Transgressing Race

Book excerpt: Transgressing is an appropriate response to race as “a crime against humanity.” No one chooses their race at birth, yet many suffer because of their race. And while many people choose to change citizenship, their accents and faces can give them away as outsiders. Racism thrives on the categorization of people according to their race. Like the Black and White dichotomy, other racial and ethnic discriminations such as casteism, antisemitism, Zionism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia undergird and promote segregation all around the world. Dismantling racism requires challenging racialized oppressions and segregations in sacred texts and contexts, in beloved traditions and hallowed theologies. This book offers such biblical and theological discourses in order to transgress the discriminative segregations of racism in connection with other forms of exploitative systems (or shitstems). The book engages with racialized biblical texts and religious theologies, with acts of racial discrimination in connection with slavery and colonialism, with agonies of people in diaspora, struggles of postcolonial minoritized people, courage of indigenous people to subvert, and with the race-insensitive practices of theological and religious education. The contributors are located in Africa, Asia, North America, Europe, and Oceania.