Greetings & blessings beloved ones💕
It is important how we see and identify ourselves.
Identifying with our heritage is vital to our well being.
We are members of God’s family.
We are carefully joined together in Christ, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.
As we close out "BLACK HISTORY MONTH" in the USA, I want to share the following excerpts for reflection.
No black people in Africa
"You know that there are no black people in Africa." What we take as gospel in American culture is alien to them.
“Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.”
Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer-winning scholar on race expounds on how blackness was created as a race. The following statement by her perfectly encapsulates how such a convoluted bias came into place. “In the making of the New World, the Europeans became white, Africans black, and everyone else yellow, red, or brown. Humans were set apart and identified solely in contrast to one another and ranked in an arbitrary manner by the people in power. It was in the process of ranking that we were all cast into assigned roles to meet the needs of the larger production; none of us are ourselves.” It is safe to say that if we continue to hold on to this mis-characterization we would be subliminally furthering a system that has for centuries, sown seeds of discord in our shared habitat.
Not all black people are African-American
The
racial classification of "Black" strikes at deeper questions over the
treatment of people of African descent, who were stripped of their
identities and enslaved in centuries past, and whose struggles to become
fully accepted as part of the American experience continue to this
day.
“Black is a color,” said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the
longtime civil rights leader who popularized the term “African-American”
in an effort to highlight the cultural heritage of those with ancestral
ties to Africa. “We built the country through the African slave trade.
African-American acknowledges that. Any term that emphasizes the color
and not the heritage separates us from our heritage.”
In the USA, the adoption of the term African American as a "very deliberate move on the part of black communities to signify our American-ness, but also signify this African heritage."
There are complexities of "black" identities, especially in the United States.
These layers of racial identity can be extremely personal and nuanced. There are some Americans who identify as both, and some who prefer black over African American because they can't actually trace their lineage.
"Part of what was stolen, when we think about slavery, when we think about colonization, was that lineage," ... some are saying, 'I don't even feel comfortable claiming African, because I don't know the story of where my people have come from.'"
Yes, we are members of God’s family and it is important how we see and identify ourselves.
In honor of our history and more so for our present and future, make choices to advance the cause of Christ which is about love, justice, and care for humanity as a whole.
We are His light and hands in the earth realm to do His will. Honor Him and His-story well.
