by Matt Lamb
A professor from Fairleigh Dickinson University recently presented for Rutgers University and explained how “white Christian privilege” and “Christian privilege” are responsible for slavery, genocide and colonialism.
Rutgers University held the lecture on September 9 to explore the topic of “white Christian privilege.”
The law school’s Center for Security, Race and Rights hosted Professor Khyati Joshi for the presentation. Joshi published a book in July with the same title as her presentation, called “White Christian Privilege: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America.”
The professor of education also said she consults regularly with employers and schools on these topics.
Joshi’s presentation discussed how whiteness and Christianity are responsible for “genocide,” “slavery” and “colonialism.” She said she wants people to understand “the role Christianity has had in the construction of whiteness.”
. @SikhProf writes on @ProfKJoshi's new book, saying that it argues "that our perception of whiteness suffers from an “optical illusion”: that religion is one place where there is equality in America."https://t.co/oBexCPqsJx
— RNS (@RNS) July 24, 2020
She said that concepts like manifest destiny, the idea that colonizers were led by God to take over land, prove her points about white supremacy and Christianity.
“We have to also take into account the Biblical justification for slavery,” Joshi added.
During the hour-long presentation, Joshi explained what white Christian privilege is and the way it manifests itself in society. She said Christian privilege is “built into the edifice” of American jurisprudence. She also talked about how even non-white Christians enjoy some privileges.
Joshi said during the virtual presentation, attended by The College Fix, that she noticed while in school that research on whiteness in America often missed the “explicit role of religion in the development of whiteness.”
Joshi, who said she is Hindu, noted that she witnessed white Christian privilege her whole life but “didn’t have the language to be able to articulate what I was experiencing.” She said that sometimes there is white Christian privilege and sometimes there is just Christian privilege.
When talking about this history of the country and privilege “we should talk about Protestant Christian” privilege “because the United States has a long and drawn-out history of anti-Catholicism.”
Christian privilege is part of “white Christian supremacy,” according to one slide that Joshi used.
This form of privilege is made up of Christian hegemony, normativity and privilege. Christian privilege, according to Joshi, is “a product of systemic religious oppression over the history of this country.”
Claims Christians do not regularly have to fight for their religious freedom
In her presentation, Joshi said that court cases on the religious freedom of non-Christian religions is indicative of Christian privilege.
Joshi pointed to three cases to prove her point, including Goldman v. Weinberger, a 1986 ruling where the Supreme Court allowed the military to prevent an Orthodox Jewish military officer from wearing a yarmulke while serving.
She also discussed Employment Division v. Smith, where the Supreme Court ruled in 1989 against two drug counselors who the state of Oregon fired after they tested positive for drugs after ingesting peyote.
She cited a 1988 Supreme Court case, Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery, where the court ruled that Native Americans did not have a religious right to prevent the harvesting of timber on lands they considered sacred.
Joshi did not respond to several emailed requests for comment from The College Fix for clarification on why counter-examples were not discussed in her presentation. She told The Fix on Thursday via email that she would provide a comment, but did not respond by Thursday evening.
Non-white Christians can have privilege, too
On the topic of non-white Christians, Joshi said that they can sometimes have privilege.
Christian communities of color “also have Christian privilege” but “when we take into account intersectionality … the race element is there.”
She said people need to understand the “overarching theme is always white Christian privilege or white Christian supremacy.”
Joshi said that “on a certain level, Hispanic Catholics have Christian privilege.”
She added that one way to decrease Christian privilege is actually to embrace religious differences and say things like “Merry Christmas.”
She said she tries to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” with the hope that other people will respond by wishing non-Christians a happy celebration of their holidays.
Additionally, Joshi did say that one way to understand each other better is for people to look at their “sphere of influence” and consider if they were only talking to people like them.
“We’re not going to make change only listening,” the professor said; instead “we have to get close to some of the challenges we need to solve” and examine the “sphere of influence.”
While the director of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights, Sahar Aziz, agreed with that statement during the presentation, she did not respond to several emailed requests from The College Fix since Wednesday asking for comment on Christian privilege and if she planned to host people with different views at the university.
Future topics in the lecture series from the center, which focuses on the experience of “Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities,” includes a presentation on sanctions against Iran and another presentation about counterrorism in Somalia.
Americans United for Separation for Church and State will host Joshi next week as part of a panel on “dismantling white privilege” and “Christian nationalism.”
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Matt Lamb is the Assistant Editor if TheCollegeFix.com.
Photo “Khyati Joshi” by Khyati Joshi.
This professor makes her living spewing racial & religious division & hatred, yet is fine with living here in this “systemic racist” country that gives her the freedom to write & say what she wants, no matter how vile. And millions more in India are desperately trying to reach this “evil” & “Racist” country. Give me a break, I’m sick to death of woke Libtards trying to guilt-trip me because of my race & religion. The founding fathers would not even recognize what this country has become, where one political party absolutely hates the US & everything it stands for, & another is desperately trying to preserve democracy. ALL AMERICANS HAVE PRIVILEGE, the privilege that comes with living in the best (albeit flawed) country in the world. I yearn for the time when we were all just considered Americans, & not bitterly divided by race, sex, religion or politics. We can thank the Left & especially the media for this sad division.
I assume by her name that she is of Indian decent. Therefore I have no faith in anything she says about the Christian religion.
So, the fact that Christians were the ones leading the charge to END slavery in the UK and US, was that somehow part of that privilege. Actually, I’ll use the word correctly and in the right context: it was a privilege and and honor for Christians to champion the end of slavery.
I’ll give this broad brush-stroke, over-generalizations a whirl. How about I speak to the Leftist Academia Privilege, where professors no longer teach critical thinking and the search for knowledge and truth, but rather unleash their opinions as researched “facts”. I thought we were paying for the former, but we only seem to get the latter. I don’t count it as privilege when in public, the media or the workplace, I have to endure baseless condemnation and ridicule for my faith; things that if they were said of any other faith or people group it would be met with utter disbelief and scorn. Actually, Jesus did speak to this when He said that the world hated Him and would therefore hate Christians. THAT is my privilege: I know that no matter how bad things get, Jesus suffered more. Please understand that as things get more divisive, at the next violent act perpetrated toward a Christian or church, you were part of the problem, not the solution.
Not a bad article if you take time to read it. Maybe something to her logic that needs more exploration
Beatrice, don’t you ever get tired of being one of a handful of liberal trolls on this site? Wouldn’t you be far happier at CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, New York Times, etc.?
GET A LIFE!!!
Another fool with an agenda. Rodent!
Has it not occurred to anyone that a country founded by European Christians, based on their beliefs in both God and His command, might have a tendency to favor such modes of thought?
Even better, the decision to allow other belief systems to be practiced was to remove the possibility of persecution experienced by the founders.
What smells so horribly to me is the way that people with different beliefs choose not to integrate as well as they can, but instead demand the majority to rip up the foundations to facilitate them.
Yes, M.Flatt, the basis of the American Revolution and a foundational principle of the Republic is, “…where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is Liberty” (II Corinthians 3:17) That applies to EVERYONE regardless of which religion or not anyone chooses. Yet these bigots are not satisfied to be free to express and practice their beliefs. No, they want to destroy the foundations of liberty and impose their views on others. It’s an evil tyranny they are promoting to impose on others.
So now the racial prejudice and bigotry includes religious bigotry too, but just against Christians.