Only If You’re “Agreeable”

Dedicated to Madi Mae

 I often feel uncomfortable as a person of color residing in a predominately white church.

Often, it has little to do with the way I came to be a member. It has nothing to do with my less-than-ideal family tree with enough drama to be considered a Caribbean telenovela. My discomfort has nothing to do with judgement from others who believe my sassy way of living the gospel doesn’t fit to the golden standard of being a Latter Day Saint.

It always has to do with the color of my skin.

Biases hide in plain sight as misconceptions and micro-aggressions play hide-and-seek with white discomfort. This uneasiness manifests in white tears and the often-damaging stereotype that to be black is to be compliant, passive, misinformed and uneducated.

At times, its easy to ignore and feign “ignorance for the sake of being ignorant”. As an act of self-preservation, I even find myself playing along, hopping over the “slippery rocks of prejudice” as I hope for a way out of the white-washed narrative of correctness favors the “lighter, whiter complexion”.

At the beginning of 2021, I sat on the sidelines during one of my classes at BYU as I surveyed what would be another painful experience. For fourteen weeks, a classmate mocked me silently each week with snarky expressions, dismissing my words as she sought to prove that her “white experience” was more Christlike.

I sat idly by as she denied the racism another classmate and I had faced. I watched as she maintained that people who continually made ignorant and often racist statements needed more prayer instead of correction.

It’s the Bajan way to get loud when passionate and to speak with conviction even if one’s voice raises a few decibels. In this class, I was loud, proud and in charge of my thought processes, calling out the often-ignorant statements made by other classmates made under the guise of Christlike perfection.

 As a convert to the church, this loud, “take charge attitude” is the one thing which sets me apart from most as I have often been told that my voice is simply too “much” in the quiet halls of member life.  

Each week chipped a little bit more of my voice away until there was none left. Slowly but surely, the weight of the sour expressions shattered my confidence into a million pieces.

I often sum up my experience post-Utah as a tug-of-war between what people “think” I should be and “who I really am”.

 I took a semester off to recover after my ordeal with Covid and this time, I stood by my words as I shattered the ceilings of comfort each week during my Zoom discussions. Still, this didn’t shake off the feelings of dread each week as I signed into the meeting as I prayed my words would be received with the kind, educational intention that I had placed behind them.

At first, all seemed well. My classmates got used to me rocking the boat and sharing my experiences as a convert who had much more experience “with the world”. Still, my mind remained unsettled as I prepared for the collision.

A few weeks before the semester ended, I grimaced as I read a message from another student who perceived my R.B.F as aggressiveness My body became racked with fear. Thoughts of facing expulsion rang in my head. Although I knew I had done nothing wrong, I knew that in a “fight to be right against someone white”, I would never win.

In the eyes of so many, people of color and especially black women should be docile creatures of comfort. We should aim to “stay sweet”, to “not rock the boat” and to “idly await validation”.

I adopted these methods for the first three years after my conversion. In my own small way, I did all in my power to remain “the perfect LDS convert”. Somewhere along the line, something within me snapped as I realized I had slowly fell into passivity. I fell into the category of “perfectly agreeable”

My grandmother never raised a passive young woman, yet here I was simply awaiting word on how “good I had become”. As I sought to find a way to be myself in a gospel where I was relegated to “goodness”, I found the “vim in my voice” that allowed me to be myself while still being a member of the church.

Eventually the “back and forth” becomes exhausting and we are only left with decisions as to which way to go? What road leads to fulfillment and happiness?

Even so, in time the pushback came.

The peanut gallery shouted from the rafters as they express their disdain.

You’ll be loved if you’re agreeable.

You’ll be appreciated if you keep your mouth shutYou’ll be loved if you say what everyone wants you to say.

Now the voices have shifted to a louder refrain.

Don’t you want people to love you…They’ll love you if you’re less direct…less YOU

Time and time again, I am told by my Caribbean friends that I shouldn’t care or that I shouldn’t have an opinion of the biases that exist even as their claws rip against my skin. Instead, I am told that I protected by my geographical location.Still, the words, the interactions and the misconceptions pierce my skin, wounding my heart in the process.

I don’t want to be anyone but myself. I don’t believe I should have to pretend simply to be classified as “good”. Still, there are many who will find the flaw in my sassy approach to living my life within these sacred halls, begging me to comply to be seen as more “acceptable”.

As my thirtieth year of life quickly approaches, I recognize that its time to unlearn what has been learned.

I hope in time I can burst the bubble surrounding race in church spaces and bring others to the understanding that black women are not a “monolith of white-washed human emotion”.

 

To the underestimated, the overlooked and the outcast

Trust Your Power

-Colin Kaepernick