Spirits of Whiteness in the Age of COVID-19

Harvard Divinity School

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to explore how religion and whiteness are interconnected. Where is religion in a president refusing to wear masks in public? What of whiteness in a governor suing one of its state’s own cities to prevent mask mandates? These current events, and their asymmetrical racialized consequences, offer a view of whiteness’s historical and phenomenological role as one of religious ‘prophylaxis,’ a living theodicy, a rejection of our responsibility to one another across lines of social distance that gives way to a sanctioning of and justification for social atrocities past, present, and future. This talk explored whiteness revealed as spirit possession in moments when the efficacy of this prophylaxis is challenged, and also showed how whiteness is working to transform the occasion of pandemic response into a perverse opportunity. Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/10/09/video-spirits-whiteness-age-covid-19