On Southern Racism

A ‘born and bred racist’ recounts how he became a best-selling Christian author
By John Blake
Updated 2:09 PM EDT, Sat September 17, 2022

The summer before his junior year in high school, Philip Yancey attended a Fourth of July rally that featured some of the most dangerous racists in America.

It was 1964, and the event, billed as “Patriots Rally Against Tyranny,” was held at a racetrack in Yancey’s hometown of Atlanta. It featured a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard alongside segregationists such as governors George Wallace of Alabama and Ross Barnett of Mississippi.

As Yancey sat in the bleachers with about 11,000 cheering White Southerners waving miniature Confederate flags, he heard speakers denounce the same enemies he learned about in his fundamentalist church, where the pastor lampooned “Martin Lucifer Coon” and preached that “coloreds” were inferior because of the “Curse of Ham.”

But something took place at the rally that made Yancey question what he had been taught.

He noticed a group of Black men sitting in the stands. Just before Wallace spoke, three of them began to boo. That was the cue for a group of Klansmen to rise from their seats and attack the men. Other Whites joined them, punching the Black men in their faces and hitting them with folded chairs as the men frantically tried to escape. The crowd began chanting, “Hit ‘em! Kill ‘em!”

“I reacted first as part of the cheering mob: Who were these Black guys trying to crash our party?” Yancey told CNN in a recent interview. “Yet when the White men started beating them with fists and even chairs, I felt sick at my stomach. I left the rally with a bitter taste in my mouth, the taste of shame. For years I didn’t talk about that experience.”

There’s been a lot of debate in recent years about the rise of White Christian nationalism and White evangelicals’ steadfast support for former President Trump. But few people are better equipped than Yancey to explain how racism infiltrates White churches and how one can escape it.

Yancey went from being a self-described “born and bred racist” to becoming one of the most popular authors and speakers in contemporary America. His books have sold an estimated 17 million copies and been translated into 50 languages. Several, such as “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” and “Where Is God When It Hurts?” have become contemporary Christian classics.

The anecdote about the White supremacist rally marks one of Yancey’s most candid admissions of his youthful embrace of racism. It comes from his recently released memoir, “Where the Light Fell.” In the book, Yancey recounts how racism corrupted his faith and eventually led to him feeling betrayed by the church. He rejected the racism of his youth, though, after encountering a series of remarkable people during his years as a journalist and an author.

Yancey, 72, says he wanted to tell a story about what it takes to change the “calloused conscience” of someone who was raised to view Black people as inferior.

“I have a shelf full of best-selling books chronicling the Black experience and exhorting us to become anti-racists,” Yancey says. “I look in vain for one that explores the mind of a bigot and what it might take to change that mind.”

CNN talked to Yancey about White Christian nationalism, why he still calls himself an evangelical, and how he thinks the media distorts most evangelicals’ beliefs. The conversation was edited for brevity.

Why do you think you were able to change when so many other people who were ‘born and bred to a be racist’ never evolved?

I was a reader. And when I read “Black Like Me” (A 1961 nonfiction book about a White man who darkened his skin and traveled through the segregated South), that was a turning point, because it just didn’t make sense. Here’s the exact same person who artificially changed the color of his skin, and at one point he’s treated like a gentleman and has access to anywhere he wants to go. And then suddenly he’s treated like a dirty animal and people spit on him. He has to step off the sidewalk. He can’t use the restroom. Can’t get a drink of water. He’s the exact same person. It was a moral splinter that would stick inside my head and bother me.

“I have a shelf full of best-selling books chronicling the Black experience and exhorting us to become anti-racists,” Yancey says. “I look in vain for one that explores the mind of a bigot and what it might take to change that mind.”

CNN talked to Yancey about White Christian nationalism, why he still calls himself an evangelical, and how he thinks the media distorts most evangelicals’ beliefs. The conversation was edited for brevity.

Why do you think you were able to change when so many other people who were ‘born and bred to a be racist’ never evolved?

I was a reader. And when I read “Black Like Me” (A 1961 nonfiction book about a White man who darkened his skin and traveled through the segregated South), that was a turning point, because it just didn’t make sense. Here’s the exact same person who artificially changed the color of his skin, and at one point he’s treated like a gentleman and has access to anywhere he wants to go. And then suddenly he’s treated like a dirty animal and people spit on him. He has to step off the sidewalk. He can’t use the restroom. Can’t get a drink of water. He’s the exact same person. It was a moral splinter that would stick inside my head and bother me.

A 'born and bred racist' recounts how he became a best-selling Christian author, and why White evangelical support for Trump is misunderstood | CNN

 

What's so special about a southern white guy feeling bad for blacks who are unjustly deprived of equal opportunity or access? Not a whole lot, really.

Are there southern white guys who hate blacks? Yeah, there are. Are there blacks who hate whites? Yes again.

The only thing that makes this guy special is that he wrote a book that lots of folks bought and read. One need not travel around in blackface to observe and acknowledge the injustice. The fact that he needed to be so fully immersed in the black identity in order to appreciate the injustice definitely pegs him as solidly racist before his lesson.

That there are so many of us who have not traveled the country in blackface to suffer at the hands of racists does not make us racist . . . not even close. Many of us already possess the perspective, objectivity and sense of fairness required to determine when someone is being victimized, and when they are not.

Take, for example, the fact that you're a northern white guy, and I don't favor you over the average black man. In fact, I favor many of them over you. There may be some black men I favor less than you (believe that or not!), but there are some white men I favor less than you too. Who I decide to help, and who I decide not to help are divided by their choices and behavior, and not by what they have, what they look like or how they talk.

Get it through your thick skull @JoeNation . . . one does not need to be a radical liberal to not be a racist.

 

During the time of the author, all the racists actions were by democrats. White Christian Nationalist is a leftist focused group term to redirect their history.

 

BLOCK the ignorannt!

 

Joe is the guy who throws the rock and hides his hands behind his back.

 

When my wife's mother died, she read his book "Where is God When It Hurts" constantly. I didn't know the man was a transformed racist..... Yes, in the southern states in 1960's America a black man was treated absolutely abhorrently. This overt bigotry as I have mentioned numerous times was led wholeheartedly by democrats that must now believe they have to reinvigorate racism so they can cover their mistakes of the past. However what has resulted is that by their own actions in the 21st century they have once again enslaved the minorities in this nation only to keep them firmly within their voting base. Quite cleverly they have disguised this new 21st century racism under the flag of woke-ism.... Keep your foot on their necks, Dems. They will wake up and make you pay for sending them backwards fifty years. It's only a matter of time.

 

I have two words you should be familiar with...

Southern Strategy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

In 2005, Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman formally apologized to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for exploiting racial polarization to win elections and ignoring the black vote.
​

Look them up and then ask yourself why something from 60 years ago means more than something today.

Where did all those southern racists go? Did they just disappear? Not likely. They are alive and well and going by the name of MAGA these days. The Civil Rights legislation in the early 60's was the Democrats putting an end to the participation of the Southern racists in their midst. What will Republicans do today to purge themselves of these vile racists? I'm going to bet absolutely nothing at all. And you know I'm right about that.

Your only path forward as a Republican is to vote Republican but not MAGA Republican. If you can do that, you will be kicking the MAGA crowd to the curb and taking your party back. If not, you're no better that the Democrats that harbored these vile racists prior to the 1960's and have zero room to be critical of anything they did.

 

2 words....Robert Byrd.

 

Interesting…. No I had never heard of this. Granted, I was not politically aware during Goldwaters run.

I grew up in the midwest. We had no racial problems. I had one black fellow named Cecil in my grade and I was happy when he joined my baseball team because he was an awesome athlete. I wasn’t introduced to racial tensions until my first duty assignment in the Army. Since then I have spent almost forty years living in the Deep South so I have seen first hand how this has progressed…. Other than the occasional closet redneck bigot, there were few issues. My first foreman when I left the Army was the hardest working black man I have ever known. I was young, strong and fresh out of the service and couldn’t keep up with him. No racial tension existed. I do business today with a number of minority owned contractors. There is no racial tension….. The only tension that exists now is that which has been fabricated by the left the last 8-10 years. And these aren’t older professionals that lived during segregation. It’s only the kids that carry this cross. They didn’t live it. They have only heard it…. From the leaders of the left. This is modern day exploitation, born of the left and it is helping nobody except a potential voting base. It is a veiled exploitation and is even more vile than outward exploitation because it is intentionally subversive.

 

You tell'em, MD.

 

Are you saying that racism went away and only came back because the Left pointed it out? It never went away. It only seeps deeper and more insidiously into the fabric of society because too many people like you frankly, do not see it as a problem. Many white people think of themselves as nonracist because admitting that there is and always has been racism is just too far beyond the way they like to think of themselves. Others are simply the rednecks that are proud of their racist behaviors.

We have a caste system in this country that is unwritten much like the caste system of India. Indians will tell you that there is no caste system anymore. It's BS. It does exist but people there refuse to admit it exists even with the knowledge of what they witness every day of their lives. Their caste system is something you are born into. Our caste system is determined by the darkness of your complexion. The top caste is white and any white person, no matter his station is life, is believed to be better than the most successful black person. That is how caste systems work.

The bigots and rednecks have been emboldened in the las 8-10 years and it wasn't by the Left. You point at the Left and say it is our fault for pointing it out the racism. I hope that we never stop pointing it out. I do hope that the Right stops giving these racists platforms for their racism.

 

Way to cheer Barbie.

 

I think you have a long pedigree in higher education so what I am about to say, you know to be truth….. If you single out a student. Tell him that he is a loser. Never make the grade… Why are you here? etc…. That student will be a failure…. Take that same student and build his confidence at every opportunity, that student will succeed…. I used this very method in little league baseball for decades and never had a losing team….. As long as the left tells black America that they are trodden upon, Black America will respond in kind.

When we defeated racism in the 60’s and 70’s I was in my formative years. We were taught to be color blind and that was the correct and proper course of action. Judge a man on his character just like Dr. King taught us to do. MLK foresaw what is happening today and cautioned us against it in fact….. Judge a man on his character, not the color of his skin…… That is precisely what you and others on the left are doing. Rather than allowing these men and women to be judged on their character, you are pushing them into a position of being judged by the color of their skin. It is oppression veiled as some morbid quest for equality. Allow these people to be judged on their own merit and stop oppressing them under your version of equality. Please. It is the right thing to do.

 

That's supposed to shut me up?

Why don't you slide offshore and go ruin some other country?

 

Are you serious? We never defeated racism in the 60's and 70's. No one on earth could seriously make that argument with a straight face. I didn't realize until now how naive you were until you posted this. The color-blind mantra was discredited decades ago. Pretending to not see color, makes people invisible. That is why you believe in it. It you don't see something, then it doesn't exist right? It has worked to perfection on people like you. Nobody pushes color-blind dogma anymore and nobody has in decades. You simply never got the message.

The best we ever achieved between the 60's and 70's and 8-10 years ago, was to drive the racists underground and out of the public square. Remember when people felt like they weren't allowed to say what they really thought because they might get shouted down in the wrong circles? Do you remember hearing that complaint? It was common. Today, those people are out and proud and you have the Right to thank for giving them back their voices. They never left. They were just afraid to say what they really thought. Thanks to people like Trump, Alex Jones, and especially Rush Limbaugh, they have found a home in the ranks of the MAGA deplorables. You'll never understand what you can't even acknowledge. As they say, die in ignorance. I don't mean literally die of course, but at least when you do die, you won't have learned anything along the way.

 

I have one more thought I want you to consider here….. I been around the block and have worked with more than my fair share of educated folks. Let me assure you… Education does not always guarantee any semblance of good sense.. So I am not going to wholeheartedly buy into the concept that we are now so educated that we can take one of Dr. Kings most basic teachings and toss it aside because it is no longer convenient.

Here’s the thought I want you to consider. I didn’t coach my ballplayers by verbally chastising them. But let’s just say that I did. And let’s just say you walked by my field while I was verbally dressing down a white player. You would walk away thinking I was a real rearend….. Now let’s say I was dressing down a black player as you happened by. Would your first thought be that I am a bigot? Think about that and then tell me who is the true racist in this scenario.

 

Oh, come on now, MD . . . That’s just plain unfair!

 

Democrats have done more to keep down the blacks in America than any other group. The ignorant in this country like the OP are unaware of this fact.

 

Can you block yourself here? Let us know how that goes my hairless primate pal.

 

]Democrats have done more to keep down the blacks in America than any other group. The ignorant in this country like the OP are unaware of this fact.

So @freshmeat

Stop chewing the Knight and craping the thread. Add something of use to the thread. DO AGREE WITH MY STATEMENT about the democrats an people of color? If not please give some examples to refute it.