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- Title
BLACK SHEPHERD, WHITE SHEEP: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF A SOUTHERN CHURCH.
- Authors
Acheson, Kris
- Abstract
Much recent literature has noted the invisibility of Whiteness and the normalization of White supremacy in the US. This body of work is often especially applicable to life in the rural Southern US. Recent critical literature suggests that interrogating examples of the disruption of normative Whiteness could offer powerful opportunities for social change. In the context of the White supremacist South, then, an important task is finding and examining instances where the everydayness of Whiteness is challenged, where people are made uncomfortable because the unspoken rules of race relations are broken. This essay explores an instance of radical disruption of the invisibility of Whiteness—a Black pastor of a predominantly White church in the rural South. Using phenomenological methods, I interrogate the phenomenon of a Black man pastoring White Southerners as that experience is described in a set of narratives written from various perspectives within the church (a church member, a church elder, and the pastor himself). Through a reduction and interpretation of themes in the narratives, I arrive at conclusions about the nature of the phenomenon and various ways of experiencing it in an attempt to find ways to combat personal and systemic racism.
- Subjects
RACISM; SOCIAL problems; SOCIAL change; ETHNIC relations; INTERPERSONAL relations; SOCIAL integration; ASSIMILATION (Sociology); PHILOLOGY; SOCIAL psychology
- Publication
Race, Gender & Class, 2006, Vol 13, Issue 1/2, p170
- ISSN
1082-8354
- Publication type
Article