Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Abby Johnson’s Racist Rant is a Disgrace

Abby Johnson’s Racist Rant is a Disgrace

Last updated on: September 30, 2019 at 7:52 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Abby Johnson’s Racist Rant is a Disgrace 2019-09-30T19:52:42-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Just once, I want to see a pro-life leader behaving themselves ethically.

I have been going through all this grief and nonsense for three years now, calling out the celebrities of the pro-life movement when they act like bullies, because I believe they ought to be the good guys. People who believe in personhood from conception to natural death should have reverence for human persons from conception until natural death. No one is perfect at this and I’m particularly bad myself. I call myself a shrew for a reason. But if we’re going to claim the moral high ground, we have to mind our p’s and q’s and we have to constantly self-critique. Our leaders, of which I am not one, had better act like angels. And when they don’t, they had better be called out by a resounding chorus of their fellow pro-lifers until they do.

Instead, we’ve got shameful behavior like Pavone’s anti-Catholic exploitation of corpses and glorifying of child abuse, we’ve got laws being passed that won’t help to limit abortions but will get women killed and persecuted, and if you dare to point to thish sort of thing and ask what’s wrong, people claim you’re actually a Planned Parenthood shill.

I am a Catholic, and the number of abortions I’d be happy to see is zero. That’s why it makes me sick when the pro-life movement is so full of bullies and cranks.

Today, I encountered yet another crank.

Today’s pro-life leader behaving badly is the famous Abby Johnson, a woman who says she had a conversion after witnessing an abortion when she worked at Planned Parenthood. Her story seems to have been pretty thoroughly debunked thanks to some excellent journalism in the Texas Monthly, but many still believe it and for all I know it’s true. And in any case, Johnson is now a pro-life activist; she even had a gory Pure Flix film made about her alleged conversion story.

I wrote about Abby Johnson once before, when she defended Kristen Hatten, an overt white nationalist. Even after Hatten was completely explicit about her position, Johnson publicly said “I don’t believe Kristen is a racist. I have concerns about some things she has posted. But I know her too well to believe that she is racist. And those are things that I can talk about with her privately. I’m not going to outright believe everything that I see on social media. I would rather have conversations about it.”

Johnson later apologized for this statement, saying in part, “I did make a comment giving a friend the benefit of the doubt instead of actually looking into what was said and how hurtful her words had been. Now that I have all the information, I know that I need to make an apology to anyone who has lost trust in me because of that comment. I am deeply sorry. It is never my intention to dismiss the concerns of others and I want everyone to know that this page is a safe place for people of color and anyone else who feels marginalized in our society. My eyes have been opened to current views in our society that I had honestly hoped no longer existed. I have come to believe that the Alt-Right position generally equals racism. I have come to learn that ethnonationalism, when discussed in regards to American society, is code for racism. There is no room for it here in our movement.”

So there. In 2018, Abby Johnson learned that racism still exists and disavowed it, proving for all the world to see that she wasn’t a racist at all. And you know where this is going.

Today, Abby Johnson picked a fight with a black pastor.

As far as I can tell, that’s how the whole smackdown started. She decided she was going to tweet nasty things at a black pastor– a bishop, in fact, not a Catholic bishop but a Protestant one, the Reverend Talbert Swan II of the Church of God in Christ. He is a civil rights activist and president of the Springfield NAACP, and for obvious reasons he’s outspokenly not a republican.

No, a white woman picking a fight with a black man isn’t in itself racist. I’ll get to that.

Swan had tweeted that “Calling a Black POTUS married 25 yrs to 1 wife with 2 children, no mistresses, affairs or scandals, ‘the antichrist’ but a white POTUS married thrice, 5 kids by 3 women, mistresses, affairs & scandals, ‘God‘s anointed,’ proves your religion is white supremacy.“

Abby jumped on the comment thread to school him about who was the one true racist. “Let me tell you about real racism. The fact that our country’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, kills more black children than any other cause of death…and you stay silent about it. Wake up. Trump isn’t your enemy. Your silence is an enemy to your own people.” This, in my opinion, is nonsense. Yes, it’s perfectly legitimate to look at Planned Parenthood’s history in the black community. We ought to have no illusions about that. But that doesn’t make Donald Trump NOT the enemy of Bishop Talbert Swan. Trump is an overt racist and always has been. This is the man who is famous for his condemnation of the innocent Central Park 5, and this very year he refused to apologize for that. She’s simply wrong.

A white person being wrong about politics in conversation with a black person doesn’t automatically make her racist either. But a white woman informing a black civil rights activist about what constitutes the “real racism” and what doesn’t, is absolutely a racist act. A white person talking down to a black person about what ought to really be the black person’s experience of his own history and struggles is patronizing in the extreme, and it’s racist. It’s saying that black people need white people to educate them on what is and isn’t real.

One could believe she was tone deaf at this point instead of being racist on purpose.

The bishop let her have it. He is not a shy man, nor is he one to mince words. “You don’t know a damn thing about “real racism.” Who the hell are you, in all your whiteness, to lecture Black prople [sic] on RACISM??? The caucasity of you to jump in my mentions dripping mayonnaise and parroting right wing talking points as a counter argument to Black oppression.”

At this point, if a commentator wasn’t really racist but only foolish, they would back off and apologize, and then try to frame the comment differently to make the same point.

Abby didn’t do that. She made a flippant triumphant comment: “But I do love how this white woman has you so riled up!!! Job well done.” Thus proving that she wasn’t trying to have a political discussion, she was trying to make the black man angry and she was pleased with herself for having done so. That’s racist.

Bishop Swan called her a Becky, which is a black person’s slang term for a smug racist white woman, and she called him “Tyrone,” which is racist. She also told him he had a “dirty soul,” which, when one considers how often in history black skin was associated with dirtiness, is awfully racist as well. The “dirty soul” comment might have been ignorance, but there’s no excuse for “Tyrone.” And then she had the gall to claim that Bishop Swan was racist, for getting angry and calling her a pejorative that means “smug racist white woman,” when she had initiated this conversation by being a smug racist white woman. He was telling the truth, not with very good manners, about how she was behaving, and she considers that racist against white people.

Bishop Swan went on from there, with more and more pointed insults about mayonnaise, which I’m not saying was polite, but he was the victim of a racist attack which Abby started and Abby didn’t give up. Abby called him an “Angry black man, and an ignorant one at that.” That’s racist. “Angry black man” is racist.

And then she made a comment which she subsequently deleted, but not soon enough. Here it is:

“You are just a thug. You are no minister. You are a stain on the black community. And you WILL be held to a higher standard when you meet your maker. I pray you repent before that day comes. You don’t “check” anyone. But you will be “checked” by our Lord if you don’t get it right.”

Abby Johnson publicly, calmly and deliberately called a black man who is a cleric and a civil rights activist a “thug” and a “stain.” Those are overtly racist names for a white woman to call a black man in any circumstance whatsoever. She must have realized this because she deleted. And she did it triumphantly in response to Swan insulting her, which he only did because she attacked him with a smug racist comment in the first place.

Abby has said she can’t be racist because she has a black child, but having a black child doesn’t make you not racist. As my readers have pointed out, it just puts that child in more danger if you are. Think of the Hart family. Adopting black children does not and cannot shield a public racist from critique. Quite the contrary.

Abby Johnson is an overt racist. She claimed ignorance in 2018 but it was on full display today in front of millions of people on Twitter.

Racism is a sin, and because of Johnson’s position as a public convert to Catholicism, her racist name-calling in public is not only the sin of racism but also the sin of scandal.

Racism is also grossly inappropriate for someone who styles herself a pro-life leader– ironically enough, for a reason close to the point Abby was trying to make to Bishop Swan. Black women have historically often been the victims of coerced sterilization and abortion, as my guest poster so eloquently reminded us this summer. A woman this racist being an activist running a pro-life charity is a disaster waiting to happen.

Abby Johnson needs to publicly apologize and stand down from her leadership. And those of us who value ethics are the ones who ought to be insisting that she do so. The condemnation needs to come from the pro-life movement. I haven’t seen it coming from there, of course, but that’s what ought to happen.

If we claim the moral high ground, we have to actually be moral. Anything else is hypocrisy.

(image via Pixabay)

Steel Magnificat runs almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, go to our donate page here.

New Pro-Life Movement

news

pro-life

Public face of Catholicism

Bishop Talbert Swan II

Previous Post

September 28, 2019

The Names of the Rich are Forgotten

Next Post

October 2, 2019 Abby Johnson Doubles Down on Racism and Attacks a Priest

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

According to Jesus, what should you do when you pray?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Pray loudly for show Pray in secret Only pray at church Pray once a year