Category: Books

Celebrating 28 Days of Black Authors #Day11

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Angela Davis photographed in Oakland, CA on Sept 8 2020

Angela Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle    

She writes, “Progressive struggles . . . are doomed to fail if they do not also attempt to develop a consciousness of the insidious promotion of capitalist individualism”. Dr. Davis, unmistakably, identifies that anything or anybody threatens the sanctity of white supremacy there will be consequences. Therefore, she is very certain that activist, organizers and abolitionist must never allow their movements to be co-opted into a singular individual. The importance of  communal strength is important  “in order for people today to recognize their potential agency as a part of an ever expanding community of struggle.” Throughout the text it remained imperative that people understood their power and agency. Dr. Davis denotes, “Every change that has happened has come as a result of mass movements.… Many people are under the impression that it was Abraham Lincoln who played the major role, and he did as a matter of fact help to accelerate the move toward abolition, but it was the decision on the part of slaves to emancipate themselves and to join the Union Army – both women and men – that was primarily responsible for the victory over slavery…. When one looks at the civil rights era, it was those mass movements – anchored by women, incidentally – that pushed the government to bring about change.”

It is one thing to talk about freedom but it is another thing to live the life of an abolitionist. What Dr. Angela Davis does in this text is demonstrate what active abolitionist work resembles versus symbolism and rhetoric. Her life becomes the canvas through which we begin to see how freedom is a constant struggle. As she so elegantly articulates, “she took on the government and won.” That alone is enough to garner one’s attention.

One thing that became extremely clear was her intentionality of reshaping how we view the criminal systems that continually labeled folks as criminals. When a system is unjust it is incapable of rendering a just verdict of any kind. Dr. Davis is clearing the hubris of white supremacy that lingers from years of injustice within the criminal justice system. 

Reflections on “Death of a King”

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When I think of the Martin Luther King that is idolized in contemporary settings versus the Martin Luther King of which Tavis Smiley and David Ritz projects in the early chapters of Death of a King, much is left to ponder. The ambiguous space from which King has been launched, in the 21st century, situates a King, that is settled in reconciliation without any variance or critical lens. Tavis Smiley and Davis Ritz interrogates that particular notion by isolating a King that is wrestling with the establishment of an evolving identity. I, purposely, employ the word wrestling instead of developing because this process is ever-etching King toward meaning- making within the Poor People’s Campaign. King is reluctant to embrace the vast changes shared with him from Bayard Rustin; highlighting that racism must be coupled with economic freedom in order for the impact of the Civil Rights Movement to be substantial nationwide. It is Rustin who is in King’s ear, years prior to his enlightenment, that folks with access and no money is just as bad as no access. King experiences this reality as he is matriculating through the West Coast, it is there where the epiphany of a new direction engulfs his persona. The events of the moment are galvanizing within the instance, a resurrection of a new agenda — thoughts that are lying dormant but re-energized by his encounters on the West Coast. The identity shift that happen through the encounters on the West Coast assisted King in reimagining freedom for Black people in the United States, it tilted his overall thinking about nonviolence and served as a marker for change.

            Moving throughout the West Coast produced an economical perspective for King that he appeared reluctant to grasped, previously. While in those locations, he not only encountered a hatred from white folks but a particular angst that engulfed Black folks as well. These folks were not as concerned with racism as they were with economical stability — jobs. They preferred to have decent living spaces and opportunities to good paying jobs. King’s naiveté in such areas never embarged upon his status in the South because his previous work secured his reputation. But, in the Midwest and on the West Coast, King was not as much of a redeemable entity. What had he accomplished in such settings? This begins to be an unsettled rendering for King and the movement as he is trying to garner support. What makes King such a viable figure that the folks in these areas would want to listen to him? Yes, he had done some things in leading the marches in the South but the dynamics were different in these cities. The shift is King’s identity is starting to reveal itself at this moment. As a leader, he is questioning himself and the people are moving in a more militant direction. King is out of step with the happenings of the day which is halting his progress for effective change. King is the “ultimate Negro at a time when Negros are seeing themselves as blacks.”[1] This produced a dialectical difference of King and the constituents of the cities. Ultimately, this produces a wall that would prove unavoidable for King.

            Because King is attempting to wrestle through the very issues plaguing his progress on the West Coast and Chicago, his view of nonviolence becomes tilted. This understanding of tilted is framed by Melissa Harris-Perry’s concept of the crooked room.[2] She uses a study conducted by H.A Witkin that placed people in a “crooked chair, with crooked pictures and asked them to align themselves properly.”[3] These folks were placed in a titled chair with titled pictures but some still contorted their bodies in order to make the object straight. What I am proposing is that King does some of the same contortionist maneuvers when it comes to negotiation within a non-violent agenda. King never, openly, denounces the use of non-violence, and, consistently, commits to non-violence, as a mean to win against the structure of violence until his death. The appropriation of the tilt, nonetheless, comes into play as King begins to respond differently to why Blacks are suddenly responding with violence on the West Coast and the Midwest. After major riots and other protest over his position of the Vietnam War, King fires back about violence. He responds to an inquisitive reporter, “In the final analysis a riot is the language of the unheard.”[4] King goes further with his tilting of his position on non-violence when he claims” that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice.”[5] Though King is not advocating for the total dismissal of non-violence, what he is proposing is an explanation: Why do Black people have to have a legitimate reason to be violent? He is tilting his head just bit in order for some clarity to surface in this space of ambiguity. In white folks’ hurry to move to tranquility, they have failed to assess the violent structure that is harming Black bodies and minds. Thus, King is calling for a readjustment, but he is starting with himself.

            Lastly, King’s travels to the West Coast served as a marker for his new emerging identity of Blackness. He is having to come to grips with the Black Power movement and it is pressing him to reinvent himself and his message. Smiley and Ritz denotes that King was still dressed in “black suits and ties” when the mood of the day was “dashikis, leather jackets, dark glasses and berets.”[6] King is observing, literally, that he is becoming obsolete in an everchanging climate that is moving toward a different type of militancy and resistance with white supremacy. His non-violent rhetoric was losing the day while Black Power was becoming an existential rally cry for poor Black people. What Smiley and Ritz exhibit is that King was so steeped in his traditionalism that it begins to blind his leadership in particular places where change was vastly needed. It was in those very places where King begins to envision how he was misguided on his overall approach. He needed to find a way for people to actually eat at the very counters that he had fought for them to sit at. Here is where the Poor People’s Campaign starts to become a reality.

            King identity goes through a transformation during the last year of his life. King has become a major cog in the wheel for justice but is greeted by a force that is gaining strength, quickly — Black Power. It is something that he has fought against but has preceded to back him against the wall. King embraces the concept but reimagines it through the lens of economic empowerment, doing his best to shield the Civil Rights Movement from being an isolated endeavor. Interestingly, we find Smiley’s and Ritz’s King becoming radicalized into the leader of the Poor People’s Campaign. Honestly, a movement that would have changed the trajectory of the United States if he would have been able to fulfill the objectives of its mission. King dies being loved as one of the greatest progenitors of a reconciliatory ethic, but he was killed with a spark of genius that might have reframed the story of the United States. 

[1] Tavis Smiley and David Ritz, Death of a King, New York: Back Bay Book, 2014., 74.

[2] Melissa Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.,29.

[3] Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen, 29

[4] Smiley and Ritz, Death of a King,42.

[5] Smiley and Ritz, Death of a King, 43.

[6] Smiley and Ritz, 79.

The (un)Making Within the Theo-Creative: Wrestling with James Baldwin and John Coltrane

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Art is not only dangerous, it dismantles. As artists create, potentially, their work unearths the deepest forms of beauty in the foulest of places. As Toni Morrison denotes,

“Art requires a critical conversation about being human.”

In comparison, art as a theological praxis envisions God as a disciplined creator, creating within the infinite and borderless, space. In his lecture, The Moral Responsibility of the Artist, James Baldwin wrestles with a collision that occurs when the invented god of America and the creative vision of the artist begins to asked questions of humanity. He refers to this event as a collision, to represent an emphatic reiteration, as he proclaims, “because people don’t…wish to see their deepest intimations confirmed.” Baldwin’s view of artists reveals an intention of seeing the religious or transcendent authority that lies concealed within art. Understandably, from Baldwin’s recollection the artists are the only people capable of galvanizing the creativity to exegete from the captured space of the ugly. In other words, the artist has been blessed with foresight to see the beauty within the grotesque. We also find this type of reverence or foresight, in the artistry of John Coltrane. During an interview Coltrane insisted: “I want to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start immediately to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I’d like to play a certain song and he’ll be cured. When he’d be broke, I’d bring out a different song, and immediately he’d get all the money he needed. But what these pieces are, and what is the road to attain the knowledge of them, that I don’t know. The true powers of music are still unknown. To be able to control them must be, I believe, the goal of every musician.” The un-making  within the theo-creative for Baldwin and Coltrane embodies an engagement of unhinging from the white gaze while simultaneously embracing how their Black experience has been cultivated by their community.

What is the unmaking within theo-creative? The theo-creative is the artist; being consciously inspired by the moment, where their creative response assumes transcendence. Therefore, the theo-creative is not merely a moment, movement or occurrence; it is also the person. It is the artist’s understanding how their artistry cultivates and reconfigures. The theo-creative is where art expands the conversation, while theologically struggling to provide solutions for what George Yancy describes as the “quotidian social spaces,” (think of: Public Enemy -Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos, Alabama- John Coltrane, Mississippi God Damn- Nina Simone). This is art performing an unmaking, a reconfiguring of the space to become a proponent of Black irruption. The un-making within the theo-creative conjures an artistic moment, where perfection is not an automatically centered part of the “sociocultural vocabulary” as denoted by Ashon Crawley (BlackPentecostal Breath, 230) or normalized. Rather, the most important factor becomes how does the art register in the spirit of the people. i.e. How does it make one feel? The unmaking within the theo-creative forms a distrust, radicality and subversive disposition with dominate ideologies/theologies that refuse to interrogate the white, European gaze of artistry.

Dr. JoAnne Terrell articulates on her a podcast, Shift of the Gaze, that “Being an artist is a given; becoming conscious of one’s artistry, and becoming conscientious as an artist depends on having or developing a sacramental theory of perception.” Terrell readily designate that the sacramental aspect of art must first be secured within the artist and the artist’s gaze. Therefore, the artist is not merely offering a response but producing a work. This work is not based, solely, upon the reaction of feeling but has been nested within and through a creative process. Now, the artist, in all of their disclosed banality, maneuvers with a tempered “disruptive clarity” as noted by Ed Pavlic’( Improvise, 24), in order to create. Therefore, how one practices, and, continually, engages in a method of practice transforms their art. This is noticeable evident in the artistry of Coltrane. His maniacal commitment to practice made his improvisational skills otherworldly. There are many stories where friends, family and other musicians would find Coltrane fingering his saxophone without blowing air into the instrument. This form of practice established an uncanny fluency with the horn and developed hand coordination as one heard the music in their head. Professor Lewis Porter insists, “That [it was] essential for improvisation, since one must hear music in one’s head in order to produce it at will.” (Lewis Porter, John Coltrane, 52)

James Baldwin as an artist is not the identity that first captures the attention of most. Many would primarily label him as an activist, writer, queer/gay Black man, and playwriter. And, I might add a progenitor of Black Rage. But, the label of an outright artist is something that is rarely connected with the genius of Baldwin. The artistic world availed his imagination unto a wider perspective from which he was able to extract his information. Baldwin proclaimed in a conversation with Studs Terkel: “nobody knows what’s going to happen to [him/her] from one moment to the next or how [he/she] will bear it. This is irreducible and its true for everybody.  Now it is true that the nature of society has to be, you know, to create among its citizens an illusion of safety. But it is also absolutely true that this safety is necessarily an illusion and artists are here to disturb the peace.” For Baldwin, art arranged moments for people to communicate their truth even in the midst of oppressive times. Ed Pavlic’ denotes that “art put people eye to eye with the essential state of risk and made an engaged joy possible.” (Pavlic’, 40) This is the beauty and the un-making of the theo-creative work of James Baldwin. He is consistently reworking the accusations that God abandons the Black community, allowing atrocities to dismantle their lives. Baldwin’s search for answers both torments him and fuels his work. Black Rage serves him as a theo-creative form of release to explore the problems that plagued the Black community. Though he notices the distinct places where despair could be the course of the day, Baldwin’s sense of Black Rage activates his artistry. His Black Rage revises his understanding of the imago dei. Baldwin’s rage towards his father has implications toward God as well. Viewing his father as a fraud, Baldwin also identifies God with the same fraudulent intentions. Nevertheless, God, through the church, appears to have had an apparent impact on his thinking, because Baldwin admits that he will never be able to rid himself of the church because “it is in him.” Baldwin is conduced to define God as a distraction, not as a sovereign being working on behalf of Black folks who are oppressed. He concretely believes that Americans, specifically, white Americans, use God as a shield so that they do not have to wrestle with the reality of white supremacy in America.

In the liner notes of A Love Supreme, John Coltrane writes ,” During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD. “ John Coltrane embodied his art, ontologically, to the point that his wife at time, Naima, declared, “he was 90 percent saxophone.” Coltrane’s theo-creative moments are centered around his relationship with the saxophone. This collision between Coltrane and the saxophone happen in the midst of family tragedy: his father, maternal grandparents, and uncle pass within months of each other. Coltrane uses music as a means of survival. For Coltrane, his art represented a path of righteousness. He understood and lived under the philosophy that “playing right meant, and required, living right.” Though he questioned many things including his idea of faith and God, Coltrane “found salvation through the saxophone.” (Ashley Kahn,8) But, Coltrane, like Baldwin could never severe the connection from the Black church because “it was inside of him.” As he journeys through the musical scene and develops as an artist, Coltrane has a moment where it appears as if his skills are eroding.  Ashley Kahn describes the time, in May of 1957, while playing at the Red Rooster, Coltrane begins to play like a six year old in the middle of a set. Coltrane was [obviously] detoxing from drugs, cold turkey, It was during that time that he had a dream about Charlie Parker, and Parker said that he was on the right track. This is the moment that Coltrane begins to transform in his playing.- (Love Supreme, 35-36) After witnessing Coltrane fight through that detoxification, Nat Hentoff would later emphatic detail , “there was Trane with his band…standing with a spiritual force.” Mcoy Tyner, who would later accompany Coltrane on A Love Supreme, marveled at his transformation saying, “It was almost like he had something he had to get done. You know? He had a lot of work to do.” This spiritual weightiness in the music of Coltrane is not only reshaping Coltrane but redefining the sound of the saxophone as well. Regardless of the particular style, Coltrane provided a credibility as well as his spirituality to upcoming saxophonist. His art was his infinite invitation to his Sunday Church. Coltrane allowed his music to speak “with a particular force to Black America, where politics and culture—the civil rights movement, R&B music, and jazz—were tightly enmeshed in a rising wave of racial pride.” (Ashley Kahn, 73)

Theo-creative Mechanisms of the Un-making

Within the theo-creative, Baldwin’s typewriter and Coltrane’s saxophone emerge as mechanisms of the avant-garde. Through these sacred surrogates (typewriter and saxophone), the creativity of both men grapple with the grief of losing their fathers. First, Baldwin’s chaotic love affair with the typewriter becomes apparent. Though he finds some sacred release from the typewriter it also produced his greater place of pain. It was the typewriter, where he was able to release pain, pleasure and fear but the actual expedition to the typewriter manufactured anguish. But, justifiably, Baldwin knew that solace was conceived and enveloped in the keys of the typewriter. Embedded within the tiny, creative space of the typewriter, he was forced to confront his inner demons, and the turmoil known as the memories of his father. The typewriter became a space for Baldwin to develop his voice as he struggled to tell his Black narrative. As Baldwin is struggling with communication and the decisions of life, the typewriter provides him a “passionate detached” space to create. ( James Baldwin, Cross of Redemption, 73) Though Baldwin does not understand why anyone would ever want to be a writer, he understands that he has been called to such a task. The typewriter is the place where his father becomes characterized and Baldwin is able to release his rage. A rage produced through Baldwin’s contempt for his father’s misappropriation of God’s holy. Because he observed his father attempting to evolve into whiteness, he discovered a disdain and bitterness that he harbored against him. It was so formative that Baldwin would later write, “…that God [himself] had devised, to mark my father’s end, the most sustained and brutally dissonant of codas.” (Baldwin, Notes of Native Son, 85) Interestingly, Baldwin, associates “holy” with whiteness, in relation to his father, yet his father had such unspoken hatred for white people. (Baldwin, Conversation with James Baldwin, 47) The commentator Buzz Poole supposes that these particular “codas” God devised for his father are the few things that Baldwin can say, honestly, that he inherited from his father –a rage. (Buzz Poole, Happy Birthday James Baldwin, The Millions) Codas that demark a Black Rage that is unescapable to any Negro alive; “a rage in his blood –one has the choice, merely, of living with it consciously or surrendering to it.” (Baldwin, Price of the Ticket, 133)

Secondly, Coltrane’s saxophone was his place of peace that allowed him to rediscover his faith. The sudden death of his father appeared to leave an aperture to which the saxophone would creatively satiate. Coltrane’s love for the saxophone was visibly apparent as he spent most of his waking moments attached to the instrument. Everywhere he went the saxophone was either in his hand or nearby. It was known that he would practice from anywhere from 10 to 12 hours a day. There was something intrinsic and ancestral about the saxophone that made Coltrane feel close to his deceased father and grandfather. Wayne Shorter connects this thesis of Coltrane’s playing and his appreciation for his grandfather’s Black form whopping as an AME Zion pastor. Inseparable, he denotes, “his grandfather was a preacher and I can hear the wailing [through the horn] …and the appreciation of his grandfather’s mission.” Shorter is positing this inevitable resurgence of spirituality that emerges through the artistry of Coltrane as he is chasing lost time with the men—his father and the father figures— in his life. This is apparent in the mentoring of Miles Davis versus the paternal pedagogical approach to practice with Thelonious Monk. During Coltrane’s tenure with Miles Davis he refused to answer question but preferred for the artist to creatively explore their way to understanding. Thelonious Monk, on the other hand, takes time with Coltrane, and rehearses different methods of playing until he has mastered the musical phrases and movements. Though Coltrane flourished in both environments, it was Monk that expanded his creative parameters. Coltrane admits, “[Monk] got me into the habit of playing long solos on his pieces, playing the same pieces for a long time to find new conceptions of solos. It got so I would go as far as possible on one phrase until I ran out of ideas. The harmonies got to be an obsession with me.”  Ultimately, Monk’s pedagogical, fatherly and instructive approached orchestrated a “complete freedom in his playing” as Coltrane would confide during an interview.

Conclusion

The un-making within the theo-creative is Black performance awakening to the historical value of culture.

Because art produces itself in the means of the crumpled and the creases of struggle, Black folks had/have to be creative in order to survive. Baldwin and Coltrane are products of a people where as Fred Moten denotes “Black performance was a means and a practice of resistance. “(Fred Moten,foot note 14 pg 263) With Blackness and God servicing as a connected never-ending muse, the quest to reshape humanity avails itself as a total disruption for these two artist. Their art mimetically induced their lives. Or in the words of Sonny Rollins,

 “I’m not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I’m just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that’s when it’s really happening.”

Two Brothers Talking: A Running Dialog on the Incarnation and being Black Part 2

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Life as a black man in (a)merica is a strange predicament wedged between misery and sublime while being rushed by transcendence. The addition of a loving God would appear to deconstruct the misery that ultimately leads to a different life. Unfortunately, that is not always the cause for many black people trekking through this life in the Western world. On a bigger picture it can be assumed that God is not that fond of black people (men or women) due in part by the mass levels of oppression. We have endured years of unfairness, injustice and pure racism just for us to be seen as human. That in itself would make anybody question the intentions of a loving God.

The incarnation, Walter says in his response, means that “God will do something about the suffering.” It appears that what God did about the suffering was allow more suffering. There is not this overwhelming sensation of triumph that has overtaken the black community that signifies everything is alright –we will be alright but there is no overwhelming sensation that alerts us to the phenomenon. James Baldwin articulates, “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If he cannot do this, it is time we get rid of him.” Although this reply is harsh there is some level of contemplation that can be rendered upon this statement.

The continual suffering of a group of people does not equate to love in most places. The systemic displacement of black and brown people, not to mention the Indians, has made life difficult to negotiate in america. When you have become numb to ignorance instead of vigilante, then acceptance looms as an apparent answer. This is where many black Christians live. They live on the edge of sheer apathy with comedic hope for change. They will succumb to mistreatment by standing on a faith that change is around the corner. Well, all of that is good but there also needs to be a voice that addresses the wrong and provides a plan for change. But, God must be actively present in the midst of the chaos. Now, I digress and admit that God may very well be actively present in the midst but my understanding is lacking to comprehend what is actual going on. That is my hope and but the appearance of this mayhem in the lives of black folks makes me wonder at times.   

The dialog continues…

Reflective Thoughts about Kelly Brown Douglas’ Stand Your Ground

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There is a rage, that brings a serious critique to bear, while, simultaneously, providing indiscernible places of healing.[1] This is a distinctive place that is not entered into with brevity or lackadaisically, but serves as a breeding ground for internal change. This rage or anger is not some misguided excuse to lose control, but a lamented response to injustice, which presses one to action and answers. In her quest to find answers, Kelly Brown Douglas’ Stand Your Ground, presses truth in the face of readers, with the intention of finding answers to the continual killing of unarmed black bodies.[2] This truth is represented in three particular spaces: black rage, black fear, and black faith.

Douglas’ Black rage is visible throughout the book, but most noticeable in the mood from whence she writes in her work. Once again, it is not a rage that causes her to lash out in violence, but one that causes her to think critically about the death of those blessed with black bodies. Her black rage is visible in her constant references to her young black son. She writes, “Why is it becoming increasingly acceptable to kill unarmed black children, I wondered? Why are they so easily perceived as a threat? How are we to keep our black children safe? As a mother of a black male child, I find these to be urgent questions.”[3] With compassion and diligence, she writes with the hope of finding some sort of clarity for the death of the young black bodies. This Black rage is a real presence, with real consequences, which she understands, vividly, because her son could be the next victim of such a travesty. Her press is to find theological answers and raise hard questions to a terrorism that the “underside of modernity” appears to be facing and the modern church ignores.[4]

The notion of black fear is not one that is placed in black bodies, but a fear that it thrust upon black bodies. This constant fear that in some fashion or form black bodies will enter into designated white spaces, these “undesirable strangers” or “unloved strangers,” who enter into places that their privilege has not availed to them.[5] This ill-informed identifier instantly places black bodies in danger. This intrusion of the sacred white space alerts fear that “makes for a dangerous situation because white people are compelled, by divine law nonetheless, to protect their space from intruders.”[6] The blinding that is represented in black fear is the direct result of a racial lens that symbolizes black with crime. Brown Douglas equates this with a heighten sense of awareness that the black body does not have the “presumption of innocence” that is afforded to whites.[7] The black fear is a manufactured emotion that serves as another example of the numerous ways that the black body is continually is danger.

Black faith has been the pedestal of triumph which the black body was able to lean upon for strength. “Born in the crucible of slavery,” black faith galvanized the people in the long fight for liberation.[8] It was this black faith that enabled an oppressed people to redefine an image of God that resemble freedom instead of enslavement.[9] Black faith gave black people the opportunity to wrestle with illegitimate presentations of God with the hope of finding power in a free God. Freedom is a power within the black faith that is found in the freedom of God and is stronger than any other human power that seeks to destroy the black body. [10]  Black faith allows for transcendence, an opportunity to get past the pain –“the contradictions of black living.”[11]

Black rage, black fear and black faith make up the three emotive adventures that I traveled through as I read, Stand Your Ground. Some may find it problematic that I specified, each thought with a black identifier. The identifier provides an intentional marker that highlights the racial component that is so prevalent in America. There is an ownership of the term that must be located in black spaces to counteract the negativity. Paulo Freire, Audre Lorde and Kelly Brown Douglas all explore the need to break away from the oppressors.[12] The ownerships of rage, fear and faith represent change; Brown Douglas for me represents change. She makes it alright to stand against the system and demand that change be in the forefront of the agenda. She makes ownership available in spaces that have been deemed inaccessible. No longer can rage, fear and faith be disassociated from the black experience as if it is unattainable, unnecessary, and unwelcomed. We have made strides to freedom, but there are still more steps that need to be taken to make the black body a fully invested citizen.

 

[1] Rage and anger can be changed, intermittedly, but should be used to draw the same conclusion.

 

[2] Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, New York: Orbis Books, 2015.

 

[3] Ibid.,ix.

 

[4] J. Cameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.,379.

[5] Joy DeGruy explains that the impact of extreme racial systems have left a mark of the minds of blacks as well as whites. She denotes that these racist power structures have made the life of black folks with little “time to catch our collective breath.” As these undesirable strangers, blacks are brutalized at the hands of the very people that were/are charged to protect and serve. Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Portland, OR: Joy DeGruy Publications, 2005., 107-108.   James Baldwin’s use of the “unloved stranger” unearths the hatred that is levied on the backs of black bodies in America. He believes that all blacks have this “paradoxical adjustment” where we must come to grips with the unalienable fact that we are dark, dangerous and unloved strangers –simply niggers. Now, this is not a personal identifier but his perception of what he believes white people perceive when black people enter into sacred white spaces. James Baldwin, Notes of Native Son, Boston: Beacon Press, 1955., 42-43.

 

[6] Ibid., Brown Douglas.

 

[7] Ibid., 86.

[8] Ibid., 138.

[9] Ibid., 151. Brown Douglas wrestles with a God concept that is emblematic of an enslaved African. In her description, a God of such a stature had no power or authority to offer freedom to enslaved African people.  That God would be the very image that the slave master has depicted from the beginning, so the conscious African could not possible assert freedom with God while simultaneously believing that enslavement was a viable avenue in the image of God. I contend that the slave master’s god was not the same as the enslaved Africans’ God.

[10] Ibid., 155.

[11] Ibid., 172.

[12] Ibid., 155; Ibid., Sister Outsider,123. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum,1973.