Key Categories in the Study of Religion - Contexts and Critiques - Rebekka King
10. That's a Racist Question: Interrogating Racism in the Study of American Religions
Key Categories in the Study of Religion - Contexts and Critiques - Rebekka King
Martha Smith [+]
Fullerton College
Martha Smith is Professor of Religious Studies at Fullerton College in Southern California. Her current research and teaching interests include North American religious diversity and pluralism, race and ethnicity studies, diversity and social justice. Her courses focus on the diversity of the American religious landscape, especially the ways in which race, gender, and ethnicity are connected to religious identities and the significance of material culture and lived religious experience in American life.
Description
This chapter responds to Richard Newton's thesis by excavating American religious history through a recognition of the racist past of religious studies and a productive reckoning with that past. To do this, the chapter acknowledges that scholars of religion must recognize the ways the field has historically reproduced structures of racism and think critically about our own roles in the use and perpetuation of those structures via the category of race.