I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Prophetic Christianity)

by Chanequa Walker-Barnes

Drawing on May’s aforementioned definition of intersectionality, we clearly can see that an intersectional approach to racial reconciliation that is centered upon the experiences of women of color: (1)will view identity and systems of oppression as interlaced and inseparable; (2)will be particularly attentive to gendered racism and racialized sexism, and how those shape issues of sexuality, disability, nationality, and/or class; (3)will use a nodal approach in which it probes lived experience and examines what is needed to effect change from the position of the interstices, the points where the lived identities and systems of oppression hinge or touch; (4)will expose how privilege and oppression co-occur to produce both between-group power dynamics (such as those between Whites and people of color) and within-group inequities (such as those between women of color and men of color); and (5)will be both pragmatic and idealistic, focused upon the racial-gender realities of the here and now and also upon the possibilities of eradicating injustice at the micro- and macro-levels.106 Theologically speaking, an intersectional approach to racial reconciliation is prophetic and pastoral, incarnational and eschatological, systemic and practical, sacred and profane. An intersectional understanding of racial reconciliation rejects outright the lie that reconciliation is about relationship. It instead centers upon dismantling White supremacy and White power structures. This understandin...