There's a thing we white folks do, where we invoke a black or womanist theologian—usually James Cone, Delores Williams, or Willie Jennings—as surety for our arguments. The form of invocation is 'this person said X, therefore ... ' It's extremely bad, for at least two reasons.

First, the invocations typically treat single theologians as representative of an entire community—what James Cone writes *is* Black Theology, Delores Williams *is* womanist theology.

This is really bad. It flattens these fields to sets of claims which can be repeated, not a practice of committed inquiry and argument. It renders them homogenous, as if black and womanist theologians didn't disagree. And it treats the figure invoked as if they were static.

In all, rather than evincing meaningful engagement, this usage just reduces the figures invoked to rhetorical tools, in the process distorting them, the fields they helped create, and their colleagues.

Secondly, and relatedly—whenever I see this, the main effect is *not* to draw attention to the arguments cited, but to claim that theologian's authority for oneself.

I've mainly seen this in a 'moral' sense. When white folk cite Cone without engaging him, it reads as a way of saying 'I'm one of the good white folks.' Or; it's a way of performing anti-racist whiteness. Which, precisely to the extent it's about the whiteness, is, well...

In this, it's as if black and womanist theologians get used like Magic Cards, buffing the white speaker with a saintly aura, since in the division between good and bad guys (it is honestly almost always guys), the bad guys obviously wouldn't appeal to these figures!

If/when this occurs, all that's happening is that a black theologian's intellectual project is being appropriated to perform a morally superior version of whiteness.

Anyway, insofar as this actually occurs, the rhetorical deployment of black and womanist theologians by white folks which treats them as cards to be played is a Very Bad Thing. It distorts the work they've done and inspired. It appropriates them for the sake of white smugness.

(This is, btw, very specifically about white deployments of black thinkers for rhetorical purposes. It shouldn't be generalized beyond that.)