Here’s some free advice. If your public soliloquy starts off with the words, “The statement I’m about to make, I’m going to be called a racist and I will be called every name under the sun, but…” just shut the hell up.
But evangelist Donnie Swaggart, son of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, most certainly didn’t keep his racist thoughts to himself. Instead, he “self-whiteously” scolded the Black Church for, from his pasty perspective, not adhering to “biblical values.”
Here’s an excerpt from Swaggy-D’s recent sermon:
“The statement I’m about to make, I’m going to be called a racist and I will be called every name under the sun, but somebody needs to stand up and speak to the Black Church. When the largest African American Pentecostal denomination, when that leader stands up and said I endorse that woman, he was saying, I endorse murder, I endorse homosexuality, I endorse lesbianism, I endorse transgenderism, I endorse every evil that Hell could prosper or bring up to [be]right. That’s wrong folks. And the Black Church votes predominantly for the party that is anti-God. What’s going on here? What’s going on?”
What’s going on is “caucasity” expressed at levels rarely known to humankind, which is really saying something.
Little Swag conveniently ignored the history of white “Christians” using Christianity to justify slavery and attempt to pacify Blacks against working in their own best interests. Donnie Swaggoo causally left out the legacy of white “Christians” literally teaching and preaching that slave masters—white people who kidnapped, tortured, raped and human trafficked human beings from Africa—were God’s representatives on earth. Or that they endorsed the white domestic terrorism that came via Reconstruction and Jim Crow and the “War on Drugs” and the boom of the prison industrial complex.
None of that, from Swaggart’s perspective, was an endorsement of “every evil that Hell could prosper or bring up.”
Amazingly, there are some Black people who take this misread of the gospel as gospel truth. However, the legendary political philosopher, the late Franz Fanon, would say of such sisters and brothers; “The colonial system nurtures the colonized people in such a way as to make them believe that salvation lies in their identification with the colonizer’s values.”
That’s a much kinder and gentler way of saying some Blacks and other people of color define their value by their proximity to whiteness, white people, white institutions, white perspectives, white definitions of good and evil, and white theology, even to their own detriment and degradation. Like the Black man pointed out at Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally who was made the butt of a “watermelon joke” by a Trump rally “comedian.”
One of the most foundational of all spiritual teachings, one that can be found in many faith systems, is “Man/Woman, know thyself.” This principle speaks not only of the critical importance of self-knowledge (knowing your people’s history, heritage, and culture) but of self-love.
For Blackfolk, a lack of self-love will have us believing Swaggart has the right to indict us for straying from a “Christian” path defined by those who have been anti-Black for the past 450-plus years.
I’m far less concerned with what’s going on in Swaggart’s mind than what’s going on in ours. Swaggart exemplifies the nonsense and madness that comes with fully believing in the myth of white supremacy. But when we give credence to his perspective, we, Blackfolk, become Black-faced white supremacists ourselves… or at the very least, servants thereof.
Neither is acceptable.
So, let’s work on getting our self-love up, in our spirits, and in the spirits of those we hold dear. If we do that, Swaggart’s ill-informed view will have no sway over our lives and futures.
