"To Be Grown, Gifted, Black, Woman, Queer, and Free in the U.S.A." by Tejai Beulah Howard, Ph.D

       For those unfamiliar, the title of this reflection borrows from Nina Simone’s beautiful song, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black.” Nina Simone wrote the lyrics in 1969 as an anthem of Black pride and Black joy at the close of a decade marked by bloody, deadly struggles for civil rights. My favorite verse says, “When you’re feelin’ really low/Yeah, there’s a great truth you should know/When you’re young, gifted, and Black/Your soul’s intact.” I love these words so much because they remind me that when I embrace who I am, in the midst of facing oppression for who I am, my soul, my emotional and intellectual energy are intact. In other words, I am reminded that joyfully being who I am and declaring who I am in a country that seeks daily to restrict my civil rights and freedoms as a grown, gifted, Black queer woman, I must seek to cultivate my inner authority over my life so that I might remain spiritually whole, unbroken, intact, and free. Further, I must do the work of helping others to experience that same level of divine wholeness and freedom.

       Over the last few weeks, many people around the country celebrated Pride Month, Juneteenth, and Independence Day. I was not one of those people. I didn’t attend the local Pride parade. I didn’t go to any of the Juneteenth celebrations. I didn’t invest in any fireworks or cook out on the 4^th of July. I’m not patting myself on the back or judging anyone who did any of those things. The older (or, rather “grown-er,” maybe even “groan-er”) I get, the more dissatisfied I am with public commemorations of “pride” and “freedom” in our country. They are like the “blemished offerings” that the people of Israel presented to their God in Malachi 1:8. Rather than honoring God with the best of their livestock as a sacrifice, some of the Israelites brought forth easily discardable animals—the sick, blind, and disfigured ones as holy presents. In the U.S., on specific dates and months, we publicly celebrate the heroic acts of Marsha P. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, former slaves in Texas, Alexander Hamilton, and freedom fighters, yet somehow, we fail to fully emulate their ideals and the actions they took to live out their principles in our private, day-to-day lives. Some of us don’t do the hard work of claiming our whole selves and disciplining our spirits to struggle for freedom. As a result, I don’t think that we pay those American heroes a proper homage for their sacrifices for justice and democracy. We attend expensive breakfast banquets and perform acts of service on MLK Day in January. We take to social media to post Black history facts in February and the biographies of notable women in March. We wear T-shirts and accessories covered in rainbows and red, black, and green in June. And then, we wear red, white, and blue in July. But how do we maintain what these colors, symbols, and heroes represent on a daily basis? How do we embody Angela Davis’s teaching, “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world, and you have to do it all of the time.” I think we do so by joyfully being our authentic selves and by doing the work of helping others to live authentically, unapologetically, and freely.

       In a commencement address at Barnard College, Toni Morrison told the young women seated before her, “You are moving in the direction of freedom, and the function of freedom is to free somebody else.” For those of us who are committed to our spiritual development and, thereby, moving in the direction of freedom, how can we take seriously the idea that we must do the work of radically transforming the world by freeing other people? I didn’t participate in any public celebrations over the last few weeks. However, I did remind my beautiful wife that she is my pride and joy, and I support her in helping Black and Brown women enter the workforce as IT professionals, a field in which only 3% of its workers are women of color. I spent Juneteenth in group spiritual direction with an interracial cohort who spent the time processing how to do work of liberating ourselves so that we could help to liberate our society. I spent the 4^th of July with my young, Black godsons reminding them of their innate worth as human beings and affirming their hopes and dreams for the future. I sacrificed some of my time and money to support organizations that do the work of justice for those facing poverty, racial injustice, and gender and sexual discrimination. Again, I am not patting myself on the back. I’m not judging people who do not take such actions. I am, however, encouraging us all, especially those who identify differently than the American ideal—as Black, woman, queer, spiritual—that we not only celebrate pride and freedom but that we also do the work of creating a society in which other people can continue to emerge as whole, free beings no matter what social identity markers they check. In that way, we can all live with pride and joy in the midst of those bloody, deadly social forces and factors that seek to destroy us.