"You Don't Mess With Mary!" Youth Religious Identities and Literacies Mediating Conceptions of Race

• In Event: 25.069 - Religious Identity, Development, and Philosophy

Abstract

Scholars have called for increased attention to the relationships between religious identity and literacy practices; particularly the potential for religious literacies to mediate and construct understanding of racialized selves and others. This paper considers the relationship between religious identities, language, and literacy practices drawing from two critical ethnographic studies that traverse home, church, and schools of racially, ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse youth. Findings center on the religious language, literacies, and practices youth, parents, and teachers use as tools to both reify and counter hegemonic norms surrounding race. First, how religious language can be used to uphold whiteness and white supremacy and secondly, the agentive use of religious literacies to mediate youth understandings of race.

Authors

• Leah Panther, Mercer University

• Rhianna Kay Thomas, University of Missouri - Kansas City