History Is Lunch: Robert P. Jones, "The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy"

On September 20, 2023, Robert P. Jones presented “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” as part of the History Is Lunch series.

In his new book The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, Jones examines a little-known church doctrine that emerged in 1493 and shaped how European Christians would understand the “discovered” world and the people who populated it. Jones makes the case that human enslavement in the New World was a continuation of acts of genocide and dispossession flowing from the first European contact with Native Americans.

“These deeds were justified by people who embraced the belief that God had designated all territory not inhabited or controlled by Christians as their new promised land,” said Jones. “This reframing also allows us to understand how the nation’s founders could build the philosophical framework for a democratic society on a foundation of mass racial violence—and why this paradox survives today in the form of white Christian nationalism.”

The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy focuses on communities in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma navigating these contradictions. Jones makes connections between Emmett Till and the Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto in the Mississippi Delta, between the lynching of three Black circus workers in Duluth and the mass execution of thirty-eight Dakota men in Mankato, and between the murder of 300 African Americans during the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa and the Trail of Tears.

A starred review of the book in Publisher’s Weekly said “Arresting and deeply researched, this unique account brings to the fore the deep-rooted sense of ‘divine entitlement, of European chosenness’ that has shaped so much of American history. It’s a rigorous and forceful feat of scholarship.”

Jackson native Robert P. Jones earned his BS in computing science and mathematics from Mississippi College, his MDiv from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his PhD in religion from Emory University. He is the founder and CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute. Jones is the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award, and The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. He writes regularly on politics, culture, and religion for The Atlantic, TIME, and Religion News Service and is frequently featured MSNBC, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other national media.

History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.