White Supremacy & Weaponized Despair
Yes. This is a strange image to place before you as I introduce a conversation that occurred a couple of blocks away from the site of a recent anti-mask rally, but I have reasons. I am indeed David Dark of Nashville and Davidson County, but I’ve lived much of my life within Williamson County which includes Brentwood and Franklin. And some of the best days and nights of this life of mine occurred in a place called the Brentwood Three Cinema. It was destroyed long ago, and this is the only surviving image I could find. Do you know the name Jerry Reed? Does the phrase, “East Bound and Down,” have meaning for you? Anyway, Mr. Reed was one of the early investors in the only movie theater to ever exist in Brentwood. For a time, I was an assistant manager and a reasonably skilled projectionist there. It was also a space in which drama unfolded and viewing, listening, and reading recommendations were exchanged. There was a bookstore within walking distance where I bought my first copy of William Burroughs Naked Lunch. This was the eighties.
I share all this to note that Williamson County was and is something of a mixed bag even as it now plays host to Ben Shapiro, Dave Ramsey, Michael W. Smith, Jay Sekulow, Senator Marsha Blackburn, and others. One of my favorite people I associate with Williamson County is scholar/pastor/prophet, Kevin Riggs. He’s one of those exceedingly thoughtful Tennesseans whose accent might fool you. He’s as serious about the Bible and the possibility of church as just about anyone I know, but he doesn’t always land where you might imagine he’d land. We’ve known each other a little for most of my life, and we’ve gotten to know each better in recent years as we’ve found ourselves alongside each other in efforts to end state killing and challenge white supremacist terror in our state. His brother,actor and songwriter, Jonathan Riggs, is one of my best and oldest friends.
So, Kevin and I joined Kevin Sage on Floods of Justice, a Tennessee Holler Podcast just before the election in November. We talk Critical Race Theory, the attempt to market Christianity, and …so much else. It was such a pleasure to sit down at a table at a coffeehouse in downtown Franklin to discuss these matters. Please give it a listen and tell me what you think. At 50:20 or so, I tell a story about disgracing myself.