African American History Month is annually observed in February in the United States. For twenty-eight days, save a leap year, all Americans are invited to recognize and celebrate the central role this community has played in the nation’s history.
Not bracketed by American chattel slavery and this present moment, who we are, as African Americans, is not just historical but spiritual. In fact, like our ancestors, spirituality—not religion, which is cordoned off and reserved for practice on Sundays—informs all of life. Thus, what most African Americans believe is not separated from other aspects of their existence.
A nod to indigenous African spirituality, it is a way of life and informs everything. But the aims should not be confused with that of religious totalitarianism.
Instead, Howard Washington Thurman, cofounder of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California, and the former Professor of Spiritual Resources and Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, serves as an expert example of such a practitioner who really gets it. In his discussion of “God-meaning” and the inwardness of religion in “The Creative Encounter,” he wrote, “As Bennett puts it, ‘It is the knowledge of the subject of all predicates.”
Thurman speaks not just of an awareness of God, but the realization of God and God with us by the very nature of the Divine. Thus, God could not be brought to Africans and later African Americans who were enslaved through missionary exercises that doubled as colonial conquests.
God is not a product of the capitalist enterprise and does not travel by way of human hands. In fact, Christians believe God is the source of all creation and the ultimate origin of all things (Genesis 1:1). The psalmist would argue there is no place where God is not (Psalm 139:7-12).
God then predates any other concept of beginning and nullifies any arguments of a “new world.” In fact, the writer of Ecclesiastes had already seen it all. He quipped, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun” (1:9, NRSV).
This understanding frees African Americans from defending or justifying our existence and turns our attention to what really matters. Because “the function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work,” Toni Morrison warned us.
“What do I want, really? What is the fundamental thing that I am after with my life?”
These are essential questions posed by Thurman that must be answered in the time that is ours. This assignment is reserved for those ready to receive what he called “the working papers.”
He also notably asked, “Who am I, really?” This inquiry should not be confused with the normal, gnawing, and natural one: “Who am I?”
No, this interrogation goes to the core of our identity, to the very root of our being, and to the tail end of our existence. I am not asking for a tattle tale answer or a confessional response.
This is not about who you are when no one is looking or what you say to impress others. Instead, it is a call to listen in for what Thurman calls “the sound of the genuine.”
It is also a calling to live in response to this holy authenticity. Deep down inside, who are you, really?
The answer is not the stuff of rumor and gossip. The response is not found on our resumes, in our homes or parked in our driveways. That is mere proof of the propaganda of capitalism.
The answer is not your job title, your role in the community or even at home. It is not an identity printed and carried on a plastic card but carried out, acted out in the world. And it is rooted in what you believe about yourself.
The elders would say, “God don’t make no junk.” They were reminding us that social projections are not a reflection of who we really are. As children of God, we should link our self-esteem and self-actualization to an inward orientation of life.
During a recorded conversation, Thurman spoke to this, saying, “It goes back to my childhood, because I had constantly to affirm my own self in an environment that reduced me to zero, an environment in which I had no standing, as it were.”
He continued, “I was driven to find in the grounds of my being that which transcended everything in my environment (external to me). Once I hit it, then I knew I was home free, that the environment could never destroy me because at my center I would never say ‘yes’ to the external judgment of me [as an African American man].”
Remember who you are, really, and the source of your identity. Further, James Baldwin prompted us, “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.”
You are somebody because you are a child of God. That is worth celebrating!
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
