Abstract
This ground-breaking study of religion and racial Whiteness is a creative and persuasive account of White racial subjectivity. Driscoll engages throughout this study with the historical recurrence of White mob violence or vigilante murder targeting Black Americans, with particular attention to recent killings such as that of Trayvon Martin. Of central importance is the author’s focus on the capacity of White racial identity to structure a ‘god complex’ that animates the ideological rationale for a racial political order. In addition, the author examines the material aspects of embodiment as well as social forces that produce collective responses to death. Beyond this, the entire book renders an account of Whiteness as a system that constitutes a ‘god-idol’, a term by which the author denotes the lack of meaningful distinction between gods and idols.
The book is apportioned into two major parts: the first rendering the problem of the false assertions (‘White lies’) that sustain racial Whiteness, the second proposing a possible corrective through embracing an ‘orthodoxy of death’ (p. 203) and advancing that Whites need to learn to ‘die with others’ (p. 13). Driscoll’s introductory chapter explains the stakes of the ‘twilight’ (an age in which Whiteness finds itself on ‘uncertain ground’), while accounting for racial Whiteness. In his first chapter, Driscoll examines White mob violence and lynching particularly, as he engages with Anthony Pinn’s argument that lynching became a pivotal tactic and ritual for deploying racial terrorism against Blacks. It is here that Driscoll proffers one of the central recurring themes of the book: Whiteness is dying or declining and thus faces an uncertain present. Whereas White mob violence against Blacks previously functioned under the sublime light of legal sanction, it has now become publicly indefensible and will result in state prosecution of White perpetrators.
Driscoll’s second and third chapters examine the ‘god-complex’ (p. 65) of White Americans that George Zimmerman manifested when he asserted that it was ‘god’s will’ (p. 89) for him to kill the unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin. Among the critical themes that emerge is Driscoll’s insightful interpretation of theism in the United States to mean ‘belief in in the idea of god’ (p. 66) or ‘belief in belief’ (p. 75). In this way, he foregrounds and critiques the strident trend of valorizing belief in a god with little or no regard for the actual function and consequences of theism (what if this is a racist god?). In this way, Driscoll is able to account for why George Zimmerman’s appeal to theism elevated his indignant defence of murder to the level of inviolability.
In the fourth and fifth chapters, Driscoll engages with multiple authors – he draws extensively on the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre and the work of Anthony Pinn and Harold Bloom – to explain why embracing death is essential to contravening White racial identity. Driscoll offers a means for considering what it might mean for those inhabiting racial Whiteness to ‘number our days’, i.e. valorize death as integral to life and thereby enable the perception of a common humanity.
White Lies is a truly distinctive treatment of race and religion that takes seriously the historical and continuing violence of White racial domination. By applying an interdisciplinary lens to bring historical, sociological, theological, literary and anthropological methods to bear on the life-and-death consequences of racial domination, Driscoll has composed an elegant study that will inform and inspire scholars and lay readers to comprehend and mitigate formations of racial Whiteness.