All Rev'd Up: 'America First Caucus' Is A Product Of Ongoing 'Whitelash'

In this Feb. 5, 2021, file photo, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Greene is reportedly launching a new "America First Caucus."

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

April 19, 2021

Updated August 07, 2023

Last week, news broke that Trump loyalists, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., were reportedly creating a new “America First Caucus" in Congress. A document published by Punchbowl News described the caucus's policy platform as "a nation with ... a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,” which is “threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse.” Greene has since distanced herself from the effort.

The Rev. Irene Monroe and the Rev. Emmett G. Price III spoke to Boston Public Radio on Monday about the America First Caucus, which is being widely criticized as racist and nativist.

"If the United States of America is watching this and they can't get to an antiracism position or even consciousness, then so be it," Price said. "But I hope this would help people to wake up to see what's really going on."

Monroe said that the caucus is part of a growing "whitelash."

"The only thing I can think of to explain this 'whitelash' is Black ascendancy," she said. "When we think about the election of Obama, there was a huge 'whitelash' with the Tea party and birther movements."

We're now in a place where the country is more multicultural and has a larger participatory government, Monroe said. That fuels the anger of those who wouldn't like to see it be that way, she said.

Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology. Price is a professor of worship, church and culture and founding executive director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Together they host the All Rev’d Up podcast, produced by GBH.