A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar

The Truth Will Set Us Free: An Interview w/ Lisa Sharon Harper

June 30, 2022 Randy Knie & Kyle Whitaker Season 2 Episode 25
A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar
The Truth Will Set Us Free: An Interview w/ Lisa Sharon Harper
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Buckle up, friends...this is a major episode.

Lisa Sharon Harper wrote Fortune, which dives into and details the history of her ancestors from Africa, to slave ships, to plantations and displaced and colonized Native Americans, all the way through to her own lived experience and the trauma, bravery, and resilience she carries in her own body through her ancestors. The book details the history and making of America in brutally honest ways...ways we all need to hear. This interview is raw, honest, challenging, beautiful, and she wraps it up by taking us to church. Can somebody say, "Amen!"?!

The whiskey we tasted in this episode is Maker's Mark Private Selection. It's delicious.

The beverage tasting is at 3:11. To skip to the interview, go to 6:54.

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

Content note: this episode contains discussion of rape, slavery, drugs, racial violence, and some mild profanity.

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Randy:

I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle is a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

Kyle:

We also invite experts to join us, making public space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy:

Thanks for joining us, and welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.

Kyle:

On this episode, we're talking with Lisa Sharon Harper, who is a public theologian and activist, somebody that I've been following on Twitter for quite a while we've been excited to get her on the show or to try to get her on the show, since we've literally one of the first names I think we put on our list. And she just came out with a book, very shortly before we recorded this interview, called Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World, and How to Repair It All. And it's, I won't do it justice, trying to sum it up in a blurb here. But it's, it takes its starting point from her spending literally decades trying to trace her ancestry and her family's history. But it's also not just the history of her family. It's a history of race in the United States. It's a history of the horrors that people are very happy and descent have visited upon not just African Americans, but Native Americans and a whole host of others. And it's a it's a powerful and important interview. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it's probably the most spiritual I felt in an interview that we've had. Yeah. So there's some some important and really heavy stuff that you're about to encounter. But yeah, I don't know. It's healing. It's cathartic. And it's, it's true.

Randy:

Yeah, I mean, as reading this book, as a white male, as a male from European descent, it was particularly devastating to me, it was it was a difficult, painful read in all the right ways, in all the ways that we need to be put in painful, uncomfortable positions. And it's, it felt like, it felt like one of those books where you're beginning to learn the true American history, the history of this nation and what this nation was built on, and how the church was right alongside it, sponsoring it really and, and like you said, Kyle, Lisa is not just an activist, but she loves Jesus, she takes the gospel seriously, more seriously than probably most of us and it's within her hope in the Gospel, it's within her hope in the resurrection. And in the good news of Jesus and in the kingdom of God and in the imago day, it's because of that, that I walked out of this interview and walked out of this book, feeling still devastated still like I just got got punched over and over again and I'm a boxer and know how that feels. I walked away with with hope. Today we have something extra special. I have not supplied it; when I supply it you know my friend Joe Muench at Soar Hill BKC supplied it, so let's, let's cheer, toast to Joe Muench at Story Hill BKC...

Elliot:

Randy's just the mule.

Randy:

I'm the mule, that's exactly what I am. So Joe decided to share with us Maker's Mark Private Selection, and it's a Wisconsin Select. So this exact bourbon you can literally only find at Story Hill BKC. And it's Maker's Mark 46, so their, their upper echelon, and then they let the vendor, so let, let our friends at Story Hill BKC pick 10 staves that they were going to put into the barrels for nine weeks and age it in that flavor. And so Story Hill BKC... oh man, I don't have my readers, damnit. Can somebody else read this?

Kyle:

How old are you?

Randy:

I'm old enough to need readers my friend. Just wait, it's coming.

Kyle:

So these are the staves they picked then, yes? Okay, so we've got four seared French cuvee staves, two Makers 46, and four roasted French mendiant, I don't even know what that means.

Randy:

Neither do I, we should have done our homework beforehand, but that's the flavor that we're going to be taking, so they got to pick what staves go in there that sat for nine weeks in Maker's Mark's limestone cellars, and then they brought it to Wisconsin and it's available only at Story Hill BKC for a limited time. It's cask strength, by the way.

Elliot:

For being cask strength, the nose is so sweet and fruity.

Randy:

It's all the good, dark luscious fruit.

Kyle:

But kind of bright too, I get some lemon in there.

Elliot:

Yeah.

Randy:

It's got some citrus in there.

Elliot:

It's like essential oil that squirts out of an orange peel when you're making a cocktail.

Randy:

Oh, good, Lord. That's nice.

Kyle:

Yeah, it is not hotat all for the 54 and a half percent that it is.

Randy:

It's delightful. It's darker in color than many. It's very, very complex, not hot, like you said for cask strength, not hot at all when you take it across the palate, but it's this playland of, it's got that dusty leathery thing on one part of my palate, then it's got that rich dark cherry on the other part of my palate, then it's got the smoke and the wood on the other part of my palate, and it's almost all happening at once. It's one of those whiskies that it doesn't, it's not like a boom, boom, boom, it's like a symphony all at once. I love it.

Elliot:

Yeah, I get a lot of maple syrup.

Randy:

Okay.

Kyle:

Oh interesting, I'm gonna look for that.

Elliot:

And saffron?

Kyle:

Okay, now you're just making shit up. It reminds me of some, like, double barreled whiskies that I've had, which I guess makes sense if they put extra staves in it to add some extra flavor. Like, a very fresh wood.

Randy:

Yeah, this is what I want in a, in a top shelf whiskey. It's complex. It doesn't like suck all the life out of you because it's so strong.

Elliot:

No, and there's no one note that overpowers all the rest.

Randy:

Man, this is good stuff. So this is something that if you're in Milwaukee, or you're visiting Milwaukee, and you want to have something to impress people with on the top shelf, this is not super cheap, it's not super expensive, this is about $75 bottle of bourbon at Story Hill BKC. But this is something to save to impress your friends. This is good stuff.

Kyle:

Yeah, or just drink it yourself. Screw your friends.

Elliot:

Yeah. Impressing my friends is really all I think about doing.

Randy:

Absolutely. And I was also at Story Hill today and I took a look at their selection and they have tons of really solid whiskies at about that $30 price point, they were, they have our Noteworthy is still there for 31 bucks.

Elliot:

Oh that's good stuff.

Randy:

Yeah, they have the whole line of Michter's. Buffalo Trace unique stuff is coming to Store Hill. So stop in at Story Hill, get this Maker's Mark Private Selection Wisconsin Select for your top shelf, and then fill your middle shelf with all sorts of good stuff at Story Hill BKC. Well, Lisa Sharon Harper, thank you so much for joining us on A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar..

Lisa:

Thank you so good to be with you guys. It's a privilege and a joy.

Randy:

Awesome. Lisa, you wrote this book, Fortune that Kyle and I just had the privilege of reading. And Fortune is it's one of those books that hit you like a lead weight. I mean, it's just as far as being a white American male. I found myself feeling overwhelmed, feeling depressed, feeling ashamed in some ways, and not bad ways. I don't think and feeling kind of like reading your book was a cathartic spiritually cleansing exercise. And really felt like I was reading history of our nation of my people for the first time. In some ways, it was that it was that profound for me. So first of all, thank you for writing that book.

Lisa:

Wow. Well, thank you for reading it seriously. And honestly, I have to say, one of the most surprising things for me has been the response of men of European descent, as they are reading it, I don't understand I don't have your same experience, right reading it. And I don't think I could have even predicted that. All I told was what I know, I told the truth of what I know. And so I would be very interested actually, to hear your response and kind of how you're processing it.

Randy:

No, I'll be processing for a while, I think in in the best ways, in in a number of ways. But I'd love to just introduce you to our listeners, Lisa, who might not know who you are, in where this book came from. Because it's a remarkable story of what we're this book was birthed out of.

Lisa:

Well, my name is Lisa Sharon Harper, you guys know that. I'm a writer, artist, public theologian, activist, but I don't really lead with my activist I, I am first and foremost a storyteller. And so I have a master's degree in playwriting. I wrote a play that won a national award. And you know, but then I got very, very quickly, and I made a choice to go into ministry. And so I was on staff with a college ministry for 10 years. And it was there that I really learned how to execute the scripture, and really how to how to dig into the Scripture and ask really good questions. The kinds of probing questions that kind of get you different answers than you normally would get, actually, in Sunday school or youth group? Because you're asking the text, not your pastor, what are you actually saying? What do you really mean to be saying, and, and I think the text speaks back. And so you know, that's, I am a missionary. I've been a missionary to college campuses. And so my faith has really guided me the whole way. And it led me to write the book, the very good gospel, several years ago, 2016 It came out and that came out of a journey where I started to be really disillusioned when I realized that the gospel that I was proclaiming on campus was not something that my own third grade grandmother, Leah Ballard would have jumped in shout about, you know, would not have made her rejoice and say this is good news. Because it was all about your own individual sin and how Jesus saved you from your own individual sin. And when I put that up against her life, likely a breeder who whose job it was on the plantation to breed money for her master free labor, that she would give over to him, her children to go give over to him for more free labor for for their whole lifetimes. You know, if I came knocking on her door and said, you know, great, great, great grandma, I'm Lea, I have good news for you. Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Right? So anyway, like, what do you do with smoking crack? Like, what are you doing? And honestly, the realization of that threw me into depression, because I had shaped my whole life around around that understanding of the gospel, that Jesus died to pay the penalty, my sins, and all I need to do is pray this prayer at the back of the goal booklet, and then I get to go to heaven. And it was it was the wrestling in that space over 13 years that led to the very good gospel. And after the very good gospel was done, I wanted to know Okay, so how does this actually work itself out in our lives, in my family, how has How has the brokenness of shalom manifested in my family, and it wasn't hard for me to go dig into that, because I'd already been doing Family Research for at that point, well, still nearly about 30 years, about 25 years at that point. And that family research when we discovered that the Fortune line in our family likely traces to Fortune Game McGee, who would be my seven times great grandmother, and she was born of the Union, not marriage, but of course, an affair. Actually not no, not, of course, but it was an affair of Maudlin McGee and Sambo Game, mixed race couple Ulster Scott woman and a Senegalese man who came together sometime in 1686, she was came on an adventuring ship, from from Northern Ireland, in 1682. He got here was brought here in 1686. And in 1687, Fortune was born, they had this little girl named Fortune, which I thought was amazing. But the thing about Fortune is that her mixed race body absorbed the wrath of the very first race laws in the second colony ever, and, and that, that those laws shaped the course of her life, and the lives of all of her descendants after her. And when I realized that I thought, wait a minute. And then in each chapter after that all of my ancestors lived in times where the questions of race, the questions of human hierarchy were being answered by laws and structures that further entrenched and actually clarified race, and that was impacting their lives. I just wait, this is not just my family story. This is the story of America, and race. And it needs to be told. So okay, let's, let's tell it.

Randy:

So out of that 30, some years of research of your family history, going all the way back to the mid 17th century, and probably even a little bit before comes this book about your family slash our nation, and this book and your complex family tree. It's not not just about white Europeans, enslaving and dehumanizing Africans to the slave trade on white supremacy, even though that is a large part of it. There's also so much about what what European men did to Native Americans in the genocide that this nation committed against indigenous peoples here, which is part of your family history as well. You you hold in your body, that story of two dehumanized and oppressed people, groups that have been destroyed by white supremacy and white nationalism. And you tell that story in your book. So clearly, but can you tell us about learning about your ancestors history and their reality and their, you know, you tell the story of Native Americans, Cherokee being being caged up and men having to listen to their wives in their, their, their woman being raped, and watching their elderly die of exposure and then being forced to walk to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears? These are your ancestors. Can you just tell us that experience about learning about your ancestors reality and then your own sense of identity living in this nation?

Lisa:

Well, I have to first say that I am talking to you from the land of millennial and Ave, which is now known as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And they were here and are here. And we're all the way up as far north as New York and all the way through New Jersey and down into into Pennsylvania as well Philadelphia. And I say that because to acknowledge to now which their stewardship of the land is the first step in healing, the break in the relationships, particularly the break that was caused by colonization. So I think they would have come to understand, and you don't understand this until you actually begin to understand. And what happened to people of African descent in the context of what happened to Native people, indigenous people here is that ultimately, our what has been happening on this land is colonization, that even the racialization of our nation was something that was an modus operandi of the project of colonisation, that slavery and the slave trade and slave autocracy was only a system by which colonizers could extract as much profit from the land and, and human people, people as possible. So ultimately, the sin of Europe was the sin of colonization, domination, of nation, over nation, nations over nations. And it wasn't just racism, I think racism really, really minimizes it in a major way. Because it's not about people's individual like or dislike of black people or native people. It's about the laws, it's about the structures, it's about the economy, and the way that the laws were set up in order to protect the economic dominance of white men, of men of European descent, that they deemed white, in order to create a ruling class in America, a nobles class in America, but in America, unlike in Europe, that class was racialized. So you know, I, so you must we have to acknowledge that. Second, I have to say, I am not, I am not a member of any nation, any any indigenous nation in America. And that's actually made very clear in the first pages of my book. And I could never be because of the obliteration of and the confusion of identity that was intentional by colonizers when they when they got here. And ultimately, when they did round up the sloggy people, the Cherokee people, and the Choctaw and Chickasaw, and the creek, and also the Seminole, when they rounded the people up, they didn't just move them, they then controlled them, they controlled how they could even define who they are. It was never ever the case before the Trail of Tears, never the case, before settler colonization, that indigenous people would ever count their blood quantum limbs, or had any kind of a roll a roll call for who could you could identify themselves as native or not. That became the case, because that was the requirement of the people who one of the colonizers and the reason why they did that was explicitly their policy was to breed them out. Their policy was to commit if not physical genocide, which they in me, they really did, for all intents and purposes, when they first got here, you know, not even Columbus, because Columbus never set foot here on this on this on North America. But when the first explorers came here, there were they say 100 million indigenous people who lived on this land between North Central and South America. By the time we came into the 20th century, we had only 100,000 left 100,000. So and that's not like, look, that's just years from the removals. So by the time you get to the removals, you just you just we've already had genocide. So the policies by that point, we're no longer about killing all Native people, especially around the 1880s 1890s when the final Dawes rolls were actually set up in a Dawes rolls were this really a roll call of all of the Cherokee people and also there are Dawes rolls that list for pretty much all the five tribes that lived in it five nations that lived in the southeast. They basically say these are the people who made it to the end of the trail. These are the people who lived through it, and also who didn't escape. And the way that America decided America now would decide who can be counted as a Cherokee person or a Chickasaw person or Choctaw person was the if they were on that roll then they could they could be counted as a member of the tribe. Well, you know what that did? It literally cut off for all time. Anyone who said no, to the oppressor. Mm. Anyone who refuse to be parted from the land, anyone who defied and stood up and said, I will not go, which was a lot of people, a lot of people in Kentucky and the Kentucky hills where my ancestors were in the Lawrence chapter, there were just all kinds of people who just never they didn't even escape the trail. They just never went on a job. They went into the hills and they hit and they assumed other identities by the time you know, the the census comes around after the Civil War, they're listing themselves as white. But when you look at the Dawes rolls, you'll find their surnames are on the Dawes rolls, they just didn't go. Right. These were the names that the Cherokee people had adopted in that area. And so that's what I found when I checked the Dawes rolls that my own ancestors, surnames were right there there on the Dawes rolls, in terms of there are people on the other side who did walk, who suffered that degradation, and that absolute torture, 800 miles in a blizzard 16,000 walked 4000 died. And they made it to the end. And when they listed their names, their surnames matched the surnames of the people in the community that my ancestors lived in. And so you know, I can't say I mean, I just I cannot say with assurance, yes, they were native or no, because, because of intent, it was the intent of settler colonists, that I would not be able to list it to trace my identity. And part of it is that identity gives strength. Identity gives a core, knowing who you are, is something nobody can take from you once you have it. So the the goal for domination was first, to confuse identity, and they did it, they did a great job.

Randy:

So I want our listeners to who haven't read the book yet to just, you know, we're talking about deeply weighty things. And you can hear it on our voices probably. And I just want you to know, once you read the book, you'll understand why. And you should read the book. This is this is one of those books that white Americans need to read, particularly as we have the lunacy of the CRT witch hunts happening in politicians and Christians and churches trying to whitewash our history once again, even though I would have told you in college, my favorite subject was American history, right? Yeah, it was, it was it was fun. Like American history was really fun when I was in college in high school. It was fun, because it didn't tell any of these goddamn stories. It didn't. It didn't tell the real story in American history. When you read it from books like yours and others. It's a series of gut punches each page, and dealing with that reality just totally changes the way I see our nation. And so I'm wondering from you, Lisa, you're an American? Yes, we talk about patriotism. We had a, our most listened to episode was on nationalism and patriotism. And I'm wondering, how do you feel come every fourth of July or, you know, Memorial Day when flags are flying and fireworks are blasting and people are, you know, eating hot dogs and drinking beer and celebrating our nation and getting all patriotic. But I'm wondering is patriotism a white privilege?

Lisa:

Patriotism is anathema to the gospel. Patriotism offers the possibility that country can be placed above God. And the reality of God is that God is not contained by borders. God's concern for particular people is not contained by passports or nationality. God cares for the image of God everywhere, everywhere. And so I love America. My ancestors have literally fought in almost every war, literally every war, including the Revolutionary War, federal Great War of 1812, Revolutionary War, Civil War. In fact, Henry and three of his brothers all fought in the black regiments in the Civil War, and all four of them survived. That's some mean people. We're some strong stock, right? And so, you know, like my Hiram, Henry's son, was in the Spanish American War. My uncle Marshall, and my grandfather, Austen fought on the front lines in Germany, and both of them in Germany and in France, and World War Two. So I mean, I am, we are Americans. Yeah, we are absolutely Americans, but But when you go back to the very first race law that was ever created on this land 1662, Virginia, it was created in response to a court ruling that was handed down in 1650. And actually, and all that came after that court ruling. So in 1650, a girl named Elizabeth key takes her case to court. She's enslaved by her father, Thomas key, who at some point in his life, was actually a member of the House of Burgesses, the legislature in that colony. And he recognized her, he was actually forced by the colony to recognize her as his daughter, and have her baptize. So he had her baptized. Well, homegirl came back and she said, wait a minute now, because doesn't the English law this is an English colony? Doesn't British law say that you can't enslave another British citizen. And this British laws say that citizenship is determined by the line of the Father. Well, my father, who just recognized me as his daughter, is a British citizen, and so I should not be able to be enslaved. Oh, and, by the way, I am also baptized. So she took that case to court and she won her free freedom. And many other people then took their cases to court when they said, Wait a minute, my dad is an English citizen, too. That means I shouldn't be able to be enslaved. And so they did. And they weren't only black. They were also Native American, because Native Americans were being enslaved around that time as well. And so next thing, you know, 12 years later, the House of Burgesses, which is the planter class, right? They're the ruling class that were granted the land, but now they were using free labor in order to increase their profits. They look up and their profits are leaving the plantation. They're, they're leaving, they're like, I'm done Peace out, y'all. I'm a British citizen, you can't enslave me, I'm a Christian, you can save me. And so what are these law abiding law loving men? Do? They change the law? changed it? They in order to be able to keep their profits? They were like, oh, no, no, no, we're not going to break the law and make you you know, stay and, and, and be enslaved. And even though the law says you shouldn't? No, no, we're just going to change it. And they chose Pardus, the Roman law of Pardons, which places the the citizenship status of the child through the line of the mother, not the father. So what did this allow them to do allowed the planter class, which was also the legislative class, to continue to rape their enslaved African women with impunity, and thereby breed free labor. And then they use the two words in perpetuity, meaning for ever, so if your ancestry through your mother's line traces back to a black woman, in this in this construct, then you will be enslaved? Why? Because you are not a citizen. So isn't it interesting that in the very first race law, you actually also have the very first citizenship law passed on the soil, and you have the very first gender law as well having to do with gender. Now. So what does this tell us? It tells us that from the very beginning, the very beginning, like literally, this is 1662, this is only what less than about 50 years from from the establishment of the very first colony, this this same colony, Virginia. So within 50 years of the establishment of the first colony, they have already determined by law, people of African descent are not going to be citizens. We are not citizens. And that, that my brother's has been our struggle ever since that, because the question of citizenship is the question of rights, the right to flourish. The question of citizenship is the question of the ability to exercise dominion on the land to make decisions that impact the land. And from the very, very beginning, the men of European descent who came here, cordoned off the question of dominion, and place a sticker on it and said, for whites only. But we know from scripture, right, the very first page of the whole Bible says that all humanity was created to exercise dominion. So really, brothers, this is not this was not just racism. This was a war against God, for supremacy. That's what we're really talking about. We're talking about war with God for supremacy.

Kyle:

Yeah.

Randy:

As we're talking about colonization, and in the book, you do a great job of talking about how the goal of colonization is fragmentation. But this idea of European colonization and white supremacy, you go back to the church that it was born out of The church right where you speak specifically of the 15th century edict by Pope Nicholas, the fifth Romanus Pontifex. Can you tell us about that? And how that changed the course of history?

Lisa:

Yes, well, I have to go back a little bit before that, actually, to give you some context. So the construct of race, as far as I've been able to trace it in the western Western culture, you can trace it back to Plato. So Plato, in his book, The Republic, Plato says that there's this thing called race and race is the different metals that different people groups are made of. And some people are made of gold, others copper, tin, and whatever metal you're made of determines how you serve society, how you will serve the Republic. So gold people do these kinds of jobs. So when people do these kinds of jobs, and so on, and so forth. It's it's debatable whether or not there was actual hierarchy there, but it didn't take long. So 10 years later, his acolyte, Aristotle, comes along, and he writes his book on politics and in on politics. He says, if you have if you're a conquered people, then you are you have demonstrated that you were created to be enslaved. So he's now giving justification for slavery for enslavement, it was not the same kind as that we experienced here. But it is justification nonetheless, he's also creating a hierarchy of human belonging, right. So now we have any also he hated the barbarians, right? So he was also he also would always call like, the barbarians are kind of a lesser race. They're like, the Bar Bar Bar, like, you know, they, he made fun of them, basically. And so but now, now, flash forward 1000 years, and you get Pope Nicholas the fifth. And Pope Nicholas, the fifth has a friend of the family who comes, you know, to visit, and the family friend says, Hey, Pope, I need I need a blessing, I'm going to go exploring. And the Pope says, A, I'll give you a blessing. And I'll even do you one better. When you come across land that is not civilized, or Christian, then you can claim that land for the throne, and enslave its people. Now I asked you, was he operating according to scripture? Or was it operating according to something else? I look at the first page of the Bible. And it says clearly that if you are human, you are made in the image of God, and you are created to exercise dominion in the world. So it was not Bible, at least it was not pre fall Bible. But what it definitely is, is it It mirrors, Aristotle, it mirrors Aristotle's declaration that there are people who were created to be enslaved, right. And for the Pope, it was if you're not civilized, and of course, he gets to decide who's not civilized. And if you're not Christian, right, so so if you're not Christian, you were created to be ruled. So it's going, you can trace it back there. So and that's why get this so the second colony ever, that's Maryland when they create their race laws two years after Virginia, they're trying to solve for and literally the opposite problem that Virginia was trying to solve for Virginia was trying to solve for mixed race children created from white planter class men raping their enslaved African women. In Maryland, it was the exact opposite. It was white indentured women who were falling in love with and marrying enslaved black men, and having mixed race children. So that, of course, got to the egos of the planter class men. And it also confused the racial hierarchy that was still being developed. And what did they say? They said, white women, if you marry and have children, by enslaved black men, you yourself will be enslaved. I was like, wow, that just tells you how white white women really are. They're only as white as they as much as they protect the egos of their white men. Hello. And they protected the supremacy of white men. Yes. And and then and if not, may as well be black because you're gonna be enslaved. So and they were they actually enslaved many white women in that period. And they added those two words and their children shall be enslaved in perpetuity. And so but I say this because a few years later, they realize that now you know, white male planter class men were saying, Oh, we can we can actually get an increase our profit line here because of course, that's all that really matters. And so they actually forced their indentured austere Scott and Irish women to marry in very enslaved black men and have children with those men so that they would be enslaved to them and their children will be enslaved to them in perpetuity. And so the legislature looks up a few years later and says, We didn't really know that was going to happen, even though honestly, they were the ones doing it. And so they said, Okay, so this is what we're going to do, we're going to take the keys of indenture and enslavement out of the planters hands. And now we're going to place those keys in the hands of the church. So the church is now going to become the manager of the crushing of the image of God on this land. And that was the case through the Revolutionary War for about 100 years.

Kyle:

Yeah. You know, at least it's interesting. I'm a philosopher. So anytime somebody references Plato, I get a little bit excited. Right? Yeah, that passage you cite in the Republic. And I don't think this makes it better at all. So I'm not defending Plato here. That parable or metaphor, whatever of the metals, is, in the context, where we get the concept of the noble lie from which is this ancient debate still ongoing about whether the best thing to do for a state leader is to present false images to the people, because they're not philosophers, and not capable of understanding and working within the truth. And so we present to them a false set of images that will allow them to become virtuous and flourishing to the extent that they that they can. And that idea comes from that story of the metal. So Plato was presenting it as a lie.

Lisa:

Oh, that's interesting. I didn't read it that way. I read it, I read it straight. You know, I read it. Like the words on the page when He literally says, gold people serve the society in this way. Copper people serve the society in that way. That's interesting.

Kyle:

Yeah. So this kicks off a centuries long debate between some who aren't like Leo Strauss who argue that this is actually the best way to proceed to lie to the people knowingly and then others who, who deny that you can guess which side Aristotle would have been on. So no, I don't think that makes it better. But But that's an extra little layer to that onion.

Lisa:

It's a really, honestly, it's a great, it's a great layer. And I'd love to I'd love to look into that more. And one of the things that that that strikes me is that, you know, we're talking about Plato, Aristotle, we're talking about the Greek Empire, we're talking about the Roman Empire, which used the the philosophies that were developed in that Greek empire, like that ruled it. And we're, we're looking at the question of Empire was understood at that time as a peacemaking venture. You know, they were they they saw themselves as making peace, through conquering through domination. And I mean, even up to the English, the British Empire, they saw themselves, you know, the Commonwealth was a way to create peace in the world. That was one of their justifications for it. But it's never peaceful for those who are conquered. It's never, it's never from the perspective of those whose hands are tied and whose women and children are raped, and whose bodies are exploited for the labor that you can bilk from it. Oh, that is not peace,

Randy:

Not good news. Yeah.

Lisa:

No.

Kyle:

So let's zoom out just for a second, I wanna ask a more general question about sort of the place that your book maybe falls in the current cultural conversation that that I think a lot of maybe post evangelical are becoming post evangelical Americans are having. So it seems to me that in recent years, there have been a flurry of books that are in some ways similar to yours. And they've kind of they've been received, as I don't want to say they actually are this, but they've been received as lightning rods for various kinds of social tensions mostly around race, gender, and sexuality. And we've actually been fortunate to have several of the authors of those books on our show. So we've talked with Kristen you may, Beth Barr duquan And Greg Thompson, Dante Stewart cat armas, Dominique Gilliard, and recently Bridget Rivera, and now we're talking to you. And I think these books have, they're all very different, but they also have a common thread. And I think that common thread is that they all have a strong emphasis on history, some of them explicitly so because they're written by historians and their academic, and that's just their goal, Christian, that's book, for example. But all of them in one way or another, make their case by telling usually overlooked or buried stories from the past. And it's just remarkable to me as an academic, as someone who's interested in the truth and exploring questions for their own sake. It's remarkable to me that books with usually such simple aims as here's a story you may not have heard before, cause such fear, right? So your book does this by recounting the complex and uncertain story of your own past and your quest to understand it, as we've talked about, so can you say a little bit about the importance of history and of telling stories In the past, for understanding and making progress on the forms that racism takes today, but also, why do you think the past is apparently so threatening to the people who wish to maintain the status quo or who wish to urge caution and patience?

Lisa:

I don't think it's the past, I think it's the story that's threatening. I think that the story that we tell ourselves about who we are, and how we got here, in large part is what is what gives us the perceived strength of America. Right? It is the hot dogs and apple pie, it is this the image of the white women with the curled hair, and the and the A line skirts in the 50s. And the high heels and the pointy breasts, you know, who are serving dinner on a tray to their, their, their husbands and their sons around the table. And they have a one car garage, because everybody has a one car, they don't two cars at that point. And they have 1.2 kids. And, and they have a dog named spot. And, you know, it's Father Knows Best. And it's it's the stories that we've told ourselves about ourselves, that have shaped the identity, the understanding of who we are as a nation, that has always from go in this nation has always privileged, not just privileged but centered and really obliterated all other stories centered the perspective of white men, and not just perspective, the stories spun by white men. And in order to protect white men's sense of self, and white men's power, the power they gained through the domination, economic domination, social domination, political domination, and civic domination. So, and that's over the course of what 500 years, right? So for African Americans, 400 years, so you have this history that has been spun. And of course, it's you're going to leave out the enslavement of white women, if you're white man, come on, right, if you want to, if you want to be able to get married and and have white women trust, you're going to leave that part out, of course, you're going to leave out the laws that that literally created the hierarchy of human belonging in the post Civil War years, you're going to leave out the fact that I'm in South Carolina, you only allowed people of African descent to work in to by law and To fields of work and industries, either field labor, or domestic labor. No, that was not an inherent thing. But see, to tell that part of the story would then be to to reveal to your children, how you did it, how it is that they're the only it is only white people in their schools, it is only they are they're the ones who get the jobs. It's not because they're actually the smartest or the strongest, it's because the others have been subjugated by law. Right. So but to tell that part is actually tend to weaken, to weaken white men in their own conception of self. And that just can't be not according to the, to the past, not according to the, to the story that we've been that we've been told, that has been told. So thankfully, in the last 30 years, I'd say since roots, since we had roots come out, which was the very first time in American history, that America actually saw the story of people of African descent, before slavery, first time that it was actually told by a black person. And what was it it was his family history, or at least as much as he could, as much as he could gather, and then other stories to fill it in? Right? So, you know, at that point in the 1970s, when that came out, there was no such thing as African American studies like it there was, there was no discipline called African American studies. There was no such thing as African American history. We didn't even celebrate MLK, like we didn't, you know, that's how this is a new development in the last 30 to 40 years, that you now have people of African descent who have been able to study like go in and actually search for the stories themselves. And I'll tell you what, for me, and I think that I think this is a growing, there's a growing acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the history that is on earth, not just legitimacy, but legitimate historical work that is done through genealogy. And I mean, I just couldn't believe how many primary documents I was looking at. That was telling me a story that I never heard before. The story of Henry right And, and the fact that he it took him decades to get his pension after the Civil War. And I found out in the course of that research, that was the norm for men of African descent, who fought on the battlefield, turned the course of the Civil War, America would not be America without black men, who finally in the end, you know, also don't hear this. They were the ones who surrounded General Lee hunted him down and forced his surrender. It was black, almost every black regiment in the army was called to follow the all the the northern generals, the union generals at that time, and they were the ones so you don't hear that story. And I learned that because I did family history. So I think there's there's a growing tide of really an awakening to the legitimacy of genealogy as history telling as storytelling and not just story weaving, but rather, telling this is what happened. Now, of course, there are holes, I am not a trained historian, nor do I ever claim to be. And so I am not trying to write a history book, I'm trying to tell tell the story of I'm trying to find the story of my family, and share what I found. And because of the domination of colonizers that obliterated sought to obliterate our stories, it is quite the quest, one of the things that that again, blew my mind when I was doing this research was in the early 1700s, the decision was made in Maryland, again, the second colony, that they would not they were going, they finally by law passed a policy that now we were going to record the births and deaths of our citizens. But in that same law, they actually said, and I read it, I read it in the law, we're not going to record the births and deaths of black people, people who are not white, they gave no real justification except for this, it's not worth our trouble. So because of that decision point that they made, it's not worth their trouble. And we're not even just talking about enslaved people, or even indentured, we're talking about free black people, like my five times Great aunt, Betty, right, or my four times great uncle Humphrey, they would not have had their births and deaths recorded simply because they were free, and they owned land, but just simply because they were deemed black. So our subjugation even if you are free, at the very least, the confusion of identity, the confusion of story, was something that is woven through all of our stories.

Randy:

Yeah, and I want to say, when I had to experience reading the book, Lisa, where I had a tendency for a little bit to just relieve myself by saying, this is a southern thing. This is a white southern thing, right. And my roots go back to Germany, and Finland. And I'm, all of my ancestors, from what I know, have lived in the Midwest, northern part of America. And so it's always been easy for people like me to just dismiss it as a southern problem. But a couple of years ago, I did a sermon series about our city, which is Milwaukee, which is the most segregated city in the nation. And we basically just executed our city. And what's the history of it? How do we get to where we are? And what is God's dream for Milwaukee? And what we found was it's not just a southern thing, right? I mean, right? You didn't, Milwaukee didn't have to deal. Like you have to figure out how to integrate and how to how to live together, because there were no black people in the north until the great migration. And then when that happened, my ancestors made a decision to get away as black Americans and to redline and literally there are sadly, they're still in the books, laws about who can and can't own property here who can or can't live here. And it's all about people of color. Can't live here. And so in then the judges and the police chiefs were in white, white nationalist, racist clubs and organizations who people in power were tied to the hip of the kk k, the story goes on. So if you find yourself is a white, northern or Midwestern, or whatever it is saying, oh, man, I'm so glad my answers don't go back to the white South. We're not off the hook. In that equated to my city being the most segregated city currently in America. And now we've got to figure out what how to how to repent of that and how to how to repair that, like you talked about in the second half of your book.

Lisa:

Yeah, I love, thank for, first of all, thank you very much for saying that. And I mean, my family's story starts in the South that actually starts in in Africa and Senegal and Nigeria and other places, and it goes through Barbados and into the south. Out of the times of colonizing colonial slavery and also antebellum slavery, but then it very quickly because of the great migration moves north. And it's in that it's in that move that we begin to see how racialization in the human hierarchy of belonging is taking shape and the north and you're exactly right. Redlining is a major thing. And here's the thing, it's not just a thing. It's not just like one thing that happened. Okay, so it's some people redlined No, it was all over the country because it was federalized in 1933. With the advent of the Federal Housing Authority. And the Federal Housing Authority when it was crafted, the person who crafted the algorithm was a segregationist. And one of the things that he put in that algorithm was that if there was even one person of African descent, one black person in your community, the land value of your entire community would automatically be lower, automatically. Now, I'm a homeowner, I don't want my home to be my land to be, you know, lowered. That's one of the reasons why you buy a home to invest, right? So. So it's not even just about like bad people. What it is, is about bad policy. It's about policy that creates a wave then, of domination and subjugation, and, and separation, because who wants their land value to go down? Nobody. But it also has consequences. Because the consequence of that is that now you have whole areas where people of African descent are not allowed to live outside of that red line. And when you do, when you have even one, the land value goes down. So if you have a whole community that is, is African American, according to the Federal algorithm, the land value then plummets, and it's nothing to do with how well people keep their homes or, or anything or amount of nothing, it just has to do with the fact that somebody with brown skin is living on the land. And so then what does that do? If you have land, if your whole community has your land is worth less guess what, the way that we set up how the education system is funded is according to land taxes. So that means that you're going to have less money to then go around to at least as many children and usually more because you have more renters in that area, more children using less money, um, to pull from in order to buy their books, in order to secure their teachers. So you end up having less qualified teachers, because they're not being paid as much, and no books. And that's what you're, you know, you see this Oh, you see this. So clearly with my mom's story, sharing the story of Sharon, you know, she's one of the brightest children, literally one of the smartest kids in her class. There's three honor students in her class. She's one of them. And so what does she get to do, she doesn't get to learn she gets to run errands for her teacher. So her teacher puts her on an errand because that was the normal course of a day, my mom would run errands for the teacher all over the all throughout the day. And one day, she's sitting in the principal's office waiting for the principal to respond to a message that her teacher sent to the principal. And she's sitting next to a box of books and she leans over and looked at the books. And these books are tattered. They don't have covers, they're missing pages, there's writing in them. There's literally about two or three generations that have used these books. And the books still have the label from the school that they came from. They came from the Drexel School, which is two blocks away. And the Drexel school was the white school. Right across the street. My mom lived right across the street from child's school, which is the black school. And my grandmother, Willa tried to get my mom into the Drexel school two blocks away. And they told her she's out of district. But guess what, the little Italian boy who lived right next door to my mom, he went to the Drexel school, because it was an out of district for him. And so the the question of our education, and education sets you up, education prepares you, prepares you for something that your society wants you to do. It's either going to prepare you to lead, or it's going to prepare you to consume, or it's going to prepare you to uphold the economy through cheap and low cost labor, and how best to do that than through prison. And so the black schooling public school system, the segregated public school system in the north, prepared people of African descent to either be consumers, but more than likely to be to be free and no cost labor just as they were in the South. Through prison.

Randy:

Yep.

Kyle:

Yeah. So I think this is relevant. In chapter seven of the book, you cite a study from NPR and this was a 2018 study that found This remarkable statistic found that 51% I went and looked it up so I can know the exact figures 51% of white Americans in 2018 think that things have mostly gotten worse in the United States since the 1950s. It's amazing. Let that sit for a second. If this is the decade, as you point out in the book, that it till was murdered, segregation, rained, redlining rained, LGBTQ and disabled people didn't have any rights either. And 51% That's most white Americans four years ago, said things have gotten worse since then, you can imagine how the numbers look different from, from non, non-white Americans, right?

Lisa:

Right. And I would just say just, I mean, really what they were asking them was, Do you long for the 50s? Or do you long for the 50s? And yeah, 51%? Yeah, yeah, I long for the 50s. I long for Daddy Knows Best. I long for Happy Days. I long for that narrative, that story.

Kyle:

Yeah. I think that should give us some pause. Right? Because, you know, we've, you've talked a lot about policies and named names, some concrete examples, and talk to us about the history of those things. And I can hear some people, people that I know, personally, that I can think of, and certainly people that I've read online, that would hear something like that and say, Yeah, but you know, we had the Civil Rights Act, and we had the Voting Rights Act, and it's 2022. And the policies have changed. And so if that's, if that was the problem, then what's the big deal? But this is a recent study. And it turns out that most white Americans would like to go back to those policies.

Lisa:

Yeah. And I mean, and now also, yes, that was a recent study. It's recent, taking the pulse of white America, but you can go to policies, right, that are even more recent. I mean, what happened then, and redlining was eventually outlawed, but the practice didn't end. Right. So just in 2014, a bank in New York State was was taken to court. Because it redlined just a few years ago, another bank was taken to court because it redline so redlining is still happening today. And if it's not redlining, its community covenants. It's those kinds of things. And on top of that, then you also have to add, what we have to talk about is the drug wars, and mass incarceration and three strikes laws and what they call the back then child predators, and the the analyzation of black children that really just mimics the criminalization of blackness that was placed into the law in the years after Reconstruction, when peonage was the thing and convict leasing was the practice, a way to increase the bottom line of a state. It was to add to the number of people who are offering no cost and low cost labor through imprisonment. You know, Nixon, Nixon's legislative director John Ehrlichman said, it really confessed in 1995, that Nixon launched the drug wars, not at all to have anything to do with drugs had nothing to do with drugs. It was about crushing his political opponents, and who he named as black people and hippies. So the drug wars that were launched by Nixon and carried forward by Reagan, the only reason they were they were there was to break up black families. And those laws had consequences. I mean, those laws literally broke up not only black families, but black communities. And they didn't, they weren't just laws on the books, there was practice that went with them as well. Drugs were literally pumped into heroin, pumped into black communities throughout the 70s. And into the 80s. Crack was pumped into black communities. And I know because I'm sitting in one of the communities where it happened. One block, I'm sitting one block from where my grandmother lived, with my uncle, and my mom's where were they all grew up where our family was, for 70 years. This was an area where black children black boys saying do up on the corners in the 50s. This is the area this is the city where Gladys Knight comes from here, right? This is the city where I mean you just had a lot of amazing talent come through here. In fact, John Legend even went to UPenn right so like a lot of amazing talents. Black boys would sing do up on the corners in the in the 1950s and 60s, and the 70s. Heroin was pumped into this area, and black men dropped like flies from overdoses, and they were swept up out of the streets and put into prison. And my uncle was among them. He died of an overdose one block from here. And the 80s Reagan did the same thing. He pumped this community full of crack and then declared war on drugs to have really to crush his own, same, same same MO, to crush his political opponents. What's the impact of that? My grandmother was literally beaten to death by a crack addict in this community. And I came back here in around 2000. When I spoke for my cousin's Church, which is like right around the corner from where I'm living now. And when we were leaving, we drove through a community. And I just all I could think was what happened here? Because it really literally, I mean, I'm watching the images in Ukraine right now, this neighborhood looked like Ukraine does right now. It looked like it had been bombed out. Like There were doors with no doors, windows with no windows boarded up homes, just what happened because this was a teaming, amazing, beautiful, powerful black community back when I was coming here as a child to visit my grandmother. But now it was absolutely gutted. And you ask anybody around here, what happened, and they will tell you, the drug wars happened, drugs happened. Black men died, they dropped like flies from overdoses. That's what happened and families were thrown into absolute poverty and the area itself was left to neglect. The city didn't do anything for decades, just let it rot. And then, when the time was right, they whispered urban renewal, and urban renewal meant urban removal of those black families, they began to go around knocking on doors. Do you want to sell your home, you want to sell your home? And of course they do. They bought their homes for dirt cheap, they would buy lots of land here. And the land where I'm sitting back this home, was I think the lot was bought for$12,000 $12,000 in the 2000s. Okay, $12,000 it sells now for hundreds of 1000s of dollars, hundreds of 1000s the same not just my house, but all of the houses in this neighborhood. I mean, they are, this is hot property. And they're they're flipping it. They're building like as if it's like pancakes, they're flipping the pancakes. And there's lots of dogs and dog grooming shops and lattes. And there's now a Starbucks. And you know, but that's only now that there's white people. So the question of human hierarchy of belonging is one that we have to ask not only just of ourselves, because again, this is not really about us. It's not about you. It's not about whether you're, you know, racist, or what; it's about, do we want a society where everyone can flourish? What do we really want?

Kyle:

So to close our time here, Lisa, I want to go to the church. We haven't talked a whole lot about the church, but you've got some stuff to say about it in the book. And I want to quote something you say in chapter eight and get your thoughts on it. So you say, "The Apostle Paul lists lying as one of a handful of sins worthy of hell. Lies break and block peace from entering the world. They sow confusion and obstruct the reign of God, which is characterized by shalom. At the heart of shalom is truth. Truth telling and integrity are basic requirements for healthy relationships. Without truth, trust is broken. Without trust, relationships are broken, individual, communal and systemic relationships."

Randy:

So good.

Kyle:

So in a way, I think your book is an exercise in telling the truth, and you've got some beautiful and challenging things to say in that chapter about the relationship between truth, humility, faith, these are all things we talked about a lot on this podcast. So tell us what you mean in that passage, and also right after that, you say,"Truth seeking is a spiritual practice." What does that mean?

Lisa:

Yeah, it really is. My mom used to sing over me when I was a little girl. Um, she would sing the song Wade in the Water. And that song was a song that enslaved people would sing just before somebody was going to try to break free and they would sing "Wade in the water, wade in the water children, wade in the water. God's gone trouble the water." And the waters were understood to be troubled because you know, look, if you ride you run in North, South Carolina and those waters, you don't know what you're gonna come up against water moccasins, snakes, you know, all kinds of cray cray and if you're in Florida or Georgia, you might come against alligators and, you know, troubled waters, but there's no way for us to get free without going through the troubled waters. So, the process of truth seeking and truth listening, and truth telling is the process of wading into troubled waters. You do not know what you're going to find. You don't. And I can guarantee you that what you find, will challenge the narratives, the stories you've been told about who you are and how you got here. But friends, we live we live caged by these stories. We live shackled to perennial violence. Because of these stories, spin spun stories. We tell you about spin, I went on a pilgrimage from the Whitney plantation in Louisiana, through Sugar Land, and right outside of Houston, Texas, to San Antonio, to the border, this is in 2018. And when I got to Sugarland, it blew my mind because Sugarland is right outside of Houston. And this is the place where they had convict leasing, and they had a bunch of basically prisons that were actually plantations. And they would sweep up men off black men off the street, just for sitting on a park bench for too long for standing on his porch. And like people watching, for looking a white man in the eye, they would literally take him sweep him off the street, put them in jail, and that jail was a plantation where he needed to then work for free. And because they could get in like really an infinite number of black men to fill their quota. They didn't take care of them, they just they use them and then buried them, they literally the policy was to bury them where they drop. So in sugar, land, Sugar Land was a basically a community of plantations that were workhouses, for convict lease black men, around the turn of the 20th century in late 1800s. And now talk about spin, talk about storytelling. Now, it's gated communities, it's communities with streets that are named plantation row, that are named cotton court, or something like that. It is, it is named It's beautiful, planned community, but under the ground, are dead men, dead bodies of black men who were buried where they dropped. They discovered 95 of those black men when excavating when attempting to build a school on top of one of those plantations. And they finally discovered 95 of those men, and they, they had to fight to halt the building. And you know, where those black men are stored, now they're stored in a bin, on the property, in a bin on the property. So we are a nation that has stored the dead under our paved roads, and plantation lanes. And because of that, we have to fight with violence, to maintain to maintain the lie. Now what would happen though, if we let go if we if we laid down our arms? What would happen if we, if we lay down our weapons, or our our instruments of spin, and deceit and deceit and lying? What would happen if we embraced truth? If let me tell you what would happen, we would experience more of Jesus, we would actually experience come on the power of the cross, not just sing about it, we would experience the power of the actual resurrection, not just talk about it. So the call for repair and the call for truth seeking and truth listening. And truth telling is actually a call to come back into relationship. Let's go and relatedness with Jesus. Because as long as you cover the truth, you don't need God. As long as you live according to the lie, you hold God at bay. You hold the power of the resurrection at bay. You hold the power of the cross at bay. Yeah. What did Jesus say I came for the sick, not for those who are pretending ending to be well, so the call for repair of our nation is actually a call for us to finally become Christian.

Randy:

The book is Fortune. Lisa Sharon Harper. It's spectacular. Thank you for sharing your family story. Your story, the pain. The goodness that's come through and thank you for sharing your time with us tonight. It's just been a real pleasure man, please I want to tell you your book is like a spiritual cleansing exercise talking to you. It's like a damn spiritual exercise are all your interviews. Guys, Norm Thank you really just need to process Yeah. All right, let's see. Let's see. Bye.

Kyle:

Well, that's it for this episode of A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. We hope you're enjoying the show as much as we are. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience by supporting us patreon.com/apastorandaphilosopher, where you can get bonus content, extra perks, and a general feeling of being good person.

Randy:

Also, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, and Spotify. These help new people discover the show and we may even read your review in a future episode. If it's good enough.

Kyle:

If anything we said really pissed you off or if you just have a question you'd like us to answer, or if you'd just like to send us booze, send us an email at pastorandphilosopher@gmail.com.

Randy:

Catch all of our hot takes on Twitter at@PPWBPodcast, @RandyKnie, and@robertkwhitaker, and find transcripts and links to all of our episodes at pastorandphilosopher.buzzsprout.com. See you next time.

Kyle:

Cheers!

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