Questions at the Crossroads with Dr. Jamil Drake

A conversation with Dr. Megan Goodwin 

[00:00:00] Megan Goodwin Much better than now to market. Okay. Dr. Jamil Drake is a member of the Black Religious Studies Working Group, which is affiliated with the Crossroads Project. He is assistant professor of African American religious history at Yale University, and his first book, To Know the Soul of a People, Religion, Race and the Making of Southern Folk, is now available through Oxford University Press. Dr. Drake, thank you so much for joining me. 

[00:00:23] Jamil Drake Thank you, Dr. Goodwin, for having me itÕs glad to be in conversation with you. 

[00:00:28] Megan Goodwin Me too. This is great. So I am really excited to talk about your book. Can you give us a sense of what is the most important takeaway, the most important thing for readers to know about To Know the Soul of a People? 

[00:00:40] Jamil Drake Yes. That's a you know, thank you for your question. And what I want readers to sort of walk away with is this idea that the study of black religion actually contributed to their perceptions of the black lower class in American politics. Additionally, as it relates to that point, you know, it's also to show how the context of racial segregation and poverty in the agricultural South during the Depression and World War Two periods actually had a hand in the shaping of the study of Black religion. 

[00:01:13] Megan Goodwin Oh, that sounds fascinating. I'm really excited to read this. Yay. Hurrah. Sorry. Like, I can tell, I do a whole lot of very professional podcasts. 

[00:01:23] Jamil Drake Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We're both excited about what we do, and thank you. 

[00:01:28] Megan Goodwin Yeah, no, absolutely. I spent a lot of time with Ilyse, just cuss words all over the place. Like, right now I got a pair to get to put on my work pants. 

[00:01:37] Jamil Drake Right, right, right. 

[00:01:39] Megan Goodwin So, all right, I'm going to ask what is probably an unfair and arguably violent question, but just do the best you can. Can you distill the argument of your book for us and like 1 to 3 sentences? 

[00:01:51] Jamil Drake Yes. So in this book, I'm arguing essentially that, you know, the category of folk religion used among liberal social scientists and reformers actually contributed to this idea of of an underdeveloped, deficient black lower class, supposedly in need of moral and cultural development, as well as social and economic development and reform. 

[00:02:20] Megan Goodwin Mm hmm. Wow. That seems so needed and and so applicable in and just thinking so many different conversations. So I am a little bit familiar with your work, obviously, and grateful to be so. But if you were going to break down that category of folk religion for us, can you help us understand that a little bit better? 

[00:02:39] Jamil Drake Yes. So, I mean, you know, on one level, it means many things to different people in different groups. Right. I think within the sort of like discourse sort of study of African American religion, let's just say since the 1970s, in the 1980s, when we think about the likes of Lawrence Levine, or we think about the likes of other sort of cultural historians and religious historians, particularly in black religion. Folklore or ÒfolkÓ is actually a kind of resource that allowed historians and scholars to basically get at the ways in which people, in this case Black people on the underside of American modernity actually actually had a sense of agency that they were not sort of in some ways, victims to the very kind of pernicious, sort of racist like systems that they lived under. Right. That they created religion, that they that they thought that they had ideas about family, that they had a robust cosmology. And that is very much a part of our understanding of folk to get at that kind of interior, to get at the kind of cultural worlds that Black people have created since slavery. Right. From what I'm doing, though, is just to show another side of this ÒfolkÓ category that is also being used to in some ways classify a deficient, underdeveloped, you know, Black laboring poor population in the rural south, supposedly outside of the American mainstream or outside of American modernization. So while we have this romantic category where Lawrence Levine, even the likes of Albert Raboteau and others, where they're looking to folklore to kind of valorize the agency of Black people on the underside of American modernity. If we go back to the 1930s. Right. And I mean, they're drawing on like, you know, Zora Neale Hurston and they're drawn to Zora Neale Hurston. But there's another side where these liberal social scientists are actually using this folk category in their cause to develop a population that is sort of isolated from mainstream society. And this mainstream society, particularly not just social and economic industrial capitalism, but they're also isolated from the sort of advanced moral and cultural behaviors and conduct. 

[00:05:29] Megan Goodwin Okay. So if I'm if I understand correctly and tell me if I'm not right, because my my very first thought was the way that we talk about Zora Neale Hurston in ÒWitchesÓ class as we bring in Tell My Horse and we look at the kind of different ways of knowing and the different medical knowledge that she's bringing in through those stories. And that is it's very much a valorization. But I think what I'm hearing you say is that this category of folk also does work. At at the time and also in the construction of Black religious studies to categorize and I don't know if demean is the right word, Black folks as as isolated, as excluded, as fundamentally not modern because of these folkways. Is that fair? 

[00:06:17] Jamil Drake Exactly. Exactly right. And I mean, the likes of, you know, think about the social scientists coming out of, you know, the school where you were trained, like the University of North Carolina. Right. Chapel Hill. We think about, you know, the rise of kind of southern kind of Social Science or southern Sociology or folk Sociology. They're using this term and they're in earnest about trying to help African-Americans get access to social, economic resources, such as better, better schools, better housing, but also at the same time, they need development because they're underdeveloped, underdeveloped, and they're in some ways reifying, you know what, you know, Kathryn Lofton says this kind of Òperpetual primitive,Ó because in some ways they are privileging this kind of cultural, human, social, evolutionary model, right, that we get from, you know, the 19th century. But it's finding itself in the context of the Depression and World War Two periods, you know. So there are competing definitions of folk that I think my work is actually trying to bring to light. 

[00:07:32] Megan Goodwin Absolutely. Oh, that's fascinating. I was thinking this is ringing like Tyler Bell's in my head. 

[00:07:36] Jamil Drake Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

[00:07:39] Megan Goodwin But I mean, just trust Dr. Lofton to come up with a permanent primitive, because that's that's exactly it. Wow. That's fascinating. So, so, so excited to read this. And I have follow up questions, but I want to stick with the question that I sent because that's fair. And I'm also curious to see if this comes out in in your response. So what is at stake in this project? Why does this matter? 

[00:08:02] Jamil Drake Yeah. So they're like several stakes, I think. Right. And, you know, for the sake of like, you know, conversation and time, I'll just limit it to maybe two or three. I think, you know, in terms of thinking about the stakes and thinking about the stakes in light of our contemporary moment. Right. And also in light of the study of religion and Black religion in particular. So I think, though, that, you know, on one level, it's kind of what I stated. And, you know, first question, right, where the study of Black religion, you know, kind of underscores how populations and groups are raced, classed and gender.ed Right. So what I'm saying is that, you know, the kind of folklorization of Black religion intersects or it, you know, it relates to processes, or informs processes of race and class and gender formation, right? So folklorization is, as you know, folklore scholars have noted, folk historians have noted, folklorization is a process, right, of classifying a population. And I think the second point in light of this sort of relationship between race and class, right, that this book really tries to speak to this kind of entanglement. Right. Of race and class. Right. In other words, how these sort of liberal social scientists and liberal reformers were actually privileging the sort of economic situation and the class position of Black laborers, such as tenant farmers, sharecroppers and unskilled general workers in response to Jim Crow and white supremacy. In other words, they're emphasizing, you know, Megan, at one point, they're saying that the Black folk are not any different from the white folk, poor whites, particularly in terms of their religious practices. Yeah, if you think about the snake handlers and Pentecostals and so forth, and this is a way to move beyond biological notions of race and their privilege privileging class. But my work tries to show that this is a liberal strategy in order to advance African Americans within the constraints of Jim Crow governance. So there's an entanglement of like race and class. So we should no longer think of like, you know, you know, in today's sort of politics, the white working class or the the working class as a kind of a category that's separated from identity politics. Right. That race is always bound up in our notions of class, right. And this third point, I think, is basically saying that, you know, since I'm thinking about liberal reformers, those who are earnest, about, you know, granting Black people access to, you know, economic, you know, social resources within Jim Crow, right. It really shows how within liberal reform, even though they're talking about social and economic access, they are still very much preoccupied with these behavioral norms, or reforming black people to these behavioral norms. And in other words, it underscores how our notions of democracy, or our notions of freedom entail notions of right conduct or good religion that shapes the kind of reformist sort of liberal reformist sort of agenda basically. Right? 

[00:11:47] Megan Goodwin Of course. Of course. And of course, we know our sense of good religion and right conduct is infused with white Christian supremacy. So. 

[00:11:56] Jamil Drake And your work is like that. 

[00:11:59] Megan Goodwin You know it's true. It's true. I just. But what about me, though? What about Tyra? But no, I mean, it's fascinating because on the one hand, I feel I'm hearing you say that this category of folk is a knowledge-making category. It teaches us how to know these populations É like it is doing racialization, it is doing class and classification, if we want to use it that way and trying to both argue for I don't know if it's solidarity, but certainly resonance between the Black working class and the white working class. And I'm like, I see a lot of that in early 20th century, like socialism texts. Not that I do. I spend a lot of time in a like and Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs sort of way. And I always that's always an uncomfortable space for me because on the one hand, like, fuck yeah, solidarity forever. On the other hand, it does real violence to the movement and to real people to claim that race isn't part of this or that the experience of a white working class is equivalent to the experience of a Black working class. So that's that's tricky. Well, there's a lot going on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:13:13] Jamil Drake Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I can go on. I mean, this is why I like the context of, you know, the Great Depression and World War Two periods. I mean, because even among these sorts of social scientists who are in some ways thinking about a kind of liberal bureaucratic reform, a kind of top down reform, where we could bring modernization or right behavior, right conduct, you know, better pay, better schools to these underdeveloped people. You do get the kind of what you're talking about, the kind of organizing as the, you know, the Communist Party, USA, as they're going into, you know, rural Alabama and organizing black farmers and white farmers or sharecroppers, you know, organizing across the racial divide. And a lot of scholars now are talking about that. I just want to in some ways and I'm not saying these scholars are necessarily doing this, but I don't think we can disentangle, right, race from class, you know? Particularly in light of our our political moment where quote unquote, Black politics gets defined and demeaned as identity politics. But when we talk about workers, the whiteness becomes invisible. Right. 

[00:14:28] Megan Goodwin Very much so. And you're encouraged to make it invisible. All of us are encouraged to make it invisible. And we're arguing that it's good for everyone, but not paying attention to the specific vulnerabilities of race, depression. 

[00:14:40] Jamil Drake Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:14:42] Megan Goodwin And one of the real contributions I see you're making here, too, is extending the timeline around these conversations around class solidarity, because I think there has been more attention to this happening, say, in the 1970s. And the moment that's really sticking in my head is I mean, obviously it's a dramatization, but Jesus and the Black Messiah, when you've got Fred Hampton coming in and pulling in white supremacists with the the Panthers and the The Young Lords. That's right. And like and I remember looking at this and being like, Jesus, no wonder there were so fucking scared of him. But I don't I don't think activists in that space ever stop knowing that they're in the room with white supremacists. They might work around it. That's short term pragmatic, but like the race is always there. So to watch like a Bernie Bro in 2016 argue that it's really just about class and we need to stop thinking about race is just, that is frustrating. So to have that extended back beyond the seventies, into the twenties and thirties, I think is a real material contribution to how we're thinking about all of the issues that you're raising around religion and race and class and gender. 

[00:15:47] Jamil Drake And that's a profound point. I'm sorry to cut you off at a profound point. You know, we may extend this this talk, for the sake of time, though. Yeah. I think what we're getting at in terms of like class solidarity, you know, it's a point in my book where they're emphasizing class, they're emphasizing poverty. And yes, you know, these things are actually there. I mean, you know, you know, when you look at the sort of plight of, you know, tenant farmers, sharecroppers in their book, but these you know, it's it's abject poverty, right. But at the same time, these sort of liberal bureaucrats are making choices. They're being strategic as it relates to how do we you know, how do we advance, you know, the cause of African Americans to these sorts of white powerbrokers in the South? We need to emphasize that they have the potential to be good workers. We need to emphasize that, you know, if you take care of their health needs, they will provide for you materially. If you take care of their schools and stuff, they will actually help a kind of dilapidated, ah, kind of underdeveloped southern agricultural economy, right. And so there are strategies being made as it relates to emphasizing the folk are emphasizing class and frankly using the term from Tyler and others by saying these Black people are basically America's peasants. You know what I mean? 

[00:17:21] Megan Goodwin Yeah, yeah. No, I just. Yeah, sorry. That's just the that that capitalism weighing on my soul. 

[00:17:26] Jamil Drake Absolutely. Absolutely. 

[00:17:27] Megan Goodwin You want to take care of people, not because they're humans and they deserve care. Because they they would be better cogs in a. [Drake: That's right.] You know what? I read a tweet one time where somebody said that regular health insurance doesn't include your teeth because you can work without them. And I've never been right. And it's isn't that bad. 

[00:17:44] Jamil Drake That's right. That's right. That's right. 

[00:17:47] Megan Goodwin So I am I want to be aware of your time. We've got about 20 minutes, so no rush. And the other thing I was going to say, too, is I don't, you wouldn't have seen this because you're smart enough not to be on social media. But I accidentally started a book. Right? Series for Religion Dispatches called ÒPhoning It In,Ó where I don't really read the book, I ask you a bunch of questions about like the premise is we basically pretend we're back in seminar and I was supposed to read the book, but I didn't. 

[00:18:12] Jamil Drake I got it.

[00:18:16] Megan Goodwin But if you're interested, I would love to have you on and it would be great to have kind of multiple platforms for your stuff. 

[00:18:22] Jamil Drake Absolutely. I would love to do that. And thank you. Thank you so much. 

[00:18:26] Megan Goodwin Yeah, please. So I will I'll get in contact with you about that. So all of that is to say that, like, I want to keep talking to you about this because this is so interesting, but we don't have to get to everything today and it's okay. 

[00:18:35] Jamil Drake Right. Right. 

[00:18:37] Megan Goodwin But so the I had a follow up question about the stakes, and then we can get to the broader field piece if you don't mind. 

[00:18:44] Jamil Drake Okay. 

[00:18:45] Megan Goodwin And if this isn't relevant, feel free to just be like, no, this isn't my project. I don't to talk about it. But the. The first place that my brain went. When you're talking about all of these kind of essentialist logics around the category of folk and the -- again the kind of Black laborers as permanent, primitive, permanent primitives or survivals. I just I feel I know, frankly, that there's so much of that language and so much of that logic in the carceral system of what's now the United States. And I'm curious if that. Mm yeah. Isn't part of what's at stake in your work as well? 

[00:19:27] Jamil Drake No, absolutely. I mean, in some ways, I mean, the folk category and the quote unquote, as the term was actually being used by these liberal social scientists, they're using it in such a way where you see the kind of antecedents or the precursors to the Black underclass. And that Black underclass concept when we that where we get in the 1970s, in the 1980s and dealing with some of it today is where you have a population inhabiting, you know, the urban ghettos. Right. And who are prone to, you know, having children out of wedlock, dropping out of school. They are prone to like crime and violence. They're prone to drug use. They are, you know, taking advantage of the welfare system. They don't want to work. They're lazy. And this is the kind of, you know, the antecedents for me of this Black underclass concept that we see in the Moynihan Report that we see. And, you know, whether it's, you know, Nixon, Reagan, you know, and particularly Reagan and we see some of it today in terms of how we think about welfare, that basically we always in American politics, we always go to a set of sets of behavioral, ehavioral deficits, right. Pathologies, right. And so we see the antecedents being like, you know, the folk Negro, the southern, rural, agricultural, you know, Black subject. Right. And this is in some ways the kind of, you know, after this sort of, you know, thirties into World War Two period, we start to see the kind of the criminalization, particularly once we think about, you know, these kinds of urban urban ghettos apart from or marginal to mainstream, which is, I guess would be suburban America, right? Yeah. Mm hmm. 

[00:21:32] Megan Goodwin Yeah. No, I just. I'm just sitting here thinking. Absolutely. With the Reagan and the Nixon 100%. But also it just feels like a hop, skip and a jump and a jump from a permanent, primitive or folk category to a super predator. 

[00:21:49] Jamil Drake Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as religious scholars, I mean, we have, you know, historians, you know, like, you know, Elizabeth Hinton, you know, talking about the criminalization. And we have others talking about the criminalization. I mean, we, you know, we we we think about works that I, I can't I can't actually recall now, but religion is kind of absent, right? You know, it's kind of like, you know, the moralism that goes into criminalization. And so you have scholars in religion now who are bringing religion to the fore when we think about criminalization or the carceral state. Right. And so, you know, on this kind of intellectual level, these social scientists are in some ways, given this sort of like the ideas that I think leads to the kind of criminalization, among other factors. Right? Mm hmm. 

[00:22:41] Megan Goodwin Right. And I don't want to I don't want to reduce the impact of your work and the importance of your work to conversations about carceral systems, either. Because I think that they did serve us, but it did. It struck a resonance for me. Thank you. Let's zoom back. Mm hmm. How does your book fit into the broader field of black and or African American religions? 

[00:22:59] Jamil Drake Yeah. So, I mean, in some ways, you know, I can just talk about, you know, this work came about, you know, from, you know, scholars like Barbara Savage and Curtis Evans. And my book kind of joined them in a sense by, you know, first showing just the importance of the social sciences to the study of Black religion. Right. That we can't think about Black religion apart from, you know, anthropology, sociology, you know, psychology and so forth. Right. And I think following that line, we see, you know, continuing kind of, you know, Savage and continue continuing Curtis's excuse me, Evan's book and approach. When you sort of think about, you know, the relationship between Black religion and the history of the social sciences. You also see the tension between the tension between Black religion and modern politics, right? Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:24:09] Megan Goodwin Can you say a little bit more about that? 

[00:24:11] Jamil Drake Absolutely. No. I mean, there's this idea, obviously, that, you know, if you think about, you know. I'm thinking about, you know, Dr. Savage's work. And, you know, there's an idea in Black religion that essentializes is a particular kind of portrait are picture of the Civil Rights Movement, the modern Civil Rights Movement. So maybe in, you know, popular American culture, when we think about black religion, it you know, we think about, you know, Martin Luther King, we think about SCLC, how we think about a form of liberal kind of progressive Protestantism. Right. That in some ways, the Civil Rights Movement is just a natural evolution of what black religion is. Right. And so when we think about, you know, the 1930s, in the 1940s, that's really not the case. Right. It's not a natural evolution that culminates in the Civil Rights Movement that Black religion is sort of wedded to this kind of like maybe liberal or kind of mainstream, a kind of modern politics, there are debates, there are fissures, theyÕre there's tension. And these liberal social scientists, some of them being black and some are being a part of an emerging middle and professional class. They want to rid their people of these sort of folk beliefs. Some people will call this the kind of politics of respectability. But I think in our very notions of freedom and our very notions of democracy, it entails, as you know very well from your work, and your research, a certain notion of right sex, of right conduct, of right behavior that, you know, all groups feel pressure to conform to, and particularly Black people in this way. Yeah. 

[00:26:17] Megan Goodwin Absolutely. 

[00:26:18] Jamil Drake Mm hmm. 

[00:26:19] Megan Goodwin There's just not so much here. Okay. Our last question is where you see your work and the field of Black and African American studies or sorry, Black and African American religions. Where do you see them heading next? 

[00:26:32] Jamil Drake Well, that's a good question. And I you know, I think, you know, the field of Black religion, it's in, you know, good hands, you know, particularly the Crossroads Project. And many of my colleagues are just doing very they're doing exciting work. So I can just talk about a piece of where I think the field is going. And of course, I'm thinking about my work in light of Judith WeisenfeldÕs new work. Right, in terms of like thinking about Black religion and psychiatry. Right. And so even as I'm talking about the social sciences and I'm thinking about the sciences, I'm interested in how the field is thinking about the relationship between Black religion and these other sort of scientific, ah, quote unquote, non-religious discourses, right, or organizations are networks in institutions. So in other words, we can understand the FBI are we can understand welfare politics, we can understand the sciences, we can understand historically black colleges or we can understand psychiatry, mental health, public health, which is my new work, when we study Black religion. 

[00:27:49] Megan Goodwin Right. So Black religion as a way of understanding these fields, of knowledge making, of of creation, of knowledge. This is. Yeah, I love that. I would love to hear a little bit more about your your work in Black religion and public health, if you don't mind. 

[00:28:03] Jamil Drake Yeah, no, it's you know, it all started just thinking about, you know, as I was, you know, working at Florida State. You know, there's chapter three of my book looks at the history of the syphilis experiment study that actually, you know, that actually started, as, you know, a project to rid Black farmers, particularly in Alabama and other parts of the Black belt south of syphilis. Right. When we when we think about the organizers, particularly the Julius Rosenwald Fund working with Fisk University, a historically Black college, and part of what they're doing is as they're trying to educate, you know, Black farmers, quote unquote, formerly uneducated É outside of medicine, they're they they they are in some ways saying that in order for us to modernize these Black farmers, in other words, in order for them to trust modern medicine, we have to go to the churches. We have to make appearances at their churches, we have to reform their theologies. That makes them in some ways not rely on folk superstition, but also rely on not also, but rely on modern medicine. And that just opened up so many avenues. And so, while at Florida State working with midwifery, you know, I just I'm waiting for this article. It's under review right now. But I discovered a program at FAMU, which is another historically land grant Black college in Tallahassee, Florida, in the 19 in the 1940s during World War Two. And these midwives, as the sort of Florida health state and this is happening all over the South, they have to turn to, quote unquote, uneducated black midwives who are not formally trained medically to help modernize birthing in these, quote unquote, isolated rural areas in the South. Right. And so they the modern medical organization there, depended on them to, you know, distribute this knowledge and distribute some of the techniques to their people. But in order to be a part of this program, this midwifery program, as they're trying to modernize birthing among Black folks by relying on these midwives to do the work of the state and medicine, they are making them they're making them get recommendation letters from their pastors, male pastors, to validate to validate their to validate their moral capacity to deliver babies and to be licensed as a midwife by the state. And so, in other words, this kind of what Judith is doing, Judith Weisenfeld is doing. We can't think about modern medicine, we can't think about modern health without Black religion. So Black religion, not only does modern health has something to say to black religion, but we can't understand what what is modern health devoid of this work among black people. And this is what I'm most excited about, particularly in light of our moment where state health departments, state governments, in light of all that, are turning to churches to disseminate knowledge and techniques, meaning vaccines and shots and so forth, right? 

[00:31:46] Megan Goodwin Yeah, COVID was my first thought, but my second thought was, of course, that the staggeringly high mortality rate among black mothers trying to deliver in the U.S. and I am listening to you realizing that there must there must be a huge religious component to how communities are responding to that, to where else folks are trying to have babies because it's not safe to try to have one in a hospitl. But I just there's so much there. Oh, that sounds really exciting and fascinating. I am. 

[00:32:15] Jamil Drake Absolutely. 

[00:32:17] Megan Goodwin Excited to read the article if and when it ever gets through peer review. 

[00:32:21] Jamil Drake Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. 

[00:32:24] Megan Goodwin I know editors are doing the best they can. Everybody is just done. 

[00:32:28] Jamil Drake Oh yeah. Yeah. 

[00:32:30] Megan Goodwin This was great, Jamil. I'm so excited to read this. I thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, I guess. Is there anything else you want to say about your work before we sign off? 

[00:32:41] Jamil Drake No. You know, Megan, I'm actually, you know, grateful for this opportunity to be in dialog with you and, you know, to be in dialog with you and your work and your contribution. And thank you to the Crossroads Project for giving me this opportunity. And I'm you know, I'm just, you know, developing with by being a part I'm developing by being a part of this group. And I'm learning so much about Black religion and its new avenues, new directions, because I'm a part of this group, so I'm just grateful. 

[00:33:19] Megan Goodwin That's amazing. Thank you so much. I'm going to stop recording