Their [White Liberals] knowledge revealed in fact that they
can deal with the Negro as a symbol or victim but had no sense of him as a man.
–James Baldwin , The Fire Next Time
Adaptation
The White Christian’s knowledge of racism and how they see
themselves connected to it reveals in fact they can deal with the legacy of
Jesus as a symbol or a mythological victim of the persecution of his day but
have no sense of how to integrate the essence of his character into the stark
realities of his humanity. Which is to say that White Christians can understand
that Jesus was persecuted and crucified, but just can’t seem to accept that
they [White Christians] are most closely related ethno/biologically to the
Romans that crucified him. They are so unacquainted with the racial ethnic
realities of Jesus that they even depict him as a Blond long straight haired,
blue eyed, pale skinned White man on their adorned crosses in their lily white
churches or in their lily White movies.
So I am struggling to get through the Disunity in Christ
book. I recognize that it is written by a woman of color, potentially another
Black woman. It is clear as I stumble through her pages that we are at a very
different stage of nigressence. I would guess that Dr. Cleveland, who
consistently glosses over the historical context of how disunity found its way
into the Christian Church, has prioritized the value of multiculturalism and the importance of its translation to a White dominant society over the painful lived experiences of herself and other people of color.
I found my blood boiling right after reading her juxtaposition of ethnic/racial separation in Chicago to cultural segments of Christianity. She writes about it as if all the Black folk in Chicago wanted to live in Cabrini Green or Bronzeville and all the Polish folk wanted to be sectioned off too. She writes as if slaves werent forced to the colored sections of White churches simply for show or to insure their continued captivity during worship hours of their masters.
I get it, Dr. Cleveland is trying to reach White folk and in order to reach them, you have to pretend like their racism was unintentional or nonstrategic. I see this in a lot of White focused diversity work. No one is allowed to make White folk feel uncomfortable. I have affectionately renamed Cleveland’s book 220 Pages of Non Threatningly Whispering For White Folks
I found my blood boiling right after reading her juxtaposition of ethnic/racial separation in Chicago to cultural segments of Christianity. She writes about it as if all the Black folk in Chicago wanted to live in Cabrini Green or Bronzeville and all the Polish folk wanted to be sectioned off too. She writes as if slaves werent forced to the colored sections of White churches simply for show or to insure their continued captivity during worship hours of their masters.
I get it, Dr. Cleveland is trying to reach White folk and in order to reach them, you have to pretend like their racism was unintentional or nonstrategic. I see this in a lot of White focused diversity work. No one is allowed to make White folk feel uncomfortable. I have affectionately renamed Cleveland’s book 220 Pages of Non Threatningly Whispering For White Folks
Dr, Cleveland makes me realize that I do not believe in the
validity of a warm and fuzzy unified cultural world. Not even within the
confines of Christianity. Its not that I don’t believe that the idea is good
one. I just do not trust, after all this time, that White folk have the
capacity to strip themselves of the racial privilege that finds itself at the
cux of the issue of racism. I can’t get down with multiculturalism in
Christianity because I don’t think it truly exists. I believe that there are
large White churches that some people of color attend or Minority Majority
churches that some White Folks attend. I don’t believe that we can truly have
multicultural churches because White folks aint ready to deal with (acknowledge
and apologize for) how they brought Black folks, Native Americans, Latinx,
Asian, and so on and so forth to know Christ. White folks aint ready to be
uncomfortable and Black folk aint got the energy or timed required to deal with
the aftermath associated with making White folks uncomfortable.
James Baldwin so eloquently wrote:
It is a fact that every American
Negro bares a name that originally belonged to the White man whose chattel he
was. I am called Baldwin because I was either sold by my African tribe, or
kidnapped out of it into the hands of a White Christian named Baldwin who
forced me to kneel at the foot of the cross. I am then both visibly and legally
the descendant of slaves in a White protestant country. And this is what it
means to be an American negro, and this is who he is, a kidnapped pagan who was
sold like an animal and treated like one. Who was once defined by the American
constitution as 3/5s a man. And who according to the Dred Scott decision, had
no rights that a White man was bound to respect. And today a hundred years
after his technical emancipation, he remains, with the possible exception of
the American Indian, the most despised creature of his country. (The Fire Next
Time)
