Womanist Group
post #2
Our group has been learning about trauma carried in the bodies of people of color and its impact on black faith. When considering the trauma of black bodies we must first recognize the generations before that have endured being a black body in an overarching culture that does not value anything other than whiteness. Black faith has been steeped in trauma for generations and not only has it survived, it has been a catalyst for communities of action and culture change at large.
Black faith, we are learning from Kelly Brown Douglas in Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, did not come about after Africans were captured and enslaved in America. They already had faith in one they called the Great High God and an integral part of this deity’s being was freedom (p.145). This God, whom they later came to identify in the God of the Bible, was a transcendent being who existed as a free being and created in that same image; his creatures were free as well (p.143). This belief in a truly free identity was paramount to black faith, historically and presently.
As they carried this faith in their bodies and communities, Douglas believes that African Americans held onto their “God-given, ‘inalienable’ right to be free” (p.155). She goes on to suggest that the way they did this was through song. Spirituals were sung in order to express both their experience and the faith that contradicted it (p.141). In this way, the spirituals acted as a generational memory that connected them to their ancestors, the act of speaking the true value of the black body in the present, and a future hope for freedom from being property. According to Bessel van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score, “collective movement and music create a larger context for our lives, a meaning beyond our individual fate” which gives hope and courage (p. 332–3). Perhaps this was part of the reason oppressed African American slaves were able to hold onto their identity and community in the face of trauma that, as van der Kolk claims, typically alienates one from others and a sense of self (p. 38).
The inner freedom and the promise of future outward freedom is what Douglas would call the paradox of black faith (p.164). Douglas says that “black faith, however, is not passive. It does not seduce black people to wait on the Lord to free them (p.165).” The very foundational belief of God as ultimately free means that freedom is also for all people and that God is fighting for the freedom for African Americans (p.165). The strength and resiliency born from these beliefs make possible moving through the ongoing trauma of the black experience while holding onto a mind for what could be in the future.
Douglas initially paints this picture of resiliency and strength located in the history of slavery in America. But she doesn’t leave it there. Black Code, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, redlining, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration and the senseless murder of black children have played out the ongoing oppression of black bodies by a culture that values whiteness above all else. And still black faith and the community who hold it press on toward the ability to live out their God-given freedom as true equals in human creation. Such connection and strength of community reveals an outcome contrary to the disempowerment and disconnected Judith Herman names as expected in the face of trauma in Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (p.133).
As a group of to-be therapists approaching this intersection of faith and trauma, we are heavy with questions, anger, and hope. Herman notes that People of Color have incredible strength and resiliency and need allies rather than rescuers (p.145). She goes on to warn therapists who have benefited from the oppression of People of Color, which we are, of the potential to identify with the oppressors as a way out of experiencing the harm done to and felt by our clients (p.144–145). This warning weighs heavily upon us. Van der Kolk remarks on the propensity of traumatized people to “simply give up (p.30).” It is clear we have much to learn from black faith and the communities of black bodies.
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Bibliography
Brown-Douglas, Kelly. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. Maryknoll, NY, 2015.
Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York, NY: Ingram Publisher Services US, 1992.
Van Der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, And Body In The Healing of Trauma. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2015.
