Liberty University instructor resigns after Jerry Falwell Jr.'s blackface tweet
A day after Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University in Virginia, tweeted an image of a face mask depicting figures in blackface and dressed as Klansmen, Christopher House, an online instructor for the university, announced his resignation on Facebook.
House, a Pentecostal pastor and an associate professor of communication studies at Ithaca College, responded to Falwell’s tweet: “As an African American man and Christian pastor, I am horrified and appalled that the president of the largest Christian university in the world would knowingly and intentionally use images that evoke a deep history of racial terror for people of color in the U.S., specifically individuals who look like me, for the purpose of a political statement to the Governor of Virginia.”
House joined Liberty University online last year to teach an intercultural communications class. “I was brought in to teach Liberty students about meaningful conversations around race and racism, to help them understand the very thing their president reinforces by drawing on these images of racial terror,” House told Religion News Service.
