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

by Chanequa Walker-Barnes

The truth-telling that we witness in The Color Purple is quite distinct from the approach that is dominant in today’s racial reconciliation movement. With its focus on symmetrical treatment and bridge building, it encourages White people and people of color to tell the truth about their lives so that they might equally repent of the ways in which they have contributed to racial separatism and then find common ground upon which to build “reconciled” relationships. It calls for both oppressor and oppressed to remember the truth in ways that facilitate the building and maintenance of relationships, what Miroslav Volf calls “remembering rightly.”15 The symmetrical treatment approach to truth-telling is a therapeutic approach that focuses on being neutral, avoiding taking sides, and minimizing feelings of guilt and shame. It may work well in conditions of equal power between dialogue partners. But when power is unequal, this strategy is ill advised, perhaps even dangerous. This is why, for example, many therapists view conjoint sessions between domestic violence perpetrators and victims as contraindicated.16 When power is unequal, the victim will usually modify her narrative in order to keep the abuser comfortable. Consequently, the counseling will never get to the heart of the matter, and the power dynamics will remain unchanged. The other alternative, encouraging open discussion of the abuse, is dangerous and professionally irresponsible in that it risks violent retaliation f...