Open Letter to Wal-Mart

Dear Wal-Mart,

It has come to my attention that you are in need of some damage control after a recent unfortunate incident regarding your line of black Barbie dolls. To wit:

Black Barbie Sold for Less Than White Barbie at Walmart Store

March 9, 2010 — Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll's white counterpart at one store and possibly others. A photo first posted to the humor Web site FunnyJunk.com and later to the Latino Web site Guanabee.com shows packages of Mattel's Ballerina Barbie and Ballerina Theresa dolls hanging side by side at an unidentified store. The Theresa dolls, which feature brown skin and dark hair, are marked as being on sale at $3.00. The Barbies to the right of the Theresa dolls, meanwhile, retain their original price of $5.93. The dolls look identical aside from their color.

Wal-Mart, I feel your pain. There’s just no pleasing some folks. We always got to be angry about something. First we’re all “destruction of the black self image” and then when you give us scraps from the table, er, remember there’s dollars to be made, er, not only give us the black Barbie (and, way to go Mattel, saving money by not actually Africanizing her features!) but discount said Barbie to get her into as many hands as possible, folks go an turn on you.

"The implication of the lowering of the price is that's devaluing the black doll," said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.

One word for Thelma, Wal-Mart: uppity.

We here at the Broaddus Institute of Creative Spin are currently devising the best ways for you to spin this. Free of charge, we offer you these options:

-Call it your 3/5 Constitutional compromise sale
-clear shelf space by auctioning off the black dolls a dozen at a time (applicable to damaged/defective dolls only)
-Two words for you: “discount darkies!”
-Say it with me “Negro clearance sale”

Be strong Wal-Mart. This is one good spin move away from being a non-story.

Your consigliere during troubled times,

Maurice

O Harry: Because Sometimes Your Friends are Ignorant

It’s always a tricky bit of navigation when your friends say or do something ignorant. I remember a couple of occasions in church, I was attending a mostly white church at the time, and one of the members patted me on head. On another occasion, the pastor compared me to “a faithful dog” from the pulpit. For better or worse, I chalked those things up to well-meaning, but ignorant gestures. Perhaps she didn’t get the memo that the whole rub the head of a black guy has some pretty racist origins or maybe he didn’t get that comparing black folks to animals might not play well considering a history or dehumanization. I often got the “you’re the whitest black guy I know” (which I often heard as “you’re the only black guy I know and I only associate with you because you sound and seem to act a lot like me so you don’t scare me”) because I don’t “sound” black.

Which is why it didn’t exactly shock me that Senator Harry Reid had described Obama—as reported in the new political gossip book, "Game Change" by John Heileman and Mark Halperin—as a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." There was a steady chorus of people who bought into the idea that "the first black president" is actually not black.* The comments were being made on both sides of the political aisle and from across the spectrum of race. The “am I black enough for you” debate even raged in the black community (Reverend Jesse Jackson says what?).**

Race is the third rail in politics, in the church, and, well, most of our lives. If there is to be any hope of reconciliation, there has to be a sharing and hearing of stories and some of the conversations are going to be tough (and, as a friend of mine points out, you can’t have a conversation about anything by starting it with "Your voice doesn't count.") Now, I know some Republicans want to make hay of this incident, calling folks on the seeming-hypocrisy of Senator Trent Lott having to step down over his comments versus the gymnastics folks do to defend someone they like. And they’d have a point, except that conversations about race shouldn’t happen in a vacuum, but rather have a context. (Though, seriously, Senator Lott, how do you think trying to spin someone’s segregationist past is a good idea or that it wouldn’t get you into trouble? But again, if you have built up a lot of good will, you can step into such firestorms to make the point you thought you were making because friends can have those kind of tough conversations. If you don’t have that kind of good will built up…]

Every few years we have these sort of dust ups, so we were about due. Not too long ago we had Don Imus referring to the women of the Rutgers basketball team as "some nappy-headed hos." After so many offenses, he rather struck me as an equal opportunity offender, but it led to the conversation about how there are some words and phrases “off limits” to certain folks in certain contexts and the situation resolved by the offended parties speaking up and reprimands given.

We also had Kelly Tilghman, play-by-play announcer for The Golf Channel's PGA Tour broadcasts, while bantering with Nick Faldo about young players who might challenge Woods suggesting that they "lynch him in a back alley." In short, it’s stupid and you can’t say it. However, I don’t think she should have been suspended. I think her apology should have stood on its own, she should have been simply reprimanded, and the conversations had about why what she said was a poor choice of words. We can’t police every bad sentence, because that would stifle conversations that still need to be had.

"I've apologized to the president, I've apologized to everyone that within the sound of my voice that I could have used a better choice of words," Reid has said. Apologies happen for a reason. Sometimes folks simply don’t get that what they did was hurtful or demeaning and their apologies should stand and be accepted on their face value (even if the incidents themselves aren’t forgotten because we know that forgiveness takes time). Just like folks ought to be judged by their deeds and track record.

Just because folks are your friends doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of saying and doing ignorant things. Just like I’m sure there will be another RaceFail conversation in the genre fiction world as we muddle through what it means to live with one another, deal with the history of hurts with of one another, be different from one another, and respect one another.


*Now, I can’t wait to see the gymnastics folks do if President Bill Clinton’s alleged comment about President Obama—“ a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee."—prove to be accurate. After all, President Clinton was widely held as our “first black president.”

** Better to discuss this than the reality of what it means to be black in America, dealing with what W.E.B. DuBois called the “double consciousness” of black folks. How many of us may “act” or “speak” one way when we are in professional settings and then another when we’re at home or in a “safe” place.

[That and sometimes our “friends” are just too ignorant for words: "I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived," ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said to Esquire Magazine. "I saw it all growing up."] With a h/t to the blackfolks LJ:

Worf’s Journey of Blackness Part II

Worf’s allegorical journey of blackness sets the stage for most of the Star Trek: The Next Generation storylines which focus on him.

Immersion-Emersion

“I have studied and know everything about my heritage.” –Worf
In this stage, individuals immerse themselves in all aspects of their culture. Diving into Klingoness, especially liberated from his Star Fleet ideals, didn’t necessarily make him committed to his Klingon identity. Worf had an intellectual understanding of his people, though his was a perspective of the outsider even among his own.

Still, he embraced all things Klingon, going out with only Klingon women (K’Ehleryr) and studying his culture, history, rituals, religion; poetry and songs, all the things he was stripped of. Yes, he was indeed stripped of his religion, his culture, and his identity. Though benign and unintentional, his Star Fleet enculturation left him with only his zealousness to his duties as his avenue to prove himself. However, there was still a loss of self, culturally who he is.

An interesting consequence of this is that both Commander Riker and Captain Pikard choose to explore his culture, often alongside him, in order to understand and know him better.

Such over-compensating Klingon-ness still didn’t stop his internal insecurity. He lived in silent fear of judgment from the more Klingon than thou crowd, either positively living for judgments such as him acting “as a true Klingon” (“Mind’s Eye”) or in such negative pronouncements, such as having his name not being mentioned on his home world. “It is as though you never existed. Terrible burden for a warrior to bear. To be nothing. To be without honor. Without the chance for glory.” (“The Drumhead”).

Internalization

It’s only at this stage that his Klingonness starts to be defined, starts to become a part of him. It's the psychological change wherein he learns to balance his personal cultural identity against his greater cultural identity. It’s a two-pronged battle that he faces: his Starfleet training vs. Klingon nature as well as being a Klingon among Klingons.

“Is there nothing in your heart but duty?” Kern (“Redemption Part II”)

Worf has always had a Sidney Poitier type quality to him. Because he was all dignity and honor, he was the perfect Klingon representative, Klingon, but not SO Klingon as to be overly-intimidating to mainstream Star Fleet. He was the uber-Klingon required to break through: smart, handsome, and knows how to navigate the “mainstream”. From Starfleet’s perspective, his token acceptance—after all, he was the ONLY Klingon serving in all of Star Fleet—gave him a singular distinction (Look at us! We got our one. WE *ARE* DIVERSE!!!)

Integrating human ways into his Klingon code prove bumpy at best, as he let a Romulan die rather than donate some of his blood (“The Enemy”) and balancing his Klingon vs. Federation responsibilities (“Ethics”). It was always interest to see if he’d behave in a more Klingon fashion among Klingons, and turn around and act more human among his fellow Federation members.

“I know, but it is not MY way.” –Worf

The responsibilities of being Klingon weigh heavily upon him. Though he realizes he has a child from K’Ehleyr (“Reunion”) and he feels comfortable enough to choose Captain Pikard to be his Cha'DIch, his “second” during his trial, it still left his rival, Baytor, to remark that “he’s still unsure of himself” (“Sins of the Father”). By the episode “Redemption” he seemed to have learned an appreciation for what it’s like to be a Klingon. And it’s cost. Being Klingon meant he had to transcend his own individuality in the name of communal survival. He accepts discommendation for the idea of his people to prove his Klingon heart. Yet, once again he finds himself isolated from his people. Except this time, he was isolated by sacrificing for his people by his choice. And by his commitment.

Internalization-Commitment

At this stage, the idea of one’s cultural identity involves commitment to a plan of action, and individuals begin to live in accordance with the new self-image that they have developed for themselves. Worf’s Klingon-ness takes on the dimension of praxis, theory accompanied by social action, but it sprang from a place of reclaiming his internal pride. Being Klingon meant being true to who he is. All of him. Which meant Worf is able to guide Alexander through his own journey of self-discovery (“New Ground”), impressing that his sense of honor is what made him Klingon. His self-defined Klingon-ness allows him to be who he is no matter his context.

“We have forgotten ourselves. I do not know why. Our stories are not told. Our songs are not sund.” –Tok

By "Birthright II", he abandoned the paradigm of what was culturally acceptable as a Klingon value by not abandoning his father to dishonor. Thus finds himself at a camp of Klingon survivors, with a whole new generation of Klingons in search of their own Klingon identity. Not bound by any preconceived traditions, these emergent Klingons were drawn to Worf. He walked around the camp—big pimpin’, a Malcolm X to the young people, restoring their pride—and taught them their stories. The stories define them.

As successful as Worf was with the lost tribe of Klingons, the events of Birthright left Worf feeling empty. There was one part of his cultural heritage which he hadn’t explored. Again, due to benign neglect more than anything intentional, he had lost his religion, his God. So in “Rightful Heir”, Picard responds to Worf’s crisis of faith by suggesting he again immerse himself in Klingon beliefs to see if they hold any truths for him, and allows him to make a pilgrimage to the Temple of Boreth, core of Klingon beliefs concerning Kahless and Sto-Vo-Kor.

A secure sense of his Klingonness allowed Worf to pursue (Deanna) and marry (Jadzia Dax,
on Deep Space Nine) outside of his race. It allowed him to make peace with his brother (“Homeward”) and it allowed him to figure out which values and traditions to pass along to Alexander. It’s a difficult task to foster an interest in one’s heritage in young children. In “First Born,” Worf wanted to take the time to involve his son in cultural rituals, to not just prevent him from being assimilated, but also allow Alexander to have the room to find his own destiny. To not be trapped by his people’s or even his father’s idea of who he should be.

Worf’s major battle was one of fighting against the passive integration which had undergirded much of his life in Star Fleet. He was given room to explore his culture, difficult as that journey and the conversations involved with it might have been. There were times when he had stern words and had to make difficult decisions. He carries the burden of his culture, but the thing is, he grew to a place to begin to relate to others within his culture and without. And his journey of self-discovery and cultural exploration never truly ends.


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Worf’s Journey of Blackness Part I

The Tragic Mulatto

Admittedly, it’s difficult to have discussions about race (made doubly so if you’re prone to use words like nigrescence or ontological blackness). People have defense mechanisms, walls, and quick triggers on the issue that often make constructive dialogue exasperating. However, as metaphor, such discussions are relatively safe when viewed through the prism of science fiction or fantasy (unless the topic of cultural appropriation comes up, then hold onto your Sorting Cap).

I am firmly on record as saying that Star Trek: DS9 is the best of the Star Trek iterations (this is a deal-breaker point with me and I will judge your intelligence and your family’s honor based on whether or not you agree with me). And yes I once described Captain Sisko as Black Jesus. Appearing in more Star Trek episodes than any other character is Lt. Commander Worf, first on The Next Generation, then on Deep Space Nine. As you watch the episodes which centered around him, especially in The Next Generation, you can see that his journey towards what we’ll call ontological Klingon-ness mirrors that of any search for racial/cultural identity.

Worf quite doesn’t fit the category of magical Negro, but a case could be made for him being the “tragic Mulatto”. Trapped between cultures, often kept in his place if not outright neutered by Star Fleet, half the time he comes across as a mascot for the Federation (“look how progressive we are. We let one in!”).

Let’s see how well he follows the journey of Klingescence:

Pre-Encounter

“As I watched Worf, it was like looking at a man I had never known.” –Captain Pikard “(“Heart of Glory”)

Born Worf, Son of Mogh, his parents were killed by the Romulan attack on the Khitomer outpost before the age of inclusion (when he is formally accepted by his people). Adopted by a human couple, he was raised as one of them, learning their ways, and eventually joined the Starfleet Academy. Thus he was hardly among any of his own kind, he didn’t understand them. To fit in, he was asked to change the one thing about him he couldn’t change: his Klingon nature. Too Klingon for humans, too human for Klingons, he was often shunned by both sides.

Worf was a Klingon in name only, perfectly assimilated into the Federation. Colorless, or rather, raceless (race being a matter of accident of birth), it “didn’t matter” to the Federation (except that they could count him as a Klingon statistic). Even Captain Pikard once remarked that “I think it is best to remain ignorant of certain elements of the Klingon psyche.” (“Where Silence has Lease”). Worf existed in essentially a state of non-being.

“Worf is feeling culturally and socially isolated.” –Wesley (“Icarus Factor”)

Typically in this stage of their journey, individuals downplay the importance of race in their lives and focus more on their membership in other groups. Cut off from going to school with his people, cut off from working with his people, all Worf was left with desperate attempts to bond where he could. He made Jeremy Astor his brother through the R'uustai ceremony (“The Bonding”).

In the episode “The Emissary”, he re-kindles a relationship with K’Ehleyr, the mixed heritage (half-Klingon/half-human) woman who also was trapped between cultures. Unlike Worf who initially appeared adrift culturally, she had long sunk into a spiral of self-hate. During an encounter with her “kindred spirit”, the half human/half Betazoid Deanna Troi, the two have diametrically opposed views of themselves. While they each experience the richness and diversity of two worlds, Deanna saw herself as getting the best of each, while K’Ehleyr saw herself as receiving the worst of each. Her Klingon side terrified her and she didn’t like it at all. Part of her self-hate gets passed along to their son, Alexander Rozhenko.

The problem is the negation of cultural identity: his Klingoness is part of who he is. To reject, dismiss, ignore it is to do the same to part of him … even if he is doing it to himself.

Encounter

“Listen to the voice of your blood. You are not of these people.”

The second stage in this journey of Klingoness is when an individual encounters an experience that causes them to challenge their current feelings about themselves and their interpretation of the condition of themselves and their people against/within the mainstream of society. The Encounter experience is one that is so foreign to individuals' previous worldview regarding their cultural identity that it forces them to rethink their attitudes about their culture. The danger inherent danger is that few things can potentially shatter a person like having their worldview collapse.

Probably the most important episode for Lt. Worf came during the nearly unwatchable first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In “Heart of Glory,” he encounters some injured Klingons on a freighter in the Neutral Zone on a mission to seek glorious battles. One of the survivors, Korris, asks Worf to explain his reason for joining Starfleet. Worf explains how after the Romulans attacked the Khitomer outpost, he was left for dead in the rubble. A Starfleet officer found him and took him to Gault to raise him as a son. With his trimmed hair and civilized look, especially when seen alongside “native” Klingons, all of them realize Worf hasn't spent much time among his own kind. Worf doesn’t know his culture, his rituals, and doesn’t know what it means to be a true Klingon. The words “have they tamed you?” haunt him. Though this won’t be the first time he hears from the “More Klingon than Thou” crowd, they would prod him onto a path of self-exploration.

Their words fire his soul. Now he has a taste of his own people, a place he’s meant to belong. And thus he goes on a pursuit of “ontological Klingon-ness”.

[to be continued]

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President Oreo?

“People think they dis my person by stating I’m darkly packed/I know this so I point at Q-Tip and he states ‘black is black’.” –De La Soul, Me, Myself, and I

I was surfing the Internet when I ran across a LiveJournal community for “oreos”. Made up of black folks insecure in their “blackness.” Their stories start to sound alike after a while. Some variation on “I grew up in the suburbs and ‘lost my way’”: My whole life I grew up in "white" settings–school, church, neighborhood. So I don’t sound or act black. What’s ironic is that white and Asian people who act black or ghetto give me just as much grief. (OR) I never seemed to fit in with anyone. In high school, I read a lot and listened to whatever music interested me. I had friends, but I wasn’t hung up on color. The black kids teased me a lot.

So here’s what’s been bugging me: this rising/steady chorus of people who insist that "the first black president" is actually not black. This is exactly one of the reasons I spend so much time thinking about various ideas like ontological blackness. We inherited this screwed up idea we call race, we suffered through things like the “one drop rule”—that one drop of black blood in you was enough to declare you black—and played by those rules (btw, try explaining those rules to a six year old). You can’t just up and change them simply because you suddenly want to define someone’s blackness down so that you can suddenly stake a claim.

Obama has said, "I identify as African-American — that's how I'm treated and that's how I'm viewed. I'm proud of it." That’s the end of the discussion. Period. Just like Tiger Woods can call himself a “Cablinasian" and be as “We are the World” a Negro as he wants to be. We all have to balance how we choose to define ourselves vs. how society defines and treats us.

Maybe I’ve been spending too much time on the Racial Slur Database, but I’ve never liked the idea of calling oneself or anyone else an “oreo”, to denote that one is black on the outside and white on the inside. It’s one of those epithets like “sell out” or “house Negro” or “Oreo” whenever someone breaks with our accepted group think, be it via philosophy, idea, or political agenda. And like “nigger”, I don’t believe anything is reclaimed by using it yourself to describe yourself.

People always find themselves having to define blackness (I know I’m about sick of being asked “what exactly is “being black”?”), but it’s another symptom of how the idea of race has us twisted up. What does “being white on the inside” amount to? “You talk like us. You look like us. You act like us.”

Like being called bougie, it’s an attempt to pigeonhole a group, people who don’t fit perfectly into some predetermined cultural box, and not allow for (even the biracial among us to) split cultures and interests. As if no one is allowed to like things not seen as “black”. It points to a level of assimilation, having grown up in the dominant culture. It points to how large our class problem is, often trumping our race problem as we assume that only one group can have middle class values or any kind of middle class culture … as opposed to redefining the boundaries of that culture.

Ok, Obama is half white. The next racial draft should be interesting, white people: just how many picks are you willing to give up to get him?


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Bougie* Down Productions

“No one ever means bougie as a compliment. It’s never ‘Oh, you’re so bougie!’ It’s ALWAYS a negative trait.”

I guess this starts with a confession: I’m a black nerd. A Dungeons & Dragons playing, Magic: the Gathering crushing, comic book loving, occasional Dream Theater listening nerd. I’ve been thinking about some of the “iterations” of blackness (no worries, this isn’t another round of my Ontological Blackness series). I know how so many folks, within and without of the black community, like to define blackness by some sort of standard of ghetto crackery. But class plays as much a role in defining a culture as anything else, and there is the burgeoning folks whose blackness strays to something more middle class. And for our troubles, we enjoy a different epithet: Bougie.

We’re the folks who get compliments like “You speak so well” or “You’re a credit to the race.” We enjoy that tension of being accused of forgetting where we’ve come from vs. remembering where I’ve come from … but wanting to get the hell out. Look, my soft bougie behind wasn’t built for the streets. Me trying to “be real” would only end up with me being real dead, real quickly.

It’s rare that I’ve actually been labeled bougie. Mostly I’ve escaped that because 1) I’m England born, with Jamaican roots and therefore excused due to cultural differences; and 2) I’m given room because I’m just so much the weird one to family and friends and just about any community I’m dropped into.

Bougie, as an epithet, strikes me as a reaction to the idea of betraying community, a term to keep us in line as we’re policed by other bougies projecting their black insecurities. The Blacker than thou crowd demonstrating their superiority by shaming us back in line. It’s bad enough when I don’t live up to people’s idea of true blackness from inside the culture, but then it can also come from those outside (which strikes me as “you’re not black like the hip hop guys I see on MTv”) which then borders on the ridiculous.

This all points to a class fall out issue as I maintain that we have more a class problem than race problem in country. A middle class white guy has more in common with a middle class black guy than a trailer park living white guy. And don’t get me wrong, I’m barely clinging to middle class as it is. But the “policing” does serve a positive role: it’s a reminder to not separate. It’s a call for all of us to remember that we share the same fate as we are bound by community.

It all comes down to what “being real” actually means. Being real doesn’t mean clinging to some sort of ghetto aesthetic and value system. Allow me to say that me doing down would make me a minstrel, not being real because that’s not close to who I am or what I’m about. And as I look at many hip hop videos, I see enough minstrels to last us for years. No, it boils down to be personal authenticity. Putting on airs, if that’s my attitude, I can take my bougie ass to the back of the bus.


*Bougie as in the short form of Bourgeoisie, taken to mean that someone has a bourgeois personality. By rights, bougie should be “bourgie” - but I can’t stand the r, and if we are going to bastardize the term I would rather bastardize it phonetically. A variation on bougie is siddity.


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Cosby’s Call to Arms

I finally got around to reading the transcript of Dr. Bill Cosby’s remarks in commemoration of Brown vs. the Board of Topeka Education to see what the brouhaha was all about. I understand that a lot of my white acquaintances want me to co-sign what he said, having heard snippets of his comments, but with all due respect, what these were were the equivalent of a barbershop conversation. A family conversation where some dirty laundry gets aired in order to possibly work toward a solution. So that’s the context in which I make my comments.

Few people call out the problems. Teenage pregnancy, families without fathers, drugs, and the chasing of materialism without any thought to life in the long term. These are all symptoms of the true state of despair in which too many people live.

I feel like an old man complaining about today’s youth. Maybe I’m mis-remembering the past, but it seems to me that there was a time when black folks lived together in community. That we have someone lost part of our cultural ethic, having gone from marching in order to secure equal education to dropping out of school in record rates and playing “gangsta”.

Too many of us have bought into the lie that we have no choice, that there’s no point to dream, that no one cares. We’ve bought the lie of low expectations. It is intellectually easy to blame racism and the actions of “some” people within the community. Folks may have their own ideas about what “some” may be code for, particularly as an attack on the poor. However, I believe that leaving the conversation behind, not having it at all, or forgetting about the poor is truly attacking them. It may be easier to kill the messenger because that’s sure beats wrestling with the actual problems.

The conversations may be hard; even still, the solutions are easier said than done. But the conversations need to be had. Often and loudly because how we treat the poor defines who we are as a culture and as a country.


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Raising Shadow People

It may have been Vin Diesel who coined the phrase “shadow people” to describe what it means to be part of two different racial groups: how they might look like one race or another, but would feel the pull of each world, not being able to properly identify with either. Derek Jeter, Mariah Carey, Tiger Woods, The Rock, Lynda Carter, Halle Berry, Jessica Alba. You get the idea, all shadow people to one degree or another.

I suppose the dilemma facing the parents of potential “shadow people” is similar to what folks go through when adopting/raising trans-racially; thus, the sleepless nights as we, as parents, try to think ways to ensure that our children find a place of wholeness for themselves. Like any good parent, we want to spare our kids from having to go through unnecessary pain. We don’t want them to have to experience the cultural disenfranchisement, that sense that they have no place. That they don’t belong to either group or aren’t accepted by either group. Too black for some, not black enough for others. While we may aim for them to experience the best of both worlds, life has taught us to prepare for the opposite.

One racial equivalent of the dark night of the soul would be the journey of nigrescence (part of me wrestling with the idea of ontological blackness). I believe it’s important for my children to know both sides of their cultural heritage and be proud of both sides of them while leaving room to explore each. We intentionally keep them in multi-cultural environments, from school to our circle of friends/family to the church we chose to attend.

Our goal is to guide them in their search for “ontological themness” – defining themselves, for themselves, as themselves (as eikons of God) - not hindered by people’s expectations and definitions. Sometimes race can be a journey of its own, a bumpy road laden with historical baggage and the often overwhelming sense of community responsibilities. It’s easy to retreat to what’s comfortable … for the parent. At the very least, I’m there and have been through a version of this. And I want a world of substance for my children, not shadow.


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I’m So Articulate

I don’t sound black.

I get that a lot. I neither sound nor act black by some people’s definition. [I’ve already done the dissection of the idea of ontological blackness (in I, II, III parts) so I’m not going to re-hash that now.] It’s one of the reasons I don’t do reading of my work very often. A good chunk of my family lives in England, another chunk in Jamaica, and the rest live in America. As a consequence, I picked up an ear for accents and write them pretty well. However, having purposefully lost my British accent as a child in my efforts to fit in, I don’t have much of an affect to my speaking. Not British, not Jamaican, not black – and I would sound ridiculous trying to affect one.

Let’s be straight though, when folks talk about anyone sounding black, we know what they mean: ghetto. I took a linguistics course in college and when we got to the topic of Black English Dialect (B.E.D.), she asked me, the only black in the class, to give an example of it. She caught herself pretty quickly (cause I would hate to have to snatch a professor in front of her class) and realized maybe that wasn’t the best way to have that discussion. However, it did lead to a dialogue in why we make such assumptions.

Here’s another one: on a recent episode of the show Boston Legal, Denny Crane (William Shatner) gets in trouble because he tells an applying associate (played by a grown up Urkel) that he doesn’t sound black and thus is a keeper. Shirley Schmidt (Candice Bergen) gives this defense to quell the brouhaha:

My name is Shirley Schmidt, I’m a senior partner at Crane, Poole and Schmidt, thank you all for coming. It’s nice to see you’ll turn out when there’s hard news. Yesterday my partner, Denny Crane, made some regrettable statements, the most offensive being when he told an African-American law student that he didn’t sound black. I know Denny Crane. He is not a bigot. When he used the word ‘articulate’, as I suspect Joe Biden used it, as I suspect our President used it, what he was attempting to convey was that he thought Mr. Givens would play well with white corporate America. The simple but ugly truth is we all look for that. Perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not, but we do. We have a primarily white client base. We hire associates we feel will best appeal to that base. Before you point your finger at us I would invite the media to look at its own industry. Consider the criteria by which you choose your anchors. Denny Crane’s statement speaks not to his own racism but to a much more insidious one that exists in a white collar society that prefers to take its blacks as it takes its coffee, with a little cream and sugar. I’m not proud of it. But until we confront that truth, we will not change it. Thank you all for coming.

Which dovetails with the comment left by Laura:

When you hear someone's voice you can't help but try to picture them. I don't think it is racist to say someone sounds black. You are just being honest, you are saying "when I hear your voice, I picture a black person." There is a blonde white woman televangelist (I can't think of her name) who I believe sounds "black" when she preaches. I could also say she sounds "southern,but not twangy, tough but not rude, with an attitude but a strict teaching kind of attitude" but I don't think you would get the idea as clearly as when I say she sounds "black." Her preaching doesn't appeal to me, probably because I am white and I am used to the "middle-class white" vernacular. But when the camera pans to her huge audience, you can see that she has many black followers. How cool, this tiny, blonde white woman leading a huge congregation made up mostly of black people. What does that say? I think it says the same as what "Shirley Schmidt" said above. People are attracted to those people who communicate in a manner they are used to. It is just easier to listen to someone who sounds like you. I think it also shows that we no longer are supporting people based on their similarity to our skin color, but on their similarity to our own lifestyle. Unfortunately our vocabulary has not caught up with us. There just isn't a word with the same kind of meaning as just saying "black." And I think saying black carries a nuetral meaning whereas saying "ghetto" or "gangsta" or "thug" are definitely words with negative connotations.

One of the things I hadn’t thought about in my ghetto crackery blog was the idea of speech. When people hear a Southern drawl, much like when they hear B.E.D., there is the assumption of being uneducated. It’s what leads people to ascribe words like “well-spoken” and “articulate” to black leaders they feel comfortable with, as if they are compliments.

Nope, I don’t sound black, so I’ve been told by black and white folks alike. From black people, it feels like the accusation of “selling out”, a warning that I risk being left outside of the community. From white people, there is sometimes an air of condescension, however well-intended it may be meant. Or, it would feel like that if I believed that being black boiled down to how people spoke or dressed. Still, it’s a shame that there is an undertone, even in this very blog, of middle class bourgeoisies trying to put distance between “us” and “them”. And that’s another simple, but ugly truth, one worth discussing further.


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Keeping It Real?

Dear Arbiters of Blackness,

The Blacker than Thou lobby is designed not only to shape and define a people, but also to demand a certain kind of conformity from them - forcing its members to swear allegiance to their side. With that, my new Intake column is up where I question the idea of what it means to “Keep it Real”.

Love,

Maurice (go to my website to direct your hate mail)

P.S.

I was interviewed for a new blog by my friend Lisa Baker that will reflect on various environmental issues, concerns, and events from a spiritual perspective. I was asked about my actual day job, as an environmental toxicologist for Commonwealth Biomonitoring. If you’re so inclined, you can read it here.


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Black Self-Image

A teenage girl stirred up quite a bit of controversy with her documentary re-creating Dr. Clark’s doll test that was used to make the case against segregation (in Brown vs. the Board of Education). The results of her experiment every are every bit as tragic today as it was in the 60s. Something in our culture still propagates this destructive (self-)image.

There was a reason for Amiri Baraka having to start a “Black is beautiful” movement and a reason why Ossie Davis said in his eulogy of Malcolm X, “Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people.” It was about the reclamation of dignity. As the documentary makes painfully obvious, it is important to continue to have conversations and ask questions.

We continue to have debates about racism (what it is and how it affects people differently), reparations, affirmative action and so on. Too many times it is seen as black people wallowing in self-pity, a mentality of victimhood (although some folks also feel threatened by the rhetoric of escaping this victimhood). There is an assumed hubris of knowing the “answers” to the “Negro problem” because, as I will inevitably hear it, black people are too ignorant to work out our own solution.

It’s usually at this point in the conversation that white friends of mine feel unduly put upon. “They didn’t own slaves” and so on. They sometimes get defensive around discussions about white privilege. Why? Because the tricky part about conversations is that we aren’t always hearing the same thing. White privilege is not “all white people are evil.” It is not that all white people are out to get black people. It is not all white people are racist or “benefit” from racism. It is, however, the acknowledgment of the reality that there is a legacy of racism.

I don’t care if you agree with it or not. What I am saying is that there is a point of view, a mindset, a perspective that I’m coming from. Our story is the paradigm from which we operate. You might not “get it”, maybe because your story seems so removed from mine. You could see if you could contribute to the solution. You could see what you can do to challenge your thinking. You could see where you can find and recognize injustice and fight it where you are.

Or you could listen.

Let me try this another way. There is also male privilege in our culture. It doesn’t mean all men are evil or that they hate women. It does, however, point to the (historical) fact that the mentality that went into the founding of our society, that created the infrastructure of the culture we live in, was patriarchal. There is a legacy of patriarchal though that we have to deal with, systemic issues as well as heart issues - neither of which are easily rooted out. From closing the inequality of pay gap between the sexes to sexist attitudes in the work place as “old boy clubs/networks” are dismantled.

It’s the (sometimes perceived) attitude built into the system that causes so many to give up before they begin. It’s why I care so much about images and depictions of black people in news, movies, television, etc. It’s why I keep harping on the power of words. It’s why my mother so impressed upon us why we shouldn’t buy into being told what we can and can’t do. Look at the recent rise of black quarterback. It’s not like black people suddenly learned how to throw the football. The mentality was that black men weren’t smart enough to be a quarterback. So they were steered towards being a wide receiver or a running back. You don’t become “firsts” by buying into old stereotypes and accepting old barriers.

Progress has been made, but some battles still need to be fought. Hearts changed and lingering hatreds rooted out. This year’s Super Bowl marks the first time a black coach (much less two) has coached their team to the championship game. Lovie Smith, when asked about the significance of possibly being the first said that “Progress will really be made when something like this is not news.” The sad fact that he had to then concede was that “we’re not there yet.”

But we’re trying. One conversation at a time.


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Miracle of the Black Church: Ancient Future African Faith

“I have never understood how African Americans could be Christians when the church did condone slavery for so long. Our enslavers were Christians. We were not.” –Wrath James White

I have been thinking about this comment ever since he made it in reference to my “A Theology of Slavery” posts (parts I and II). My initial response got me thinking in general about the miracle of the black church. But I wanted to look specifically at some of the aspects of African faith that carried us through this time and led to the development of the historic black church. And I think there are some lessons that we in this modern/postmodern age can learn.

Whenever beliefs seem to be in conflict, bridges can be built across the differing faith systems. In this case, they had to be. For example, I would imagine that animism, in essence, seeing God in all things, lines up nicely with the passage in Acts 17:28 “'For in him we live and move and have our being.'” With even such a tenuous connection made, conversations can begin. Suddenly we can re-evaluate how we perceive and create reality; something especially important in light of how we over-emphasize a logic-engineered reality.

Community was a vital part of African culture, representing the idea of belonging before believing. Even today, many people are searching for a safe community in which to belong. This is something I want to get back to later. However, I think the idea that resonates so much with we can learn from the ancient-future idea of African faith is the idea of the sacred performance.

“Three things characterized this religion of the slave–the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.” –W.E.B. DuBois “Souls of Black Folks”

The Preacher saw himself as the voice of freedom and inclusion, modeling himself similarly to how Jesus threatened the establishment of his day with the same thing. He was God’s poet: part leader, part orator, and part story-teller.

As leader, they were rhetorical representatives attempting to close the gap between words and actions. They stirred up the moral imaginations of their listeners to fight against (social) sin. Overtly–and sometimes less overtly–political, they tried to raise the consciousness f their congregation and community.

The sermon is also part of the sacred performance. The rhythm and emotion of language, the cadence, the whoops and chants make up part of the tradition of Black sermons. They arose and spoke to the pain and joy, troubles and blessings - affirming truth in spite of circumstances. Call and response, the back and forth interplay between speaker and hearer, was about participating in the sermon. From the Amen corners (those seats on either side of the pulpit filled with the older and prominent members of the congregation who responded enthusiastically to the service) that developed to simply encouraging the preacher as he spoke, the messages spoke to the congregation and they spoke to the sermon/sermonizer. The congregation became both witness to and participant in the sermon.

What cannot be over emphasized is the importance of The Preacher as The Story-Teller. The ideal preacher has style, humor, and a gift for stories. Story-telling has always been important, vital to the culture and the community. The story captured people’s imagination, creating image before the word. This dates back to the African griots, the keepers of history and traditions in an oral cultural. They were the tribe’s memory and tale-tellers. Folk tales passed down from generation to generation, kept alive the ancient tribal stories, as folk figures provide hope. Trickster characters illustrated the weak triumphing over the strong through cunning and perseverance. In narratives, personal accounts of ex/slaves in their triumphs and defeats. The important thing is that the stories be true. They knew that while truth was a component of story, story was the medium of the truth. Preaching naturally embraced this, as it lent itself toward story telling and making the story relevant to people’s lives.

“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Psalms 137:4

Music (and by extension, dance) is also part of the sacred performance. Music was an expression of human life, as W.E.B. DuBois put it, “adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people’s sorrow, despair, and hope.” Even under the worst circumstances, you have to sing sometimes. The circumstances were not the definition of who we were. Songs encouraged the individual and then the community, to find their voice and work toward their hope.

The songs were produced by manifold suffering. Sorrow songs, as W.E.B. DuBois called them. Negro spirituals. Vehicles of communication and unification. The songs were another aspect of our oral tradition. Handy, since we weren’t allowed to read were even punished if caught. And the songs expressed a dimension of our faith that could only be done through art. Experienced.

Songs sang the truth as lived by the people, much like the Psalms. The shouts, hums, and moans that punctuate the spirituals and Gospel music were expressions of emotional truth. Words without words. The songs also expressed home as eschatological reality as well as speaking to their present reality. Phrases like the “Other side of Jordan” and “Down by the riverside” not only told of yearnings for heaven and their spiritual hope, but also served as code for escape routes. Faith met social action even in song.

African influenced worship marked a shift in how people look and experience church. The parishioners weren’t simply an audience that watched worship, but participated in it. Music (and dance) was a form of language, body prayers and a dynamic representation of faith. Worship should be zealous, private and public. There should be a spiritual rhythm to life, symbolized by the drumbeat and dance. To be in sync with the Spirit, to rest in, be caught up in the transcendent, worship in God-consciousness, dependence on His will in and for life.

“Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with your: a gift of story and song–soft, stirring melody in an ill-harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil ... the third, a gift of the Spirit.” W.E.B. DuBois

Difficult to explain what DuBois means by ‘the Frenzy.’ Maybe it’s one of those things where the experience comes before the explanation. However, basically I’d say that the sacred performance has to be responded to. Some people look down on black worship services as emotionalism over substances and thus (in their condescension) miss the whole point.

There is an ecstatic element to African religious expressions. Getting hit with the Holy Ghost is not too distant from the spirit riding of voodoo/animistic practices. The Spirit seizes you if you open yourself up to it, going from silence to wild abandon, murmurs to wails. It’s a “communion with the Invisible.”

As Ralph Wiley puts it in his book “Why Black People Tend to Shout”: “Black people tend to shout in churches, movie theaters, and anywhere else they feel he need to shout because when joy, pain, anger, confusion, and frustration, ego and thought, mix it up, the way they do inside black people, the uproar is too big to hold inside. The feeling must be aired.” We join a proud history of shouting as I read the Psalms. Shout, stomp, shriek, weep, laugh ... worship experience springs from life experience.

Ultimately, the sacred performance is life.

In African religions, there is an interplay between community and the individual: to be truly human, you had to become part of, feel a responsibility to, and serve the community. What happened to the communal gathering affected the individual and what happened to the individual had an impact on the community. This stands as antithetical to western Christianity’s embrace of individualism, with the message of salvation often reduced to some brand of “getting my butt into heaven”.

Faith becomes tied to social praxis. How we have understood our history and culture. How that is related to our faith in Christ. Faith becomes a matter of asking a different set of questions from a different social and historical context.

Most importantly, faith revolves around moving from the sacred performance toward action. To take the generous orthodoxy of transforming faith (that wellspring that allows Christianity to find its way into any culture, bringing differences in faith) and let it guide generous orthopraxis.


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A Theology of Slavery Part II

If the story of the Bible is one of God slowly wooing humanity back to him, reaching us where we are dealing with us as we are, then that casts a new light on how we ought to view many of our Bible stories. When I turn to the Old Testament and try to make sense of the Canaanite slaughter, I imagine a people being met where they were, not quite ready for the leap to love your enemies and your neighbor like yourself. When I turn to the New Testament, I see Paul unable to imagine a world that could transcend their social order even as he sought to alleviate the worst of the abuses. However, I also recognize that this argument presents quite the slippery slope. It doesn’t take long to get to the issue of where does that end? The same with the issue of our interpretation of Scripture changing because society decides that something that was acceptable was now in fact wrong. Does that change what the Bible says or simply how we interpret what the Bible has to say?

Some commands in Scripture are time bound and culturally limited. It is dangerous to ignore the voice and lessons of tradition. At the same time, we need to recognize when it is time to jettison traditional beliefs. Culture shouldn’t determine theology, but the impact of culture on the biblical writers and all biblical interpreters (us) shouldn’t be ignored. Gospel has power to transform individual and society.

The Old and New Testaments regulates, but doesn’t approve of, slavery. The same could be said about divorce. Slavery was a social institution created by sinful men, a purely human invention that continues to this day with far too little comment from the church, which could be abolished. No social order should be taken as God given. Culture changes and good theology has to lead to right action. The Bible is a historical revelation in narrative form. It has a historical-cultural context that it works within. We were all are made in the image and likeness of God, created with inherent worth and dignity.

History shows us that religion follows the military: conquerors impose their religion on the conquered. Sometimes it takes God moving in history to bring social change. God is the Great Emancipator, the freedom giver. Christ came as a Liberator; in Him there is neither slave nor free. Anything that undermines that needs to be questioned. . God would have to stand opposed to system and culture of slave masters. Usurp power to define humanity on the assumptions of white superiority, notions of Empire, or Manifest Destiny.

It boils down to this recurring idea that has been nagging at me: you can’t separate ideas from social reality. The Quakers, Benjamin Lay (1736), called slavery “a hellish practice ... the greatest sin in the world.” John Wesley soon followed their lead. Eventually the church became the driving force in the abolition movement. In the mean time, there were consequences to be had.

As mentioned before, black people had to have permission to marry and permission to have kids. The power of ownership extended not only to a lack of power over our own names, but also in our choice of religion. Christianity, the white man’s religion, was foisted upon black folks in the guise of evangelizing the heathens, but more to continue the mental and spiritual conditioning already at work inherent as a part of the institution of slavery. Many folks, understandably, couldn’t reconcile their religious faith with reality of their current bondage, seeing religion as an opiate meant to keep them passive--praying to a silent, indifferent God for refuge. This in turn led to answers being sought in places other than Christianity - political solutions, self-determination, alternative religions (Islam), economic solutions.

Within Christianity, the religion was co-opted as a means of mental and spiritual survival. We saw the creation of the black church, believing that God is relevant to black life in a white society. God’s ways, while mysterious, would vindicate the unjust suffering. The key was to start kingdom living now. Jesus inspired courage and strength to hold on, representing God’s active presence in our lives.

Christ is the freedom-bringer and we were created for freedom.

“You are always righteous, O LORD,
when I bring a case before you.
Yet I would speak with you about your justice:
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all the faithless live at ease?” –Jeremiah 12:1

Slavery, as practiced in the Americas, must be seen as our holocaust. This brings me back to slavery and the problem of evil. Evil is under the aegis of God’s sovereignty. Reconciling God’s justice with humanity’s suffering used to be answered by saying that the suffering/judgment was in proportion to your sin (and sadly, still is in light of many reactions to modern day tragedies and disasters). “God reaching people where they were” - maybe that explains things like the Canaanite genocide, maybe not. Qoholet, the Teacher in Ecclesiastes (9:2, 11-12) reminds us that God is transcendent, his ways hidden from ours. Suffering is a test of faith through which you find out what you are made of. These latter answers also prove unsatisfying (however true, unlike the previous answers to the theodicy) that we are still left asking why and how this can be (Habakkuk 1:13).

As I read the story of Israel’s faith in the promise of God, the faith in the promise carried them through times of slavery, exodus, kingdom, exile, and return. God didn’t always intervene or liberate, and definitely not in ways they could always see or understand. He allowed the suffering of the innocent. He allowed the subjugation of His chosen people. And not always did they understand. Psalms 94:3 points to a practical implications about evil/suffering: not why does it exist, but questioning why it seems to hit the wrong people.

Therefore the problem of evil solved: not in why does it exist, but in what God has done about it. God identifies with the poor and those in pain, liberating them from injustice. The promise of resurrection gives them hope and grounds to struggle for freedom. Like the Suffering Servant in the book of Isaiah, Israel (and Black folks) identified with the idea of God’s visible presence alongside them during times of suffering. Through Christ becoming the Suffering Servant, suffering became redemptive. Christ’s mission was to free us from sin: individual sin and social sin. Suffering arising from the struggle for freedom is liberating, providing a vision of freedom. Not a “pie in the sky when you die” vision, but the kingdom age bursting into our present. It’s easy to let the problem of evil become a matter of intellectual theory, philosophical points to be debated, that paralyze us into inaction. Rather, the answers can be found through social praxis.

Our mission is to join with His, to relieve suffering and fight injustice because evil is real and ongoing. We need to never foget and join with our brothers and sisters to ensure the promise of “never again.”


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A Theology of Slavery part I

We all have crises of faith (even my atheist/humanist friends, though I suppose they are more crises of non-faith). My last crisis of faith occurred as I thought about the issue of slavery. Obviously, as a Black man in America, the issue of slavery is one that strikes a special chord within me. It’s part of who I am, part of the story of my people and my family. I only have to go back four generations before I have to trace my family tree through receipts. When the topic of slavery comes up, it brings up a mix of emotions: sadness, embarrassment, humiliation, anger. It also means, for example, that I read the story of Israel as slaves in Egypt differently than others might. The Exile of Israel. The New Testament passages on slavery. These stories all resonate differently for me.

A lesson we have to keep re-learning is that words mean things. So, when pastors speak of God’s ownership of us, it’s going to resonate differently with black folks. When we speak of God buying us at a price, images of auction blocks swim through our collective unconscious. When we speak of Adam laying dominion over creation by naming things, we can’t help but be reminded of slave owners giving us new names. The “elect”--the chosen--means “called out” and implies that there are those excluded. Though people forget that the elect are called out for a purpose, the poor identify with the excluded. When they talk of sin being black and the need for people to be washed whiter than snow, well, you get the picture of the mental conditioning.

In a lot of ways, slavery is a specialized, personal form of the problem of evil theodicy for me: Why would God allow slavery - be silent on it at best, condone it at worst? Why would He permit it on the level and scale seen in America? For that matter, why allow the continual suffering? Like the theodicy of the problem of evil, I suppose that we could solve the dilemma by saying God is not good or that he is not all powerful, but those statements are neither true nor satisfactory. Though I do suspect that one of the reasons that this issue sticks in my craw so much is because I believe in the Bible as God’s inspired word, and I feel betrayed by that “truth.”

Truth can seem to be a slippery thing. People from the conservative side of my theological circles are quick to jump up and down, point to the Bible, and proclaim “God’s truth is eternal” or “The Bible is inerrant.” However, those are moot statements because if even if they are true (“if” because the Bible doesn’t describe itself as “inerrant”), our interpretation of the Bible is far from eternal and constant, and often about as errant as you can get.

I guess the first thing we have to do is define what I mean by slavery. I’ve sat through too many sermons in my day where the common evangelical position is to equate slavery with ordinary work. As if our modern 9-5 gigs are the equivalent of yesterday’s slave. Slavery was a peculiar institution set apart even from forced labor. Slavery represented a segment of the working population; not all workers were slaves. Most importantly, a slave was property. Property. Subject to their owner’s authority. People were owned. We need to meditate on that for a minute. We’re talking about people needing permission to marry. Permission to have kids. Natal alienation, people as socially dead or non-entities from birth–separated from family, culture, even country - with no power, no independent existence. Men were work horses. Women often used sexually.

Slavery was not an institution new to America, mind you. The story of the human race is one of the strong oppressing the weak. Slavery from Africa, Europe, and Asia, was essentially a by-product of conquest. One power conquered another, and the conquered were taken as slaves. For example, there was the Roman brand of slavery. Slavery was not based on color; the slave could be white and the owner white. Slaves could expect manumission. Slaves were mainly captives, not born into it. Don’t get me wrong, Rome did use her slaves in gladiatorial combat and could also be cruel and dehumanizing.

Slavery as practice in the Americas, however, had two distinguishing features. The dynamic shifted so that it was a matter of capital motives moreso than conquest; and was practiced along racial lines, justified by the inherent inferiority and dehumanization of African peoples. Slavery became an economic/political system that once woven into the fabric of the culture, created a mindset echoes of which are still felt today. This mindset found it’s way to the church’s “inerrant” interpretation of the Scriptures regarding slavery. The reactions of the church on this matter fell into one of three categories: 1) the church was silent on the issue, 2) the church justified it, or 3) the church spoke against it.

For almost 19 centuries, most Christians, the historic church tradition, believed that the Bible regulated and legitimized slavery. Legitimized being the most troubling part of their interpretation. 362 A.D. The Council of Gangrae laid anathema on “anyone [who] under the pretense of godliness should teach a slave to despise his master.” The Council argued that we are all slaves in Christ and that one’s exact station in life didn’t matter. Augustine argued that slavery and other hardships were a consequence of the Fall with the implication being that social hierarchy was fixed by God.

Reformed theologians and proponents of the inerrancy of Scripture considered slavery “a divine institution”: many owned slaves in good conscience. Absolutely certain they knew what the Scripture had to say on the topic. Kevin Giles, in his The Trinity and Subordinationism, sums up their “unassailable” hermeneutic this way:

1) slavery established - the curse of Ham (Genesis 9:20-27) was used as the proof text God instituted slavery. Black people specifically, since Ham being the father of the black race.
2) slavery practiced - all the patriarchs had slaves Abraham, Isaac, Joshua, David, Solomon, and Job.
3) slavery sanctioned and regulated by the moral law - slavery was mentioned in the 4th and 10th commandments. The ceremonial law (such as Leviticus 25:44-46) was temporary, but the moral law perfectly reflected God’s mind and will.
4) slavery accepted by Jesus - He never criticized slavery and often used slaves as parable characters. Paul sanctioned it (I Timothy 6:1-3) based on Christ’s teachings.
5) slavery endorsed by the apostles - I Corinthians 7:20-21, Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:22-25, I Timothy 6:1-3, Titus 2:9-10, Philemon 10-18, I Peter 2:18-19.

Now because this interpretation was given the weight of the authority of Scriptures, a person who argued against slavery wasn’t arguing with the authority of someone’s interpretation of the Bible, but they were arguing the authority of God. What got overlooked was how often our interpretation of Scripture is mistaken and influenced by our own self-serving biblical tastes. In 1780, Methodists condemned slavery as “contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature and hurtful to society” even voting to expel all slave holding members. Those rules were suspended when cotton became lucrative.

The Old and New Testaments accept slavery without direct criticism. The overarching story of the Bible is the story of God wooing man back to Him, and often this wooing had to begin where we are. We often establish relationships by accepting and dealing with someone where they are before moving them to a new position. So, when cultural values shifted, slavery became to be seen as inherently unjust. Changing cultural values caused us to see slavery as a sin, that the social order itself was a consequence of the fallen order. The Church came to a crossroads as it had to re-think what the Bible had to say on the topic. Either it had to uphold the status quo, using the Bible to prop up their position or the church had to face the fact that its interpretation of the Bible was wrong.

This was part of the journey that I had to go on, following the soul-searching that the church itself had to do. Frankly, this is a scary place to be, because “absolute truth” is the bedrock of so many people’s perception of the Bible. But this bedrock is more slippery than they think: if social and cultural values can change how we see the Scriptures in regards to slavery, what does this mean for other areas, such as how we view the role of women (as Giles argues)? There are many consequence that come out of this epiphany.


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Ontological Blackness II: Nigrescence?

If culture, in its truest form, is our sense of identity, who we are, then to be stripped of it can be traumatizing to say the least. It’s one of those tertiary effects of slavery that doesn’t get a lot of play: it left a lot of people insecure about their blackness. I imagine this chiefly an issue for black Americans, because let me tell you, Jamaicans have no identity and pride issues. Ditto Africans.

I was surfing the Internet when I ran across a LiveJournal community for “oreos”. Made up of black folks insecure in their “blackness.” Their stories start to sound alike after a while. Some variation on “I grew up in the suburbs and ‘lost my way’”: My whole life I grew up in "white" settings–school, church, neighborhood. So I don’t sound or act black. What’s ironic is that white and Asian people who act black or ghetto give me just as much grief. (OR) I never seemed to fit in with anyone. In high school, I read a lot and listened to whatever music interested me. I had friends, but I wasn’t hung up on color. The black kids teased me a lot.

However, racial identity issues are not unique to black folks. I know “oreos” (black on the outside and white on the inside), “eggs” (white on the outside and “yellow” on the inside), and “bananas” (“yellow” on the outside and white on the inside). Maybe examining a kind of racial journey anecdotally found among American black folks might shed some light.

This journey of defining blackness was the basis for my first novel, Strange Fruit (still making the publishing rounds). This might seem like “too black” of a theme, but I think the idea of struggling with identity is a universal one. When I was in college, I ran across this article on the “Negro-to-Black Conversion Experience” (sometimes called Nigrescence, developed from the work of Dr. William E. Cross, Jr., author of Shades of Black, one of the most frequently referenced texts on Black identity). The stages of Nigrescence goes something like this:

Pre-Encounter Stage
In the first stage, individuals downplay the importance of race in their lives and focus more on their membership in other groups (e.g. religion, social class, sexual orientation). Some people in this stage consider race-based physical characteristics to play an insignificant role in their daily lives, while others see race only as a problem that is linked to issues of social discrimination, and even others have negative attitudes toward Blacks.

Ah, the “colorless” stage. It sounds like a good and reasonable stage to be at. A live and let live, non-judgment, “can’t we all just get along” sort of place. It sounds like something to be strived for not run from. The problem is the negation of cultural identity: my blackness, for example, is part of who I am. To reject, dismiss, ignore it is to do the same to part of me.

Encounter Stage
The second stage of the Nigrescence experience in which individuals encounter an experience that causes them to challenge their current feelings about themselves and their interpretation of the condition of Black people in America. The experience is often one in which individuals face a blatant racist event. However, there are other instances in which the experience is more positive. In any event, the Encounter experience is one that is so foreign to individuals' previous worldview regarding race that it forces them to rethink their attitudes about race.

This is what I call “The Rodney King Memo” or the angry stage since this is the stage where there is the greatest danger of getting “stalled.” Few things can shatter a person like having their worldview collapse. The anger at the injustice and inequities can form a defensive armor.

Immersion-Emersion
In the third stage, individuals immerse themselves in Blackness and feel liberated from Whiteness; they have positive feelings toward everything associated with Black people and a negative view of those things associated with White people. Despite this immersion into all things Black, individuals have not psychologically committed to a Black identity.

I so clearly remember this stage. I wouldn’t do anything if it wasn’t black. I ate at black owned restaurants. Went to a black-owned dry-cleaner. Movies? “Yeah, I’ll check out a movie, but it’ll take a black one to move me.” I read a version of this article in the Black studies class that I enrolled in. Ironically, this phase comes with a spurt of creativity. I found this bit in my ad-hoc journal from the early 90s, as I went through this phase:

“Ours was a race that built great empires, civilizations, and culture. The only race to wander and conquer (in order to spread its self-declared superiority) is the white race. With slavery, they cut us off from our religion, culture, and language until we were the only race to have absolutely no identity. We couldn't even keep our true family names. A collective tabula rasa upon which the white man imprinted history, his language, his culture and sense of aesthetic and his religion. Why are we so integration crazed?

“We were brainwashed into thinking white is good, black is bad--to hate ourselves and our color. We were taught to think that the lighter your skin color is, the better you are--in a society where the lighter you are the farther you can get. We were dubbed ‘the Negro’ and taught that our native Africa was peopled by heathen savages. We were raped, beaten, enslaved, worked, and tortured. We were kept ignorant and uneducated.

“We were taught to submit to and obey the white man by worshiping his alien (to us) white God (it's amazing how God and Jesus are always depicted as white). In fact, never did white people spread Christ the way He did. Jesus spread his message in a meek and humble way. White people always spread his message with bloodshed.”

Obviously, still quite a bit of anger in this phase.

Internalization
The fourth stage is described as a psychological change wherein individuals learn to balance their Blackness with the other demands of personhood (e.g. other group memberships).

It’s only at this stage that blackness starts to be defined, starts to become a part of the individual. I would guess that the anger and immersion of the previous phases were an over-reaction–the pendulum swinging so far the other way–due to where the person was when this started. Now, the pendulum is coming back to the middle; the person, however, is trying to figure out where that middle is.

Internalization-Commitment
The final stage of the Nigrescence model, in contrast to previous stages, this stage involves commitment to a plan of action, and individuals begin to live in accordance with the new self-image that they have developed.

Here, blackness takes on the dimension of praxis, theory accompanied by social action.

“Our ultimate concern is that which determines our being or not being.” –Paul Tillich

For the longest time, blackness was a state of non-being. People ask why black people make such a big deal of Black icons, black power mottos, even the high esteem in which Malcolm X is held. Because it is about reclaiming pride. Eschewing self-hatred. The whole “black and proud” recovery of our sense of pride, borders on a certain amount of culture worship. There are historical and societal reasons why we are where we are, victims of the holocaust known as slavery. Paradoxically, another unfortunate consequence of that human tragedy is that the idea of victimhood has also become part of our identity, popping up too often as excuses for why we can’t succeed.

Our neighborhoods feel less and less like communities devastated by drugs and crime, with our people imprisoned at a disproportionate rate because of this. Our teenage pregnancy rate has sky rocketed. Even as the effects of institutional racism lessen, as educational opportunities broaden. Victimization gave us a pass for a while, but after a while, blaming white folks isn’t enough. The deterioration in personal, familial, and communal responsibility and relations must be countered.

“What is needed is not integration but a sense of worth in being black, and only black people can teach that. Black consciousness is the key to the Black man’s emancipation from his distorted self-image.” –James Cone

Being black means being true to who you are. Black self-consciousness, black experience, it its totality of life and ideology. Transcends individuality in the name of communal survival. Well woo-hoo. So I know who I am, secure in what I am. Where does that leave me? I’m still not sure if I’m comfortable with this idea of blackness, if I want to carry this burden of race society feels so intent to foist on me. The thing is, it seems like I’m only now at a place to begin to relate to others within my community and without. However, history now stands in my way, as if I have to traverse a long winding path of past hurts and grievances before I can deal or be dealt with by other people groups as equals. Or, maybe the problem is that I am trying to deal with a modern problem through a modern paradigm trying to find a modern solution. Maybe that’s what we have to press beyond.


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