I Keep On Shifting: On the Intersection of Being a Black Woman Minister in the Academy
By Jennifer Payne
“Black women are the yoga masters. We’re required to bend in as many different ways as possible in our daily activities. We have to be extremely flexible, and people expect us to be good at it — friends, family, relatives, coworkers, society. For each different role that we perform in society, we have to bend a different way. And if we don’t perform those roles well, we’re perceived to be, and sometimes we perceive ourselves to be, less than adequate, or failures”. — Shay, 33, Cambridge Massachusetts.
I have had to perfect shifting over the years… yet, shifting is never completed. Shifting is defined in Charisse Jones and Kumar Shorter-Gooden’s book Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America as “a sort of subterfuge that African Americans have long practiced to ensure their survival in our society” (pg 5). In my own life, I describe it as wearing a set of masks masterfully and artfully, knowing that each of the costumes is a part of you, yet at the same time don’t quite fit. Because, by nature, the masks are not congruent. The costumes do not play well together.
I was twelve years old when I first learned about the need for shifting. Until then I was an African American little girl going to a middle-class African American elementary school. But when I started junior high, I went to a school that was a mix of Asian, White, and Black students. I was thrust into the gifted classes, and suddenly I was the only Black girl in a class of primarily Asians and Whites. Suddenly, I was pushed into the position of having to defend who I was as a Black girl during class, and of sitting alone at lunch because I was not in classes with any of the Black kids that I grew up with. For instance, I will never forget the time when my Asian teacher played Amos and Andy videos in my 7th grade English class. I sat mortified as the White characters in blackface played their caricature of Black people in that day and time. It was my first time seeing these film clips, and I watched them in a room of non-Black students. Because of my confusion and the disconnect between those in my classes and those I would normally socialize with, junior high was a dark period for me. It took me years to learn what was expected of me by those who were not Black. However, by high school, I began to put shifting into practice, and during my undergraduate years at UCLA, I started to perfect how I spoke and acted in college circles versus how I spoke and acted with family and friends at home. At home, I could relax and be myself. I could talk to and understand the subtle language differences of those in my house. Ebonics was not spoken; however, our conversations were flavored by my parents’ roots of Louisiana and Texas.
Flash forward many years later, and now I am in academia as an African American, a woman, and an ordained minister in the Apostolic/Pentecostal church. This combination is disjointed, incongruent, paradoxical, and conflictual. Yet, every one of these pieces intersects to form the true essence of who I am.
There are a lingo and a culture I am immersed in as an ordained evangelist. There are nuances of language, behaviors that are accepted. I have been blessed to attend a church where women in the ministry are respected. Yet, are still undertones of inequality in the system, in that male ministers are generally looked at differently than female ministers. Of course, the academy has its own expectations and lingo, much different from the church culture. Navigating who I am has gotten more difficult over time, particularly in this day and age. This is an age where evangelical Christianity is seen as congruent with Trumpism. This is an age and time where White Nationalists who claim Christianity are at odds with Black Lives Matter. In this time period, President Trump and his followers downgrade research and empirical lines of questioning to fake news and fake propaganda. In this land of polar opposites, where do I fit in? It is hard living in a Black body in this day and age and believing in what some call a White Christianity. It is hard being a proponent of empirical research and a Christian at the same time. It is hard to be taken seriously as a researcher in the academy who happens to be female and Black and an ordained minister.
For example, there have been several times when I have been minimized and put on the “pay me no mind” list. I remember once being introduced to a White woman at my own university who was going to guest speak in a colleagues’ classroom that day. During the introduction, my colleague introduced me as “Dr. Payne” and discussed my teaching area. After this, the White woman proceeded to say something about my hair and touched my hair without permission. Both my colleague and I were mortified. Yet, it was evident that this White woman consciously or subconsciously intended to minimize my existence by ignoring the content of the introduction and instead focusing on my hair. This is just one example. I have experienced this type of behavior several times and in several situations.
On the other hand, I have been slighted by people of color as well. In December 2016, I attended training for researchers at a prominent university. I was one of about twenty persons invited to the instruction by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This training happened to be a few weeks after Trump was elected into office, so tensions were high. We each introduced ourselves and our areas of research. As I introduced myself, I noticed that some of the academics looked angry. Others seemed bored or dismissive. Because I worked at a Christian school, it appeared that people had prejudged me as not worth talking to or getting to know. I remember feeling alienated in a room full of scholars of color. It was the first time I had felt that way. It was a horrible feeling.
Thus, I am the yoga master and the shape shifter. I continue to shift and adapt to the roles I play and the environments I find myself in. So, how do I navigate the intersectionality of my life? And what are things that make the need for shifting tolerable?
- Getting as much education as possible (being a lifelong learner). I have always loved learning and I continue to do so. I function based on Melanie Tervalon and Jann Murray-Garcia’s principles of cultural humility; their first principle is to yield to lifelong learning and critical reflection. Thus, even though I am licensed as a clinical social worker and have a doctorate, I do not feel that I have arrived educationally. I continue to seek out educational opportunities to better myself for the sake of those I serve. By having this stance on life, this increases my indispensable nature at any job that I have.
- Have the courage to be your true and genuine self in all of its complexity as much as possible. For the first few years that I taught on the university level, I hated it. I felt self-conscious, and as an introvert I felt drained after each class. But a few years later, I began to be my true self in the classroom. I realized that I might as well go down in flames being myself, if I am going to go down in flames at all. I am an educated black woman Christian, and I found a place to work that does not scoff at that but instead respects that and embraces it.
- Always have a place of refuge. If you have to code-switch to survive then do it, but always have a place to go where you can switch back. (Code-switching involves embracing the dominant culture or vernacular among certain groups like co-workers, for example and switching to a more authentic self when around friends and family). I can be my true, authentic, free self at home if nowhere else.
- Don’t box yourself in. Stay open to opportunities that we as women (or we as black people or we as Christians) have not considered much for ourselves. For instance, recently I attended a training on “Creating Your Own Private Practice” and I was the only African American face in the room. Yet, I stayed, and I received the information, and I plan on utilizing it.
- Never dim your light, even if you receive unspoken requests to do so. This issue of dimming one’s light is especially troubling for those who are on the tenure-track but who have not yet attained tenure. Also, sometimes these requests to “dumb down” can come from one’s own friends, family, and church members. I used to refrain from speaking up at work because I feared being type-cast as “the angry black woman”. I used to dim my light at home because I wanted to make my husband or male ministers more comfortable. But I have learned to ensure that my voice is heard, albeit strategically and rationally. If someone or if an agency does not respect my voice, then it is time for me to consider moving on.
I, at times, have been pushed into being a yoga master and shape shifter. But I have the potential to consistently move closer to transparency and my authentic self. May I never give up movement toward that potential.
Jennifer Payne is an associate professor in the Department of Social Work at Azusa Pacific University and a member of the Diversity Scholars Network at the National Center for Institutional Diversity. Her research interests include developing community-based mental health interventions and addressing minority mental health service disparities.
