Blackscholarsmatter Quotes

“I left because I ran out of reasons why I should continue to work in a profession and at an institution where I was treated like a permanent interloper. (From "On Leaving")”
― Renita J. Weems

“Yet if our research and our teaching are to address the multifaceted challenges African Americans face, we must do the required contextual and interdisciplinary work, and we must remember that, by serving in leadership positions in the Society of Biblical Literature at any and all of its levels, we create the academic spaces we need for that work to flourish. (from "The Struggles: A Personal Reflection")”
― Cheryl B. Anderson

“...I called into question the traditional Black treatment of the so-called curse of Ham, which was utilized to support the African slave trade. The line of argument was that there was not a curse of Ham but rather a curse of Canaan, and by implication being good Judeo-Christians, we didn't like the Canaanites either. My question was how could we, who have had chattel slavery in our background in this country, not be appalled that by virtue of birth a Canaanite should be a slave (from "Lest We Forget")”
― Randall C. Bailey

“For those of us who care to do biblical scholarship deliberately informed by our social location, the concepts of apartheid and/or post-apartheid thus become critical concepts in shaping the discourse at a specific point in time. The preceding interested stance is motivated by my persuasion that there is no value free interpretation of texts, be they legal, religious, economic, or political texts, among others. Our experiences form a critical part of the meaning-making processes of our disciplines. (from "Navigating a Foreign Terrain")”
― Madipoane Masenya (ngwan’a Mphahlele)

“It is the work of our guild--as arbiters and interpreters not just of ancient texts and histories but arbiters and interpreters of knowledge--to articulate the contextual dimensions and biases of our traditional hermeneutical approaches and contemporary hermeneutical developments. Moreover, it is our collective responsibility to work at interpreting new centers of biblical history and literature. (from "Preliminary Thoughts”
― Shively T. J. Smith

“Nothing prepares you for what it means to be the first, the only, one of a handful in your profession. The first Black. The first female. The first anything. To be a Black female academic, navigating the double jeopardy of race and gender, means, for one thing, to think, write, and teach under a cloud of suspicion that says you're not good enough, not serious enough, not smart enough. You are forever the outsider, the interloper, the Other in a world that centers whiteness and maleness as the abiding images of inquiry. (from "On Leaving")”
― Renita J. Weems

“Biblical studies is at its core a racialized enterprise that was founded to shore up empires while simultaneously subjugating the Other. (from "On Leaving")”
― Renita J. Weems

“Required now and going forward is thick and deep/radical critique and rewriting/reorientation of the Society -- away from being identified as congresses of (white) gentlemen to critical discourse(s) and practices that signify in powerful terms that Black scholars do matter. (from "Tribunals of Jurists...")”
― Vincent L. Wimbush

“...classification meant more than placement on a rung of the civilized; it was license to write on the bodies of the outsiders, to define, to fix identities and social position. (from "Tribunals of Jurists...”
― Vincent L. Wimbush

“Haitians...have learned and lived with the notion that home is more than a geographical entity. We create home by walking, by living, by dancing, by eating, and by making love and giving birth in new lands. We make home by dying here and accepting that it is impossible to go back... This thought alone is devastating, but that is the reality....We are forever scattered. We will never rest.”
― Ronald Charles

“Translation is about trying to bridge gaps between cultures, establishing intercultural dialogue and exchange. (from "Moving In-between Places...")”
― Ronald Charles

“Answers are low-hanging fruit. Questions make us pause and savor the moment. (from "Questions with no COVID-19 Answers")”
― Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

“A reader's who-ness is a guidepost on a road to sense making and stands center as interpretation shifts to practice. Thus, my existential reality as a Black woman is how and where and when I enter to engage questions. (from "Questions with no COVID-19 Answers")”
― Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

“The fuller life I want for myself and for others beset by the colonialist project is the revolutionary life, the life of protest, escape, and destruction of systems that never were designed for our full thriving.”
― Steed Vernyl Davidson

“A focus on biblical studies that incorporates an absolutist approach to truth and interpretation does harm to individual scholarly inquiry, especially by people of color such as Black and Latinx scholars, who have been too often quieted in our search for interpretative approaches that include and empower our communities. (From "Latinidad in Dialogue...")”
― Efraín Agosto

“God is an embodied God in the messiness of everyday life and so should biblical interpretation. Minority biblical criticism aids in this process and is thus eminently theological, as well as interdisciplinary and interethnic. (from "Latinidad in Dialogue...")”
― Efraín Agosto

“For me, the challenge is trying to figure out how to <>conjure change as an "inside outsider" or "outside insider" depending on how I am viewed within the academy or in BIPOC settings; how to mess with seemingly intractable structures that dehumanize and demean; how to fix systemic problems that are inimical to Black thriving and lead inexorably to social death; and how to create -- doctor up, as it were -- pockets of resistance, maroon communities -- within and outside of primarily white universities where Black scholars and allies can thrive.”
― Hugh R. Page Jr., Black Scholars Matter: Visions, Struggles, and Hopes in Africana Biblical Studies

“...Black diasporic Africana biblical scholarship matters [because] it is an invitation into boundary events that probe the depth of human psyches, histories, spiritualities, and scriptural imaginaries. And, it invites a home-coming -- a journey toward at-homeness with the bones, sinews, and nerves that constitute the respective location of each interlocutor... (from "Come Join Us, Sweetheart!")”
― Mai-Ahn Le Tran

“The truth is that the hierarchies of gender and religion -- the privilege historically enjoyed by Christian men within our guild -- are embedded within a hierarchical system manifested perhaps most powerfully in both overt and subtle forms of anti-Black racism. This system, referred to in shorthand as white supremacy, promotes an ideology that privileges white, Christian, straight men, and though a creature of colonialist Europe, it remains formative in American society (and far beyond the United States), and in the modes of biblical scholarship that are prioritized within the field as practiced within the Society of Biblical Literature and in many parts of the world. (from "A Duty to Act")”
― Adele Reinhartz