My Mother Doesn't Think I Believe in God

My Mommy :)

As an African American, God has always been apart of the culture of my family. We held hands and prayed before every Thanksgiving meal. We shouted “Thank God” when something went our way. We “swore to God” when we were telling a lie and the truth. We listened to Kirk Franklin and the Family. We went to a Baptist daycare center that showed us how to do nightly prayers. Black Jesus with the dreadlocks greeted us every day in the foyer. But there was an unspoken fear of going to church in my family. The judgment and the feeling of not belonging always stuck with me after our once a year voyage on Easter Sundays. 

I didn’t grow up in the church, I grew up in poverty. I didn’t read the bible as a child, I read Word Up magazines and tore out the pages of Immature and hung them on my walls in the ‘hood. I didn’t have an old church going grandmother who wore white gloves and drug me to Sunday school. I had a cursing granny who tore me a few food stamps from the book and sent me to buy hot pickles and a box of Dominoes’ sugar for the spades game. My father didn’t play the piano, he smoked weed.

What I know about the church, I know from seeking it out myself as a teen. We lived across the street from a church on the northside of Milwaukee during my teen years. Before the pastors left the city in a scandal that rocked the community, I used to visit the teen’s group quite often. I was bored and the kids seemed to have it all. So I joined. I remember the youth group leader’s wife drove into the church parking lot one evening in a cream Cadillac. I’ll never forget that car because even as a teen if you called “bingo” on that car, you won. She was a fair black woman with long, jetblack permed hair and  a college degree she wore on her sleeve. She seemed to me like she had it all. She had a husband who kissed her softly on her cheek in public. She had two children, a son and a daughter. She always had fresh Jet magazines on her car seat and most of all she lived in the suburbs. Wearing a big beautiful hat, she winked at me one day and I followed her across the street. I joined the youth group soon after. The youth group was less about me accepting God and more about belonging to a community of teens whose parents were middle-class and aspirational figures for me. They all had fresh clothes and new shoes. They spoke like we spoke but there was no doubt in my mind we lived in different places. I just wanted to be around them. And so I did. Every Wednesday night, I would sneak into the last hour of “power hour” and then join the youth for church. When I was alone at night, I would talk to “God” about my dreams, the goals I had for myself, and all the ways I wanted to be free.

I don’t know if he ever responded.

Much of my college years were spent in the South, so church was commonplace. I mean, you could party all Saturday night, but Sunday morning you had better be in the church pews.  I learned all the songs, how to pray, and I even joined the college ministry from time to time. It was apart of my culture. I loved getting dressed up and I loved to see the people all dressed up. I missed church when I didn’t go and I loved the messages of hope, solace, and prosperity. In those church pews, I felt like I had arrived.

I don’t think my mother knows, and she’d be shocked to learn I’m sure, that I spent some of my early days as a faith based community organizer. I learned more about the power of faith and traditions there then I had ever learned before. I found out so much about how faith could usher people into a realm of social justice. How ground shifting it could be to center your faith in the middle of justice. I was moved. And I was sold. 

In my twenties, I attended Alfred Street Baptist church in Alexandria, VA outside of Washington, DC. What a dynamic experience that was. It really helped my contemporary understanding of the lessons in the Bible. Alfred Street had traditions but what I loved most was that the pastor talked about real issues and social justice. I needed to be at that place to help me make sense of all the injustices in the world. Much like my work as an organizer, Alfred Street had sold me less on church and more on faith.

My mother, who has since gone on to be saved, sanctified, and humbly filled with the holy ghost, calls me some Sunday mornings to see if I’m going to church. The truth is, here in Brooklyn, I’m rarely at church. These days, Ta-Nehisi Coates is my pastor and Janet Mock is my choir.  I’m so consumed with my questions of church and the commitment to the church community, that I bypass the opportunity every time. I’m also a serious progressive. I’m an unapologetic latte liberal with some revolutionary tendencies and I have some serious concerns about the phobias that are justified in the churches I've visited. And the very thing that drew me to the church, is what has kept me away.

And while my mother probably thinks that I don’t believe in God and I’m raising some kind of heathen in my stinky Brooklyn apartment, my faith has never been more solid. I rise every morning in a meditation of gratitude. Every time I see the sunrise, I am reminded of the magnitude of God that the world cannot control. When I arose in the bush of South Africa to see a mighty elephant, I probably said my most ernest prayer. I know from wince I came. I don’t bless my food before I eat it and I’ve never said I was blessed. But I am no less faithful to the notion of a higher power guiding my life and ordering my steps. And although I haven’t read the Bible in too many years, in my time of need and sorrow, I think of the verses that calm me and still my beating heart. Every time I say amen, I mean it. I mean it with so much intentionality. And every breath I take, I know that to whom much is given, much is required. Although I have some questions about church and God, and the wordly acts of the Godly people, there’s not a Negro spiritual karaoke contest I could ever lose. Maybe my being unchurched has my mother worried for my soul,  I feel alright with God. 

And most of all, I still have an unbinding reverence for my people’s devotion to faith that has carried us from slavery to freedom. And that will never leave my life. 

Ramblings about Solidarity

Solidarity scares me. Solidarity reminds me of the word that you say in public when you really mean something else in private. Solidarity reminds me of the recent marches on Washington to commemorate the anniversary that led to a speaking list full of everyone from Pepsi representatives to organizations that have never elected Black leadership. Solidarity triggers something very sad in my soul that brings up images of forgotten poor people. When I think of solidarity, I think of the 99% who just as culpable for the problems of the lower 5% as the top 5%.

Am I confusing solidarity with unity? Perhaps. What’s it all mean if we aren’t unified? Am I confusing solidarity with the things that happen after the closed door meetings? Maybe. What I’ve experienced of solidarity as of late is the erasure or censoring of poor people from the forefront of the liberation movements. When I think of those who need to be free the most, I think of poor folk. When I think of the folks who are not making room for poor folk and taking up space, are the folks in the middle.

Could it be that middle class folk and people who are economically moderate and politically liberal are taking up too much space out of fear that the targets of some of the problems we face could be them? I should include myself in the “them.”

I hate when Americans, especially middle class Americans, specifically declare themselves in solidarity with anyone in the Global South. It becomes almost a joke if we are not uplifting the margins of poverty. It becomes almost a joke if we are advocating for more wages in a vary narrow westernized context but we fail to advocate for living wages of the people in the Global South. Sometimes our advocating leads directly to marginalized people being over policed, underfed, and having no access to goods. We do this in the name of solidarity and jobs. But what happens when we have a job and we fight to protect that job at the expense of even more marginalized people?

I’ve watched unionized security guards advocate against policies that seek to minimize sentencing for Black men who became pawns in the War on Drugs. I’ve seen them march, hand and hand, as working class men to disenfranchisement poor men. Men who they've deem disposable. Men who they don't even include in their 99%.  I’ve seen those same security guards join with plumbers, in the name of solidarity to protest laws that would eliminate faulty pipes therefore eliminating jobs for plumbers but decreasing apartment problems for the poor. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen white mothers in Brooklyn join hands for an increase in minimum wage in New York, while paying their Black, immigrant nannies under the table crumbs. I’ve seen unionized public teachers march, write letters, yell, and complain about the parents of students they teach in poor communities. I've seen them lobby against getting fired as working class people all while refusing to teach students in poor communities they've failed to include in their 99% narrative.  I’ve seen them, in the name of solidarity, march alongside racist police officers who kill, brutalize, and humiliate the very students they claim to want to teach.

What are we, as progressives, doing in the name of solidarity? How much are we willing to advocate for ourselves as a collective group when the truth is, it's the least of these that need most of our advocating? 

Lessons Learned in 2015

Functioning Crazy People

All those rumors I hear about people who know people who “do it for the ‘gram” but are secretly maladjusted, just has never been something I’ve witnessed in real life. No really. I’ve heard this of course from some of my social media-hating friends but I’d never actually met those people in real life. Until I found a few of those folks in my personal offline social circle. I learned that you could be amazing and be in shambles.  You can be like, extraordinarily gifted and dope and self-destructive. This year was the first year of my life that I had to actually deal with people that even I thought were “fine” but were far from it. It took some adjusting and I had to make some decisions on whom I’d be there for and whom I wouldn’t.

Things Don’t Need to Be Figured Out

In 2015, I had very particular instances that reminded me that people and things don’t need to be figured out by me and I should make conscious decisions to either stick through the learning phase or dash. Life will go one without me knowing the exact next step and that’s actually ok. So in 2015, I stayed a few places I didn’t think I would because I didn't have it all figured out.

Friendships

I’ve said it a million times, I have incredible friends. Very thoughtful, warm, passionate, and intelligent people. I live in a friend bubble.  In 2015 though, I learned a few lessons I’d thought I’d known already about adult friendships. I learned  that you can have complete respect and love for people, and they still can kinda believe you don’t. And you can continue to have admiration for them and not talk to them again. And that’s ok.

Blackness doesn’t have to be sacared

I used to feel full when I hung around a lot of Black people (and still do). I’d go to Harlem, spend the day just walking around, eating soul food, shopping at Schomburg, feeling very affirmed. Outside of that weekend moment, I always felt my Blackness was slipping away from me as if I had to perform some neutralized actions in white spaces. Like not speak in slang unless I was intentionally breaking character in the workplace. Like not talking about racism, blackness, as much as I was actually thinking about it. Reserving a day or two, or even an evening to be comfortably Black no longer worked enough for me. I stopped saying I wasn’t watching ratchet reality tv, when I was. I stopped saying I didn’t catch the news, when I could barely function because a new Black person was shot by a police officer. I stopped only whispering to Black colleagues about issues of white supremacy faced daily in different spaces, on trains, and in hallways. I stopped holding it all in only to be released amongst my Black girlfriends. I stopped trying to suspend my Blackness to make others uncomfortable. And it hasn’t been easy but I feel so much better for it.

The Unfollow Button on Facebook

Who invented this and why? This is amazing! I don’t have to deal with the guilt of unfriending my family members but I don’t have to be subject to all their crazy news stories from unreliable sources and rants about child abuse. Thank you Facebook fairy!

What are some lessons you learned in 2015? 

Lupita and the Politics of Beauty

Lupita is hella fine but this picture is not mine.

And now, at coffee shops and in grocery store lines all across mid-America I have to overhear conversations about how…well, you know, drop dead gorgeous Lupita Nyong’o is.

Lupita Nyong’o is best known for her role in 12 Years a Slave. Lupita is a Brooklyn transplant born in Mexico City to Kenyan parents. She studied at Yale School of Drama and like President Obama, she is of Luo ancestry. And yes, she is drop dead gorgeous. But why is mainstream media so surprised that she’s so goddamn fine?

You know, it’s that racist, patriarchal, capitalist (thanks, bell) unconscious attitude that frames even how we process how we see obviously beautiful people. Lupita is obviously beautiful. Seeing her shouldn’t send your mind into a surprisingly and unexpected reaction of lust. Because she was already lust worthy before you got here. The image of her deep dark skin, button nose, slim frame, short natural (most times) hair and wide eyes, is now sending imperialists into a mental juxtaposition of wanting to re-adjust their feminization of beauty (because, it’s been clearly challenged) and wanting to openly validate it in this post-racial America. Save it. Seeing the objectification of feminized celebrity for what it is would have freed you from feeling ‘some type of way’ about Lupita’s beauty.

Our unconscious commitment to mainstream media’s current polite acceptance of Lupita Nygon’o as a thing, a beautiful thing to be openly seen, has us thinking we’ve moved passed our patronizing relationship with dark skin as an occasional beauty marker. We haven’t. Beauty is so intertwined with celebrity and ones success at times it is painfully trapped in the identification of “gorgeous.” Our standards of beauty as an Eurocentric culture has always allowed us one. Or maybe a couple. We always get a Kelly Rowland. We can get by with a Tika Sumpter. We can cruise into a movie and applaud even a Gabourey Sidbie. And don’t you just love Gabrielle Union in Being Mary Jane? Our deep dark skin always conveys this dangerous superhuman message that we are exclusively strong and almost secondarily beautiful. As if the two can’t occupy the same space. Insert the instant shock.

This picture is not mine (THR.com)

I’m very happy Lupita is being celebrated as another example of the beauty of humans.

But I am not at all grateful for mainstream media’s shock given the ideological terrain on which they operate from is inculcated with the premise that deep dark skin is ugly. But let me just be all the way real and tell you why these jaw dropping, lustful eyes don’t bring me to tears of validation. Despite the more negative qualities we have been conditioned to associate with being of African descent, the media manages to go through phases of highlighting black as beautiful. But doesn’t it seem so forced right now? Like beauty affirmative action. Some mainstream magazines are calling it Lupita’s style. Some blogs are raving about her “unique beauty.” And some pundits are just acting like the rude tourists gawking at ‘round the way girls on subway trains. Speechless and paternalistic admiration.

Standards of beauty in this country are obviously flawed in concept and application, so quite naturally seeing someone who doesn’t actually meet that standard but appeal to you anyway sends you in to shock. Stay shocked. It sends folks into ideas of otherness, objectification, and wonders of foreignness. Lupita is not some unique, need to be gawked at creature. She is  not seeking public paternalistic validation. There are countries full of Lupitas, and Gaboureys and Tikas. THIS country to be exact. And yes, yes she is BEAUTIFUL. 

Challenging Realness

Real Sleep 

As a New Yorker, you should probably never turn to The Breakfast Club as daily therapy. But, when I’m interested in zoning out, especially on a 10 minute drive to my Brooklyn office, I turn on The Breakfast Club. One random morning, as I was already filtering through random accusations of realness, I tuned it to an uncanny conversation with former RocAFella head, Dame Dash. He lashed out “You are not a real man, if you gossip. You are not a real man if you work for another man.”

Wait. What?

Dame later recanted parts of his statement, as anyone who faces public scrutiny does from a quick sound bite of a less than stellar interview.

That however, was my last internal straw with this notion of realness. Realness is so dangerous. Binaries are so dangerous. Either/or and no in betweens are so dangerous. A single standard for how to be a man, a woman, a mother, a goon, a righteous human being is so dangerous. Not only are these notions of realness soaked in Homophobia (i.e. real men aren’t sensitive), transphobia (real women don’t have penises), body shaming (i.e. real women have curves), makeup bashing (i.e. real women don’t wear makeup), parent bashing (i.e. mothers shouldn’t be wearing that), religion defining (i.e. he’s not a real Christian if he’s sleeping with all those women) and so many other things. And these stereotypes that constitute realness for some amounts to dangerous and harmful implications for others. It can amount to low self esteem, putting people in vicious competition with those they feel opposed to, forcing many to alter their look, walk, attitude, and lifestyle.

I’ve always struggled with defining something as real. So long as I could remember, I questioned the integrity of people who put others in very narrow boxes without room for exploration and challenge. Questions of someone’s “realness” is not brilliant criticism, it amounts to a serious shade rooted in devaluation. It’s a look that says You’re fake, You’re invalid, You don’t belong here.

Realness is also problematic because it’s used to reinforce normative behavior; it defines what is worthy of respect. I’ve seen some of the most liberal amongst us claim we don’t support the heteronormative standards of life but in the same breathe declare “…he sitting at home, while she working, he ain’t no real man.” What does his manhood have to do with being unemployed? Why does he have to become a target then of your notions, deeply rooted in patriarchy, because you are unable to understand the various layers to someone’s story?

We love to exclaim the rule, not recognizing that there are more exceptions than we could ever possibly be aware of. For the sake of maturity, we should recognize that. For the sake of being kind, we should understand that there are multiple ways to be real without that compromising our stated gender, sexuality, religion, race, etc. I’m interested in, a more open, more nuanced, more boundaries-less definition of realness that supports all ways of being as authentic. Open your mind.