Who Should be Trusted to Remember Black Life?
We can’t remain reliant upon white power and consider ourselves to be free. We can’t depend upon the benevolence of malevolent people, and consider ourselves to be free.
We can only be free when we realize that our creation in the imago Dei gives us the power to free ourselves. By remembering our blackness in the imago Dei, we can at last find our way into the Promised Land. By reconnecting our blackness to the image of God, we can realize, establish and secure the Mattering of Black Life.
We must remember Blackness in the imago Dei. We must re–member Black identity, which has be dismembered by White supremacy and it’s enforcement agents and structures.
I mean, that has to make sense by now…right?
This is what is meant by – should be meant by – reparations: re-membering what was dis-membered. Pr. Jimmie named this concept for us in one of our Blacks with Power episodes.
If White supremacy set about to dismember Blackness and separate it from the imago Dei, so as to justify abusing Blackness and Black people, then it must of necessity follow that the key to recovery from our encounter with whiteness is to remember what has been dismembered…right?
We want to rejoin ourselves to the imago Dei. We want to realize our redemption in and restoration to the image of God. We want our reparations – to be a repaired nation: to see ourselves as fully a member of the human family, and not as a subordinate member – ever subjugated to the rule of white power and at risk to the ebbs and flows of their malevolence and manipulative benevolence toward us.
We want the authority under God to make decisions for our own life, rather than trusting in the leadership and counsel of those who have historically and intentionally come to us pretending to want our good while truly plotting our harm.
So how do we remember Black identity? How do we reconnect Blackness to its full stature in the imago Dei?
Well…how was it done for the Israelites, whose journey through slavery and liberation from it we follow?
The Israelites didn’t want freedom either. They wanted to keep their heads down and not upset their Egyptian masters. That’s why they were upset with Moses for killing the Egyptian who was abusing the Hebrew slave. Like if a Black man were to kill a White man who entered into the hood and started abusing the poorest, most defenseless among our people…we know the “heat” that would come upon the community if that were to happen, right?!
The Israelites simply wanted to survive their oppression, which is understandable. Oppressed so hard they could not stand…they couldn’t breathe either. #TheyCantBreathe
So, the Lord delivered. Like sending the Word to be made flesh as Jesus Christ, while we were yet sinners, the Lord God Almighty understood that the people had been oppressed so long that they no longer knew they needed freedom. So He freed them in grand fashion, drowning Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea.
I Am declared Himself to Be “the God Who Delivers.” He Is not the “god” who merely makes promises that are never kept. He Is the God Who Delivers.
Having delivered, He then declares them to be “a people” – to Him. The Egyptians may not have seen the worth or value of the Israelites, but to the Lord! To the Lord they were a people.
He frees them. He then makes promises to them. The God Who Delivers made promises to this people. For the God Who Delivers to make a promise to a being, that being must be special unto itself…for that being is clearly special unto God. If that being were not special, the God Who Delivers wouldn’t make time to deliver. And certainly the God Who Delivers would not pledge to stay with and establish a people after having already delivered them, if that people did not matter to Him.
The Lord delivered. He made promises to those whom He had delivered. That was the statement: “You Matter. Your Life Matters.” #HebrewLivesMatter
Oppressed so hard we could not stand. The Civil War came and drowned Pharaoh’s army in a type of Red Sea…to this day, the bloodiest war America has ever known. Believe what you want, but after 200-plus years of slavery, Niggers weren’t hoping that God would deliver them. By this time, we were hoping that God would send us a kind Massa, or a white man who would let us go free.
So God came and delivered, in grand fashion – just like the Hebrews in Egypt. He made promises to our ancestors, whom He delivered. His statement to us was clear too: “You Matter. Your Black Life Matters.” #BlackLivesMatter
That is the declaration of our mattering. Amen! Yet, clearly we don’t feel as if we matter. We are still crying out for white power to establish and secure our mattering.
The God Who Delivers has spoken. Yet, we still don’t feel as though we matter. We live in an environment that says we do not matter. So what is the problem? How do we reconcile this reality?
