Embodied Solidarity Is The Human Future

It gives me great joy to remind you that Belmont is hosting Dr. Larycia Hawkins this Friday (10/28/22) with two public events. It’s all a part of our still-underway Transformative Justice series.

The first is a public conversation with Dr. Hawkins at 10AM in the Massey Performing Arts Center. Parking is available for visitors just across the street from MPAC in front of the Bunch Library.

The second is a 6PM screening of Same God which will include an opportunity to put questions to Dr. Hawkins and the film’s director, Linda Midgett. This will occur in the theater located in the Johnson Center which one can park beneath.

In short, Friday’s a big day for Beloved Community and other forms of baseline moral seriousness in Nashville. We’ve hosted Dr. Hawkins before and I’ve had lots to say about her since. You can find a lot of that here.

But I want to say something more which will involve alluding to what I take to be some repressed memories among many talkative white people in America. This is a bit of a trigger warning.

“I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in.”

That’s Jerry Falwell Jr. speaking in December of 2015. The pastors, pundits, and politicians who gave Jerry Falwell Jr. a free pass after he intoned this hate speech are still at large and in charge. Dr. Hawkins spoke up and paid a heavy price.

She tapped in when others with less to lose tapped out. Just imagine where we might be now if her institution had had her back. Institutional courage can move the needle. Institutional cowardice is tyranny’s air supply.

What feats of civic courage might yet be undertaken within, without, and on the peripheries of our institutions right now? Come out. Let’s talk about it.

Dr. Hawkins chose the prophetic task of embodied solidarity over silence. When it mattered (It always matters), she bucked what Reality Winner refers to as the bystander effect and overcame what Kristin Kobes Du Mez calls misplaced deference.

Education, as I understand it, is the slow but also sometimes sudden overcoming of misplaced deference and, by extension, the bystander effect. bell hooks tells us education is the practice of freedom. Let’s undertake it together.

Please consider sharing this news, coming out, and/or tuning in.

We are a beginning.