The videos went viral. Here was this eccentric man with a long beard, hipster glasses, and a slow drawl condemning “white America” just as tensions between the police and the black community had exploded. Conservative blogs like The Blaze and Breitbart blasted Hood, while Patheos called him a “queer Islamist.” Commenters accused him directly for the slayings; others criticized him as an opportunistic attention-seeker. In an instant, Reverend Hood became a national target for death threats over Twitter and Facebook.
“You should feel so proud. Because of you and your rally five people are dead. And now you’re on TV for your 5 minutes of fame. Crawl back in your hole scumbag.”
“I can only hope and pray that you are killed soon...”
“Just wait till you get dragged through the street. Racist loser.”
“My targets on you wigger c*nt...you’re mine bitch boy.”
For days after the protest, Hood sat in his office chair, alone, wondering when the windows would crash in or a bullet would fly through the side of his home. He sent his wife and five small children to stay with his wife’s parents in West Texas. For more than a week, police officers patrolled Hood’s home and offered him protection. “I exist in a weird place,” Hood told me when I met with him in late July. “Many activists on the left hate my guts because I refuse to go along with the plan. Activists on the right side hate my guts because they think I’m a f*cking traitor.”
Hood is a man out of sync with his surroundings: He's a white liberal activist in a staunchly conservative stretch of Texas. He fiercely opposes the death penalty and fights for LGBT rights, which he views as in step with modern Christianity. In short, the contradictions that Hood can’t help but inhabit raise complicated questions and scrutiny about the role of allies operating from positions of privilege.
On certain topics, for example, he often retreats into vague generalizations. On Colin Kaepernick's protest, for example, Hood says, “I’m glad that he’s standing up for his beliefs, but the question is, if our world is truly going to change, then it seems to me that we have to do more than sit or kneel. We have to give our lives.” When asked if he'll be supporting either candidate for president: “Trump can say whatever he wants to, and [Clinton] can say whatever she wants to. But it’s up to us to transform society.” And when asked to characterize his affiliation with Black Lives Matter, Hood says, “BLM is an institution. I’m not institutional, by any stretch of the imagination... I am an independent activist who was concerned about police brutality and involved in the movement of black lives.” The explanation comes off as evasive, even contradictory. Black Lives Matter is less an institution than a movement, and one without a hierarchy or codified rules; certainly BLM is less of an institution than Southern Baptism or Christianity.
Christian Parks is a former intern of Hood’s. Even though he is one of Hood’s biggest supporters, some of Parks's friends in the black community are consistently frustrated with the reverend's message, which they see as inflammatory and antithetical to their cause. “I have friends who would consider themselves very Afrocentric, very much part of the black nation, who are very frustrated with Jeff. Because to them, he was another white body who was taking up lots of energy and taking up lots of airtime to support something that, in their minds, ultimately added more confusion and more work for them.”
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Chas Moore, the co-founder of the Austin Justice Coalition and an active member in the Texas BLM movement, disagrees with the notion that people like Jeff Hood shouldn’t be allowed to participate. “I’m not for that #AllLivesMatter bullsh*t, but I am saying that if my black life matters, it’s going to take all colors, all walks of life, getting into this fight and make this work, make the world better,” he says.
“I think there’s always a thin line when it comes to white activists or white allies, particularly within this movement,” Moore adds. “[As a white person,] you have to look at it like, ‘Is my privilege going to overpower people that are fighting for their liberation?’”
Around 11:10 P.M. on a recent summer evening, I met up with Hood in downtown Dallas to walk through the events of that night. Up until that evening, he had avoided the press.
He rolled up in a dusty beige SUV with a bumper sticker on the back that called for the abolition of the death penalty. He wore brown Jesus sandals (Chacos), jeans, a beaded bracelet, and a brown blazer with an untucked button-down shirt. His beard was rabbinical.
“Hey, brother.”
We shook hands.
In person, Hood was relaxed and spoke in a soft southern drone that hints at his Georgia roots. He is an activist in the most literal sense of the term: He prefers firm, direct action with little regard for the consequences. (Current arrest count: three.) On certain topics—say, white America—his opinions are clear as day. He believes that America, as a country, should confront its deep history of racism head on, and build bridges to “love and justice.” “I’m not saying that me and my family are a lie,” he says. “I’m not saying I’m a lie. I’m saying this whole idea of white America is a lie.”
“I have friends who would consider themselves very Afrocentric, very much part of the black nation, who are very frustrated with Jeff. Because to them, he was another white body who was taking up lots of energy.”
Tonight is the first time he’s been in downtown Dallas since the shooting. I ask him how it feels.
“It feels like I’m returning to the scene of a crime,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s guilt that I’m dealing with now. I think it’s devastation. And just sadness. And feeling like this didn’t have to happen. It didn’t have to happen.”
We walk up to a small hill in the middle of a city park, and Hood tells me this is where he shouted his now-infamous refrain, the one that got him in trouble. “I said, ‘God damn white America,’ and I said white America is a f*cking lie right after that,” Hood tells me. He never expected the clip to be broadcast to a national audience.
