Feb. 27, 2018 | “They Do Not Know It and Do Not Want to Know It”: Racial Ignorance, James Baldwin, and the Authenticity of Christian Ethics

“They Do Not Know It and Do Not Want to Know It”: Racial Ignorance, James Baldwin, and the Authenticity of Christian Ethics

The Rev. Bryan N. Massingale, S.T.D., James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics

Tuesday February 27,  2018 | 6 p.m.
Keating Hall | First Floor Auditorium
Rose Hill Campus
A reception immediately follows the lecture in Keating Hall Rotunda.

RSVP by Tuesday February 13, 2018 by replying to visiting here.

Writing in the 1960s, James Baldwin declared that a central obstacle to achieving racial justice was the racial majority’s willful and cultivated ignorance of the situation facing people of color. Yet this kind of “ignorance” has not been critically examined in Catholic moral theology. This lecture explains the conceptual and race-based obstacles that hindered this engagement and the social consequences of this omission. It will also detail how key concepts in Christian ethical reflection will have to be reconfigured by the faith community and its scholars if they are to answer Baldwin’s challenge and become an effective force for racial justice in the United States.

Hosted by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President of Fordham University