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

by Chanequa Walker-Barnes

Still, the concept that we now know as race was not fully formed until the advent of the Atlantic slave trade. It was in the dungeons of the slave ports on the West African coast and in the bowels of the slave ships that the Fante, Igbo, Yoruba, Mandinka, and Wolof became simply “Black,” a term that signaled not just skin color and geographic origin, but also enslaveability. Since then, the concept of race in the United States has been shaped by a forced-choice mentality, in which people ascribe, or are assigned, to a single category. This makes sense given the country’s history. Since the arrival of Europeans on the shores of North America, race has been a high-stakes category that wholly constrains a person’s opportunities. Racial categories in the United States were constructed to “flatten” a person’s identity so that the person fit easily into one box. Being White meant that you were free; being Black meant that you were enslaveable; and being Indigenous meant that you were extinguishable. Throughout US history, the task of every immigrant group has been to prove themselves “not Black,” that is, not enslaveable. For western European immigrants, this has meant becoming inscribed into the racial category of whiteness. For other ethnic groups, it has meant reinforcing one’s non-blackness.

this is one of the things that I think is hardest for a white people to believe