Trillia Newbell, a Christian author, had just delivered a talk in Jackson, Tennessee, when a White man approached her.

Newbell, who is Black, had spoken about imago Dei -- the idea that all humans, of all races, are made in the image and likeness of God. The man disagreed."He explained that I was subhuman, that I was a different species," recalled Newbell. "And he was trying to use Scripture as proof."Newbell, 41, chooses her words carefully. But the Knoxville native is candid about the racism she's faced during her ministry, including the past seven years as a community outreach director for an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention."Too many times to name, I have gone after a speaking event and wept in my hotel room," Newbell recalled in a recent interview, "just realizing how deeply deceived some people are."Since the death of George Floyd in police custody in May, conservative White Christians have condemned racial injustice in unprecedented ways, with many acknowledging and pledging to fight the persistent scourge of systemic racism....

But even as they appreciate the scales falling from some White Christians' eyes, some Black Christians remain wary.

Black Success in America Is Often Met With "Whitelash"

In this op-ed, writer Kim Reynolds explains the history of "whitelashes" in the United States.

On November 9, 2016, CNN commentator Van Jones described Donald Trump’s nearly solidified victory to become president of the United States as a “whitelash.”

“This was a whitelash against a changing country, it was a whitelash against a black president, in part, and that's the part where the pain comes,” he said.

“Whitelash” is a unique and poignant word: It signifies a definite and determinant action in retaliation for the mobility of blackness that is an assertion of white supremacy. There are clear and distinct racial underpinnings that give voice to some of the reasons behind Trump’s election and also prove that this is not the first example of a whitelash in American history.

If we think about how and why whitelashes happen, we must begin with the invention of white supremacy, an ideology and structure that views white people as a dominant, superior race. This ideology was used to mobilize, justify, and create racialized slavery, which was used in the United States, with origins stemming from European colonizers, including the Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish.

The concept of white supremacy was legitimized during the 18th century through pseudoscience that sought to prove the inherent inferiority of black genetics. And while race is a social construct and pigmentation is genetically insignificant, such scientific “findings” were normalized in the public arena and installed in America.

While the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865 sought to abolish legal slavery, the racist architecture and legacy of slavery could not be wiped clean. One of America's first whitelashes, then, was the Jim Crow period that came in reaction to the period of Reconstruction.

Reconstruction took place from 1865 to 1877 and was marked by prosperity among many African-Americans: 16 African-Americans served in Congress, and over 600 African-Americans were elected to state legislatures. However, the end of Reconstruction was marked by the withdrawal of Union troops from the southern states, and white supremacy took hold again. The Klu Klux Klan resurged, and the 13th Amendment was being regularly exercised to enact convict leasing — a practice of leasing prisoners to do cheap or unpaid labor for private or public organizations, greatly resembling racialized slavery. Lynchings were happening with regularity, and segregation by law and by fact came into being.

The next whitelash came at the onset of the civil rights and black liberation movement of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, when an intense and significant mobilization of black people saw an equally intense backlash. Published in 1975 and 1976, the Senate-commissioned Church Committee reports revealed the extensive surveillance, conspiracy, and sabotage that was carried out by the government, the FBI, and allied powers against domestic antiracist and antiwar activist groups. Programs like COINTELPRO included illegal surveillance that was often manifested in violence against groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, helmed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The reports detail rampant wiretapping, fabrication of evidence, media agenda setting, infiltration via informants, and even assassination, like that of Fred Hampton. So while the civil rights movement is often romantically remembered, the swelling of black agency and political involvement was actively sabotaged and widely condemned.

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Many of the most draconian measures implemented in the first couple weeks of the new Trump Administration have been justified as emergency actions to root out D.E.I.—diversity, equity, and inclusion—including the freeze (currently rescinded) of trillions of dollars in federal grants. The tragic plane crash in Washington, the President baselessly suggested, might also be the result of D.E.I.

Typically, D.E.I. describes policies at large companies or institutions to encourage more diverse workplaces. In the Administration’s rhetoric, D.E.I. is discrimination pure and simple, and the root of much of what ails the nation. “D.E.I. is the boogeyman for anything,” according to Jelani Cobb, a longtime staff writer at The Atlantic, and the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. “If there’s a terrible tragedy . . . if there is something going wrong in any part of your life, if there are fires happening in California, then you can bet that, somehow, another D.E.I. is there.”

Although affirmative-action policies in university admissions were found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, D.E.I. describes a broad array of actions without a specific definition. “It’s that malleability,” Cobb reflects, and that makes D.E.I. a useful target, “one source that you can use to blame every single failing or shortcoming or difficulty in life on.”