Damned Christians

[Fake Messiah]

White Christians' fear of Black people is dangerous. A notable Catholic fueled the hysteria.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Charlie Kirk, a Christian nationalist, repeatedly used language similar to 1 Peter's description of the devil, speaking of “Black criminals” who are “prowling” around looking to kill White victims. He is not the first Christian to speak like this. As I'll explain, similar inflammatory rhetoric from a prominent Catholic in the late 1990s has also shown to be dangerous and deadly to Black Americans.

The Catholic political scientist and professor John DiIulio Jr. coined the term “superpredator” to describe particularly delinquent boys, especially those who are African-American. His 1995 article “The Coming of the Super-Predators” using dubious statistics, DiIulio deduced that a staggering new wave of youth crime was inevitable, and according to him, “the trouble will be the greatest in black inner-city neighborhoods.”

In 1996, DiIulio wrote an even more racist and unapologetic warning about Black youth titled, “My Black Crime Problem, and Ours.” Therein, he used talking points that have since been thoroughly debunked, such as that there were no racial disparities between cocaine trafficking sentences, that the war on drugs and death penalty were both racially unbiased, and several other racist claims about Black criminality.

DiIulio's articles had a major impact on the way the public, politicians, police, and governmental entities—even President Bill Clinton—treated young people, and especially young Black boys, in recent years.

Using Christian language, DiIulio argued that “moral poverty” was to blame for the upcoming societal threat posed by young boys. His solution, therefore, was “religion” and investing in churches to provide services that would boost social and economic development, especially in low-income Black neighborhoods.

At the time, DiIulio was celebrated as a kind of prophet, someone who was brave enough to tell it like it is. By the end of the 1990s, almost every state had toughened its criminal laws concerning young people.

What DiIulio created was a caricatured image of violent Black men that harkened back to similar views during slavery. In the superpredator stereotype, young Black boys and men were not fully human; they were animal-like predators with no conscience, ability to tell right from wrong, or capacity for human emotions like love and empathy. They were more like the “prowling devil” looking for their next victim that would—in the eyes of the White public—most likely be one of them.

On Charlie Kirk’s Facebook page, in his September 10, 2025 video, he stated bogus statistics, like that 1 in 22 Black men will become murderers in their lifetime, which is statistically impossible to predict for many reasons. He argued that Black people commit the most crime in America, which is also patently false. Yet, like many did with DiIulio, right-wing American Christians laud Kirk as one who wasn't afraid to stand up and proclaim the “truth.”

Even right now, the criminal legal system’s pendulum is swinging rightward once again with the Trump administration weaponizing public fear of “inner-city violence” while ignoring the predominately White male domestic terrorists using guns to murder children in their schools, adults in public, worshippers at church, and even Charlie Kirk at his own public debate.

After Donald Trump took the presidential office for the second time; racial profiling, targeted violence, detainment, and deportation are now focused on the immigrant communities in the United States.

https://www.blackcatholicmessenger.org/w...dangerous/