No longer complying… I just want to be...

A Reflection 1-Year Later

It’s been a year since the #toxicFuller protest led by Black students at #fullerseminary. And people have asked what’s been going on. As I reflect over the year, the image of a roller coaster comes to mind. This year has felt like a roller coaster ride where you start off with anticipation knowing there will be ups and downs; even still you risk it in hopes of the outcome. But what do you do when you realize you ended where you began only more shook up, heart racing, hair disheveled, pulse elevated, trying to catch you breathe because the ride you took was just that: a ride through a loop taking you back to the place you began.

As I look back, to look forward I wonder, do I strap back in for another ride around the loop, do I walk away and count my losses, or do I find another way to resist?

Do I put on a smile and sing praises for the ride and the inches we moved forward while I sit on a therapist chair dealing with the accumulated impact that whiteness has had on my well being?

Do I praise the accomplishments of being seen and heard only after disruption demanded that it be so?

Recently at a luncheon for women seeking ordination myself and others on the panel shared the pains of their journey. One sister acknowledged that part of her journey was to deal with the ways she had been complicit with her own oppression. She recognized that in some ways she had and we had been complicit in our own oppression at times because of both our colonized theology and subsequent mindset.

So what now? What’s next?

If I’m honest, I’m done with respectability politics.

I’m done with being complicit in my own oppression.

I’m done with listening, and waiting patiently hoping change will one day trickle down.

I’m done waiting for the scraps that fall from the table.

I’m done apologizing for taking up space and waiting to be seen for the fullness of who I am.

I’m done being the token, the only, the one, because it costs too much of me.

I’m done complying...instead I am choosing to resist.

This requires me to resist a colonized theology and frame of mind on a daily basis. It requires a new way of thinking, seeing, and being in such a way that does not lead to my own subjugation. It requires the ability to see and discern the difference between the books of liberation and the Pharaoh’s bricks of oppression.

That’s the insidious thing about whiteness. “Whiteness is expansive. It is invasive and all consuming. It has this way of infiltrating every aspect of one’s being and existence. The idea of whiteness is not simply a reference to a social construct often used to divide and subjugate people groups along a White-Black continuum; rather, it is an ideology founded on the belief of a supremacy of one over and against another. It is an ideology that has defined and continues to define reality as it influences society, systems and ways of being.”

For too long I’ve been taught to comply, to be complicit in my own oppression in order to be seen as respectable. After all I know what happens to Black women who dare to shed the armor of the StrongBlackWoman and show anger even when they have, we have every right to be angry. I’m over the respectability politics because I can’t help but to see the pieces of myself that got lost along the way as I was trying to do things the right or maybe white way.

What then are we to do when our voice and theology is pushed to the margins while we are indoctrinated with the real Theology?

What then do we do when the scholarship of Black women and Black men is seen as only for Black folks and is relegated as an elective and not core to our curriculum, our formation?

What then are we to do when the Good Book and the books meant as a form of liberation and freedom become bricks and tools of oppression?

What then do we do after investing thousands in an education that leaves us more hollowed out than when we came?

What then do we do when are told that we have all gathered at this seminary to be formed as global leaders only to realize global leaders aren’t forming and shaping us, white men are?

So what then do we do?

What then do I do, knowing that I don’t have the luxury of getting to just be a student, an employee or whatever other role I’m in? What then do I do when I know I will not be afforded the luxury of studying and working in an environment free of all types of microaggressions that leave me with scars only my soul can feel.

What then do I do as a Black woman?

I do what my grandma taught from her front porch pulpit: I resist the pressure to conform, to comply.

I resist the narrative that says we’re in a colorblind, post-racial, post-sexist society.

I resist.

I choose to no longer comply.

I resist having to choose between my blackness, my womanhood, my faith, or any other part of me.

I resist the pervasiveness of whiteness over my mind, body and soul.

I resist by refusing to be complicit in my own oppression.

I resist by continuing to decolonize my minds with a bibliography crafted by those who’ve come before me.

I resist by refusing to accept the status quo that places our text as recommended instead of required reading.

I resist by telling my story and listening to the stories of others.

I resist by holding the institution accountable, both privately and publicly.

I resist because I must.

If I don’t, if we don’t, we’ll find ourselves trapped in the sunken place of our own minds while we exist as a propped up token, puppets used for the benefit and propagation of whiteness.

So I think I’ll strap back in... but not for another loop in a circle.

I’ll strap back in to watch, resist and refuse to comply with whiteness as normative. I’ll strap back in so my brothers and sisters can one day just be students, scholars, preachers, teachers formed and living in their kingdom vocations.

I encourage you to strap back in but know this time I’m done playing by the rules.

Follow #ToxicFuller #SeminaryWhileBlack #BlackExodus & #BookOrBrick on all platforms to see what’s happening and support this movement.

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Here’s a letter  to the Fuller community I wrote last year

Here’s more context for & updates since protest.