Ep. 79 – Shoutin’ in the Fire: A Conversation with Danté Stewart about Black Joy, Grief, and Survival

Race and Democracy Episode 79 – Dante Stewart
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[00:00:00] Voiceover: Welcome to race and democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race democracy, public policy, social justice, and citizenship.

[00:00:21] Peniel: Okay. We are excited to be in conversation with my friend, Dante Stewart. Who is a writer, speaker, and author of shouting in the fire, an American epistle named by the center for American progress as one of 22 faith leaders to watch in 2022. And by religion news service as one of 10 up and coming faith influencers Dante’s work has appeared in the New York times, the Washington post ESPN’s Andscape.

Sojourners NPR, CNN and more Dante. Welcome to race and democracy brother.

[00:00:58] Dante: Hey, what’s up brother? So good to be with you, man.

[00:01:02] Peniel: Well, thanks for being here. I’ve got your book shouting in the fire, and I wanna talk about this book, but I wanna, um, in American epistle, one of my favorite books of, of the year, uh, and, and I’ve read it twice, you know, so this is, you know, this is a book written.

With sort of the fierce urgency of now that Dr. King talked about, but also in that, um, passionate essayist voice of, of James Baldwin, uh, the June Jordans, uh, the folks who really, you know, obviously Ralph Ellison, the folks who really know how to craft. um, an essay. And I wanna talk about writing. I wanna talk about this, you know, so much, but I wanna start with, um, these recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, uh, New York.

Uh, you, you, you did a terrific appearance on NPR here and now you’re working on a new book about grief and talking about grief and trauma. So much of your work, uh, deals with that, both in shouting in the fire, but you have a large social. Media presence as well. So I want to, in a, in a way you’re, you’re sort of.

Uh, a voice of, of a new generation I’m I’m 20 years older than you. So I can say that and not in a way that I’m, I’m really impressed, indeed admire and really inspired by. So I, I want you to talk to us about, uh, Buffalo and UVA. I organize things in Texas for, for, uh, in the aftermath of Buffalo, RO op ADSS, um, racist, mass shooting.

In the Maston neighborhood of east Buffalo, and then, um, you know, all of our babies being killed and murdered in Uvalde, um, just a few days later and this happening right around the second anniversary of George Floyds murder and public execution and the year of racial reckoning during the pandemic. So talk to talk to me about that and what are your feelings yeah.

About that?

[00:02:58] Dante: Yeah. Yeah. First of all, thank you so much, uh, for having me on. Benefited tremendously from your mind and your work. Um, I have your books on my shelf. They’re all marked up with my black pen that I always write with precise V seven. That’s the only, so when I come to Texas, that’s the only pen I write with precise V seven.

Um, you know, and, and that’s, I, I think about these moments right now, one of the lines that I wrote in my piece with ESPN, that, that, you know, I talked about with NPR was. You know, in these moments, I feel like one of the challenging things is that we go first to policy and we miss the humanity. You know, and the work that we do, especially since around race, religion, politics, democracy, you know, critical and central to the work that we do.

And even the traditions that we come from is these black radical traditions, um, that think deeply about democracy that think deeply about citizenship that think deeply about the order of things or the ways in which. Um, the, the D MOS, uh, to use that language, the ways in which the D Moss is ordered and, and how community, the oils, uh, uh, functions.

Uh, and so I think critical to that is figuring out, you know, the, these policies and practices and principles that will shape in order the world where all people have the freedom to breathe, to live and to explore what it means to be fully human and fully loved. But also I think critical to our work is also revealing the humanity behind all of these killing.

I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m driving this morning. I’m dropping my son off to school and the reporter, I listened to NPR, Facebook, NPR listener, uh, and which, which made me so happy to be even invited. I was shook, uh, that I was, that I was on NPR. I literally stopped the car and I listened to it when I was on and recorded it.

I was listening to NPR this morning. I was dropping my son off. As I’m dropping him off, I’m literally about five minutes away from school. And the reporter says today, three children are being buried. And I think about this moment that like, yo, so many of our lives have quote moved on. You know, we, we moved on to the next situ um, you know, right now the big thing in the news, at least for the other day, You know, you know, Johnny de and Amber heard, or young thug and charges, uh, in Atlanta or, you know, things that’s going on in Ukraine, things like that.

Um, and yes, the shootings in all there, Buffalo and the news, but also, I don’t want us to lose that. These are families that have to bury their children right now, as we’re taking our children to school. Yeah. You know, it’s June right now, some of our children are out and playing. We can’t take for granted the, the ability to hear them sing and to hear them ask to put on their favorite TV show, we can’t lose the ability to remember that as we’re making our bacon, egg, and cheese, or, you know, like me, I’m mostly vegetarian as I’m making my rap this morning.

Like these parents are probably crying. They’re they’re, they’re they’re outta rote memory. They, they, they have placed their child’s things in a certain plate. And a child child is not there anymore. So, so much of what I’m feeling right now in this piece, characterizing this line is an apology and, and not the apology.

That’s like, you know how, when things happen, people apologize or we we’re so, so sorry this happened. I think that’s cool. But like, for me, it was about like, yo, you do not deserve. Deserve to carry both the argument for your humanity and the love necessary to protect. See, that’s what we, we, we can’t get like, like I am so sorry that these families and even us who suffer vicariously through them who have been given their wars, like, because we exist together in a country where.

Police don’t respond because you are from a certain zip code or you’re from a certain school. So whatever protocol they go through, they don’t respond to that. Or somebody seeks you out hours away because you’re doing what you normally do. And that’s just simply be human. I’m so sorry that we have to, so many of us have to carry both the argument for our humanity and the love necessary to protect it.

And that’s what I’m feeling in this moment. I don’t want us to lose that humanity. As we’re arguing for change as we’re arguing for better as we’re grieving and all of these things, man, I don’t want us to forget that these parents first are breaking. The communities are breaking. The children are breaking and we are holding so much that we need to heal from.

And I hope, I hope, I don’t know. About months, weeks, years, decades, however long it takes us. To figure out how to be together and to love one another and to do better and to imagine better. I hope we do it. So that’s kind of where my heart at right now.

[00:08:32] Peniel: No, thank you. Powerful. I appreciate those words. I, I think those are it’s, it’s a great, uh, uh, entree into your book because your book, uh, shouting in the fire is really a memoir.

Um, it is an American epistle. It’s an African American epistle. Uh, you talk about growing. In the Pentecostal church in South Carolina, you talk about being an athlete at Clemson. You talk about your, your time. I don’t know if you’d call it a detour, but the time in, in sort of white, white evangelical spaces and sort of the impact that had on you in your heart, um, and then you talk really about.

And I wanna talk about all these things. You talk about the, the, the police killings of black men and women, and sort of the impact that they had on you. And you’re trying to both stay in that white Evangel, white evangelical space, but you were also trying to talk about structural racism and you were trying to talk about police brutality and you were trying to talk about white supremacy in those spaces.

and you found you found no support in those spaces. Mm-hmm right. Um, and in a way, this book documents, all of that. Um, so, you know, I’d love to talk to you about all that and really start at the beginning in terms of, you know, you talk about growing up this young black boy in South Carolina, you know, your family, your extended family.

Um, just talk about that, that, you know, how South Carolina shaped you. Sort of how the color line within South Carolina shaped you. And I’m very interested in, in South Carolina, the older I get, because even in my new book, South Carolina and you and a friend of mine, Charlemagne Tha God are, are both from the same.

[00:10:23] Dante: Yeah, yeah. Wanted, yeah. Yeah. You know, he hear a little bit, but we built he from, I think, Charlemagne from Charleston name. Yeah, I

[00:10:29] Peniel: think so. And, and South Carolina was the only state in the Confederacy. With a majority black population mm-hmm so when we think about right after the civil war, even at South Carolina, it’s much different politically.

Now, if there had been equality, South Carolina, would’ve had a black governor, would’ve had two black senators and you talk about black power. Would’ve been in South Carolina.

[00:10:57] Dante: Hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. When I think about South Carolina, bro, I, I, I gotta give love to where I’m from. So I grew up between. Sandy run South Carolina, uh, specifically sugar hill where my granddad, my grandma lived, um, where so many memories were developed, uh, where, where so much, you know, of, of, of what we want to be like culture and.

Just embody black life. So much of it is there, but then also give up the Swanee cuz it’s where my parents live. Um, and where, you know, my church was at, uh, Emmanuel church. That’s where our church was at. So we kind of at that black Swanee, but then also, I mean, I gotta give up to St. Matthews bro, which shaped me and inform me at my high school count kind high school, you know, uh, John Ford, middle school, you know, Sandy, Ron elementary, all these places.

And I think about, you know, as I get older and I’m 30th, I’m 30 right now. And then, you know, the old, I. You know, the more I, I try and go back and try and, you know, figure out home and try and figure out like what, what type of things did I learn that I lost over time? And I go back to my own, like, like high school days and, and middle school days, and just growing up between like Sanon and Swansea and, and, and St.

Matthews, you know, so much of that world. You know, was, was insular in the best way. Um, you know, I, I, I think about my childhood and, and, and like my parents with religious, I raised Pentecostal. Um, my family is a big, big family. Uh, my granddaddy was very active in the community. Um, my high school was very active as one of these rural schools when it came to, you know, civil rights.

And then particularly, I, I don’t know if people talk about this. Is the 1970s and the 1980s and the struggles, the black radical struggles in rural places and the 1970s, 1980s. When so many of these schools are still, you know, pushing back against, you know, federal mandate of desegregation mm-hmm, , they’re creating their own schools and their curriculum just so they can uphold the kind of white supremacist super structure.

So that they can, uh, enslave our minds and kind of control our bodies and our movements. And I come from a place and people who both fought against that. But who also created an alternative world within the ways we lived, the both that had our being that let us know that yo like the world out there is not the only thing true about life, but there is a world inside of here that we create that we live in, that we, that we love that, that, that gives you something, uh, more than, and like, My, my upbringing is it’s like, there’s like this whole idea about like black excellence that people don’t like really like, because a lot of times, you know, so much of black excellence is also about black respectability and proving ourselves to white people.

Um, and, and whatever, things like that. And that’s a legitimate thing, you know, especially, you know, going into the 1980s, the 1990s, um, even with the rise of like artists and athletes and this whole kind of respectability going back to the hood, saving the fluids, saving. Black dudes and black girls from all these things so that white people, you know, like us and actually be better.

Um, we need to deal with that. But then also I want to also say that there is a gift of black excellence that I was given as a young, from my granddaddy, from my grandma, from my mother, from my father. That even if they were nurse a nurse, like my mama, or even. You work at Walmart? Like my daddy, there was something about being sh being in the world and showing up in the world in a way that said that whatever is in my hands, whatever Menal thing is in my hands, when it guts in my hands, it is a miracle and I must treat it as if it is such.

I must treat it as if it is precious. I must treat it as if my children. When they turned 30, we were called it and write it in a book. And so I that’s, my upbringing is that it was so powerful that even though I went off to Clemson and left and, and, you know, kind of got in with the white folk, it was something that continued to call me again and again and again, and again and again.

Um, and so that’s kind of my upbringing and, and I could even talk about sports too, cause I, I mean, my, my town was just like a sports town, so. So Don

[00:15:24] Peniel: one, one thing I want to talk about within that, I wanna talk about the black Pentecostal church, but you have over here page 53, you say my mama and my dad would always tell us about all the ways they used to be terrified.

Uh, Martin is dead. Um, they remembered Medgar being murdered, his wife and children, seeing his black body in the driveway and his dead black body in the hospital. They remember Malcolm in all the ways that he told them that they were black and. And the terrible experience of learning that his voice had been silenced as the hot lead entered his flesh.

Um, and later you, you talk about, um, um, beating what little love was left in us. Uh, they remember the cruelty. I, I I’d love to talk just for a second about. That the terror and the Greek, but also within the context of the black church, cuz I grew up in the black church too, in my case, New York city, south side, Jamaica, Queens, new Betho Baptist church, a Baptist church.

So, so you grew talk to me about that and the Pentecostal experience, you know, in terms of shaping you, you know, this idea yeah. Of, of, of terror, but then. Ecstasy. Oh, 100% Pentecostal church. And the, the, the sort of speaking in tongues and deliverance, because in the book, like a hundred church, even though we don’t speak in tongues, it is not a quiet church.

It’s a church. Oh, 100 reading this, there was a lot of similarities between the church. Oh yes. The church and the church that I grew up in, in New York city. And I, and we really attended church, not just once a week. We

[00:17:02] Dante: were in church years. Yeah.

[00:17:05] Peniel: Years. So I wanna talk, talk to me about that experience.

[00:17:09] Dante: Oh one.

So, so much of church we have to realize is like working within like these class structures of the rural south, where so many of the Pentecostal, you know, congregants that I grew up in, in the manual church who, a working class, black folk. And so you got these working class, black folk. Who are coming from.

So many of these men jobs they’re coming from structures that, you know, want to both exhaust them and exploit them. And then when they get to church, you know, this is like one of the only spaces outside of like your home or outside of your cookouts or whatever. This is one of the only spaces where you are giving power to make decisions about your life and other lives that can shape people’s.

So when one stands in front of the pool pit, it doesn’t matter what some white person said out there. It doesn’t matter what they did out there. In this moment of being in front of a pu pit, you are empowered by God to speak a word that can change somebody’s life. Uh, it don’t matter what kind of thing you heard out there in the world when you get on the choir or when you stand behind an instrument that is yours and there’s a sort of possession, uh, both of it’s yours to have, but then also it’s something that enters.

So when I, when I, when I think about the Pentecostal church that I grew up in so much of this church space, uh, created an alternative world. I I’m thinking particularly of like Jarvis Gibbons and his book, um, uh, fugitive pedagogy, fugitive pedagogy, where he’s talking about, you know, black teaching or Ash, Sean Crowley, when he’s talking about black Pentecostal breath, he’s talking about, both of them are getting at these kind of.

Stealing away, black humanity from the ways in which it was stolen from us. So taking back our dignity, our power, our creativity, you know, our intellectual capacity to create life and liberation and love. And so when I think about. The Pentecostal church that I grew up in and the kind of larger Pentecostal history going all the way back, um, to William Seymour, um, going all the way back to, you know, even the breaking of like, you know, COJ church, God in Christ and, and church of our Lord Jesus Christ and like the sixties and beyond, and all these, um, kind of splinter movements of Pentecostalism that went all over.

Uh, the country, whether by, by way of religion, whether by way of arts, whether it’s by way of music, you know, Pentecostalism have shaped so much of the black American experience when it relates to how we relate to our bodies and religious experience, you know, how we relate to one another and this kind of sharing.

As a gift, something to give one another, this experience together. Um, and, and, and, and really, you know, when I think about even going back to the time of enslavement, uh, and the hush harbors, where, where before Pentecostal ever was a actual. Term in lexicon, the religious and, and kind of social lexicon.

This was already an experience where, you know, people would be caught up in these ecstatic experiences, uh, or they would gather in small little communities and would say that the divine is. Speaking directly to them. Um, and so even today, when, when you read my book, there’s a cadence. And when you read my writing in general, there’s a cadence to my writing that some don’t resonate with, cuz some say, you know, it’s, you know, like too preachy and I, it is cool.

It’s cool with that. And I’ll try and give them what they need. You know, I, I, I work at, I try and develop my craft as a writer, as much as I can to. You know, lean on the writing of like fiction writers or try and mix up things, or when it comes to like novel and verse or poetry and try and take from those type of writing that, that, that, that feels like myself, but also.

That resonates with other, uh, communities. So some people don’t like really resonate with it like that, but for me, like Pentecostal living shapes, who I am in so much of the ways I name see and act within the world to say that, okay, wherever black people dwell together, whatever marginalized communities dwell together, that place is sacred and whatever.

Place is, it must be transformative. And if it’s not transformative, then we need to do something to reimagine that structure and that experience. But as an artist, there is something about my text. That Pentecostalism should give new language. Like it gives new language to something that has already been known or experienced.

So of course, people know cultural criticism and history and theology, but I want, when people read me that there is something of newness to the type of style of writing I’m trying to do and things like that. So yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s how it shaped me, but then that’s kind of the experience of Pentecostalism as a

[00:22:12] Peniel: kid.

And I think you succeed there admirably. I wanna talk to you about, you know, in the chapter rage you talk about, um, it wasn’t Jesus, nor James Baldwin who radicalized me. It was white people, apathetic white people. Now, before I talk about with you, that discussed with you that radicalization, what, what inspired you to join the evangelical

[00:22:33] Dante: church?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz a lot of people asked me that and, and people wanted that particularly for like young, young black people. How, how do they get caught up in this? And for me it was sports. So, so many of us who go off into white colleges, predominantly white institutions like Clemson, um, where I attended, we, we, we really get involved in these communities by way of like FCA.

Um, or athletes in action, you have all these kind of white Christian organizations that are particularly geared towards discipling and ministering to athletes. Um, and from an athlete standpoint, we just think that like, yo, we are we’re. We are just going to get spiritually fair, cuz you know, the way, one of the things about black people, the way we do religion.

You could get spirituality from anywhere really, you know, it ain’t really like this kind of bifurcated experience or bifurcated world. Um, you know, you may be Pentecostal and, and your people might be like, yo, come home and, and come back to your home church and things like that. But there’s a part of black religious experience that is.

That is, that has somewhat of an orientation to war, like inter religiosity, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm, like, there’s, there’s something about like, like, like, like almost like Alice Walker in the color purple, uh, where, where God can be experienced in a multitude of ways. Oh no. Where, where the divine can be found, you know, whether you find a, a, a Asian church or Hispanic church.

Yeah. You know, don’t, don’t lose your find God, but don’t lose yourself. And so like when we go off to these colleges, You know, we kind of, you know, try and find God, you know, in the process and too many of us athletes get hooked up in these parachurch organizations. And they’re, they’re very good at marketing.

They’re very good at marketing. That’s how they get us.

[00:24:21] Peniel: And when you think about your time in the evangelical church, in the evangelical space, um, do you think the fact that you were a black athlete at Clemson division one, uh, school was a coup for them having you in that church space. Um, and then how did you feel the times you were still in it hadn’t yet left.

And you described this, but we’re trying to talk to them about, um, um, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Yes. Especially these are, especially, these are people who were killed before 2020, because when we think about effects, folks who were killed from 2012 through 2019, even as that upset black people until 2020 and George Floyd, and even Brianna Taylor, We get to Brianna Taylor really through George Floyds, when we think about, oh 100% hierarchy and, and, you know, the, say her name, campaign by Kimberly Crenshaw, um, it’s, it’s, uh, uh, Kimberly Williams Crenshaw.

What was it like talking about Alton Sterling and sort of black lives matter in those spaces and those spaces not giving you really any kind of love and, and trying to empathize with you.

[00:25:37] Dante: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Yeah, it, it, it was hard. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s the only way to describe it is that was hard and it was hard not only because I was trying to prove my humanity and the humanity of others.

Um, to people whose own conception of themselves depended on their ability not to see us as human. That that was not just, it is that it was also that like it affected not just me, but my family. Um, so I tell the story in the book where I come home to my wife and I’m, well, actually I’m at work and I’m, I’m telling like, yo, I’m the first black dude to preach at the church.

And. Things are getting better. Um, and then McKayla tells me one of my coworkers, black scissor, she’s like, yo, you don’t got a damn thing to offer black people. And then that upset me cuz I’m like, yo I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m like this young charismatic black dude in this white church. Like, and, and they giving me gripe and things like that.

And I come back to here and it is like, oh man, I’m just trying to figure out what’s up. And I go home and I tell my wife and I’m complaining to her and she was like, yo. You’re always listening to other people when I’ve been telling you this the whole time. And that, that, that put the dag in me, bro. Cuz it was like, it was like, yo, I’m not just trying to prove my humanity to people who don’t see it and erase it.

I’m actually. Hurting the humanity of people who look like me, who, and who love me. Mm-hmm . And that, that that’s hard, you know, that is incredibly it’s. It was an incredibly depressing place to be in, you know, it was an incredibly enraging place. And that really was what. Made me write that chapter terror and rage.

And that’s why like, as a literary device, I put those chapters back behind each other is because I wanted the reader to experience with me what I experienced as I was changing and wrestling with. What does it mean to see dead black bodies? And to see them like, like when I write yo, I remember the first time I saw dead black body.

I remember the second time I saw dead black body. I remember the third time I saw dead black body. And at every moments of meeting these dead black bodies, I was not met with white compassion, but with white hostility, now I wanna be careful because on the flip side, people like to believe, and we see this from 2020 people like to believe that yo.

And we see this even now, like with the kids, like there was a oped wrote, yo maybe it’s time for families to show the pictures of their kids, mutilated flesh in hopes that it would change. Like somebody’s

[00:28:16] Peniel: people keep on talking about an Emmett till moment and Emmett till

[00:28:19] Dante: bro. I I’m I’m like, yo like, like bro Emmett till got murdered.

And then literally that changed nothing. Like literally she had the funeral and literally black people kept getting murdered. Yeah. Even to this day. Yeah. Yeah. Like that was her decision. And I think I wanna be careful then say like, yo, like. Even if white people responded in those moments in compassionate ways, committed to justice and, and the humanity and liberation of black people that is not the salvation we are looking for.

I’m only chronicling an experience. Mm-hmm of what I experienced. I’m not saying that like, yo, you gotta get white people to see us, but I wanted to Chronicle experience of like, yo, every time I, I met these black bodies and they were dead. I was met with hostility and that really bro was a part of like my change, like.

I had two decisions to make either I stay and be angry or I leave and try and find something better. And I made the decision that I did not want the best of my life, the best of my thinking, the best of my right and the best of my ministry to be given to people who are more concerned about protecting a world that.

You know, benefits their children rather than liberating a world that loves mine and protect them and see them and love them. And so I got to the point where I was like, yo, like I could spend all this time going through these book with you, going through these studies with you, going through all these things with you.

But if you don’t make the decision to change and, and really if this country doesn’t change and the structures that make change possible, don’t change and I’m wasting my time and my time is better spent. Figuring out how to love us and to give us something that contributes to our freedom, rather than simply trying to convince people that we are human and deserve to be protected in ways that they feel they it’s their divine right.

To be protected. And so like, when I think about those moments and like this hostility that I met, bro, it was incredibly, incredibly hard because the other part is. At one point in time and we, and we all, as people go through this, I convinced myself that was the best place for me.

[00:30:43] Peniel: I’m gonna read something and then ask you for a summation, um, uh, about how you’re feeling, where we’re, you know, this is, and this conversation right now is too short.

We’ll be back . Oh yeah, yeah. Bet back together. Um, but this is on page 2 33, and my book of your book is, um, Lined up, you know, it’s, it’s lined up a hundred percent. It’s just, but this I really, really touched me, says a part of me wants to love our country so hard, so deeply, so vastly and a part of me feels so foreign, so unfamiliar, so angry, so exhausted that I live in a place that, that has had a profound commitment to deny those who look like me, the blessings of the dream America, our country.

Has neither known us nor the God it proclaims to love and serve. And so talk to me about that because I think that’s a great way to wrap up because we’ve been talking about Buffalo. We started with you all day. Yeah. You know, one of the things, when you talk about grief, you’ve talked about, you know, we can’t start with policy.

We have to start through humanity. And I think that that’s what will take. There and that’s right near the end of the book. Last chapter is breathe, but in a way that could have ended the book, when you think about , how you’re writing. So talk to me about that. The, the dream, God loving this country, that doesn’t love us back in terms of us black people.

I think that’s real and human and vulnerable because this is the country we were born in and we’re as much American.

[00:32:11] Dante: Yeah. Yeah. 100% bro. And it’s like, my grandma said, you know, I asked my grandma, you know, why didn’t you go up north? Like your, my uncle Sambo. And my grandma said, you know, I was born in the south.

I live in the south and I’m going to die in the south. And I think about my grandmother and like loving this country and you’re right, bro. It’s ours. And I think that that is the dream. That is the dream that we are fighting for is. Whatever has been promised to us. We will do whatever it takes to get it.

And even if we don’t die getting it, then our children and their children mm-hmm will pick up the banner of democracy, justice and love long after we’re gone. You know, my granddaddy died. There were things about my granddaddy that I did not know. One thing I didn’t know was that the first book that he ever gave my mama.

Was song go Solomon by Toni Morrison. She’s talking about her daddy. My daddy gave me this book and then me and my mama talking about a song called Solomon and she, and then she actually couldn’t remember which one it was. And I was like, yeah, it was about black men. Oh, that song called Solomon. She was like, yeah, that’s it.

So I didn’t know that that was the first book, but then also, I didn’t know that my grandaddy.

Was one of the big leaders in the NAACP, in my rural town, after he died, there’s all these awards and accolades. That’s red that I never knew. Mm-hmm him, him fighting for the right to vote him fighting for money for the school, him like making sure we got this and making sure we got that. And all these people from town coming to talk about what my granddaddy did and I’m sitting there and I’m think.

Look at here, I, as his grandson picked up where he left off, not ever knowing that I ever would become a writer, not ever knowing that I ever would become a minister, but that is our inheritance. And I think for black people in this country, that’s something that I. We should celebrate, but more than anything, be proud of and embrace as a life given ethic.

And so like when, when I’m long gone and, and people have my archives of what I wrote and when people have your archives of what you wrote, I think as king said, there lived the people. You know, who, who, who I might butcher this, so you gotta help me out, brother. Uh, they, they, they live the great people. You know, who, who loved, who, who, who did the things necessary to achieve the world they want.

And I think as this country is so caught up with its own ideas of God, its struggles across religion and race and gender, sexuality, and politics. I think it’s on us as people of faith, people of Goodwill. People of justice, people of love people of freedom to fight against these traditions, to, to fight against what they’re trying to do.

Mm-hmm but also try and become the best of the traditions because we may live in the same. Country, but we exist in two different Americas. Our faith may have the same name, but we need to imagine a different way. And so when I think about this country in this America, this dream, you know, the dream is always a reflection of its inheritance.

Mm-hmm . And I hope that we become the best inheritors of whatever dream we’ve been given. So, yeah.

[00:35:58] Peniel: All right. It’s eloquent. Ending to our conversation with Dante Stewart. Uh, we’ve been talking with Dante Stewart, who is a writer, speaker, and author shouting in the fire, an American epistle named by the center for American progress as one of 22 faith leaders to watch in 2022.

And by religion news service as one of 10 up and coming faith influencers Dante’s work has appeared in the New York times, the Washington post ESPNs scape, sojourners, NPR, CNN, and much more. Uh, it’s been a pleasure to speak to you. Your work is so inspiring and so impactful. I can’t wait, uh, for you to come to university of Texas and that’s gonna happen.

And, um, you know, thank you. Thank you for joining.

[00:36:43] Dante: Oh, thank you, bro. I’m I’m, I’m glad to be here.

[00:36:45] Peniel: Thanks for listening to this episode. And you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph that’s, P E N I E L J O S E P H. And our website,

CSRD.lbj.utexas.edu and the center for study of race and

democracies on Facebook as well.

This podcast was recorded at the liberal arts development studio at the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. Thank you.