Recently in my quiet time, I’ve been having these pertinent conversations with the Lord that I’d like to make others privy to. DISCLAIMER: this is what the Lord is speaking to me. It’s controversial. It is an unpopular opinion, but it’s true. Understand that my heart belongs to the Lord first then to myself and lastly to my identity. I do identify as an African-American woman for which I feel the pain of my people. I just choose to react differently.

In high school I lived in Dayton, Ohio (Beavercreek to be exact). For those who haven’t seen Dave Chapelle’s 8:24, this is the same community for which he lives. It is historically segregated and very much behind as it relates to the redlining, “integration”, and race relations. While living there, I was faced with so many questionable experiences. (So many that I’d save you the time of explaining them all, but) one notable experience was in 2010. My school administration saw it fit to have me write a paper on why blacks should still be slaves. Rightfully, as the only non-first generation African-American student, I found great grievance with it. Nonetheless, some years later when discussing this experience with family friends I was faced with the question, “Which takes precedence in life: blackness or Christ?”

Thankfully, I’ve had a smooth ten years to chew on and debate this question, but many of us are faced in this time with this dilemma.

Regardless of how you feel about Christianity, the facts are that American Christianity is rooted in the misrepresentation of Christ to propagate slavery. Whether then or now, the fallacy is the same, that Christianity is often misused for silencing, shaming, and boxing in the racially, gender-oriented, and sexually-oriented oppressed. Taking this into account, I have an independent relationship with Jesus Christ, grounded on the Bible (and its principles that have stood the test of time), not man (any other human other than Jesus). I don’t ascribe to the whitewashed (albeit sometimes with brown faces) American church culture that dictates worship, glorifies slavery, promotes segregated experiences, or idolizes leaders to control and/or gain power and wealth.

On the other hand, I was born black. I will die black. Regardless of how you feel about African-American culture, you cannot deny it is a direct byproduct of slavery and subsequent systemic and systematic chains that continue to bind today. From these strongholds, I don’t subscribe to the sex culture, anti-male, anti-Christ narratives. Similarly, my blackness is not synonymous with being “real”, profane, and/or ethnocentric. I don’t come from Egyptian royalty. I don’t call on my ancestors or pray to crystals. I see others from a place of companionship based on personality, not racial or socioeconomic background.

There’s no monolithic Black American experience. In the same way, there’s no monolithic Christ based experience. Everyone’s relationship to life is different. So when faced with the paradox of duality and the hierarchy of importance, I cannot choose. Even if I didn’t identify with one or the other, I am by default both black and Christ-follower if I died yesterday, today, or tomorrow. In the same way, I’m no less Christian for protesting, flipping tables, or demanding change for my rights. The word says, “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and please the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17). I’m no less black if I pray and fast during times of cultural crisis. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed nonconformists … Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.”

To see me, you must accept me in both my blessing and blackness. You must see my spirit and humanity. You must recognize my pain and prominence. So to answer the question from that assignment in 2010. I am neither slave nor Jim Crow free. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). “If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho' we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny” (Martin Luther King, Jr).