Settler Colonial and Jim Crow Ideology in California's Religious-Education System

**written for Sociology class, the topic: Your experience with stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination (based on race, gender, culture, sexual orientation, mental health, disability – including learning disability, and/or physical characteristics)

Content Warning: historical references to violence committed against African diasporic people and Indigenous groups, personal recollections of blackface and stereotypes against Indigenous people, mention of suicide,

Through examining two separate personal experiences with anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism within my religious academic experience, I aim to communicate the recurrent existential crises that I have faced as a mixed-race person in white-dominated spaces. It is important to note several things to respectfully and tactfully observe this conversation: 1) I hold several modes of privilege as a light-skin, able-bodied person living in Los Angeles, California, 2) in these spaces, there were always other Black people exposed to racism and aggression in different ways, and their stories are just as, if not more valid, and 3) my oppression as a descendant of displaced Indigenous people should never speak in place of the living experience of Native and Indigenous people actively resisting against the illegal occupation of the United States. It is within my colonized observations that I aim to bring to attention a common agenda within similar religious social spaces: Western religious educational institutions tokenize and fetishize Black and/or Indigenous peoples and cultures as a means of perpetuating settler-colonial and modern Jim Crow ideology. 

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Introduction

I grew up mixed-race, Black and Indigenous, in my Black grandparents’ household. I was informed of my maternal Indigenous roots that scattered from this continent to the small Caribbean islands to various degrees here and there by my aunties, and my mother would take my sister and I to pow-wows when she was physically able to be in my life. My Nani is a proud, educated, hard-working grandmother who I've always trusted to have the answer or solution to anything. My grandma was a single mother raising my father in 1970s Los Angeles when she graduated from Pepperdine University with her degree in Business Management, something that could be considered a statistical anomaly for middle-class working Black women at the time. It was this long personal, and presumably arduous educational tenure that informed her attitude towards my educational journey. Such an attitude would lead to such things as learning how to write my name in cursive and my times tables up to 12 by preschool, to me becoming Valedictorian of my graduating Kindergarten class. My grandparents have always been God-fearing, therefore the educational environments I was raised in were usually private schools with Christian-curriculum. Private-religious schooling in Los Angeles provided a seemingly safer environment for her mixed-race grandchildren to continue to flourish; she had previously experienced its benefits with my father’s schooling. My grandmother, with the loving assistance of my grandpa who would assist with cooking breakfast, braiding hair, and taking me to school, made it her mission to nurture my success by instilling in me the value of my education.

In these private-religious schools I found my musical roots in multiple choirs and musical theatre. There wasn’t a concert, recital, theatre production, candle lighting service, or memorial that I passed up. Each year I would fully immerse myself in a slew of different performing arts activities, getting a chance to audition and rigorously rehearse in order to finally perform for my friends and family. In transparency, I really enjoyed the detachment from the real world that these musical and performing arts environments offered me as I got to repeatedly immerse myself in fictional worlds. I knew that if I excelled in school and the performing arts activities, I’d ultimately be able to fill my free time with nothing but music. This pattern would repeat for nearly my entire academic career, starting with my first solo in Kindergarten to singing in and leading multiple choirs in college.

It was also in these private-religious school performing environments that I would have my first introductions to microaggressions and overt racism. If it wasn’t white girls in my class feeling comfortable telling me their parents won’t let them come over to my house in Inglewood because it’s “unsafe” and “ghetto”, it was white boys in my class incessantly mocking my name by calling me “kayak” while telling me my usual, lower-toned speaking voice made me sound “like a man”. Almost more importantly, it was these institutions and their administrators reinforcing stereotypes about my ancestors through biased curriculum and extracurricular activities that led to multiple existential crises in my childhood. 

Racism and stereotypes in performance arts environments, in particular, is nothing new to Los Angeles. Chester Himes, a prominent Esquire writer and eventual Race paper author moved to Los Angeles for a job as a screenwriter at Warner Bros. Hollywood in the 1930s. When Jack Warner, co-owner of the major motion picture company, received word that a Black person was working at his company, Chester was promptly fired and spent the rest of his life as a laborer around the city. It is to note, that Warner Bros. would simultaneously be responsible for producing films that portrayed Native Americans as savages and monsters, desperately needing their souls and bodies to be saved by their rotating cast of white, gun-slinging cowboys. These stereotypes of Native people only amplify the coinciding systematic oppression they were facing at the hands of the bolstering boarding school and reservation system.

Theory

The United States government in collaboration with whichever corporate and financial entities are occupying what we know as California has a pattern of failing to educate not only Black and Indigenous people, but the general masses, on its true origins. This has allowed for a multi-generational perpetuation of a racist, ahistorical curriculum to be infused into its private-religious schooling system. I personally remember learning about the California Gold Rush and had to build a model of Mission Santa Barbara for my history class in fourth grade, accompanied by a written and oral report on the history of the mission. Los Angeles, formerly known as “Yaanga” to local indigenous people, has been a home to thousands of diverse indigenous communities for centuries. Indigenous communities in the Los Angeles basin are known for their expertise in basket making, fishing, hunting, and sailing skills. Under the direction of the Mexican government and Catholic Church, the city of Los Angeles was born from the physical labor of enslaved local Indigenous and stolen African people accompanied by a long line of “missions” scattered up the state. The California Mission System was the Catholic Church’s way of commiting cultural and ethnic genocide against the local indigenous people of California by forcing them from their land and banning their languages and religious practices. To the naive scholar of California history, the state at this time was starting to embed itself as a religious and economic symbol of the West due to its pristine weather conditions and beautiful scenery. 

Prominent Chumash oral-historian and community leader Pilulaw Khus (2011) states in Earth Wisdom: A California Chumash Woman that when European settlers first arrived on California soil they repeatedly noted the beauty of the land and the health and strength of the local people (p. 60).  With this settler colonialism, also came a complete decimation of the Tongva and Chumash peoples through the poisoning of their crops and disruptions of their traditional medicinal systems. In 1850, California was officially added to the United States, which presented a new set of violent obstacles for local Indigenous groups. Khus states that the American settlers acted especially viciously towards the Chumash:

 “While the Spaniards brought their viciousness and the military and the priests, and while the Mexicans brought their political systems and imposed them over us for a time, sometimes with great brutality, when the Americans came there were absolutely no holds barred. Under the Americans it was legalized to kill Indian people or take them as slaves. We had no legal standing in the judicial system when the Americans took over… When American men would be out drinking and having fun, they could decide, ‘Well, let’s go kill some Indians,’ ” (Broyles-González & Khus, 2011, p. 67).

Local indigenous communities rightfully responded to settler colonial violence and the ultimate theft of their land with guerrilla warfare. It is widely known amongst Chumash historians that the original true legend of “Zorro” is based off of a well-known community member and fighter who was one of the only people in their village to own a horse. Another indigenous response to settler colonialism was to flee to other parts of California where tensions were not so high. It was illegal to practice indigenous spirituality in the state until 1978 when the American Indian Freedom of Religion Act was signed. Indigenous groups have consistently stood fast in their storytelling and ceremonial practices despite America’s incessant efforts to destroy them. Khus’ recollections of America’s education system at the time of her upbringing accurately describe Chumash belief in American assimilation and lifestyle: “Be careful when you go to school, you know, don’t believe everything you hear or read,” (Broyles-González & Khus, 2011, p.77). It is well known amongst indigenous groups that it is within Western educational environments that you experience some of the worst forms of cultural erasure, namely by constant ahistorical retellings of the massacre of your people. 

The Black history of Los Angeles and any other part of this country recognizably starts with chattel slavery. Under the Compromise of 1850, California was classified as a free-state, despite the fact that in 1852, the government enacted fugitive slave laws that ultimately helped slaveholders and traders continue the violent practice of African enslavement with a financial and land incentive. Yet, it was specifically Los Angeles’ multi-ethnic history that enticed thousands of Black Americans to move West in the early to mid-1900s. While the formal structures of slaveries such as the plantation system seemed to be dwindling, the United States started to enact Jim Crow laws that aimed to systematically disenfranchise Black Americans. Conditions were becoming increasingly violent in southern states such as Texas, with the Ku Klux Klan hosting rallies and “pic-a-niggers” or “picnics” in which they would gather to eat and watch a Black man hang and sometimes burn from a tree. With the loss of Black patriarchs en masse, it was no wonder that families, such as mine, moved to predominantly Black metropolis’ such as San Francisco and Los Angeles for potential safety and security. 

Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America by Douglas Flemming highlights the new form of racism in Los Angeles at the hands of white Americans: “California’s free-state status notwithstanding, the majority of white Angelenos had migrated from slave states; most supported slavery and did not welcome black residents,” (Flamming, 2005, p. 21). Los Angeles has always been a segregated city, and those whites who did not benefit from upper-class privilege often acted just as oppressive as their upper-class peers. Despite this, Black people have always managed to successfully integrate themselves into various multi-cultural American social systems:  “It was the ultimate dream of most black Americans–to live in a colorblind society, to be accepted naturally and without hesitation, as citizens who had the full range of options all Americans should have,” (Flamming, 2005, p. 64). One of the means of acceptance into the dominant society was education. Na’ilah Suad Nasir asserts in the first pages of Racialized Identities: Race and Achievement Among African American Youth that it is “through education that one could engage in society more centrally, be viewed as a full human being with rights and privileges, and have greater access to determining one’s future,” (Suad Nasir, 2011, p. 14). It is clear that access to education for Black people is not just about getting a better job, it is about being seen as human and deserving of life in general in a world destined to erase you. 

It is within the American education system that I failed to receive any of the California historical information just recounted. This information was independently sourced in my adulthood outside of a syllabus or Department Head. It is in the apparent whitewashing of my ancestral history and the history of other oppressed peoples’ in collaboration with two explicitly racist events that occurred in my religious-academic career that has informed much of my politics which currently center Black people and global Indigenous groups.

The first incident of racism happened in fifth grade. I was participating in one of the Christmas musicals at my Lutheran elementary school, and was excited to be considered for a solo or a speaking part. I had never been casted in a “lead role” before, and had previously noticed that some of my white friends who did not show up to musical rehearsals because they had other activities, were disrespectful to teachers, or had bad grades, were seemingly picked for leads and solos over me. Nonetheless, I was just excited to be there. The music was called “Promise U”, a modern-Christian musical by Kathie Hill which told the story of a group of “very cool, crazy” college missionaries whose only goals throughout the entire musical revolve around convincing people of the Miracle of Jesus’ birth. 

My choir director and vocal coach pulled me to the side and let me know that I was actually not being casted as one of the main roles, nor one of the speaking support roles, but I would have one song all to myself. I was to portray the role of a lost, scared Sacagawea who is  crying out to Christian God for divine intervention on her travels. Sacagawea’s importance to the show is strictly used as a mystical metaphor for “God’s Guiding Light” for the Christian missionaries, as she only appears once throughout the entire show.  At the time, I was naively flattered at the prospect of singing onstage by myself, something I had done many times before, and the idea of playing Sacagawea excited me as I always had a strong spiritual reverence for Indigenous women historical figures, even as a child. 

The song I was assigned was called “I Am With You”, and follows Sacagawea lamenting to the big bearded man in the sky about how lost she is, how she needs his help, and about how she is ready to accept him. The final production included appropriative tribal drums and flutes, as well as me dressed in a disingenuous, appropriative outfit. In hindsight, it was a distasteful and incorrect retelling of the story of a stolen Lemhi Shoshone teenage girl who was repeatedly forced to guide Lewis, Clark, and other settlers on their quests through the newly-purchased Louisiana Territory under the direction of white nationalist and wealthy slave-owner, Andrew Jackson. In the chapter entitled “Antiblackness, Settler Colonialism, and the US Democratic Project” of the book  An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States, Afro-Indigenous scholar Kyle T. Mays (2021) asserts that US history classes tend to skew the realities of Jeffersonian democracy:  “The story goes something like this: he wanted everyone to be created equal; government should be limited; and civilized people–white male property owners–should be citizens.  Yeoman farmers should be independent and be able to work their land,”  (p.24). I was typecasted for the role given that I was a known strong vocalist, I had long dark hair, and apparently, I looked like I could be vaguely “Indian” to these white people. I was the perfect submissive Indian princess for them to share their message of white saviorism. A Lutheran school had essentially greenlit a lifelong spiritual humiliation ritual against a young indigenous girl. Thankfully as an adult I pride myself on the ability to recount this with respective social context. 

Another existential crisis of racism I faced in my religious educational career was in a high school fall production of To Kill A Mockingbird, based on the novel by Harper Lee. The play follows a white lawyer trying to acquit a Black man in the Jim Crow South named Tom Robinson for a crime against a local white woman that he didn’t commit. I was a freshman and one of less than 10 people in the drama department at my Catholic high school at any given time.  Even though my school had more Latino and Asian students than white students, our department was overwhelmingly white. I am playing the role of Tom Robinson’s heartbroken wife, although I didn’t have any lines and only appeared on stage twice throughout the entire show. The student originally casted as Tom Robinson, the main character and moral symbol of the play, was a Black student who unfortunately had to drop out due to his academic standing. The next student casted for the role was a Honduran, non-Black student who had performed well in the audition process, whose curly dark hair and brown skin could totally let him “pass for Black” if we close our eyes (sarcasm).  

Before opening night, our department hosted a Rehearsal Dinner in which parents and families of the students performing could enjoy dinner and the production before opening night. We were adequately prepared, and although there had been some stirrings of discomfort among the other Black students about the Tom Robinson casting, we were ready to put on this production in the best way we could. I remember before the show, everyone was congregating for warmups in the boy’s dressing room, also known as the Ninth Grade History classroom during school hours. It was upon walking in the classroom that I saw 3 “costume girls” as they were called, packing face makeup for darker complexions onto the Honduran student’s face. They hadn’t done this for Tom Robinson’s character in the technical rehearsals, so part of me was taken aback at the sudden change. One of them made a note to not put so much as to make sure his mike tape would stay. In rotation, they repeatedly dug into this cream Ben Nye pallet that contained nothing but shades made specifically for dark-complected Black skin. They’d scoop up large amounts and spread it across his face, as if adding more of the paste would somehow actually make him a Black man. They finished up with all three of them wielding their 3 separate powder puffs, applying dark powder to set the cream foundation they had ignorantly applied and surprise, it didn’t match. I remember being absolutely stopped in my tracks because the Honduran student was now covered in dark brown makeup that also covered his hands and forearms, his costume would definitely have to be washed after this run. 

Our stage manager came down and yelled that we needed to take our places in ten minutes, so after warmups and some water, we all headed to our respective spots for the show. The first act goes as well as it should, and we make it to intermission. When Act II starts, I am already placed on stage right in my courtroom pew. When Tom Robinson enters the staged courtroom, there are multiple gasps and sounds of shock heard from the audience. It should be noted that one of my fellow Black cast mate’s mother was a very prominent and helpful parent volunteer in our department, and upon seeing Tom Robinson’s appearance, immediately stormed back into the kitchen in disgust. The show continued until the end, bows were taken, and we all went backstage. 

I had certainly noticed the audience reaction to Tom’s appearance, but I at the time couldn’t formally identify why I was so uncomfortable with the idea. When Tom began to speak in a very obviously appropriative Black Southern accent, noticeable whispers of discomfort fluttered across the auditorium. Eventually, we heard that after the show, my cast mate’s mother voiced her disgust towards the school’s apparent acceptance of blackface. Ultimately, no disciplinary action was taken against whoever made the blackface decision, nor was that person’s identity ever revealed. However, the school administration’s passivity towards the topic of anti-Black racism was chronic and informative of many of my experiences as a student in that institution. I continued my performing arts career at that school in willful deniability and dissociation as best as I could. 

It is obvious that the tools of racial stereotyping and color blindness that were used in Christian educational environments led to racist, internalized beliefs about myself. As a Black and Indigenous woman, it is by American design that I was repeatedly and inaccurately told about and shown my history in violent, often traumatizing ways. According to a study by Harvard scholar Lawrence D. Bobo, race and race ideas contribute to the maintenance of the existing racial hierarchy in this country by “influencing the ways that individual members of racial groups see themselves and their place in society through the perpetuation of stereotypes that also may inform the development of racial identity,” (Bobo, 2001). By seeing and participating in the projection of falsified images of my ancestors, in connection with personal and eventual world events, I did in time acquire a pessimistic, nihilistic view of myself and my community. Such feelings did lead to thoughts of depression and suicide, which were only eventually mitigated by community connection, therapy, and several changes in my environment. 

Solution

With mandates for banning books spreading nationwide and California’s hidden racist history, it’s surprising that Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has codified AB1078. This bill essentially prohibits the restriction of books and supposedly stops censorship and inaccurate tellings of history. AB1078 is important in a state whose religious institutions clearly aim to repeatedly tell racist recollections of history and events. In addition to government measures, Clio is a non-profit humanities organization recognized by the National Council on Public History as well as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. They offer an educational website and app that allows its users access to its wide database of historical and cultural sites that exist throughout the United States. Their site also offers information about  nature trails, art tours, and virtual museum tours. The website allows you to search by city and Location Name, as well as offers Advanced Search options. 

When searching for relevant historical landmarks in Los Angeles on Clio, I came across Biddy Mason Park in Downtown LA. Clio states that this was the first piece of property owned by prominent Black business woman, community leader, and philanthropist, Biddy Mason. Biddy Mason was brought to Southern California under enslavement by a wealthy white Mormon family. Despite California’s aforementioned status as a free-state, Biddy was still enslaved when she first arrived. With the assistance of prominent Los Angeles Black community leader Charles Owen, she managed to win freedom from her enslavers in 1856. She went on to become a successful doctor’s assistant and midwife and co-founded the First African Methodist Episcopal church in South Central which still holds steadfast as a Black spiritual community space today. She was able to accrue around $7.5 million in today’s dollars, and consistently opened daycares and communal housing centers for the Black people of Los Angeles throughout her life.

Another few clicks and I was able to learn information about the Catalina Casino, located on the island of Catalina about 22 miles off the coast. Prior to colonization by Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in1542, the island of Catalina was known to Gabriellenos as Pemú’nga. The Gabriellenos thrived on this island prior to European intervention, traversing back and forth from the mainland for thousands of years. It is estimated that the Native populations of Catalina island were violently displaced into the mainland California Mission System well into the 1820s. After being tossed about in the various stages of California’s colonial history, Catalina’s ownership was granted to the Wrigley family in 1919. Chewing-gum business tycoon William Wrigley Jr. built the once-named Sugarloaf Casino with intentions of making Catalina a popular luxury tourist destination. Since then, the Catalina Casino has been a theatre for film festivals, a high school, one of the world’s largest aviaries, and is currently a museum housing very famous Catalina historical artifacts. It should be noticed that many of the indigenous Catalina historical artifacts once contained in the Casino are at the Fowler museum at UCLA. 

Each search results page on Clio offers a plethora of useful historical information hosted directly on their site, which is a plus. Although it was quite difficult for me to specifically narrow down my search results to Los Angeles, anyone interacting with their platform is recommended to have their Location Services turned on for accurate information. I was only searching by key terms with my Location Services turned off. An improvement to the website that I’d suggest is allowing their users to search by specific years and time periods or allowing users to search specifically “Los Angeles Black Historical Sites” or “Los Angeles Native American Historical Sites” and have more results presented to me that are only in California. Technology and GPS services are ever-evolving and Clio asserts on their About page that they are looking for constant data input from their users’ local historical societies and organizations. 

Conclusion

The racism I dealt with and subconsciously perpetuated in my religious educational environments was a direct result of the misinformation that was repeatedly being given to me about my ancestors' lived experiences. White retellings of Black and Indigenous history are rarely rooted in good faith and accuracy–they often skew their delivery so that the White Violence committed wasn’t actually that bad or actually never even occurred at all. This chronic, generational-gaslighting to lived history has directly informed the white supremacist practices of religious-educational environments. It has also led to a generational depression that is shared amongst myself and many descendants of chattel slavery and Indigenous displacement as we fight our erasure and cultural genocides daily.

Despite Gavin Newsom’s claims to preserve California’s status as the “true freedom state” under AB1078, it is evident that Los Angeles private-religious schools are focused on inaccurate dramatizations of history rather than actual lived history. The only means to combat this is by continuing to talk about race inside the classroom, despite its public or private sanctioning. White people and institutions must stop saying that they “don’t see color”, specifically because you subconsciously inherited that particular attitude of erasure from your ancestors, and that passive mentality has directly led to the systematic oppression of Black and Indigenous people that we still see personally and systematically today. 

Sources

• Davis, M. D. (2018). City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (3rd ed.). Verso.
• Khus, P. K., & Broyles-González, Y. B. G. (2011). Earth Wisdom: A California Chumash Woman. The University of Arizona Press.
• Gabrielino. (2024, April 18). Tongva Tribe History & Timeline | Gabrielino/Tongva Nation. Gabrielino / Tongva Nation. https://gabrielinotongva.org/history/
• Anderson, S. (2020, April 3). California, a “Free state” sanctioned slavery - California Historical Society. California Historical Society. https://californiahistoricalsociety.org/blog/california-a-free-state-sanctioned-slavery/
• Flamming, D. F. (2005). Bound For Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America. University of California Press.
• Suad Nasir, N. S. N. (2011). Racialized Identities: Race and Achievement Among African American Youth. Stanford University Press.
• Llc, K. H. M. (n.d.). Promise U. : Kathie Hill Music, LLC, Home of Angels Aware!, Back At the Creekbank, Fish Tales, We Like Sheep & Preschool Praise’ntations! https://www.kathiehillmusic.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_41
• Wikipedia contributors. (2024, November 20). Sacagawea. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacagawea
• T. Mays, K. T. M. (2021). Afro-Indigenous History of the United States. Beacon Press.“Antiblackness, Settler Colonialism, and the US Democratic Project”
• Handley, G., & Lee, H. (1985). Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA19434768
• Gardon, I. (2024, June 17). California bans book bans and textbook censorship in schools. Governor of California. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/25/california-bans-book-bans-and-textbook-censorship-in-schools/
• Curtin, P. C., & Trowbridge, D. T. (2018, January 10). Project Showcase: Clio. The National Council on Public History. Retrieved November 30, 2024, from https://ncph.org/history-at-work/project-showcase-clio/
• Biddy Mason Park - Clio. (n.d.). Clio. https://theclio.com/entry/13727
• Dogmo Studios, Eliza Wee, @ewee. (2018, June 28). Biddy Mason - Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California | ACLU NorCal. ACLU of Northern CA. https://www.aclunc.org/sites/goldchains/explore/biddy-mason.html
• Catalina Casino - Clio. (n.d.). Clio. https://theclio.com/entry/11527
• LA County Library. (n.d.). LA County Library. https://lacountylibrary.org/catalina-island-local-history/#:~:text=The%20Gabrielino%20Indians%20lived%20on,achieved%20its%20independence%20from%20Spain