Catholicism and the “Negro Question”: Religion, Racism, and Antiracism in a Transnational Perspective (United States and Europe, 1934-1968)

Project Information

US-E AntiRacism

Grant agreement ID: 794780

DOI

10.3030/794780

Project closed

EC signature date 23 February 2018

Start date 1 May 2019

End date 30 July 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 262 269,00

EU contribution

€ 262 269,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI GENOVA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - US-E AntiRacism (Catholicism and the “Negro Question”: Religion, Racism, and Antiracism in a TransnationalPerspective (United States and Europe, 1934-1968))

Reporting period: 2021-05-01 to 2022-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

US-E AntiRacism investigated how the Roman Catholic Church responded to anti-Black racism from the age of ‘overtly racist regimes’ to decolonisation, the civil rights era, and 1960s modernisation. In particular, it focused on Catholic ‘interracialism’ as a specific third way between (Nazi-style) racism and militant antiracism appealing to universal human rights.
These are the essential questions addressed by the project:

• How and why did interracialism become a common tenet in Catholicism?
• Did interracialism change Catholic race thinking?
• When did Catholic antiracism begin?

Catholic antiracism is often taken for granted. Racist views of Catholics have been regarded as something foreign to Christian universalism which ascribes to the status quo or to the mainstream biological theories. US-E AntiRacism seeks to reverse this ‘cultural captivity’ thesis, in the awareness that the Catholic stance towards identity politics and the #BLM global movement are best understood by looking at the way (and the limits) religious agencies historically handled the topic of race and Blackness.

This research project had three main objectives:
(1) The reconstruction of Catholic interracialism as a global network.
(2) The examination of interracialism as a particular way of antiracism, i.e. its key-concepts, images, practices, and paradoxes on both sides of the Atlantic.
(3) Writing a cultural history of Catholic antiracism, i.e. illustrating the Catholic evolution in the struggle for racial justice (from ‘interracialist’ to ‘antiracist’).
Scholarly debate has often been polarised between the cliché of natural Catholic antiracism and a broad definition of white supremacy as embedded in Western Christianity. As regards the conclusions of the action, the research program enhanced a nuanced interpretative framework aiming at: (a) revisiting the notion of racism as a cultural construct itself, gaining currency in the face of the German völkisch doctrine; (b) laying out an ‘epistemological’ history of how the Catholic Church has contributed to the conceptualisation of the antinomy racism/antiracism; (c) addressing ‘interracialism’ not just as a label referring to the history of American Catholicism and desegregation, but as a wider pattern which was shaped between the two sides of the Atlantic through mutual exchanges of ideas.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work performed comprises an extensive study of press sources and archival documentation in Italy, the Vatican City and the US. Different sources were combined: Catholic Magisterium and theological contributions; periodicals; missionary press/literature; devotional material; visual media. The research action also involved training activities, as well as communication and dissemination through publications and public events, which have been advertised on the project website www.useantiracism.com.
Three major research results have been achieved:

(a) Challenging well-established historiographical patterns. The project called into question the very notion of Catholic antiracism by focusing on an interracialist discourse that was strictly connected to a reductionist definition of racism (not necessarily encompassing anti-Black discrimination).

(b) Identifying a periodisation of Catholic antiracism. The research showed how an increasingly globalised focus on the Black Question (civil rights movement, apartheid, decolonisation) gradually framed a new sensibility.

(c) Investigating the antiracist politicisation of sainthood. Communities assimilated interracialism through liturgies and devotions too.


One can mention the organisation of the following conferences/workshops:

- "Nazione, razza e razzismi nell’Italia del Novecento", University of Florence (UNIFI), 6 June 2019.
- "Razzismi: retoriche e pratiche della discriminazione", UNIFI, 30 September-1 October 2019.
- "Catholicism, Race, and Anti-Racisms: New Historiographical Trends, Global Approaches, and Open Questions", Fondazione Romolo Murri, 21 October 2021–26 November 2021.
- "Anti-Racisms in Modern and Contemporary Italy", CENTRA-University of Genoa (UNIGE), 31 May-1 June 2022.

In addition to this, the research results were disseminated through the following conferences, workshops and other events:

- "Contro il razzismo. Per una storia dell’antirazzismo nell’Italia repubblicana", UNIGE-Luigi Firpo Foundation, Turin, 7 November 2019.
- Columbia University Seminar in Modern Italian Studies, “Discovering Antiracism: Italian Catholic Culture and the ‘Black Question’ (1945-1968)”, 15 January 2021.
- CENTRA seminar series, UNIGE, 25 March 2021 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDvOrZp1fPs) and 12 April 2022 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpbjkFwKts).
- "From Interracial to Antiracist: A Conversation about Catholicism, Racial Justice, and #BLM", Fordham University, 12 April 2021.
- "Stigma, Discrimination, Birth: Racisms and their Dis/Connection with the Christian Experience", FSCIRE, Bologna, 7-8 June 2021.
- "Theological Encounters of Race, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust in Transatlantic Context", 2022 Annual Seminar on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, USHMM, Washington, DC, 17-24 June 2022.

The project's contents were also presented in media, and outreach fora, e.g.

- Bright 2019 – European Researchers Night, Florence, 27 September 2019 (outreach conference).
“Oltre l’indignazione. Sul recente convegno sulle retoriche e le pratiche della discriminazione”, Il Regno – Attualità, 15 December 2019, pp. 661-662 (outreach article).
- “Catholicism and The ‘Negro Question’: A New Research Project”, http://www.centrastudies.org/?p=129 23 March 2021 (web article).
- "Non sono razzista ma… parliamone", Good Morning Genova radio network, 27 March 2021, radio broadcast.



Articles/book chapters:

- "«Con eterna voce al mondo intero ammoniscono fraternità»: i ‘martiri di Kindu’ e il culto dei soldati caduti per la pace", Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, 32 (2019): 191-223. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5634298.
- "Antirazzismo cattolico e questione nera nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra", Italia Contemporanea, 297 bis/2021: 17-54, https://journals.francoangeli.it/index.php/icoa/issue/view/1050.
- "Black Martyrs, Past and Present: Racial Violence, Christian Imagination, Secular Meanings", in M. Paiano (ed.), Violenza sacra, 2: Guerra santa, sacrificio e martirio in età contemporanea (Rome: Viella, 2022): 243-298, https://www.viella.it/libro/9788833138916/6252.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

US-E AntiRacism goes beyond the state of the art, and impacts scientifically and socially in three main ways: (1) it carries out a first transnational analysis on the history of Catholic antiracism; (2) it contributes to an overall investigation of Catholic discourse on anti-Black racism by reconsidering previous religious historiography in light of the cultural/global turn; (3) it has wider societal implications by placing into historical perspective the current debate on the relationship between antiracism, Christianity, and 'white privilege'.
The project results will be set out in a publication of a volume provisionally entitled “Discovering Antiracism: A Cultural History of Catholicism and the Black Question”, which will include an analysis of the turning point of the 1980s, when antiracism gained momentum as an opinion movement. This can be of interest for political scientists, sociologists, and scholars in ethnic and racial studies.

Drawing by Ade Bethune, "Interracial Review",1937.

Catholics in Action, "Treasure Chest" vol. 8, no. 15 (March 26, 1953), p. 33.

Interview with Martin Luther King Jr., "Nigrizia”, 1960.