On being Black and Deconstructing
The experience of being Black and how this impacts life including my deconstruction journey
Hi welcome especially to the new folk that have subscribed since the last post (podcast episode) went out, it’s been a while hasn’t it?
If you can’t already tell from the title of this post, this post is about race specifically the experience of being Black and how this impacts life including my deconstruction journey. Talking about race can be raw to express and challenging to hear so I don’t take for granted this medium that I have created to hold and witness my words, however as a subscriber, you can choose if you wish to read this post or not.
I’ve spoken and written about my experience of being Black and deconstructing a few times now. One of the challenges I raised was the lack of representation within online faith deconstruction communities, almost like the only experiences worth mentioning were the majority White American ones.
At first, I felt hurt by the absence of other people whose voices, experiences and skin colour were like my own after all, what kind of message does that send if not “you don’t belong here”? But what also lives alongside the hurt is how experiences like this automatically stir up subconscious wounds from growing up and living in a society where racial discrimination and inequality are the norm.
But after the hurt died down, the anger rose up. I began to feel that if my voice and experiences weren’t represented or valued then, those spaces were not worthy of me and what I had to say or offer.
This is a sentiment that I’m feeling a lot.
I am angry not just for myself but for everyone like me and as a mum, I feel this even more strongly and deeply. Surrounded by the relentless messaging and subconscious programming embedded within society, it seems almost inevitable that my child will absorb these and potentially grow up believing that the colour of her skin makes her less valuable and less worthy than her White peers.
Here’s a recent example to illustrate.
A little while back as I was walking home with my daughter who will turn four shortly, she pointed to a nursery window with a cartoon advertisement/logo depicting little children. All the children drawn were White.
I would say that in the last several months she has begun to understand and notice differences between people such as skin and hair colour, but even so. what she saw when she looked at the nursery window was that this was a place for little girls and boys.
Maybe at a different time, I might have ignored the advertising (which is problematic in itself) but as I’m more attuned and sensitised to this I noticed it very quickly.
Surely, if they couldn’t be bothered to include even one racialised minority child in their advertising then whether they were consciously aware of it or not, whether they admitted it or not - the message they were sending out was..
“if you are not White, then you don’t belong here”
How would they treat my daughter if she attended?
I shudder at the thought.
Someone recently reminded me how teachers can inadvertently discriminate by smiling more at White children and frowning more at Black ones. All of these things are like death by a gazillion cuts in the hearts and souls of small children who begin to believe that the colour of their skin makes them less.
So to me, omission speaks volumes about the state of someone’s heart towards me and mine and in the same way, representation matters.
The deconstruction spaces I have been a part of have failed BIG time here.
For those who have never had to think about representation and feeling included, there is a sense that we should be grateful for the fact these faith deconstruction communities exist at all.
But why?
The White lived experience isn’t the only experience that matters or counts but it is often viewed as the norm which is why it has become so easy to create spaces that focus only on this majority.
There is a saying, “Diversity is everyone being invited to the party”.
Ok so I supposedly live in a multi-cultural society which by that token means that it is diverse, but what does that even mean?
In my day job I create e-learning courses and a huge buzzword at the moment is Universal Design (UD). The idea behind UD is that everyone should be able to access the content regardless of their abilities.
But access doesn’t mean equity.
And neither does diversity mean inclusion, belonging or equity.
Even if everyone is invited to the party, what does it matter when you can’t or don’t fit in? If you don’t feel like you belong and your experiences and needs are not acknowledged or met?
How does access matter when you are judged because of these differences, and the opportunities you receive are based on them?
One of the reasons I didn’t feel at home within the deconstruction space was because there was no attempt to make those who were different (in my case Black and from the UK) feel like we belonged.
There is a big difference between being White and deconstructing and being Black or another racialised minority/global majority group and deconstructing. This is because the challenges that White people face are very different from the challenges that Black people face. Even within the Black population differences exist, like I said, I’m from the UK - my parents are Nigerian and I grew up knowing my ancestry and heritage. This is potentially different to say an African American who can trace their generations back in the States to slavery but is unaware of or cannot trace their roots beyond that.
If the spaces we are in do not acknowledge these differences and expect our challenges to be the same as those of the majority then not only does it disrespect our voice and lived experiences, it disrespects us. As a result, like myself, it is unsurprising that we up and leave to go it alone or do our best to find or create spaces that cater for us.
But this issue isn’t about faith deconstruction communities per se. It simply highlights wider systemic issues and dynamics within society.
Black people like other racialised minority groups have been systemically discriminated against for generations and one way Black people have created safe havens and communities for themselves to rebuild their sense of value, worth and identity is through religion.
Religion isn’t just about religion
Religion has played a crucial role in how Black people have survived and coped with the discrimination and inequalities they have experienced over the centuries as such, you would be hard-pressed to find a Black person who wasn’t either Christian or Muslim. To illustrate let me share another story. I am part of a 2000-strong online Black parenting community and within the community, there are numerous subgroups including religious groups. So, I thought it would be nice to request a community for those who are spiritual but not religious. Guess how many people joined?
Including myself, I think there were about 13 of us when I last checked.
In a community of thousands with hundreds of members in the religious affiliation group, only twelve other people signed up!
I am not sure what I was expecting, maybe there would be some closet questioners or deconstructors that would jump on board! But it clearly showed me once again how Black people hold religion in comparison to spirituality.
There have been a couple of deaths in my family back home In Nigeria which have also shown me just how important religious belief and faith are in the processing of grief. As I have gone through my faith deconstruction journey I am more aware of how my beliefs and thoughts diverge from theirs. There are things that I don’t understand or agree with and things which make me feel uncomfortable but I think to myself, who am I with my Westernised beliefs to determine whose beliefs are better or worse, normal or abnormal?
This is another way we can use Western majority ideals and beliefs to discriminate and judge those who don’t do things in the same way. I started writing a post on cross-cultural variations on faith expression which I thought to publish but as I am writing this one instead which I feel fits in nicely, I’ll share a snippet from that post instead:
”Church, faith, God is not a half-hearted expression but a full ownership and expression, an integral component of life. Whenever we travelled back home to Nigeria, as a child I hated going to church on Sunday because it would last the entire day but for my mum and my relatives, going to church was the weekly highlight. They would sing, dance, eat and party - it was fellowship, a communion, a community-wide fiesta!
They grew up with God on their lips. Suffice it to say, when I talk to my relatives now there is a lot of mention of God, faith, prayer and scripture verses.
Maybe when I first started my deconstruction journey, I might have found all this continuous talk difficult but as I’ve gone through my own self-awareness and growth journey and where my own understanding of faith has shifted it has allowed me to make room for expressions of faith that are different to my own. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a bit of me that is challenged by it but I have come to understand it more and more.
I think one of the issues faced in “The West” is the idea of seeing everyone else through a Eurocentric or Americanised worldview. I see this a lot within the faith deconstruction space. I often get the distinct impression that true faith deconstruction is calling out God, the church and Christianity for all its flawed teachings and every single thing it has done wrong over the centuries – there is this sense that if you don’t land in a place where you totally reject Christianity, God and the Bible then you haven’t deconstructed properly.
But whose standard is this?
Whose beliefs and ideology is this based upon?
I think this is quite a privileged perspective to have and stems from the belief that there is only one right way of doing or viewing something and that this is the lens that we must understand and judge the world.
When you come from the perspective of your own cultural background and lived experience as the norm, you invariably step into a place of bias and discrimination, a sense of superiority that looks down on anyone else as inferior or uncivilised.
As the members of my maternal family are navigating grief in their own way, I am so much more aware of the cultural differences that exist between us and how this has shaped our beliefs and who we are today.
For those back home, processing grief through the lens of faith and religion is absolutely normal. It is very common to hear words like “God called them home”, “it was God’s will” or “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” as a way of coming to terms with their loss. As I sit and listen, allowing and giving them space to say what they need to say, there is the listener and thinker within contemplating their words and holding it up in comparison to my own beliefs.
I recognise that I don’t agree with them but I respect their beliefs and that is enough for me.
I recently came across a term that I think captures this tension well.
Cultural humility.
Here are some definitions of Cultural humility.
“Cultural humility involves an ongoing process of self-exploration and self-critique combined with a willingness to learn from others. It means entering a relationship with another person with the intention of honouring their beliefs, customs, and values. It means acknowledging differences and accepting that person for who they are."
Cultural humility is the “ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented (or open to the other) in relation to aspects of cultural identity that are most important to the [person]”
Being aware of these cultural differences and power imbalances especially in the expression of faith calls for Cultural humility. My experience of faith is my own and it neither better or more right than anyone else’s.
Being Black and Deconstructing requires me to understand that religion is not simply about religious beliefs but more about shared experiences and racial and cultural identities.
I am Black and as such I can’t fully and truly separate myself from religion because to do so would be to separate myself not just from the Black community but also my cultural and racial inheritance.
It is important to recognise that deconstruction in itself is a Western idea - it’s just not something that Black people tend to do. What this means is that if a White person chooses to deconstruct their faith, they will be much more likely to find communities of other White people choosing to deconstruct their faith, however, there is not the Black equivalent.
Whilst I do see many posts in faith deconstruction spaces lamenting the lack of community and fellowship after church, the fact that these posts exist in platforms where the vast majority of members are White doesn’t pass me by unnoticed.
If I want to find fellowship and communion with like-minded others, as I’ve mentioned before, I can’t find it in these spaces so what is left to me apart from finding communities where Black people congregate?
And of course, I could continue as I have done, and doing it this way has enabled me to heal and grow in so many ways but… it’s not just about me, it is also about my daughter and her self-knowing.
It’s about her being surrounded by people who she can look at and see herself in them. It is about her growing up knowing that her skin colour is beautiful and owning her powerful ancestry.
And this isn’t a line of thought I’ve just started thinking about.
Even whilst pregnant I have thought about how society shapes and raises our children and coming from a teaching background I have had plenty of opportunities to see what can happen as soon as the system gets its hold on children, especially racialised minority children.
And I won’t, I can’t simply go with the flow.
A big part of being a conscious parent is to be proactive and active in counteracting the societal and cultural influences that will harm my child’s lived experiences, growth and expression of potential.
Ideally, I would love to move back to Africa or somewhere else where being Brown and Black are considered beautiful. This is most definitely on the agenda, until then it is about finding other ways to support healthy identity development and self-worth in my child.
For instance, what do you do when you hear stories about children hating the colour of their skin?
And even my daughter, who try as I might to include as many Black shows and media as I can in what she watches, recently told me that a brown girl wasn’t pretty because she wasn’t white with blond hair!!!
And she is 3!!!!
This is heartbreaking to me and I could never expect a White mother to understand this challenge and why should they when it’s simply never been a problem?
As another Black mum put it when I shared my sorrow:
“It’s a constant battle. We as parents are equipped with small slingshots whereas out there in the majority White schools and society, it’s predominantly AK47s!”
My little girl needs to be around other children who look like her so doesn’t begin to compare herself negatively to anyone else.
So church is back on the agenda again and I feel OK with that.
Church will never be what it used to be to me before my questioning and deconstruction journey, and neither will religion, God or faith but to me, that is not a requirement for attending church.
I can still have my own beliefs, I can see it for what it is whilst still finding joy in connecting and communing with others like myself.
Of course, I am still thinking protectively - I can see how religion also can adversely shape minds and influence lives which is why I have established both boundaries and criteria around the type of church, how often etc as well as exposure to a range of other beliefs and ideologies outside of organised religion.
Until things change within faith deconstruction spaces and maybe even more importantly until things change for Black people in society and Black people feel able to create communities that don’t revolve around religion and faith, I guess mothers like me will continue to piece-meal it together for our own sake and the sake of raising children who feel beautiful in their skin.
Some final thoughts for personal reflection…
If you are a member or leader of a faith deconstruction community I invite you to think about what the demographic of members looks like and why. What could you do to make people who are different feel like they could actually belong or fit in?
If you are a Black person deconstructing especially if you are a parent, have you experienced similar challenges and how have you navigated them?
And if you are a Black person with a strong sense of religious affiliation or faith, how does reading this post make you feel? What thoughts come to your mind about how you could support those who seek community and support even whilst questioning or deconstructing their faith?
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences Florence. As an African parent, I can deeply relate to the challenges you've faced and the complex emotions that come with them.
The lack of representation and inclusivity in certain spaces is something that hits close to home. It's disheartening to feel like our voices and experiences aren't valued or acknowledged, especially when it comes to raising children who may internalise harmful societal messages about their worth based on the colour of their skin.
Your story about your daughter's observation of the nursery window advertisement resonated with me. It's a painful reminder of the pervasive nature of racial bias and the impact it can have on our children's self-perception.
I appreciate your reflections on the importance of finding spaces where our children can see themselves reflected positively and where their cultural and racial identities are celebrated. It's a continuous journey to navigate these challenges and ensure our children grow up with a strong sense of self-worth and pride in their heritage.
Thank you for sharing your insights and raising important questions for reflection. It's through open and honest dialogue that we can work towards creating a more inclusive and equitable society for our children.
As a white privileged woman who has grown up in America, this was hard to read. But of course, it's truth and we need to hear it. I grew up in diverse Los Angeles and therefore was under the very false impression that I held no prejudice. I didn't even know what systemic racism was! But as I grew older and hopefully wiser I saw it all for what it was, including my own false beliefs. I just read a book called "Worth Fighting For," by John Pavlovitz and he writes a lot about race and equality and the world we want (which is the world you want, Florence). I don't know why the deconstruction spaces are filled with white people. I ignorantly wondered if it were because black people didn't have a problem with what has happened within evangelical churches and Christian nationalism, but you aren't experiencing that over there in the same way, so there goes that ignorant theory of mine! Thank you for writing this, Florence. I am truly sorry that this is the experience.