangelicals will have to work and listen together if we want to make some better memories in this place.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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*The phrase from Charles Pinches comes from his essay \u201cStout, Hauerwas, and the Body of America\u201d<\/em><\/p>

*The quote from Saidiya Hartman is from her book <\/em>Lose Your Mother: A Journey Through the Atlantic Slave Route.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Annie Joy Williams<\/strong> was born and raised in Tennessee. Currently, she is a student at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, where she is pursuing a Master\u2019s in International Affairs with concentrations in Middle Eastern Studies, Topics in Terrorism, and International Media Engagement. Annie has previously written for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and <\/em>Arabian Business. She\u2019d like to order the shawarma with a side of mac and cheese.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin R. Phillips\u2019s book helps a young Southerner think about her memories, culture, and race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":4819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-issue-16","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farefwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/jon-tyson-7tsEHPzraFo-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1990&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4818"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4888,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4818\/revisions\/4888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefw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