Normalcy Never Again

“Dr. Lewis T. Tait Jr. and Dr. Christian Van Gorder’s Normalcy Never Again shakes us out of our status quo, calling us to a prophetic antiracist future for all God’s children.”

—Peter Goodwin Heltzel, visiting researcher, Boston University School of Theology

“This book is a brilliant exposition on racist oppression—of how the powerful have often beleaguered the weak in empire. The religious claim that we are all children of God irrespective of differences exposes the very hypocrisy of the many religious elites who support oppressors or silently approve of oppression. From the age of slavery and the continued persecution of Africans in America to the present cries of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ Movement, the racist-oppressive treatment of many is a dark stigma on American democracy and its claim to offer liberty and justice for all.”

—Muhammad Shafiq, professor and executive director, Hickey Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue, Nazareth College, Rochester, New York

“In their important book, Van Gorder and Tait stress that racist oppression, like all other forms of evil, is fundamentally an assault against human dignity and an affront to all with open and humane hearts. The painful experience of the African slave trade, far from being a buried past, is a crime in search of a just and equitable resolution, its wounds ever so fresh. As such it is part of that growing catalogue of great crimes that stretches from the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire to the killing fields of Cambodia, from Auschwitz to Rwanda to Bosnia. Written in an engaging style, the central message of the book is a resolute and inspiring manifesto for solidarity, for justice, and for human rights.”

—Artyom Tonoyan, professor of global and international studies, Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota

“This book is part a cry of agony and part a map of how to chart a way out of this agony. The agony it describes is not natural but born of the racist construction of the Black body in the United States. This agony is vividly captured in the catalogue of dehumanization that has marked the lives of Black people in the US for centuries. Steeped in Afrocentric wisdom, the book provides a vision that does not only seek to alleviate this pain, but also to create a more humane world. All those who work to create a more just world will benefit from reading this book.”

—David Tonghou Ngong, professor of religion and theology, Stillman College