New Books: Sally Hemings in Paris and Race and Theology

The Root features author Annette Gordon-Reed discussing how she came to write The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Part of the story follows Sally Hemings and her brother James to Paris (where they worked for Jefferson while he was ambassador there), of which she writes:

I learned much about the varied experiences of people of African origin during the time of slavery. It was particularly fascinating to recreate the lives of young James and Sally Hemings in pre-Revolutionary Paris, a place where they could have claimed their freedom. The pair received wages that were above the norm for servants in the country and moved about in a city where no one had reason to think of them as anything other than free persons of color. What did the experience mean to them?

The Root is excerpting the book all week.

Also of note is the new book Race: A Theological Account by up and coming religious studies scholar J. Kameron Carter. Oxford University Press says that "Carter's claim is that Christian theology, and the signal transformation it (along with Christianity) underwent, is at the heart of these legacies. In that transformation, Christian anti-Judaism biologized itself so as to racialize itself. As a result, and with the legitimation of Christian theology, Christianity became the cultural property of the West, the religious ground of white supremacy and global hegemony. In short, Christianity became white. The racial imagination is thus a particular kind of theological problem." If you are interested in an ongoing discussion of the arguments in this book, look here.