Bob Marley - Get Up Stand Up Live In Dortmund, Germany

Fic or Fact: The Liberating Black God

Fic or Fact:  The Black Liberating God

I view Christianity with a hermeneutic of suspicion. I come from a very devout Catholic family, and my father is a non-dimensional pastor, so God has always been a central part of my upbringing.  Growing up a Black Catholic, I also knew that there was a distinction that was made between Black Catholics and regular Catholics (meaning white Catholics)-even in church race was an issue. My grandmother grew up in Grand Coteau, Louisiana and frequently told stories about learning her prayers in Latin from a young white priest who was not from the area that was gracious enough to come to the house to teach my grandmother and her siblings their prayers-for a small fee, so they could make their “proper communion” because they couldn’t attend catechism with the white kids.  During the 1930s the town didn’t have separate churches for the Blacks and whites, but the church was segregated---the church.  African Americans sat in the back and received communion last, and if the priest ran out of hosts, the black folks were turned away. It would be almost twenty years before the diocese saw fit to build separate churches for the African American parishes, and even though, the Catholic Church is the richest world, black parishes, particularly black parishes with schools have been forced to close because of a lack of funds.  I have seen the savage inequalities as it pertains to Blacks in all aspects of my life, including my church. The inequalities that exists in these churches can still be seen today, so it is very hard for me to digest the idea that I serve that same God that white people or serve, and to put it more frankly, that we serve a God who has the interest of oppressed people in mind.

Cone believes that God is for those that are oppressed and that Jesus was not just this passive, peace loving man, but a man who represented marginalized people and lived and died like many oppressed people do, and that if we say we are followers of Jesus, we must do the same.  While I agree with his assessment of Jesus as being a radical during his day, and that Christians are called to be world changers, I question his overly optimistic view of the condition of the oppressed in which he states:

Theologians must make the gospel clear in particular social context so that God’s people

will know that the struggle for freedom is God’s struggle too.  The victory over evil is certain because God has taken up the cause of the oppressed, promising today what was promised to the people of Israel while they were yet Slaves in Egypt…Because we know that we can trust the promise of God, we also know that the oppressed will be fully liberated (Cone 91).

I grappled with this part of the text and myself because I wondered what it says about me as a Christian since I do not believe Cone’s statement is true.  Each time I read that passage over with the hopes of finding something I could buy into, I could not.  My mind keep bringing me to two verses in Bob Marley’s song, “Get Up, Stand Up”:

Most people think,
Great god will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

I believe this song is more of a reflection of my ideology and theology as an African American woman in America.  Let me be clear, I do believe in God, but I am not sure that I believe in the God of Christianity who does not seem to hear the prayers and petitions of people of color when it comes to justice and oppression. 

In my opinion, not much has changed in this country or the world as it pertains to people of color.  Here in America, it seems to be open season on African American males who are slaughtered each day simply because they are Black.  I wonder if the family of Jonathan Ferrell, the unarmed man who was killed in Charlotte, NC feels that freedom or liberation Cone says we possess, knowing that their son/brother/grandson was murdered simply because he was an African American man.  Where is the “victory” over evil when this man death is simply referred to as being “unfortunate”?  How are we to find such a circumstance liberating?

Cone parallels the Exodus narrative of the Bible when God liberated the people from the tyrannical hands of the Egyptians to that of slaves in America.  While I can see how the comparison can me made, it seems that African Americans have continuously been in cycles of slavery that manifests in different ways. First, Africans were slaves, literally property that was owned by white folks in America.  After hundreds of years in bondage, Black people were emancipated only to be thrust into the grips of segregation where the only thing about their condition that changed was that people could no longer say that they technically owned you, but one could be forced to become a sharecropper to survive, which was another form of captivity. Now in America, where I live and where my children go to school are usually dictated by my socio-economic status and are connected to the color of my skin.  Forgive me if I fail to see how we have been fully liberated. 

A few years ago, I had a talk with a friend of mine who was attending seminary, and she expressed concern about the salvation of her your brother because she said, he refused to go to church.  When she pressed him about it, he simply said he would deal with God on his own terms and he did not have to do it in church.  After I listened to her share her distress, I asked her if she ever considered the fact that her brother viewed Christianity as an extension of the oppression or racism he dealt with all week?  She looked very puzzled, so I continued, “ I think there are Black men who find it hard to go to church and worship a god that in their mind is white. Why would you want to church and worship a god that represents the system of racial oppression that has stepped on your neck all week?”  I was only able to come to this conclusion after talking to a few of my guy friends that do not attend church because they consider Christianity more of a detriment to what they believe as Black men.

I must say I agree with Dr. Cone when he said that Black folks and white folks do not serve the same God, but I sure would love to know what God whites do serve because they have always had the freedom, we’ve been assured through God that we would get, and we are still waiting.  I attended a white church for over a year and a half, and as Dr. Cone has pointed out “they emphasized the relativity of faith in history, they have seldom applied insight to the problem of the color line…because it did not benefit their own social interest (Cone 42).  This whole notion of everyone sitting at the table of Christ is empty rhetoric thrown around the likes of Vanderbilt Divinity School to help people ease their consciences when in reality, many people want to minister to and worship with people who look like them, think like them, and are from the same socio-economic status they are from.

Now, I know this view is also problematic, but it is something I have given lots of thought to especially since when the perpetual suffering of African peoples are questioned, the only answer that can be given is “the meaning of black suffering remains a part of the mystery of God’s will” (Cone 177).  I just cannot not accept that as an answer nor can I swallow the notion that it was “through Jesus that [African slaves] could know they were people, even though they were sold like cattle (Cone 31).  Africans knew they were people before they were introduced to Christ because they knew the DIVINE because the divine was a part of who they were.  They knew they were people because before that fateful trek across the Atlantic Ocean, they had not only known freedom, but they possessed it.

So maybe I should say I do have a few issue with Black Christianity.   While I won’t say that it has taught us to be completely passive, I think it has caused us be lulled to sleep in situations that require immediate action.  The Bible says, “Faith without works is DEAD.”  So, why are we sitting around waiting to be completely liberated?  Where is the work?  When will the rubber meet the road?  Did not Jesus put in work to be liberated?  That didn’t just consist of going to church and singing and shouting. Perhaps to Dr. Cone I would be considered one of those radical students that is misguided.  Maybe I am.  Does my theology need a bit of reflection?  Sure.  But, I think every Black person in America who calls themselves Christian needs to start reflecting on what they believe and why.  Besides feeling a spiritual connectedness when you cry out in worship or praise, what shift have we seen in the condition of Black people?  We still are not free.  While white folks are receiving their eternity now, we are waiting to get ours when we die.  I find this problematic and forgive for my being blunt, but I want mine now. 

I recently spoke with someone who said there has been an increase in Latinos becoming members of the NOI (Nation of Islam), while I don’t agree with all the teachings of the NOI, I wonder if there is something they are giving people that Christianity isn’t.  I believe it is worth looking into.  I would love to interview them to hear their rationale behind becoming Muslim.

 

So for now, I will pray for clarity regarding our plight, and I wonder how many other Black folks out there struggle with the notion of Christianity like I do.  Until then, I will use my Sundays to reflect on what I want to spiritually in the confines of my own home and listen to the worship songs of Bob Marley because for me they constitute liberation.

The Impact of Ancestry

In 2004, I had the opportunity to go Kenya for three weeks to do mission work.  Our team focused on visiting as many orphanages as possible to play with the children, read to them, love on them, and make a sizeable monetary donations towards any needs they may have. It was an experience that made my soul much richer because as I sought to give the children some of the things they did not have in abundance, but they gave me so much more; they gave me purpose, love, and a deeper appreciation for humanity. 

One day while visiting an orphanage, we were greeted by another group of missionaries from Georgia.  These middle-aged women greeted us with numerous questions after informal introductions.  They commented that they assumed a few of us were native Kenyans, and that they hadn’t run into any missionaries like us before.  After exchanging small talk, one of the ladies asked, “Well, how many people have you all saved?” 

So taken aback was I by her question, I asked her what she meant. 

“You know, how many souls have you saved and brought to God? We have saved fifty-six souls since we got here, and we’ve been giving them these “Jesus Loves You Pencils”.  You know as a missionary it is up to us to bring God to this place.”

I found the comment of this well-intentioned lady problematic for various reasons.  I hated the idea that she was keeping “score” about the number of people she felt she’d brought to God, and more importantly I found her statement downright arrogant and self-aggrandizing.   

Troubled by her statement, I attempted to choose my words carefully, and I said, “Well, I haven’t been keeping count.  I feel I was sent here to demonstrate the love of Christ. I think it is very egotistical for any of us to assume that we are bringing God to our Kenyan brothers and sisters.  God is here, and has been here before the foundation of the earth, and I am sure that most Kenyans know that and know God better than you could possibly imagine”. 

 I am sure the unnamed lady in my story was perplexed by my answer and inability to hide my slight annoyance with her statement; I don’t think she understood what she was inferring was that the Africans lacked beliefs or spiritual roots, mostly because they were African and it was her Christian duty as a white woman to save their “dark souls”.  While, I hadn’t thought about that incident in Kenya for years because there were so many positive, life-altering events that happened within my three week visit, I did think about it as I read, The Spirituality of African Peoples because Dr. Paris articulated very profoundly what I attempted to articulate to the missionary nine summers ago:  long before coming in contact with Christianity, slave holders, or missionaries, Africans throughout the world have always believed in God as a supreme being.

As slavery ravaged the continent of Africa, many justified the capture of slaves as a part of God’s unique plan to introduce “heathen” souls to the true God and rid them of their “false gods” (Paris 22).  These assumptions were made because there was no clear understanding or study of African people and their religious practices which were embedded in their everyday lives. “Black religion has not identical with white religion”, and this is still an issue- black Jesus vs. white Christ (19). For the African, there was no way to separate “the African from his religion or his community”(28).  Spirituality and community were paramount in the lives of Africans through out the Diaspora, and Dr. Paris argues that they are still a part of our communities.  While, I believe a deep reverence for a supreme being and sense of oneness with family and community are a part of the cultural DNA of African Americans, I don’t know if I agree with Dr. Paris’ assessment that community and spirituality are still an important part of the lives of black folks in today’s contemporary society.  Perhaps this sentiment would have held true twenty to thirty years ago, but it seems in 2013, in the black community, the authentic African self is warring with the self that attempted to assimilate to Western ideals that are centered on a separation of religious and secular self and the notion of “oneness”.  Instead of thinking in terms of “I am because we are, many of us think in terms of Rene Descartes assertion, “I think, therefore I am”, which is not communal at all. It endorses isolation and selfishness that ultimately can wreak havoc in the community to which one belongs, but also in one’s spiritual self.

This weekend I attended a retreat, and I had to take a values inventory.  This was my first time taking one, so I was really eager to see the results.  Most of my scores were not surprising; I scored a fifteen for valuing privacy, a fourteen for commitment to family/ethnic group, and a thirteen for creativity; all of my scores were quire accurate. However, the score that intrigued me the most was my scoring regarding family.  Family has always been paramount for me. My formative years were spent in an intergenerational home where I lived with my grandparents and mother for the first four or five years of my life.  My grandmother, whom I affectionately called Momma because in essence she was my mother in addition to my biological mother, taught most of my early lessons in life.  Each morning when I woke up, I would head to our living room to see if my grandmother was seated in her favorite chair saying the rosary as she prepared for the long day ahead of her as a domestic, a job that attempted to strip her of dignity and humanity.  Usually, I would climb into her lap as she finished her prayers. From those moments, I learned the importance of prayer and spiritual life. 

Our home was never empty!  We had relatives and family friends over on weekends and for holidays, and my grandparents were very hospitable.  My grandparents were born and raised in Louisiana, but they moved to Houston after getting married in search of a better life and more lenient Jim Crow laws.  As I got older, my mother told me that my grandparents had allowed several relatives who wanted to migrant from Louisiana to Texas to live with them, until they were able to get jobs, and save enough money to get their own dwellings.  Even after they moved, these relatives would come over every Sunday to visit. My grandmother would send clothes to her sister-in-laws, nieces, and nephews  when they were struggling financially.  These were things my grandmother never spoke of perhaps because it was second nature for her to help people.

As I got older and heard more of these stories, I took great pride in them and thought they could be attributed to my Louisiana roots.  One day, I said, “Momma, people from Louisiana sure do stick together.  Look at our family.  Look at how close we are.”  Much to my surprise, she said, “It has nothing to do with being from Louisiana.  Black folks are supposed to stick together.  When I was coming up and when I moved here, we looked out for one another. People don’t do that anymore, which is why we are in the shape we are in now.”

When I got my first teaching job, I started to see that my grandmother was right in her assessment.  I worked in a predominantly African American and Latino district with more apartments than homes, and a serious gang problem.  There was no sense of community and many of the grandparents of the children I taught were sometimes in their thirties or early forties.  There was no one of age to pass down any wisdom, and the kids saw older people as more of a childlike burden plagued with senility that had nothing to offer in terms of life lessons.  The children and parents in the neighborhood where I taught had no sense of self or community, so there was no ownership of the neighborhood.

I often thought about my upbringing and I was thankful that I was taught to respect my elders, to listen to their wisdom, that family was a priority right under God, and that Sunday wasn’t the only time we took notice of God, it should be an everyday things. 

I wonder if this is what is lacking in the African American community.  I know I have touched on it before, but has integration given us a false sense of self and identity?  Black people for the most part have always been communal and in tune with God, but in an era where many say that the church is dead and irrelevant, is the church also serving as a symbol for the demise of us as a people. Perhaps this has happened because we have more options regarding where we can live, where we can do, and what we can do.  We’ve been afforded freedoms even my mother didn’t know, but have we put we have traded our freedom for another type of bondage, a loss identity.

I would love to do a study on intergenerational families throughout the Diaspora who live under one roof to see if it makes a difference in the set of values and belief those children have. I wonder if they have a deeper sense of self and history?  Are they learning the importance of caring for loved ones especially when they get sick?  Will this living arrangement impact what career choices they make?

Before I got ready to come to Nashville, I asked for my grandmother’s blessing to pursue my masters.  If she’d said it wasn’t a good idea, I wouldn’t be in Divinity School right now, but she did. She gave me her blessing and told me to never forget from whence I came.  I promised her that I wouldn’t.  I went home this summer after being summoned by grandmother; she died less than a week after I got home. She waited until I got there so we could say our goodbyes. 

Sitting with the dying round the clock has always been practiced, due to the widespread belief that none should die alone as well as to a strong belief that the dying are very close to the spiritual realm and hence, a special blessing might be received from them just as they cross over (Paris 95).

My grandmother had often spoken of her death of her mother and how they kept vigil until her mother transitioned over, and I knew that it was something she wanted for herself, so we stayed with her as well.  She transitioned with my mother there to hold her hand.  I do not have any children yet, and when I do have children, my only regret is that they never experienced the richness that my 88 year old grandmother brought to my life, but I am sure that my mother will give them a lasting legacy because she was taught by the best.

Episteme #2

Dream Deferred, Humanity Denied

Dream Deferred, Humanity Denied

“Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond.  But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear; that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls not by their skins” (Du Bois 140).

Prolific writer and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois died August 27, 1963 on the eve of the historic March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would deliver his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, and I have often contemplated the symbolism of Dr. Dubois dying the day before this pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.  Perhaps, Dr. Dubois knew what many African Americans still do not understand, America will always see Black folks as a “problem”, and that integration served only as a tool to pacify Black people into believing we were finally seen as equals, yet in actuality we are too oft treated like the “kinky haired” step child that no one wants the visitors to see.

 I went to Ghana in 2000, and it was rumored that an older Du Bois with more lived experiences under his belt than several people put together, resolved to believe that in this life there would never be a time when Black people would be judged by their souls or humanity. Many said he felt that integration would ultimately do more harm than good because as a people we would lose sight of what it was that really mattered:  to be seen a fully human. Some have even said he was against Dr. King giving the “I Have A Dream” speech. What did it matter if white America allowed Black folks to eat at their lunch counters if they weren’t paid a decent wage to afford them the ability to eat there?  After all, “to be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships” (Du Bois 5).  Could it really be considered a triumph when people of color were allowed to move into all white neighborhoods, and the neighbors moved or made life so unbearable that usually the Black families moved? Perhaps Du Bois knew that that which Black people hoped for could only be attained in the afterlife where the veil would be lifted or better yet does not exist.

While I do not know if Du Bois actually said any of those things, I do know that the condition of Blacks in America aren’t that different than they were when Dr. Du Bois penned The Souls of Black Folks.  From the emancipation of slaves to the present we are still in bondage, but are lulled into an eerily comfortable complacency by the things we are able to buy and the places we are now allowed to go and live, but we are still seen as the bottom-rung citizens of America because we were sired from the ugly sin of slavery.  We have inherited a shame that has been embedded in our consciousness, a shame that says we will never been seen as full citizens of the nation the sweat and blood of our ancestors erected.

 In recent years we have seen this to be true with the treatment of America’s most beloved talk show hostess, Oprah Winfrey.  In the incident with Winfrey and Hermes of Paris in 2005, the mogul was refused entry to the boutique and rebuffed by the store clerk, an incident that Winfrey referred to as “the most humiliating moment of her life” and while she believed that race played a factor in her being denied access to the store, but never articulated it as such, Oprah was attacked by white media for overreacting and playing “the race card”.  Last month, a white employee in a swank Swedish store rebuffed Oprah when she attempted to buy a $38,000 purse.  Winfrey made a statement to the media regarding the incident stating that it proves that “racism is still an issue”, and a media frenzy began.  Then a strange thing happened, Oprah released a statement apologizing for “overreacting” and stated that it was “just an example of being in a place where people would not expect you to be”.  The question is, as a Black woman, where would people expect Oprah to be?  Would the saleswoman have been more comfortable with her serving in a kitchen or cleaning their house?  More importantly, would the saleswoman have assumed a white woman could not buy a $38,000 handbag simply because she was white?  I have seen this sort of disdain exhibited not only towards myself, but towards other African American women as well. Even in the academy, there are white female students who would be more comfortable with their African American professors (women) if they were pushing a broom, not teaching a class.

What I find so problematic about Oprah Winfrey’s statement is that she (1) apologized for being Black (2) she believed she was in a place where “people” like her would not be expected to be (3) she traded in her dignity in an attempt to return the dignity of the store clerk whose dignity was never compromised.  The Swedish store clerk felt secure in her role of racial superiority and unfortunately Winfrey’s response helped to keep her place of superiority intact. How can one expect other people to see them as equal when they believe themselves subordinate?  In the wake of all that has happened in the few last years with African Americans:  Trayvon Martin murder, the unraveling of the Voter’s Act, the rape of Nafissatou Diallo by French diplomat Strauss-Kahn, and the blatant disrespect of our first African-American president, could Oprah Winfrey have decided to take a stand and say “enough is enough” or has she like so many of us become distracted by the “golden apples” that we trade our self worth for materiality or what appears to be equal access to the American Dream?

Don’t get me wrong I am not judging Winfrey.  Like Oprah, I too am guilty of apologizing for my blackness when it becomes problematic for others.  I too have felt inferior because of my skin and burned with indignation because deep down I knew this was not the natural order of things.  I want to believe that integration is a real thing and not just a word that allows me to access through the same doors as my white peers, but no keys to gain real entry.  I want to believe that when a white student in study group says of my answer, “It’s actually right”, he doesn’t mean any harm and that he didn’t say such a thing because I am Black and a woman, but I know I would be fooling myself. Much like Oprah, I did not take a stand.  I remained silent.  And that is the problem, as a race African Americans have rested on the laurels of the Civil Rights Movement and have stopped fighting and demanding treatment that is rightfully ours? When did a half-hearted apology in regards to injustices done to our children such as Quvenzhane’ Wallis who was referred as a ‘cunt’ become the norm?  When will we actually get mad and say, “enough is enough” give us the respect we deserve? When will we demand it?   Racism did not end in the sixties with the end of the Civil Rights Movement; it is a living, thriving organism that must be fought at all times. Sure we can march and post revolutionary posts on Facebook, but the is still much work to be done, and it is the responsibility of all of us to do it.  So in this race, it is important that we are vigilant and are not misguided by the “fools gold” that is thrown our way, but remain mindful of the old cliché that says, “history always repeats itself”, and if we are not careful the very freedoms that we do possess will be a thing of the past.