Race, Racism, and the JFSR

Ten days after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the cochairs of the various units of Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) (the journal, the website, and the CoLaboratory) asked their boards to suggest initiatives to address systemic racism in both the larger society and within FSR. When I received the invitation as a member of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) board, it led me to ponder more deeply issues that I have thought about often over the years but have never tried to articulate for myself in a systematic way. As a cofounder of the JFSR and coeditor for its first ten years (1985–94) and then from 2012 to 2016, and as a member of the fiduciary board JFSR, Inc. from its founding, I have had a long and close-up view of the dynamics of race within FSR, particularly as they have played out at the journal. It struck me that I could best contribute to the conversation around race and racism by attempting to put on paper my own admittedly partial and interested understanding of race and racism in (J)FSR history and then looking to others who have worked on the journal and other FSR projects to share their different perspectives. I hope in this way to help expand and deepen the discussion that I am so grateful to the FSR editors for initiating.

To state my thesis clearly from the beginning: the editors of the JFSR have been committed to inclusion from the moment of founding the journal, and yet our/their efforts have not been enough to keep it from remaining a fundamentally white enterprise. How and why this should be is what interests me. I am intrigued by and want to explore the tension not just between intention and outcome but also between genuine achievement and outcome. How is that, when powerful Black women and other women of color have both sat on the editorial board and been coeditors, the container of the JFSR still feels like a white container? I believe this question is enormously important because the contradiction it raises is not unique to FSR. Many white-founded progressive organizations have active and engaged members of color and yet have been unable to genuinely alter the white supremacist ethos within which they operate. What is this about, and what would need to change for genuine transformation to be possible?

Let me start with the real accomplishments of the JFSR. (I am focusing on the journal because it is the original project of FSR and the one I know best.) Preliminary to writing this piece, I went through all issues of the JFSR, counted the number of (North American) women of color on the editorial board, and made a list of articles by women of color published by the journal. The original board of sixteen women had three Black members: Katie Cannon, Delores Williams, and Jacqueline Grant. Ten years in, women of color comprised 30 percent of the board; the percentage has never fallen below that and some years has reached as high as 45 percent. When I stepped down as coeditor after ten years, I was replaced by Emilie Townes. Emilie coedited the journal for six years and was then replaced by Kwok Pui-Lan for five years. After Pui-Lan, Stephanie Mitchem became coeditor for three years with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Melanie Johnson-DuBaufre. There were then two white coeditors for five years until Traci West became coeditor with me in 2014 and continued for four years.

While recognizing the ambiguities and complexities of deciding who and what writings by or about women of color, race, and racism should be counted, I came up with a list nine single-spaced pages long covering the thirty-six-year history of the JFSR. The list includes numerous articles read anonymously as part of the ordinary JFSR review process, invited pieces for roundtables and special sections, review essays, and Living It Out reports from different parts of the world. Some of the most exciting pieces the JFSR has published have been roundtables involving first-of...