An identity crisis of sorts is what you can call the shifts that have been made during the past couple of months. What does it mean for me to be black? How do I feel about being black? How does this identity fit into the life I had before coming into Mission Year and the life that I wish to lead afterwards? These have been difficult questions that I have been wrestling with over the past couple of weeks, especially in light of all that has happened in our country.
For the majority of my life, I never really identified with being black, although my skin color said something different. I have always been black, but I have never “been black”. I talked differently, played different sports, and was just overall different. This is what the world saw of me. But there was also the internal struggle of believing the stereotypes that have always been perpetrated against black people; we are always late, we like fried chicken, every black person is loud. And then the even more negative ones; black men are dangerous, all black women are single mothers, and all black men owe child support. I began to really believe this, and in turn, affected the way that I looked at my black brothers and sisters. It also meant that for most of my aware life, I spent most of it trying to assimilate to white culture. Whether it meant in the way that I dressed or the way I wore my hair, I never wanted to accept actually being black.
What I have learned in the past couple of months is that I belong to a culture of people who are strong. I belong to a culture of people who fight for what they believe in. I belong to a culture of people who believe in equal rights for not only just blacks, but for all races. I belong to a culture of people that God has ordained to be great in his name. Being black means to me that I have the opportunity to create change and use my voice for the people who don’t have a voice. Being black to me means that I know that we as a people are important and that an injustice against some of my people is an injustice against me, whether I know them personally or not.
How does it change things for me? How does this fit into my life? It changes my heart for justice, which has become exponentially more present in the past couple of weeks than ever before. It changes how I view the world that I live in. It changes what the word, solidarity means for me. Because if I am called for a heart of justice, because God calls for justice, then I must be able to walk along side those who are hurting because it must be hurting me too.
This change in identity has not been easy and has been probably the hardest transformation that I think I have had to go through. The realization that maybe the past 12 – 13 years of my life, I may have been wrong about almost all of the preconceived notions that I had about my own race, hurts for the most part. As a community, our house continually prays for the situations that are going on in our country. We pray for peace, for racial reconciliation, for hope, for our children in our neighborhood and the ones we work with, and for justice.
“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8
Agape Love 