So why launch the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion?  Why a peer-review journal like this?  Why now?  Maybe what we should be asking is what took us so long to launch such a journal.  For a long time, those of us from communities of color have needed a journal that:

1. 1)challenges the prevailing assumption that the present religious scholarly landscape, rooted in Eurocentric thought, is the pinnacle of academic excellence;
   

2. 2)gives an epistemological preference to the perspectives emanating from the disenfranchised and dispossessed to raise issues concerning which type of engaged praxis we should employ;
   

3. 3)moves beyond the false assumption that religious perspectives constructed by Euroamericans are normative;
   

4. 4)creates a space where religious scholars of color can study their oppression, and that of their communities, as a network of interdependent histories;
   

5. 5)deconstructs the false walls that separate natural allies; and
   

6. 6)explores how our separate marginalized communities are complicit with disenfranchising other groups of people. 
   

The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion will attempt to assemble the best voices and insights from communities of color, promoting interdisciplinary and innovative investigation, and embracing new technologies of dissemination and empowerment.