PHILADELPHIA — In a new book, La Salle University associate professor Maureen H. O'Connell explores generations of American Catholic anti-Blackness within her family and the larger community and what she sees as the long-standing failure of Catholic universities to respond to racism.
In "Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness," O'Connell, 49, who grew up in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, traces her own family's history from the time her ancestors arrived in the United States and how she benefited from their whiteness, wealth, and decision-making.
O'Connell, an associate professor of Christian ethics at La Salle since 2013, combed through Archdiocese of Philadelphia archives trying to understand what was happening in parishes when her ancestors lived in them.
