Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa ISBN: 9781626745094 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / University Press of Mississippi Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Race and Ethnicity;
Contributions by William Ackah, Allan Boesak, Ebony Joy Fitchue, Leah Gaskin Fitchue, Walter Earl Fluker, Forrest E. Harris Sr., Nico Koopman, AnneMarie Mingo, Reggie Nel, Chabo Freddy Pilusa, Anthony G. Reddie, Boitumelo Senokoane, Rothney S. Tshaka, Luci Vaden, Vuyani Vellem, and Cobus van Wyngaard
After the 2008 election and 2012 reelection of Barack Obama as US president and the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as the first of several blacks to serve as South Africa's president, many within the two countries have declared race to be irrelevant. For contributors to this volume, the presumed demise of race may be premature. Given continued racial disparities in income, education, and employment, as well as in perceptions of problems and promise within the two countries, much healing remains unfinished. Nevertheless, despite persistently pronounced disparities between black and white realities, it has become more difficult to articulate racial issues. Some deem "race" an increasingly unnecessary identity in these more self-consciously "post-racial" times.
The volume engages post-racial ideas in both their limitations and promise. Contributors look specifically at the extent to which a church's contemporary response to race consciousness and post-racial consciousness enables it to give an accurate public account of race.
R. Drew Smith is professor of urban ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and research fellow at the University of South Africa. His books include From Every Mountainside: Black Churches and the Broad Terrain of Civil Rights . William Ackah is lecturer in community and voluntary sector studies at Birkbeck University of London and author of P an-Africanism Exploring the Contradictions: Politics, Identity and Development in Africa and the African Diaspora . Anthony G. Reddie is tutor in Christian theology and coordinator of community learning at Bristol Baptist College. He is editor of Black Theology: An International Journal . Rothney S. Tshaka is professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology at the University of South Africa. His articles have appeared in Missionalia, Verbum et Ecclesia, and Journal of Theology in Southern Africa .
