Greg Garrett on White Lies and the Racial Myths That Protect Power

Why do racial myths continue to shape American politics, religion, and culture long after people claim to reject racism?

Greg Garrett, author of White Lies: Dismantling Ten Cultural Myths About Race, joins Faithful Politics to explain how false stories about race have been used to justify slavery, segregation, voting restrictions, exclusion, and white Christian nationalism. Garrett draws from film, theology, law, politics, sermons, advertising, James Baldwin, the Lost Cause, The Birth of a Nation, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture to show how myths do real public work.

They tell people who belongs, who leads, and whose suffering can be ignored. The conversation does not treat myth as harmless folklore. It asks who these stories serve, why they are still persuasive, and what truth-telling requires from Christians, citizens, and communities that want to do better.

Book Mentioned

White Lies: Dismantling Ten Cultural Myths About Race by Greg Garrett

Bookshop.org

Relevant Links & Resources

Greg Garrett - Baylor University

Guest Bio

Greg Garrett is the Carole McDaniel Hanks Professor of Literature and Culture at Baylor University and Canon Theologian for the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris. He has written more than thirty books, including White Lies: Dismantling Ten Cultural Myths About Race, The Gospel According to James Baldwin, and A Long, Long Way: Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation. His work focuses on the intersection of faith, culture, literature, film, race, and public life, which makes him a strong guide for this conversation about the myths that sustain racial hierarchy in American religion and politics.