Jesus and the Disinherited

As in the chapter on deception, Thurman sets up his argument with a defense of hate as a reasonable and often respected emotion among the disinherited. He describes the ways in which racial hatred toward Asian Americans and other minorities became commonplace and even patriotic after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Hatred is often disguised behind other names or infused into more respectable frameworks. It is difficult to pin down and define, and it is surrounded by a “conspiracy of silence” (75). Thurman states that the Christian church has not adequately dealt with hatred and has only attempted to address it through “platitudinous judgements” (75).

Thurman presents an anatomy of hatred as a set of conditions and steps. First, “hatred often begins in a situation in which there is contact without fellowship” (75). This includes false fellowship, which to Thurman includes much of the interaction between Black and white Americans in the South. When there is contact without fellowship, it either leads to a lack of understanding or “a kind of understanding that is strikingly unsympathetic” (76). This understanding includes judgement and cold assessment.