I have no idea why I am writing
this at this present moment – in the midst of theological colloquy papers and
field education case studies, I should clearly be focused on writing
scholastically. However, I have wanted to write this for a while in the purview
of what happened with the Ray Rice and Janay Palmer domestic violence tragedy that swirled out of control in the media. After the video of Janay Palmer being
physically abused and accosted by her husband (NFL player) Ray Rice surfaced,
there was a storm of backlash she received for staying with Ray Rice. As woman
who has never experienced domestic violence in a relationship such as Janay
Palmer, I felt very conflicted as I watched people attempt to snatch every bit of
Palmer’s agency by defaming her name, questioning her intelligence, and
attributing her loyalty to Rice as a bi-product of her desire for material
wealth. How did anything about Janay Palmer’s personhood have anything to do
with Ray Rice’s actions? Needless to say, I was so happy to see the #WhyIStayed
hashtag campaign arise to give space for women’s voices to speak their truths
as it related to domestic violence cases.
Soon thereafter, I began thinking
of relationships, spaces, and places that I remained even despite of abuse I
was suffering. Though, as I stated previously, I have never had a man lay his
hands on me (besides the one whoopin I got from my Dad as a child), I started
to realize that I had experienced an abusive relationship – that was my
relationship with my church. I had given so much of myself, so blindly, to my
church throughout my time in youth ministry that I was almost shocked that my
calling to ministry would not be affirmed. But on that day when I went to the
church leadership to confess my calling, I was stiff armed with every scripture
in the Bible containing expectations of women’s silence, submission, and
servitude within the church. It was very damaging, now that I look back on it.
One would think that it would
just be easy to pack your stuff and leave at the very moment that your truth,
worth, and personhood was denied. But it wasn’t that simple. I had ties in my
church. I had family – biological and extended. I had worked so hard to
cultivate meaningful relationships with my youth and the leaders of the church.
God had given me a vision for moving the young people forward in their relationship
with God and that is what I was doing. My leaving, or even standing up for
myself to be recognized as a minister, just didn’t seem like an option when
other people’s souls were at stake. So, I stayed. I stayed because I felt that
my voice wasn’t as important as the well-being of my kids. I stayed because I
figured I could handle the abuse (being used for ministry excessively while not
being recognized as minister) because I was comfortable with what I did have. I
stayed because I thought it was where God wanted me to be. Sounds eerily
similar to women who have suffered abusive relationships at the hands of their
spouses.
After a time of feeling
choiceless, voiceless, and suffocated – I finally left my church to seek out
God’s call on my life. Even though I did enter fellowship with a church where I
could affirm my calling, it has taken me up till very recently to really begin
the process of healing. Abusive relationships that deny, negate, or harm your
personhood have a tendency to seep into your soul in places you would never
think to look. Even now that I am in divinity school, I watch as I second-guess
myself and my calling time and time again; and, before now, I never had a
problem with self-confidence.
In the aftermath of dealing with
#WhyIStayed, I am so thankful that this theological journey has begun teaching
and showing me a new way of looking at God. Just before I began my first year
at Vanderbilt divinity school, God showed me a dream/vision (yes I believe that
God speaks, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to people in dreams). In my
dream/vision, I was asleep in my bed, the daylight had already broken, but it
was still fairly early. A woman – a regal and royal Black woman – walked into
my room. She had deep chocolate skin and was slightly heavy set. She had on a
shiny, light blue and green looking suit and hat to match. She was a fly church
mother if I ever saw one. As she walked into my room, I became so startled
because I did not know who she was. She walked around to the opposite side of
my bed and she stood there, looking over me. I began to try to get up and
scream for help, but just then my body became paralyzed and my tongue stuck to
the top of my mouth. She smiled at me, calmly, then proceeded to get onto her
knees and pray. Calmness and peace quickly took over me as she prayed. And,
then the vision/dream ended.
I believe that God was preparing
me to understand the embodiment of God’s divinity in womanhood. Typically, in
most churches (especially Black churches), we use he-language and
father-language to describe God. But I reckon that the vision God gave me was
something like the transfiguration experience Peter, James, and John had as
recorded in the synoptic gospels. I believe that Jesus was in my room that
morning, showing me a divine manifestation in the form of a woman. I know for
some people this is a difficult comparison – however, I would contend that the
blood and tears that flow from women make us more like Jesus, who when pierced
water and blood flowed out, than any other species.
I am praying that in my time of
healing and preparation in becoming a theologian and minister I am able to
better understand and utilize what Dean Townes calls Liberating Theological
Language. We have, for far too long, made our language and our interpretation
of scripture too literalistic about God. There is nothing in our language that
can capture the fullness of who God is – therefore, all language about God must
be seen as metaphorical as ways that we see God acting in the world and how we
experience God. I stand in agreement with theologian Sallie McFague who affirms
the awesome responsibility and power of metaphorical theology by saying the
power of metaphor helps us uncouple our tendencies to make generalizations
about who God is and who we are.
In a time when people are
wrestling with the very question asked in Exodus 17:7, “Is the Lord among us or
not?,” I believe we must be asking where we have seen God and through whom we
have experienced God thus far. For me, I have experienced God most through the
sacrifices and teaching of the women who came before me. For others, they see
God in those who are sick, homeless, or oppressed. And, still for others, God
may be among us in nature and creation. Either way, it is my sincere hope that
we as leaders of today and tomorrow continue to find new ways to describe and
experience God so that no more of God’s sons and daughters have to experience abuse
at the hands of the church who continues to one-dimensionalize an infinite God.
1.)
[noun] a point or level beyond which something
does not or may not extend or pass.
2.)
[noun] a restriction on the size or amount of
something permissible or possible.
3.)
[verb] set or serve as a limit to.
4.)
[math] a point or value that a sequence,
function, or sum of a series can be made to approach progressively, until it is
as close to the point or value as desired.
In noun and verb form, the
concept of the word limit can be described briefly as a boundary meant to keep
something contained. In Calculus, when a mathematical function cannot be solved
directly, a limit is used to describe its solution. The limit simply refers to
a place the function approaches. In some instances, a function approaches
infinity – therefore, the equation is limitless. In other instances, limits can
be found at a definite location bounding the function to a specific number. In
others, the limit is deemed DNE, or does not exist. In a hierarchical
viewpoint, the functions that are limitless seem undeservingly lucky. The
functions that have a confined limit seem depressingly sad. And the functions
that have limits that DNE seem defiantly indestructible. This is how one must
view the plight of a Black woman in America. She sees the limitless nature of
the White male institution – and he is undeservingly lucky. Wherever he wills
to go, whoever he wills to be, whatever he wills to do, he is able to perform
it with no sign of censure. She sees the confines of all other races and
genders and she is saddened. She knows that a White woman’s world is more privileged
than that of herself and her Black counterpart. But she is more deeply effected
with the knowledge that she is on the bottom of the proverbial totem pole; for
just under the White man is the White woman. Under her is the Black man. Lastly,
under him is the Black woman. She is triangulated by ‘isms – by racism, by
sexism, and by classism. Despite this reality of the limitations placed on her,
ones that attempt to minimalize her personhood and forge a template of who she can
be, she is expected to live and move and have her being as the caretaker of
Black culture and the nurturer of Black traditions while never making her White
and Black constituents uncomfortable at her presence.
The Black woman’s moral
situation, as Katie G. Cannon refers to it in her work Black Womanist Ethics, is a result of several factors. The
institution of slavery had already stripped her of her family, diminished her
to the role of ‘brood-sow,’ violently assaulted her physically and sexually,
and relegated her to not only working in the field with other Black males but
also working as a domestic inside the houses of her White owner. In the
antebellum period, she then became further imperiled to subhuman treatment.
The theme of objectification inherent in
the domestic servitude of the Black woman continued to permeate her life.
Bereft of formal education and advanced skills, the Black woman as a domestic
worker was usually at the white employer’s mercy. Her employment arrangements
had few, if any, demands that white people were obligated to meet… Sexual
harassment became the women under slavery. As a vestige of slavery, white male
heads of households assumed the sexual accessibility of the female domestic
worker[1].
The Black woman, even after
slavery had ended, was left in a hopeless, barren place – in which she was
still forced to live and bring forth life. She was never wanted, but always
needed. She was a child violently reprimanded when she spoke for herself, yet
she was a woman when a man wanted to violate her body with his sex. She fought
to live while living to fight. The weight of the Black woman’s burden had cast
an imprint upon her that left an ungodly mark on her body and disfigured her to
the root of her soul.
How does one live when given a
death sentence? Is there any hope of living within the lifetime limits placed
upon a life that cannot even be classified as one’s own? Can there be any
navigation between the wiles of triple discrimination – racism, sexism, and
classism – by the Black woman? It is the Black woman’s prerogative to answer
these existential questions compliantly in the negative. Then, she could learn
to merely exist in a world that despises her and never say a mumbling word. However,
that would essentially feature the Black woman as a major role in her own dramatic
demise. Yet, if she dares to answer these questions defiantly in the
affirmative, then she must piece together her own format for how to transcend a
proscribed life of limitation. It is that Black woman’s supreme goal to successfully
find a function in her life that affirms that the limit society has tried to
force upon her simply does not exist, or DNE. It is her duty to see to it that
she makes a name and a way of life for herself despite of her diverse trials.
Though “[she is] afflicted in every way, but not crushed; [she is] perplexed,
but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not
destroyed[2].
She must find the unmitigated gall to live life in the folds of an anyway mindset, not dependent on
submission to the status quo.
For this Black woman, she who is
bludgeoned yet unbowed, she must construct an ethic that would empower her in
the midst of struggle, energize her despite the truth of lack, and ennoble her
with an inner truth that no man could put asunder. Yet, an authentic
self-actualization that exists above and outside the White man’s gaze is more
than a protracted process. Frankly, without a methodology or model, the
possibility for success is grim. In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Mister strips main character Celie of her beloved
sister Nettie. Celie has birthed two children, fathered by her own step-father,
who are swiftly taken away from her. Her mother dead, Nettie is the only symbol
of love and sanity that Celie has ever known. As she comes to the realization
that she must let Nettie go, Celie screams out, “write! Write!” Nettie answers,
“nothin’ but death can keep me from it!” Alice Walker points to the life-saving
value found in the power of a Black woman’s pen.
Black women have used their creativity to
carve out “living space” within the intricate web of multilayered oppression.
From the beginning, they had to contend with the ethical ambiguity of racism,
sexism and other sources of fragmentation in this acclaimed land of freedom,
justice and equality. The Black woman’s literary tradition delineates many ways
that ordinary Black women have fashioned value patterns and ethical procedures
in their own terms, as well as mastering, transcending, radicalizing and
sometimes destroying pervasive, negative orientations imposed by the mores of
the larger society[3].
A Black woman must have a canon
of her own that will instruct and inspire her with permission to be a part of a
world that loves, values, and cherishes her body, soul, and mind even though
everything surrounding her tells her that her worth is menial at best.
The triple standard that Black
women face has staggering implications with notable footprints left in the last
several years (on top of hundreds of years of inhumane treatment). For
instance, in 2007 Don Imus nationally declared the Rutgers University Women’s
Basketball team, comprised of mostly Black women, as “nappy headed hoes.”
He goes on to say that the team they played against, University of Tennessee,
were all cute – but the Rutgers girls were just ugly[4].
To make matters far worse, a very popular Black comedian D. L. Hughley appeared
on Jay Leno’s show weeks later and sides WITH Don Imus saying that though the
women may not have been hoes, they were still “nappy headed” and some of “ugliest
women [he’s] ever seen in [his] whole life[5].”
In the recent and highly publicized Trayvon Martin case, the media, America,
and the Black community had a rouse blaspheming the name of Rachel Jeantel.
While she was not on trial, the judgment of her character was nothing short of
the blatantly critical ridicule that Anita Hill faced back in the 1990s when
she testified against Clarence Thomas in a sexual harassment case. In August of
2013, buzzworthy rapper Juicy J went on the record as publicly offering (and
later revoking) a $50,000 scholarship to the “best chick who can twerk[6].”
These examples are more publicized because of the nature in which they surfaced
– via mass media. However, these examples are mere minutia in comparison to
what lies beneath the media frenzy. Black women are still suffering in
substandard conditions, where nearly 26% are living at the poverty rate. In
addition, Black women continue to make only 64 cents to the White man’s dollar
according to the National Women’s Law Center[7].
According to research conducted by the Sentencing Project in 2005, Black women
are 3 times more likely to go to jail or prison than White women[8].
This is compared to data found in the National Survey of Family Growth
completed in 2012 in which 51% of White women were married versus only 26% of
Black women[9]. There is no need for the burden of proof in the plight of Black women because the writing is on the
wall. One in four Black women are living in poverty. Out of four Black women,
only one is getting married. Black women are three times more likely to be
incarcerated than their White counterparts. And Black women are earning two-thirds the salary that White men
make. Black women are the diminished because of appearance. Black women are the
butt of jokes. Black women are smeared in a national campaign of defamation.
Reflecting retrospectively, it
occurs to me now that I never played by the rules as a little girl, teenager,
or young adult. I consistently broke them all the time. Not in a rebellious
way, rather it was very subversive. For instance, the way my Mother loathed the
fact that I always played blacktop basketball with the boys. I played with
girls too, but Mama wanted me to be dainty and delicate. I wanted to be
dangerous on the court (a skill which I still have), so I played with boys
anyway. Or the way that my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Greene, told me
that I would never be able to spell the word ‘tomorrow’ because I missed it on
a spelling test. She was the same teacher that never gave me any excellent
marks on my report card and continually complained that I was over-talkative
and non-engaged in learning. She tried to give me a death sentence and steal my
God given joy. Yet, I ended up doing exceptionally well the next year of
elementary school anyway and earning advanced placement standing. Or when
people tried to tell me to enter into college with an open mind about my major
(my grandparents and parents were both educators) because they thought
engineering would be very rigorous, I majored in engineering anyway. Or when my
undergraduate engineering advisor adamantly told me that graduate school would
not be a feasible option for me, seeing that I had a below stellar GPA – I received
full funding and a fellowship/stipend and WENT TO GRADUATE SCHOOL FOR ROBOTICS
ANYWAY. My whole life as a Black woman had and has always been a series of ‘anyway’s’.
But, what about when there is no
anyway? Anyway amounts to DNE in your world because there is nobody to show you
the way to anyway? Maybe your mother is MTV jams. Maybe your teacher is Real
Housewives of Atlanta. Or maybe you don’t have a place to even lay your head,
let alone watch a television series. How does an anyway mentality become a
lifestyle when the learning curve is invisible? In my home, my Mother raised my
Brother and me as a single parent for quite some time. She worked two jobs,
kept a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, clothes on our backs, and
educated us like nobody’s business. She managed to have us in church every Wednesday
and Sunday and involved us into her non-profit work in providing resources for
high-risk and impoverished youth. Those kids that I would see – when we went to
deliver them Christmas presents (some of which were our own hand-me-downs) – I could
see the look in their eye of malnourishment. It wasn’t that they weren’t
eating, even though they probably only ate once at school. It was more that
they lacked fulfillment in their little souls. I never noticed it then, but I
know now why Mama tried so hard to affirm us, to affirm me. She never wanted us to be a statistic when society
said we were doomed to fail. And, she never wanted me, as her only daughter, to
feel empty because she was a struggling single mother. Instead, she wanted me
to feel empowered because she was a
struggling single mother. So, she acknowledged the bold and brilliant woman in
me every day. Whether it was her coming in my room to kiss me, say I love you,
and put me to bed every night. Or how she never missed a game – never, not one.
Even to this very day, she still calls to tell me she’s very proud of me and
encourage me to keep going when school or work gets heavy. She mothered me and
raised me with continual words of affirmation. That is the key to my anyway.
As I alluded to this fact
earlier, I know every little girl does not grow up with a caring mother, or
motherly figure, that can call out the womanist in her. A few years ago, I read
the book The Five Love Languages by
Gary Chapman. He outlines five different ways to give and receive love. For me, the best way of understanding love is with Words of Affirmation which can be
attributed to my upbringing. I would be interested to perform a case study on
the effects of love languages in young adolescent females to see how they cope
with or without them in their environment. When Celie finally finds her voice
after reading the letters from Nettie that Mister hid away for so many years,
she talks about how vastly painful life was without the one person who truly
loved her. There are so many young Black girls out there who are lost simply
because they have no contact with anyone who truly loves them. They are
treasure in jars of clay. They are unconquerable souls. They can make a world where limits do not exist. But someone has to tell
them that. And that someone is she who has already learned it for herself.
I’m poor. Black. I may even be
ugly. But, dear God – I’m here. I’m here.
[1]
Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics
(Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006), 47.
[2] 2
Corinthians 4:8-9 (New Revised Standard Version).
[3]
Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics (Eugene:
Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006), 76.
