Know Your History, Beloved

I am from Madagascar.

Like the movie? Usually the response of anyone aged 25 and under.

I’ve never met anyone from Madagascar. From those 25 and over.

The island of Madagascar broke off from the continent of Africa eons ago, allowing the flora and fauna present to evolve to such a degree that the biodiversity you find on that glorious island you will find nowhere else in the world.

Polynesian voyagers from the Malay Archipelago (present-day Indonesia) arrived at the island, whether by intention or by shipwreck (depending on which researchers you read) some 1500-2000 years ago. People from the eastern coasts of Africa then migrated to Madagascar. And this mix of Malayo-Polynesian and African is the ethnic and genetic make-up of this nation of warm and proud Malagasy people, 25 million and counting. Then, with French colonization from the 19-20th centuries, European genes joined the pool as well.

Wonderful and awful in measures equal and disparate—that is my heritage.

There is colorism in my country. When the oppression of colonization came, it bound both the land and the mind. The lighter the skin, the straighter the hair, the better—goes the thought in my country, in my own ancestry. Christians in Madagascar today still wrestle with the vestiges of colonization that came wrapped around the teachings of the faith that professes Christ as Lord.

We are a large island nation, so we have verve and pride in being a Malagasy people; but among the eighteen distinct people groups in the country, there have been differences, skirmishes, resentments throughout our history and even today. 

Wonderful and awful in measures equal and disparate—that is my heritage.

What are you? Are you mixed? Are you black? Are you black?

When I was in south India, locals on the street spoke both Marathi and Telugu to me thinking I was one of them.

When I am in Madagascar, I am another Malagasy woman on the bus or on the streets. When I was in south India, locals on the street spoke both Marathi and Telugu to me thinking I was one of them. When I went to a local empanada shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the patron started in with Spanish and only about 30 seconds later when my guilty face communicated that I didn’t speak Spanish did she switch to English. And when I am at a black American church, no one gives me a second glance. Ethnically ambiguous, some have called it. 

Now, I live in America. And in America, I am a black woman.

Madagascar was not one of the many places from which a significant number of people were taken to the western hemisphere in the abominable practice of chattel slavery from the 14th century until it was abolished in the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s off the southeastern coast of Africa—too far to travel.

But with chattel slavery, and the genocide of the Native peoples of the Americas before it, the social construct of race in the United States was created, and it lives on today. So when people in America (or influenced by America) look at me, they see a black woman. Ethnicity caves to the prescripts of race, just as a pale person is no longer thought of as Norwegian or Scottish but is white in America.

In the world, I am ethnically Malayo-Polynesian and African and all the richness of that. In America, my race is black, and all the richness of that.

Ethnicity caves to the prescripts of race, just as a pale person is no longer Norwegian or Scottish but is white in America.

When you enter the social landscape that is these United States, you enter a racialized imagination—you learn it, come to be understood by it, understand others by it, for better, for worse.

The unifying fabric of racial identity is strong and runs deep in the United States. Four hundred years deep. Communities of color understand this—how they are bound together by a common history of pain and resilience as a racial group.

But I’ve found white people don’t generally understand how deeply bonded they are to other white people as a racial and cultural entity—as white people. That’s the result of a racialized society that elevates one racial category—whiteness—above every other; that this dominant race does not then have to think about how it is a race, that the I can predominate over the we.

I became a black woman when I was in college. That may sound strange to some, but where I was raised, we didn’t do race, we did ethnicity.  So, the racial categories of America were a new phenomenon to me, and I was shown and told my race by others’ perception of me. At first, I resisted it—I didn’t like people telling me what or who I was—especially about something like race that is at once a social construct and a powerful social reality. But in the years since, I understand it better, and I cherish it.

I’ve found white people don’t generally understand how deeply bonded they are to other white people as a racial and cultural entity.

As a black person, and a black woman in particular, I am automatically enfolded by virtue of phenotype into the rich narrative, witness, history, and present reality of the women of deep-hued skin in this land, women who have endured more than just about any other demographic in this country.

I understand that I am able to have an education, both because my forward-thinking global-citizen parents worked hard to ensure it for me and my siblings; but also because there were young men and women with brown skin in the south of the US in the 1950s and ‘60s, who sat at countertops and endured insults hurled at them, hot coffee poured on them, firehoses turned on them in the streets—all in protest of the dehumanizing laws and practice of segregation.

Yes, my family instilled the value and importance of growth and education and opened doors for me personally to be able to step through; but systemically, I as a woman of color am able to sit and speak at tables that were built without a thought for me and those like me because the ground was first soaked with the tears and blood of those like me—women and men with rich melanin in their skin—black and brown people in America.

I became a black woman when I was in college.

So, does it matter that I am ethnically Malagasy, and that that is how I will answer the quizzical brow wondering “Where are you from?” A clear yes. That is who I am, where I have come from, my identity.

But does it also matter that in the racial story of America that we are all drawn into (even if you are far away), I am a black woman with its complexity of implications, wounds, triumphs, and inimitable strength? A resounding yes.

To the white people reading this – do you know your racial, ethnic story? And when I say your I mean you collectively, as a people, plural you—y’all, vous—not just you, your individual self.

Yes, your ancestors immigrated to the U.S. or Canada, many of you from the Netherlands if you’re Christian Reformed folk; but do you know who was displaced for them to settle the land they are on? This land wasn’t uninhabited—there were already people here.

Do you know why you and your children will likely inherit accrued wealth that is ten times that of a black or Latino family’s? And no, it is not because your family worked harder than their families did.[1]

To the white people reading this – do you know your racial, ethnic story?

Do you understand why when voices cry out again, and Lord have mercy, do they cry out again—from black and Latin and Native communities decrying atrocities done to them as a people, and demanding repentance and justice from white people as a people—that it is not a ploy to make individual white folks feel guilty, but is in fact grace embodied in calling for the repentance of a people for crimes and sins committed against a people?

To my melaninated siblings—beloved, remember your, our stories. Carry on living. Flourish.  Keep refusing, resisting, denouncing the lies that try to cover up the realities of past and present that seek to dehumanize us. We are here. To those in the Church—we have the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead pumping through these very bodies hued with melaninated skin rich and deep as the earth.

To my white siblings—beloved, remember it is love that motivates us, people of color in the Church, to speak up, to call you out. White supremacy kills—not just people of color, but its perpetrators, too. Racism is poison for everyone—not just those whom it is against, also those holding it. 

We are bound together as the body of Christ.

Remember that at one time we were all separated from Christ—Jew and Gentile, African and European, black and white. But now in Christ Jesus, we who once were far away are brought near in Christ Jesus.[2] If you profess faith in Jesus Christ, then we share together in the promise we have in him; we are bound together as the body of Christ. We together are the beloved.[3]

Know your history, beloved—your ethnic and racial history, your bloodline’s history. And learn with humility and patience what this means for you as a descendant and heir of that story, wonderful and awful in whatever measures, equal or disparate.

And repent, Church.[4]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/03/26/the-racial-wealth-gap-...)

[2] Ephesians 2:12-13

[3] Ephesians 3:6

[4] 1 John 1:8-10