Imagining Una Iglesia Mestiza: Vision Amid Crisis

This article is from the forthcoming Moody Center magazine, set to publish spring 2022. To learn more about the magazine and Moody Center, subscribe to their newsletter.

Middle-America is currently facing a years-long identity crisis.

The March 2018 issue of National Geographic includes an article by Michele Norris titled, As America Changes, Some Anxious Whites Feel Left Behind. Its subtitle reads: “Demographic shifts rippling across the nation are fueling fears that [white] culture and standing are under threat.” The story centers on Hazleton, Pennsylvania, an old coal mining town transformed by an influx of Latin Americans, particularly Afro-Latinos from the Caribbean. White residents – themselves children of European immigrants to Hazelton – repeatedly told Norris during interviews they now felt “outnumbered.”  She writes about white residents no longer participating in the town’s fall parade because it “became too scary. Too uncomfortable … too brown.” White Hazletonians were feeling, perhaps for the first time ever, the cultural collision, el choque, that has shaped the borderlands of the US for over a century. Their reaction to this encounter is unsurprisingly defensive:  

“With Hazleton’s changing demographics and persistent economic decline, the community began to see itself as white. The city reasserted its identity as white.”[1]

The realities of the US borderlands are no longer bound to the outer edges of the country, and Hazelton’s identity crisis exemplifies a common response. This crisis, and the fear stemming from it, marks wide-reaching debates about racial justice and the role of the evangelical church; it raises questions about who US Americans are and what must be conserved as things change. Few evangelical leaders are addressing the identity question inherent to the growing tensions in towns like Hazelton. Fewer still are asking if a non-white community identity can help congregations bring peace between neighbors. Ironically, the very people whose presence is cause for Hazeltonian suspicion produced a theological category and identity from which to imagine this peace. US-Latin American theologians reimagined the meaning of a racist identifying name and in doing so created a good tool to use according to the guidance of the Spirit. This article explores the US-Latin American use of the “mestiza y mestizo” identity as a tool to resolve the crisis and move toward peace.[2]

A Brief History of “Mestizaje”

During their colonization of the Caribbean and Latin America, the Spanish developed a system of racial classifications to assert their superiority. Sanctioned and perpetuated by the church, these racial categories became the hierarchical and ordering arrangement of Spanish colonies. Those designated “blanco” (white) were given the full rights and privileges of a colonial citizen. The Spanish system included 14-20 official classifications of racial mixture to distinguish between greater and lesser “whiteness” and provided measured rights and privileges accordingly. These racial categories were fluid but rooted in phenotype (e.g. skin color, hair type, etc.). Some people managed to move up via the accrual of wealth, becoming a priest, or being appointed to serve in government, and they received certificates of racial purity as they arrived at “white” status.

Mestiza/o was one of the official classifications of the Spanish colonies. It was given to those mixed children of Indigenous and Spanish blood. This designation would later become the leading self-identity for several Latin American countries attempting to establish their own peoplehood. Mexico, for instance, under the guidance of philosophers and politicians like Jose Vasconcelos, attempted to encourage (often by force) the mixing of remaining African and Indigenous people in the land, so they could become one “mestizo” people. Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, and other nations had similar blanqueamiento (whitening) programs that were justified according to racial improvement logics.[3] The goal of these programs was to move the people further up the scale toward becoming “white.”

In the 1960s, along the borders of the US, Latin-American pastors, poets, activists, and theologians reappropriated the word mestiza/o to describe the experience of Latina/o diaspora. That is, the term now described the bi-cultural tension of Latina/os born along the border who felt neither fully of the US or the country of their parentage. These Latina/os felt they belonged to both and neither at once; They were, as one writer would say, living “on the hyphen.” These borderland mestiza/os made mistakes in adopting such a term for their purposes, yet their use of mestiza/o reveals a way of imagining belonging that can be useful to the church. Here are three ways the mestiza/o identity can serve the church’s witness to a US in crisis.

1) Rejecting the Purity Myth

By definition, mestiza/os are impure. They are the byproduct of colonization by Spain and US-empire expansion. The former produced people of literal mixed heritage. The latter created the circumstances in which the already mixed person experienced a second-level mixing of culture, theology, and race. Gloria Anzaldúa would call this second mix a product of a “choque” (collision) that created dissonance for the Mestiza/o. This dissonance, what Anzaldúa calls “mestiza consciousness,” stands in stark contrast to “the theory of the pure Aryan, and to the policy of racial purity that white America practices.”[4] Because the mestiza must operate between worlds that neither accept nor include her fully, she can better handle ambiguity and develops a tolerance for contradictions. She learns to participate as a partial exile in worlds borne of conflict. To say it plainly, mestizas are disinterested in the claims of objectivity and purity used by whites to protect and insulate themselves from others.

Consider the way the Hazeltonian reaffirmation of whiteness animates retreat by its residents; they flee from that which they cannot understand. They wish to retain the “purity” of their vision for Hazelton. They accuse their Afro-Latina/o neighbor of distorting, deforming, and breaking the town fabric. Anzaldúa demonstrates the irrationality of this purity myth. Her ideas press the Hazeltonians to see themselves as equally impure byproducts of their collision with new lands and exile from former European roots. Their practices are not more true, good, or beautiful. Both “white” and non-white exist as impure products of a violent history, mixtures born from empires.

2) Accepting a Non-Innocent History

The complexity revealed in the mestiza/o identity echoes a truth long affirmed by the Church: no human is pure and innocent (Rom. 3:23). Whiteness, understood as a purity claim, records a history of innocence that reifies that purity. The default for whites is innocence, not guilt; racial purity is equated with moral purity. This began with the endorsement of the church on the racial arrangement of colonies, and it persists in many respects today. This self-defense is only possible through organized forgetting – “the intentional, repetitious omitting of certain facts, narratives, and artifacts, and the repetitious presenting of other facts, narratives, and artifacts, [by which] communities form themselves to know some things and to overlook or disremember other things.” Any attempt to disassociate from historical (and present) racism is conditioned by this form of forgetting. The normalcy of the forgetting is what makes it possible for “whites” to feel innocent regarding racial systems. They simply do not know what they do not know. Once more, whiteness moves away from sound doctrine, and the mestiza/o identity offers a corrective.

Theologian and church historian Justo Gonzalez, referring to Hispanics and their inherited history, writes:

Our Spanish ancestors took the lands of our [Native] ancestors. Some of our [Native] ancestors practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. Some of our Spanish forefathers raped our [Native] foremothers. Some of our [Native] foremothers betrayed their people in favor of the invaders. It is not a pretty story. But it is more real than the story that white settlers came to this land with pure motivations, and that any abuse of inhabitants was the exception rather than the rule. It is also a story resulting in a painful identity.[5]

Anzaldúa expands Dr. Gonzalez’s line of reasoning. In a world deeply marked by conflict, Anzaldúa believed mestiza/os could serve as mediators because the mestiza consciousness “serves as a mode of self-critique.”[6] Anzaldúa resisted the idea of simple two-sided conflicts where one group is oppressor and the other is oppressed. She believed “no one is exempt from contributing to oppression in limited contexts.”[7] These scholars echo truths of Scripture. The historical church acknowledges it is not beyond the guilt and crookedness of this violent world. The identity of God’s people is always simul justus et peccator (simultaneously righteous and sinner). As those who confess their non-innocence, Christians engage ministry differently.

3) Inverting the Scale (Life in the Middle)

Mestiza/os must make a choice: (a) attempt to move up the scale toward whiteness or (b) as mediators and ambassadors, pursue justice for all those negatively affected by the scale. If Dr. González is right that the mestiza/o identity is a “painful identity” marked by inherited guilt, this must include the ways mestiza/os have made attempts to move up the scale to white. Surely mestiza/o history does not stop with the earliest ancestors. Those blanqueamiento (whitening) programs meant to produce mestiza/os demonstrate the ways Latina/os perpetuate racism. On the other hand, shaped and informed by theology, mestizaje offers a vision for ministry rich with gospel implications. This vision begins with the subversion of the scale all-together. In other words, it begins by resisting whiteness’ invitation toward preferential treatment of the powerful (James 2:1-13). Instead, mestiza/os are invited to take up God’s missional focus on the poor.

The mestiza/o who prioritizes those affected by racial injustice also approaches their ministry methods with deep humility. In their work, they acknowledge their impurity and non-innocence; they are aware of the real risk for self-contradiction. These three lessons inform the church’s approach to the identity crisis poisoning towns like Hazelton. Rejecting whiteness is about remembering collective guilt, acknowledging shared impurity, and prioritizing the inverted scale.

“It is in the very way of Jesus that mestizos find their mission: to create. In this is both the excitement and challenge. God might have created the world in seven days, but it takes us many generations to create a new humanity, a new culture. It cannot be merely legislated. It has to develop gradually through the efforts of the poets, the artists, the thinkers…” the culture-makers.[8]

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About Emanuel Padilla

Emanuel Padilla is president of World Outspoken and cohost of the Mestizo Podcast. He is committed to serving bi-cultural Christians facing questions of identity, culture, and theology. He also serves at The Brook, a church on the northwest side of Chicago, along with his wife Kelly.

Follow him on Twitter to learn more.

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Footnotes

[1] Jamie Longazel, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, as quoted by Norris.

[2] The words “mestiza, mestizo, mestizaje” and related variants have unique meanings in various Latin American countries. The focus in this article is the specific use of the word(s) by Latin Americans in the US.

[3] See PBS documentary Black in Latin America (2011) for more information on forced miscegenation political programs.

[4] Gloria Anzaldúa, Norma Cantú, and Aída Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4th ed. Edition (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2012), p. 99.

[5] Justo L. González, Manana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective (Abingdon Press, 2010), p. 40. As a point of observation regarding non-innocence, it is worth noting the exclusions in Gonzalez’s comments about Hispanic heritage. It could be said that Gonzalez is guilty of exclusion of the African in his historical account, and in so doing, is non-innocent regarding their erasure.

[6] Nestor Medina and Nstor Medina, Mestizaje: Remapping Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/O Catholicism (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2009), p. 25.

[7] Anzaldúa, Cantú, and Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera, p. 8.

[8] Virgilio Elizondo, Davíd Carrasco, and Sandra Cisneros, The Future Is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet, Revised Edition, Revised, Subsequent Edition (Boulder, Colo: University Press of Colorado, 2000).

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Tempted to Silence

Stage Setting

To borrow a line from Willie James Jennings, “The things I tell are precise accounts while being exact fabrications…everything I tell you, everything, is the truth. It is the truth in service of moving us to a new place of gathering.”

Here is a temptation story. Does it sound familiar?

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En El Parque

We sipped our coffees between sympathetic sighs and pain-laced chuckles. We had suffered greatly and we knew it. That’s why we agreed to grab café and walk to a park where we could talk freely. We knew our colleagues wouldn’t be there. We knew the police rarely patrolled it; no need to worry about “inquiries.” Sometimes you must escape modes of surveillance so you can be—so you can listen and cry en conjunto.

Our visit did not start with sipping and sighs. Because our coffees were too hot to drink and our stories too agonizing to share without the security of a secluded space, we carried our coffees and swapped fun family updates while we walked to the park. We had much to celebrate. We had jokes to tell. Smiles adorned our faces and joyous laughter filled the space between us as we spoke. These laughs were divine gifts. We needed them and we knew it.

We reached the park and scanned the grounds. No one was there. Relieved, we selected a place to sit. Some burdens demand stillness. Sometimes movement fosters avoidance.

Our moods changed as we began discussing our personal pains. So did our cadence. Nervous, trauma-infused laughter filled the space between us. We had suffered greatly and we knew it. The brown bench bowed under our weight.

“Remember the racist meme?” I ask.

“Of course. How could any Latino or Latina forget it?”

“During a conversation, an institutional leader asked me if I had to use the word ‘victim’ when I talked about being pictured in that anti-Latin@ meme. ‘Perhaps another word is more appropriate?’ If I’m not a victim for being pictured in a racist meme that hundreds of people viewed on the internet, when would I be a ‘victim’?”

“Right? Sometimes these attempts to ‘reframe’ things to appease the constituents of historically white Christian spaces like ours leave you wondering: ‘Did I just hear that, or am I going crazy? You can’t be serious. Is it still the 1950s or something?’”  

“Exactamente. The subtle efforts to nudge Latinx folks into more ‘respectable’ speech—the kind that won’t rock the Anglo boat—infuriate and terrify me. They require so much vigilance! I’m telling you: It’s easy to become a cooked frog, assimilating to every minor temperature adjustment designed to keep ‘certain’ Anglo constituents appeased.”

“And when you resist, when you ask, ‘Why are you adjusting the water temperature?” they look you in the eyes and say, ‘What are you talking about?’”

“Preach.”  

“You see their hand on the nob. You watch them turn up the heat. But when you ask them why they’re doing that, they say they aren’t doing anything. The blatant gas-lighting is gross.”  

“Sure is.”

“Ever notice how often these leaders gas-light you right before charging you with being a troublemaker?”

“Ah—the dreaded T-word. Not sure any racialized minority can recover from being labeled a ‘troublemaker’ in a historically or predominately white institution.”

I sip my coffee; my friend is silent. No one sighs. Our muscles tense. Apprehension fills the space between us.

“Nathan, you know people are calling you a troublemaker, right?”

“I know some people are calling me much worse than that!”

“I’m serious.”

“I am too…”

“Okay, but hear me. I’m worried about you. People are labeling you a troublemaker, hermano—and some are trying to keep you from getting a seat at important institutional tables.”

“I know…and I’m grateful for your loving concern. You unfortunately have good reasons to worry.”

“Yes I do. We both do.”

“This reminds me of a line from Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction. Du Bois says that the U.S. will never have a truthful history ‘until we have in our colleges men [and women] who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race.’ What Du Bois says about U.S. higher education generally holds for U.S. Christian higher education in particular—especially in historically white institutions. My speaking out against the histories of racism, white supremacy, and U.S. Anglo-Saxon imperialism has upset some folks.”

“Sí; it has.”

“Fans of white Christian Nationalism are outraged. Some have called for my job. ‘He’s racist and a liar!’ they say. ‘Fire him, or I’ll stop financially supporting your institution!’”

 “Got to love the financial power plays coming from the very people who decry ‘cancel culture.’ I wish you never faced those threats. It must be anxiety inducing.”

“You know they are, because you get them too. Nothing like having to trust God for your daily bread when people are calling for your job or labeling you a troublemaker.”

We both look down. The bench remains bowed. My hands start to sweat as I raise my coffee to drink with my friend. We sip. We shake our heads and sigh. Then we look at each other. My friend continues.

“If you dialed it back—and I’m not saying you should—I suspect you could shake the label ‘troublemaker.’”

“I can’t dial it back. We both know that. If anything, I have been too quiet. Mi gente in Puerto Rico are the world’s oldest colony. They continue to suffer from U.S. white supremacy and economic exploitation. God has called me to bear witness to their miseries and amplify their voices in places where they have gone unheard.”

“You and your people have suffered greatly. And I agree about your calling. But I worry that your pace and the labels you carry may keep you from amplifying these voices in the halls of power. I mean, just look at how I’ve been ostracized and disrespected—and I’ve said far less ‘incendiary’ things than you have.”

Pain radiates from my friend’s eyes. Psalm 35 comes to mind as I consider my next words.

“I hear you,” I begin. “And I’m sorry you’ve suffered so much for confronting institutional racism. I hate it. I wish yours wasn’t a vocation of agony.”

“Thanks, Nathan. Me too.”

“The ‘reprimands’ and gas-lighting you’ve faced have been egregious. Simply egregious.”

“Seeing the institutional underside has been rough. I’ve shed many tears while crying out to Jesus. You’re right: It’s been a vocation of agony.”  

“I got that phrase from MLK. He says promoting justice is a vocation of agony in ‘Beyond Vietnam.’”

“I haven’t read that.”

“It’s so good. That’s where King says there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

“Some Latinx folks justify their institutional silence by saying that we need to go poco a poco.”

 “Yeah. I’ve received this counsel several times. It flies in the face of history. And it’s eerily similar to the gradualism King denounces in ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’”

“Ever the race scholar…But you’re right: Those are good connections.”

“Thanks...I wish they weren’t. I wish those pieces weren’t relevant to our lives.”

“If only…”

“Silence and gradualism remain enticing temptations. But often silence is betrayal and gradualism is an ideology that sooths flawed consciences while it perpetuates exploitation and oppression. ‘Don’t worry: We’re moving prudently—with ‘all deliberate speed.’”

“But Nathan, don’t you see, ‘We’re making big strides: We’ve written statements. You should be impressed—and grateful.’”

“You and I have heard those lines time and time again, haven’t we?”

“Yep.”

“So many evangelical institutions and institutional leaders repeat this mantra. It’s painfully predictable.”

“And it often accompanies gas-lighting.”

“You’re right.”   

We pause to sip our coffees. They’re nearly empty.

“Even when we do the work God’s given us,” my friend says, “promoting justice for and amplifying the voices of Latinx folks, we still end up in a position where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we promote justice and amplify our people’s pains, people ostracize us, removing us from institutional or societal places of power. But if we’re silent or play the institution’s desired gradual game, we’ll get accolades and mammon—but we and our people suffer, though in different ways.”

“I hear you. That’s it, isn’t it? Nothing like being stuck between a rock and a hard place while you’re trying to stand firm upon the Rock.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“It sure is. Racial battle fatigue is no joke. We must recognize it. We need to take time to recover from it. I say this knowing that, for some reason, the LORD keeps preparing a table for us in the presence of our enemies, keeps calling us to a Eucharistic feast in which we participate in Christ’s sufferings.”

“In these circumstances, it is easy to succumb to the temptation to remain silent or ‘work’ for ‘gradual change.’” Those paths are less painful and the fast tracks to fame, money, and power. ‘Forget all this misery. Isn’t Christ’s yoke supposed to be light? This isn’t light—it’s heavy!”

“You got me thinking about Jesus’s temptation. We face something similar. ‘If you just bow an assimilated knee,’ figures in historically or predominately white institutions tell us, ‘all these kingdoms can be yours. No need to suffer.

And why not better position yourself to empower your people?’ As if we could have those kingdoms and advance the Kingdom. As if we could support our people by selling them out.”

“Can’t serve God and mammon. No wonder some of the nudges and calls to assimilate feel satanic.”

“Now that’s a word.”

We wrap up our conversation expressing our gratitude for friendship. We stand and the brown bench creaks in relief. It is no longer holding our burdens. Our burdens aren’t gone; our coffee cups are empty. Still our cups runneth over.  

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About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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Believe Me When I Say it Hurts

I saw her smile slowly disappear. She pressed in hard, frantically gliding the ultrasound, searching for a heartbeat that would never again beat. “Keep trying!” I screamed at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “there’s no heartbeat.”

“Keep trying,” I sobbed.

The well-intentioned doctor offered me several explanations that were intended to extinguish my sorrow. She explained that this was a normal occurrence, that it happens to nearly 1 in 4 women, that I was young, and that I would surely become pregnant again soon. She said that miscarriage was a protective mechanism that the body uses when disposing of unhealthy organisms and what I heard was, “You should be grateful that your body is so smart.” She tried to bury my pain in scientific reasoning and normalcy. Normal, normal, normal. Normal, as in trivial, as in my life should not be altered and my heart should not ache. Her words felt cold, the type of cold that burns.

I was convinced that my doctor was not Christian, or she would understand the meaning of sanctity of life and surely know why I was in so much pain.

“She’s desensitized,” I thought. “She’s had to deal with so many miscarriages that she has convinced herself that these are not human lives but a conglomeration of cells with little to no human value.” I believed that her lack of faith had caused her insensitivity so I instinctively sought refuge in my community of faith. To my dismay, Christians also minimized my pain. They wanted to subdue my pain and transform it into something nicer, like hope or gratitude, as if hope and gratitude were the only sentiments allowed to be felt by a Christian woman who had just experienced great loss. “At least you are already a mother,” “You’re young, you can have more kids,” “At least you were not further along,” were some of the comments that pierced me open.

The legitimacy of my pain came into question and I was led to believe that I was foolish for carrying this pain. I only carried my child for nine weeks, yet I carried this pain everywhere I went. I carried it to my bedroom, to my office, and to my car. I carried it in my dreams and in my prayers. The pain accompanied me everywhere and filled spaces that my child could no longer fill. It’s true that your heart physically aches when the pain is too overwhelming, but the heart is not the only part of your body that suddenly feels too heavy. Walking, even the shortest distance, absorbed all of my energy, and eating became a laborious task. It’s odd how the heaviness can be accompanied by an emptiness. The pain becomes so unbearable that your body turns numb, but it’s not the type of numb where you feel nothing; it’s the kind of numb where you feel everything.

My pain was slowly being coupled with something even more isolating – shame. The general perception was that my pain was rather unreasonable or exaggerated. I could hear it in their tone; nine weeks wasn’t enough for me to feel this sorrow. My loss was being compared to the suffering of a woman who lost her baby girl to SIDS[1] and of another whose daughter was stillborn.[2] I think people assumed that this would give me “perspective” and alleviate my pain. I’m sure they weren’t trying to hurt me – they thought these stories would help me heal, but shame is no antidote to pain. 

“I should feel better because someone else’s tragedy is worst” was the message being conveyed by people who truly thought were helping me.

Toxic positivity is defined by therapists Samara Quintero and Jamie Long as, “the overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state that results in the denial, minimization and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.[3]” This seemingly helpful mindset, actually produces more harm and trauma because it encourages silencing and transforms pain into a “dirty secret.” In Christian circles, toxic positivity disguises itself as faith and hope and can make individuals feel inadequate in their faith.  

One in four women have suffered a miscarriage.[4] “Because it’s so common, medical professionals tend to dismiss pregnancy loss, and friends and family members often fail to register its impact,” explains Dr. Janet Jaffe, director of the Center for Reproductive Psychology. However, the fact that so many women experience miscarriages does not mitigate the suffering. A recent study found that 29% of women who had experienced a miscarriage before 12 weeks, suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. The study also showed that 24% of these women had moderate to severe anxiety and 11% had moderate to severe depression.[5] I soon discovered that several of my own family members had suffered miscarriages. They quietly shared small pieces of their stories with me, almost hesitantly and I wondered if shame had silenced them too. I suspected that the lack of empathy that their stories had been met with transformed their accounts into a hasty narrative. They recounted their experiences in a way that seemed rather frivolous, though their glistening eyes revealed a different truth. “This is what pain looked like under submission,” I thought.  

Our sufferings are often placed on a hierarchy constructed by cultural understandings that determine which events should hurt more. Certain tragedies are automatically considered more sorrowful than others. Some griefs are “top-rated,” while other losses are rendered unimportant or are even stigmatized – the pain caused by a son being incarcerated or the death of a loved one due to drug overdose, for example. Society invalidates certain pains at the expense of the sufferer, and we don’t tend to pains that we think do not or should not exist.

Neglecting pain based on prejudices is a phenomenon that is also present in the medical industry. Pain bias negatively impacts women as their pain is often dismissed or minimized.[6] Gender bias in medicine leads to a dismissive attitude that often times, causes misdiagnosis. Christin Veasly, director at the “Chronic Pain Research Alliance,” explains that, “women have been more often referred to psychologists or psychiatrists, whereas men are given tests to rule out actual organic conditions.” A study revealed that women are 50% more likely than men to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack.[7] Maya Dusenbery, author of Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed and Sick (2019), identified two principal reasons for which women experience significatively higher levels of misdiagnosis than men: 1) there’s a long-standing legacy of women being underrepresented or completely excluded from medical research, which means that medical professionals do not know as much about the female body as they do the male body and 2) women’s accounts about their pain are often met with distrust.

Gender bias contributes to the idea that women are hysterical, making it easy to dismiss their pain, and racial bias insists that certain bodies can withstand more pain. A 2016 study revealed that, “a substantial number of white laypeople and medical students and residents hold false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites and demonstrates that these beliefs predict racial bias in pain perception and treatment recommendation accuracy.[8]” These beliefs date back to the 19th century when Thomas Hamilton, a plantation owner and physician obsessed with medically justifying the enslavement of Black people, conducted torturous experiments on John Brown, an enslaved Black man. Hamilton claimed that Black people had thicker skin and less sensitive nerve endings. This myth, plagued with racist conjectures, seems to persist in today’s medical community. According to a 2019 study, Black and Hispanic patients are significantly less likely to receive pain medication, compared to White patients[9]. In short, medical practitioners are less likely to believe us when we say it hurts if we happen to be women or people of color.   

The lack of empathy expressed by people changes the manner in which you are able to tell your story. Truth and transparency become marred and you are left with remnants, carefully curated words that vaguely resemble what you feel. The way we listen to people’s stories can help them heal or it can cause more trauma. L.J. Isham describes listening as, “an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals.” To exercise sympathy and compassion and to adopt the type of listening described by Isham, it is not a requirement to have experienced every single type of pain imaginable to the human condition. We don’t even have to agree with the pain, its cause, duration or intensity. Our holy responsibility is not to rate each other’s pain, but to listen lovingly and to believe one another when we say it hurts. 

The way we listen to those in pain can have life-altering consequences. Pain is a real, intense sentiment that is often difficult to characterize using words, and culture can also influence the modes of expression adopted by each individual. This is why, it is important to listen with an open heart. I felt that my pain was delegitimized to such an extent that, even as I write this now, I have the lingering impulse to justify my pain to you. I am tempted to convince you that my pain was real. I want to explain what this pregnancy meant to me and detail the agonizing moments with such rawness that you would not be able to sanitize my pain. However, I will not do that. That is too much of a burden for a suffering person. I wrote this piece, not with the intention of putting my pain on display, allowing readers to dissect it and examine it thoroughly until they can recognize its validity, but to address the fact that we should believe people when they say it hurts. We can stand with people in their pain without understanding it. We can come alongside suffering people without having had to experience that specific pain ourselves. We can accompany people in their sorrow and console them without any “words of advice” or proposed “solutions.” We can pray for these individuals without even knowing the full story. The Bible tells us that when one member suffers, we all suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26). It is pain that unites us, and that propels us to love one another as we understand our interconnectedness in God.

We have a tendency to run away from pain and in reality, it is all too easy, especially if it is not our own pain. We look away and cover our ears and hearts with much ease. Indeed, it is much more difficult to stand with someone who is in pain. However, pain is not alien to the human condition, nor is it unfamiliar to Jesus. Our Savior experienced immense pain. In fact, it was the shortest verse[10] in the Bible that brought me the greatest consolation in my moments of sorrow; “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).  I was reminded that He didn’t weep because he was overwhelmed by joy and gratitude; He didn’t shed happy tears. He wept in suffering. He wept in loss. Profound pain caused those precious tears, and it was His pain that ultimately brought salvation to the world. Pain, generated by His everlasting love, is central to the gospel message, yet we often try to disguise it or swiftly move past it in our understanding of Him. In fact, “in early Christian times, the belief that Jesus Christ suffered pain was usually not accepted […] freedom from emotion was something to strive for at that time. Only after the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD did the pain of Christ again stand in the centre of the Christian doctrine of salvation.[11]” When all trace of pain is removed from the gospel, we are left with an anemic version, one that represents God as just a happy character, incapable of being in the midst of our grief and our suffering. When we attempt to alienate our pain from God, we are inadvertently supporting a theological vision that believes that God is incapable of understanding our pain. When we try to hide our pain away from our Creator, we undervalue His love and grace for us. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.” The Bible does not say that God ignores our pain and pretends it does not exist; Psalm 147:3 reminds us that, “God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (NIV). Our pain does not condemn us or separate us from God; on the contrary, it draws us closer to our Maker and to each other. 

About Dra. Itzel meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel

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Footnotes

[1] Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

[2] “A still birth is the birth of a baby who has died any time from 20 weeks into the pregnancy through to the due date of birth. The baby may have died during the pregnancy or, less commonly, during the birth” (Pregnancy Birth & Baby).

[3] https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/

[4] American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

[5] “Posttraumatic stress, anxiety and depression following miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy: a multicenter, prospective, cohort study” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (2019).

[6] “‘Brave Men’ and ‘Emotional Women:’ A Theory Guided Literature Review on Gender Bias in Health Care and Gendered Norms Towards Patients with Chronic Pain” Pain Research and Management (2018).

[7] “Impact of Initial Hospital Diagnosis on Mortality for Acute Myocardial Infarction: A National Cohort Study” European Heart Journal – Acute Cardiovascular Care (2018).

[8] “Racial Bias in Pain Assessment and Treatment Recommendations, and False Beliefs about Biological Differences Between Whites and Blacks” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[9] “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Management of Acute Pain in US Emergency Departments: Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review” The American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

[10] It is the shortest verse in many translated versions. 

[11] Markschies C. Der Schmerz und das Christentum. Symbol für Schmerzbewältigung? [Pain and Christianity. A symbol for overcoming pain?] (2007). 

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The God Who Hears

God is a liberating listener. I first grasped this truth while reading Walter Brueggemann’s classic The Prophetic Imagination. In the opening chapter, Brueggemann unpacks a key contrast in the book of Exodus: Pharaoh does not hear Israel’s cries; God does. Pharaoh ignores Israel’s pleas for liberation from slavery, exploitation, and oppression. He is a cruel ruler who orders Egyptian slave drivers and overseers to worsen Israel’s misery (Ex. 5). God, however, hears Israel’s cries and enters into their sufferings. “And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant…And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew their condition” (Ex. 2:23-25). Likewise, when God calls Moses to liberate Israel, God connects hearing Israel cries to calling Moses. “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians…And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you” (Ex. 3:9-10). Pharaoh’s refusal to listen reinforces and extends Israel’s oppression. God’s listening initiates Israel’s liberation.

Brueggemann is not the first Christian to spot this contrast. Scholars such as Eddie Glaude, Jr. and J. Laurence Cohen have detailed myriad ways African Americans identified and employed the difference between God’s liberating listening and Pharaoh’s oppressive non-listening before, during, and after the U.S. Civil War. Yet as Delores Williams argues in Sisters in the Wilderness, many of these interpretive traditions have proven male-centered, principally conceiving of God’s liberating actions in terms of Moses. Such interpretive traditions obscure another tradition that highlights the biblical witness about God’s hearing, speaking, and liberating oppressed women. This second tradition begins with Hagar.

A Sister in the Wilderness

Whereas Exodus 1-15 recounts Gods liberating Abraham’s descendants from Egyptian slavery, Genesis 16-21 recounts God’s liberating Hagar, a female Egyptian enslaved in Abraham’s household. It is likely that Hagar became enslaved to Sarah and Abraham when the two were “Abram and Sarai” and living in Egypt rather than the land to which God called them (Gen. 12). During this time, Pharaoh believed the false report that Sarai was Abram’s sister—a lie Abram crafted to protect himself despite Gods promising to protect him (Gen. 12:2-3)—took Sarai into his harem, and lavished Abram with “sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels” (Gen. 12:15-16). Perhaps one of these slaves was Hagar. 

Either way, Genesis 16 recounts that Hagar became enslaved to Sarai and the victim of sexual assault. Desperate to have the divinely promised child, Sarai blames God for her barrenness and persuades Abram to have sex with Hagar so that Sarai “can build a family through her” (vv.1-2). Sarai seizes Hagar and gives her to Abram to be his wife. Abram then forces Hagar to copulate with him, and she conceives a child. Throughout this grievous process, Sarai and Abram treat Hagar as little more than sexualized chattel capable of producing their children. This is unadulterated domination.

Sexually dominated, exploited, and pregnant, Hagar despises Sarai. Sensing Hagar’s righteous rage, Sarai complains about her to Abram and calls upon God to judge Abram if he does not rectify the situation. Despite being his pregnant wife, Abram calls Hagar “your slave” when speaking with Sarai. Rather than protect Hagar or their unborn child, Abram tells Sarai “Do with her whatever you think best” to both. For Abram, Hagar is not bone of his bone or flesh of his flesh (Gen. 2). She is Saria’s problem—Sarai’s slave. Within this evil family structure, Sarai again abuses Hagar, who resists her oppressors by fleeing to the desert.   

In the desert’s bareness, God visits Hagar. Unlike Abram, God addresses Hagar by name. Unlike Sarai and Abram, God invites Hagar to talk, to disclose her sufferings. Unlike Sarai and Abram who dominate and plunder Hagar, God blesses her. Indeed, God’s blessing upon Hagar is similar to the Abrahamic blessing: “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count” (v.10). God then names the child in Hagar’s womb Ishmael—“God hears”—emphasizing, “the LORD has heard of your misery” (v.11). God sees, hears, validates, and enters into Hagar’s sufferings. These are divine acts of liberation.

A Liberation Delayed

Though the LORD hears, sees, and speaks with Hagar, the LORD does not yet fully liberate her. Preceding Hagar’s divine blessing is a divine command: “Go back to your mistress and submit to her” (Gen. 16:9). Hagar obeys. After bearing Ishmael, Hagar and Ishmael live in servitude to Sarah and Abraham for over fourteen years (see Gen. 16:16; 21:5, respectively). The text never suggests Hagar’s treatment improves. Despite God visiting, blessing, and renaming Sarah and Abraham, we only read of the patriarch’s affection for Ishmael (Gen. 17). Hagar’s abusive marginalization continues.

Sarah eventually conceives and bears a son, Isaac. Sometime later, Abraham celebrates Isaac’s weaning with a party. During the festivities, Sarah sees Ishmael mock Isaac. Outraged, Sarah commands Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac” (Gen. 21:10). For Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael are potential threats whose names—one of which is God-given—she still does not utter; Hagar is the “slave woman” and Ishmael the slave woman’s “dangerous” son; they are not family; son personas desechables. Sarah’s old patterns of dehumanization and domination persist. So do Abraham’s.

After God assures Abraham that Ishmael will become a great nation, the chosen patriarch sends Hagar and Ishmael out from his household. We read nothing about Abraham voicing concern over Hagar’s fate—not even a parting word of sorrow or blessing. Abraham still does not see nor treat Hagar, his long-time wife, as bone of his bone or flesh of his flesh. In his eyes, Hagar is the slave woman, a disposable commodity.

A functionally divorced and single mother without social support, Hagar quickly faces the unspeakable: She may witness Ishmael’s death, for they have run out of water. Desperate and profoundly grieved, Hagar and Ishmael cry. God hears them and intervenes, providing them water and dwelling with them throughout their life-long pilgrimage. This is the path of Hagar’s final liberation from Sarah and Abraham, her cruel, exploitive oppressors. Its parallel with God’s care of liberated, sojourning Israel are striking (see Exodus 15, 17).

Listening Like God   

Delores Williams is right: God “made a way out of no way” for Hagar. But this way was long and painful. And unlike Israel’s bondage in Egypt, the source of Hagar’s oppression was the covenant community, those chosen by God to bless the nations. Abraham and Sarah never utter a word of blessing to Hagar. Instead, they ravage her in word and deed. Together, Exodus and Genesis teach that sometimes nations rage against the people of God, and sometimes the people of God rage against the vulnerable in their midst.

Yet Exodus and Genesis also reveal that God hears the cries of these victims, of oppressed communities and individuals. God enters into their sufferings. And God, the liberator of the oppressed (see Ps. 9:9; 10:18; 68:5-6; 103:6; and 146:3), promotes their freedom.

God’s liberative listening and work culminate in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Abraham who is a greater liberator than Moses and defender of enslaved and sexually abused women. In Luke 4, Jesus publicly declares in the backwater, colonized town of Galilee that he came to usher in a new age of justice—the ultimate Jubilee year. As C. René Padilla writes, “the mission of the Messiah [i.e., Jesus of Nazareth] in the power of the Spirit is oriented toward the most vulnerable persons in society: the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the oppressed.” Jesus announces that he came to preach good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for prisoners, provide recovery of sight for the blind, and release for the oppressed. As Padilla again observes: “Jesus was convinced that his ministry was to promote radical socioeconomic changes big enough to be regarded as signs of the coming of a new era of justice and peace—‘the year of the Lord’s favor,’ the Jubilee year (Lev 25)—a metaphor of the messianic era initiated in history by Jesus Christ, in other words, the Kingdom of God.” The saver of sinners like Abraham and Sarah is the listening liberator of oppressed communities and individuals like Israel and Hagar.

Jesus calls his disciples to enter into his divine work of liberation. Christians are to listen to and act for and with the least of these—those with whom Jesus identifies (Mt. 25). We are to care for widows and orphans in their distress (Jas 1). Like God, we should meet Hagar in the desert. Like God, we should listen to oppressed peoples and champion their deliverance from evil systems and regimes. Let us hunger and thirst to participate in the divine life through these Spirit-empowered works.

For more about hermano Nathan, visit his website.

About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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Living in my Memory: Pastor Rich Perez on “In the Heights”

This article was first published by Rich Perez on his personal blog and can be read at here.

In the Heights, Warner Brothers 2021

Like everyone else, we were excited. Beaming with pride that any semblance of our story — our neighborhood story was being told on the silver screen. We were especially proud because our son, who has been acting for 6 years now, was able to land an on-screen background role in the movie. So, no matter what suspicions or reluctance some of us had about which story would be told, “In The Heights” had us all waiting with eager expectation.

And it delivered…kind of. Well, it’s complicated. Within a few days of its long anticipated premier, social media and news outlets like The Root exploded with criticism mainly about the movie’s misrepresentation of Washington Heights, a neighborhood that recently was canonized as “Little Dominican Republic” to pay homage to the many Dominican residents that call it home.

And that may be the source of the rub.

There are much smarter people than me talking about the nuances of Latinx identity. I won’t attempt to be scholarly about that. These are my reflections, most of which are birthed out of my experiences as someone deeply shaped by Uptown culture. The only other motivator here are my kids, who I feel the exciting responsibility to pass on the legacy of my identity so that they could discover who they are.

Art will always be complex

No matter how deeply a piece of art is connected to a real moment in history, place or person, its expression will always be at the mercy of the artist. As enjoyers of art, there will always be room to insert your observations or interpretations of the piece, but ultimately the artist decides — even if subconsciously — what the pen writes, what the brush strokes, what the camera captures. Lin-Manuel is the architect; he’s the artist. In The Heights was shaped by his experiences of Uptown (mainly Inwood, or Dyckman for us natives, which is the northern most part of the neighborhood. how that difference shapes his storytelling is also important, but for another time). For those of us that took to the theaters in celebration of what could be, we watched a movie about a neighborhood that existed in his imagination. and we didn’t leave with the level of satisfaction we had hoped for. Why? Because we don’t live in his imagination. Not as main characters, at least.

Art will always be complex, because art is birthed out of us. And we are complex beings who are shaped by nuanced experiences, privileges or lack thereof. We’re shaped by our desires and preferences — spoken or unspoken. As the architect Lin created what he imagined, a “mosaic.” But therein lies a fundamental obstacle. Washington Heights is not a mosaic. While it may be home to a variety of Latinx identities, Washington Heights is demonstrably Dominican; Afro-Dominican.

There have been so many Mexicans, Cubans, even Brazilians declaring their praise for In The Heights because they felt seen. And rightfully so, their flags and accents were in the movie. They felt seen because they were on screen. The movie’s effort to celebrate Latinidad (I don’t want any of the smoke that comes with this word) was beautiful but it minimized the Dominican story that lives in the very air of this community. Now, this is dicey, because I’d hate for this to be interpreted as a campaign to not celebrate those cultures. This is not that. We should celebrate them.

This is, however, an effort to show that Latinx expression varies across the different Latinx ethnicities, and this movie was an opportunity to put that on display.

Beyond the tasks of filmmaking

Casting, as much as the wardrobe, the script, the director, or any other department on the set of a movie, is not so much a task, but an opportunity. Better yet, it’s a responsibility to build the world of the film. And in the case of a movie about a neighborhood with such a unique expression, it is difficult to see the right cast in the backdrop of the wrong setting. It’s also devastating to see (on the big screen no less) our streets, our bodegas, our corners, our stoops with strangers occupying them. Even more — what the cast wears, how they sound, their accent, their syntax, their references, their isms, their music, their skin color, the smells of the movie, el sabor of the movie. All of those are special and important to the telling of our story. All of those serve as bricks in the construction of the world that the movie promised simply by virtue of its name. Oh, how i wished there was a perico ripia’o or a number with una bachatica ensendi’a!

But this is not In The Heights through my eyes, nor your eyes. It’s through the eyes of two Puertoriqueños, one of whose relationship to the Heights could perhaps be understood as periphery having grown up in West Philly. This may be the reason for a heavy presence of salsa music and a dominant Puerto Rican cast. Even if they played the role of Dominicans. This may explain why the beloved piraguero cooled los vecinos from the sweltering heat with piraguas and not frio frios. ¡Dame uno de chinola!… not parcha. When you know the artists, you better understand the art.

And as for the visual direction, well, that was in the hands of an Asian man and a white woman. Jon Chu and Alice Brooks are responsible for what, and more importantly, who, is captured by the camera. And listen, this is no indictment on them for those things. I could never. And I wouldn’t want to. But it is a call to awareness that they are the source of this art. And the truth is that perhaps for some of them, this wasn’t their story to tell.

Casting directors and other executive roles in the film-making journey are like the visual managers at retail stores. It’s their vision that decides which mannequins and outfits are considered most attractive for the windows that face the street. Yes, we got to see Latinos on the screen in ways that we never have, yet there still remains glass ceilings to be shattered for the Afro-Latinx community. Perhaps much of the frustration is coming from the expectations we had on this movie to deliver some of that shattering.

Nonetheless, as a Dominicano from Uptown, Lin-Manuel has given me sufficient reasons to be proud of my Latinx identity — no matter how nuanced it may be. But we shouldn’t make the conclusion that critique means that we hate the project and can’t appreciate it generally. I think Lin knows that. He’s also just an artist navigating all the heat his work is receiving. That’s no easy place to be in. I get that, too.

I won’t beat a dead horse. Afro-Latinos were desperately absent in the foreground of this story, and thus, in the present imagination of its creators. But it’s important to share that I won’t condemn anyone for not highlighting me in their imagination. None of us can, I suppose. We can only hope to inspire imagination, stretch it with truthful criticism — whether it spills out of us harshly or not. Though we hope it wouldn’t.

It’s a big deal to have this movie in Hollywood. And I’m thankful for that. There is nothing like In The Heights that has been memorialized into cinema history. That should be celebrated. As big, however, is the missed opportunity to tell the story more truthfully. Again, I think Lin gets that. His humility and active listening is a hopeful sign for great future projects and advocacy of the stories some of us felt fell short here.

If anything I’ve gotten from the loving relationship in my life is that mature love leads with celebration while holding space for growth, transformation, correction.

In the Heights, Warner Brothers 2021

The Gift of Becoming Yourself

Yes, Hollywood is watching us have our disagreements, but I want to strongly encourage us to reframe the way we have these discussions. It’s important that we don’t frame those bringing critique as “hating” on the movie and damaging our perception to Hollywood. And on that note — big production companies, like Warner Bros., with their white dollars, are not the only way to have our stories told. The film-making industry is like any other industry, I imagine. There are enough creators, writers, producers, actors, directors, DP’s of color telling our stories without the help of big wig executives. I’m hopeful for the stories In The Heights will give birth to, but I’m wary of adjusting ourselves to mass appeal. I know it produces dollars, but it dwarfs our stories into something foreign. The road to getting Hollywood to see the value in our stories is long and arduous. Surely, there are other ways.

Perhaps the next best thing that we can do is more simple than we imagine: create. Tell your story. Tell your ancestor’s story. Tell your block’s story as you know it; as you experienced it. Tell it truthfully. Don’t be held hostage by mass appeal. It’s one of the pitfalls we’ve inherited from the social media age. If you drink from the cup of mass appeal you risk the integrity of your story because you decide that what others think is more valuable than the deepest truth of your experience.

There’s no question that this movie has poured gas onto the on-going conversation about Latinx identity. And for that I’m thankful. Our Latinx identity is nuanced and complex, with Afro-desendencia and Indigeno-descendencia. Learn your story. Climb your family tree. Saca tu abuela del closet. With all its twists, painful turns and pleasant surprises, there is no journey more important than the one where you become yourself, as you’ve been made. To share both that journey and what you discover is a gift to the world. To experience that in your art, your stories, your movies is to construct a bridge that allows me; that allows us, the opportunity to enter your story. The only catch is that it must be done truthfully. No hiding the mess. Not forgetting a chapter. And not making anyone invisible.

Living in my memories

My teen years were all about basketball at Dyckman park, bread runs to Kenny’s bakery, and parties at Incarnation Catholic School’s gym on 175th and St. Nicholas. For over a decade I lived in Dyckman with my wife and two kids as a faith and community leader. In 2017 I debuted my memoir about what it meant for me to love this place that had changed so much over the years. I’ve had a number of non-native New York friends message me after watching the film: “Wow, I feel like I understand your story more” or some version of that sentiment. If I’m honest, these reflections are in large part to ensure that those unfamiliar with the place that shaped so much of me wouldn’t conclude that this film captured all what that place is.

If your conscience makes room for it, go buy a ticket. Watch this movie. Take with you what you can from this story. And trust me, you can. There’s plenty there for you. There’s plenty there for us. Beauty does not evade this movie. El fuego Caribeño wasn’t a stranger. To see the hydrants open, the streets flooded with kids, and the struggle to find our place in society — that was still especially beautiful and compelling.

About Rich Perez

Rich is the author of Mi Casa Uptown: Learning to Love Again, a memoir of his experiences growing up in the inner city of Nueva York and the intersection of faith, family, identity and the significance of place. Founder and pastor of 10 years at Christ Crucified Fellowship in NYC before transitioning to Atlanta, GA with his wife, Anna, and their kids, Josiah and Hayden.

Cuida tu testimonio: A public theology of repentance

When I was a child, my mother would always say to me, cuida tu testimonio (watch, or take care of, your testimony). Whether she was dropping me off at school or going to a friend’s house, this dicho served as a reminder to always be on my best behavior. As the years have passed, this saying has become a guiding principle in my life, and my understanding of it has grown more profound. While as a child it only meant to not do anything that would embarrass myself or my parents, today it represents living in a manner that is worthy of my God. Mi testimonio is my Christian witness. It is the evidence of the supernatural work of Jesus in my life and my most powerful evangelistic tool for a suffering world in need of a Savior.  Mi testimonio is an expression of the image of God in me. It is my attempt to live as God’s royal representative on this side of eternity. 

I have also come to believe that while this principle applies to individuals, it also applies to collectives such as businesses, organizations, and even religious institutions. When an individual or institution fails to abide by the principle cuida tu testimonio, the integrity of their testimony is compromised, and often discredited. I believe this is the crisis of the evangelical church that has resulted in the loss of the credibility of the Church’s prophetic witness in the public square today. Ed Stetzer observes that, “tempted by power and trapped within a culture war theology, too many evangelicals tied their fate to a man who embodied neither their faith nor their vision of political character. As a result, we are finally witnessing an evangelical reckoning.”[1]

My mother also used to say, dime con quién andas y te dire quién eres (tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are). The apostle Paul similarly warned the Church at Corinth, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”[2] In the evangelical church’s desperate attempt to gain power, influence, and control through the veins of American democracy, it has lost the hearts of its people and in turn, compromised its public witness. And while not all evangelicals have engaged in these practices, we collectively bear the name and consequences of those who have. How then can the evangelical church regain its credibility so that it can once again be a transformative agent for the American conscience and the public square? I believe the answer lies in a public theology of repentance. 

The reality of the saying, cuida tu testimonio, is that while we seek to live in a manner worthy of God, there are times that we fall short of Gods calling on our life. In the same way, just as individuals sin from time to time, so also do religious institutions, as they are comprised of individuals. To this, mi iglesia pentecostal (my Pentecostal church) taught me that the Church’s altars are always open for anyone and everyone who is willing to repent for their sins, and that Jesus is ready to meet them in that sacred place to renew and restore them once again. It is in our brokenness and not our perfection that the confidence of nuestro testimonio lies. 

For the individual, the decision to repent from one’s sin is a central element of the gospel message; it is necessary to transform the human heart. For the collective, it serves to jumpstart the process of systemic and institutional change, which can be theologically understood as a form of “social sanctification.” The evangelical church’s adoption of a public theology of repentance has the potential to result in the restoration of the integrity of its public witness by living consistently with the very message it proclaims: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”[3]  

I imagine some Christians might have reservations about the evangelical church taking a position of humility by acknowledging its sins as counterproductive to the Church’s witness to the world. After all, the Church is meant to reflect the Kingdom of God as holy and set apart from the world. Therefore, to admit any type of fault would tarnish its character. However, I believe there is no act more Christian then that of repentance, whether individual or communal. In fact, the majority of the Bible is about a loving God who restlessly calls a rebellious people to repent from their sinful ways. Furthermore, if the Church does not model the central message of the Kingdom of God to this world, how then will the world ever learn what it means to repent from one’s sins and believe in Jesus Christ? 

Therefore, the most Christian response the evangelical church can practice to cuidar su testimonio and the credibility of the gospel message it proclaims is to repent. It must repent for placing its hope in false messiahs and partisan politics, for neglecting and suppressing the cries of black, brown, and minoritized communities, and for its companionship with white supremacy and its supporting leader(s) as exemplified at the Capitol insurrection. In embracing a public theology of repentance, the evangelical church has the opportunity to demonstrate to the world what it means to turn from sin, and even teach the world how to acknowledge and address its own historical evils through Christ’s message: “repent and believe.” In doing so, the evangelical church creates room for the Spirit to renew the credibility of the Christian message, restore the testimonio of the evangelical church, and enable the gospel message to produce spiritual transformation and social change. 

The people of Israel demonstrated this firsthand, as they knew that their public repentance would lead to the spiritual and social transformation of their community. It was only the righteous kings of Israel who were brave enough to acknowledge and properly respond to Israel’s sinful condition by removing the high places, tearing down the idols, cleansing the temple, and reestablishing their covenant relationship with God. This in turn led to the restoration of their community and the blessing of their nation. Repentance attained through the purging of evil, and belief proclaimed through the renewal of covenant relationship, the message of Christ to “repent and believe” is a timeless characteristic of what it means to be a Christian community. Should the evangelical church receive the call to “humble themselves, pray and seek God’s face, and turn from their wicked ways,”[4] perhaps then, the world will believe the gospel message they proclaim as good news indeed.

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About Daniel Montañez

Daniel Montañez was born in Visalia, CA to a Mexican mother and a Puerto Rican father. He is a Ph.D. student at Boston University in the area of Theology, Ethics, and Philosophy, and an adjunct instructor for the Latino and Global Ministries Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the founder and director of Mygration Christian Conference, a non-profit organization that seeks to explore God’s heart through the stories of migration in the Bible. He is also the national director for the Church of God Migration Crisis Initiative, a ministry that seeks to provide church leaders with the biblical, pastoral, and ministerial preparation to positively and proactively respond to the crisis facing our immigrant communities in the United States. Daniel is dedicated to serving his Latino/a community at the intersection of the Church, the academy, and the public square.

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Footnotes

[1] Stetzer, Ed. “Evangelicals Face a Reckoning: Donald Trump and the Future of Our Faith.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, January 11, 2021. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/01/10/after-donald-trump-evangelical-christians-face-reckoning-column/6601393002/?fbclid=IwAR2rJ3hrI0ld4HHRUCok788ZvoPD6B7k3lkbU3UylAVed17ZAT9NUYNchJ8. 

[2] 1 Cor 15:33 (NIV)

[3] Mark 1:15 (NIV)

[4] 2 Chr 7:14 (NIV; paraphrased)

What We Forget

Advent is the season encompassing the four Sundays which precede Christmas. Traditionally for Christians these weeks mark the beginning of our year and are defined by themes of remembering and waiting. While these weeks are latent with meaning for all Christians, I want to suggest that, for white Christians who are growing to care deeply about racial justice and reconciliation, Advent can provide an especially helpful starting point for our discipleship.

Remembering and waiting. We remember the lineage of faith to which we belong, including the generations of God’s people who anticipated the coming of the Messiah. We hear the longing in Isaiah 40:10-11, “See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” And we wait as a people who expect our Savior’s return. We understand that life as we know it in a world groaning under sin will not last forever. A day will come when the will of God will be done on earth as in heaven.

What is it about these Advent themes that can help white Christians grow in our commitment to racial justice and reconciliation? Before exploring this question, we ought to acknowledge why so many of us need to mature in these areas. For as long as there have been white churches and Christians in this country, there has been a deficit in our discipleship. Time and again, we chose racial exclusion over embodied solidarity with the rest of Christ’s body. The segregation in our churches today is not the benign result of personal or cultural preference; its roots run deep through the soil of racism and racial supremacy.

Of course, this isn’t how most of us think about ourselves or our churches. But over the years, many Christians of color have warned us about our captivity to segregation and complicity with racial injustice. For example, in 1898 Rev. Francis Grimke, the African American pastor of Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., pointed to the silence of most white Christians in response to the lynchings that ran rampant throughout the country. In his sermon he asserted, “Another discouraging circumstance is to be found in the fact that the pulpits of the land are silent on these great wrongs. The ministers fear to offend those to whom they minister… This is the charge which I make against the Anglo American pulpit today; its silence has been interpreted as an approval of these horrible outrages.”

Why has it been so hard for white Christians to confess our conformity to this wicked status quo? In large part, it has to do with what it meant to become racially white. When my ancestors arrived in this country, they did not think of themselves in racial categories. They were immigrants from Sweden and Germany and they brought with them the particularities of their histories, culture, language, etc. But upon landing on these shores, they faced a new racialized reality in which those who were white had the greatest access to the American Dream. On the other end of that hierarchy were African American and indigenous people, those most likely to experience racial oppression.

In order to assimilate, my ancestors had to discard their cultural characteristics and pick up the more recent social construct of race. They had to become white. This exchange away from cultural particularity to racial homogeneity carried innumerable consequences. As Isabel Wilkerson writes in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, “Each new immigrant had to figure out how and where to position themselves in the hierarchy of their adopted new land. Oppressed people from around the world, particularly from Europe, passed through Ellis Island, shed their old selves, and often their old names to gain admittance to the powerful dominant majority.” Because the country’s racial hierarchy was built on the plunder and exploitation of Black and Native people, newly arrived immigrants internalized these forms of racism as a necessary feature of the path toward the country’s promises. But there were other implications as well which bring us back to Advent.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

When my ancestors became white, they were engaging in an act of forgetfulness. They set aside some of the important attributes which had defined previous generations in order to access power and privilege. This was the price of admision required by the racial hierarchy and it continues to exact its toll today.

We see this legacy of forgetfulness in how many white people struggle to talk about race and racism. When I facilitate racial reconciliation workshops, it is always the white participants who stumble when asked to describe their racial identity. The difficulties only increase when we begin considering the impact of the racial hierarchy. Rather than coming to these conversations with curiosity and humility, white Christians have often reverted to defensiveness, deflection, and denial: I never owned slaves! I have Black friends! I don’t have a racist bone in my body! We’re all Christians so we shouldn’t focus on our differences!

The forgetfulness of our race engenders a false sense of innocence. Because we have not remembered the cost - to ourselves and to our neighbors of color – of becoming white, we interpret our society with the kind of boot-strapping possibility only available to the privileged. If we think about racial segregation and oppression at all, it’s with a vague evaluation of someone else’s choice. We certainly don’t assume responsibility in this story; we are but innocent bystanders.

Only we’re not. And as Christians we ought to be quick to confess not our innocence but our susceptibility to sins of all kinds, including pernicious racial ones. As Isaiah admits in another common Advent passage, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (Isa. 64:6) Why, for a people whose hope is so rooted in the grace of God which meets us as we confess our sins, is it so painful to acknowledge that we have, in the Apostle Paul’s language, conformed to the pattern of the world? We have forgotten.

Advent, with its invitation to remember, is the antidote that many of us need. As we approach our Savior’s birth, we are reminded of the danger posed to our faith by forgetfulness. We hear the stories of those like Simeon and Anna who recognized God’s Messiah precisely because they remembered. We hear the prophets pleading with God’s people to remember who they were - a sinful people in need of God’s comprehensive salvation.

If we listen closely enough, we’ll also hear the summons to remember our own troubled stories and histories. Advent beckons us to cast off our innocence and self-righteousness, to be done with the defensiveness, deflection, and denial which keep us from unity and solidarity with our sisters and brothers of color.

Remembering is not easy; there are reasons we’d rather forget. But as with every generation who has preceded us, when we choose to remember our histories – the losses, the complicities, the sins – we will also encounter the God has not never forgotten his people, who remembers his covenant with us. And with this memory newly refreshed, we can resolutely turn to the work of justice and reconciliation, freed of the forgetfulness and false innocence which has long kept us from our family in Christ.

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About David W. Swanson

David is the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church, a multiracial congregation on the South Side of Chicago. He also serves as the CEO of New Community Outreach, a non-profit organization working to reduce causes of trauma and raise opportunities for equity.

David’s book, Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Discipleship, is available now. Read more from David at his website, dwswanson.com.

On 'Bad Mothering'

His words infuriated me. I reacted instantaneously and clearly agitated, I replied, “I decide how to spend my time.” He had unknowingly struck a nerve – a deep wound inflicted by the tendencies of machismo[1]. It was a reflex response; the words slipped out of my mouth without pause or hesitation. He apologized and I hurriedly hung up the phone.

“I’ll let you go now so you can go be with your son,” had been his exact words. He was a romantic interest and I identified the cause of my anger almost immediately. I became a mother at nineteen. My eight-month pregnant-self waddled across the stage of my community college graduation. I had a plan. My son would be born in July and in late August, I would begin state college. And I did just that (a 19-year-old healthy body could perform such miracles). I had a whole village that supported me, and thanks to them, I eventually completed my doctoral studies. My son was nine years old when I became a doctora. 

As a single, Latina mom and first-generation college student from a low-income community, the obstacles were many. There were real challenges placed before me. My body was constantly exhausted from attending school full-time, working part-time, and raising a child. My mind attempted to juggle numerous tasks simultaneously and every second of the 24-hour period was carefully planned. My workload was unimaginable but, with the help of the abuela/os and tías, achievable. The unbearable burden was not the physical labor itself but the constant criticisms and accusations dressed as innocuous questions: “¿y cómo dejas a tu hijo tantas horas? Yo no podría” and frequent, “Y tu hijo, ¿con quién lo dejas?” paired with, “pobrecito, ¿y no lo extrañas?” I wish that at that moment I would have immediately identified them as fallacious statements upheld by the violence of patriarchy. But I didn’t.

Instead, I wept. I wept in the shower – in the place where your tears merge with the shower droplets, in the place where the noise can muffle your cries, in the place where solitude accompanies you. There were times when my tears would refuse to respect this sacred place and would instead travel to my bedroom or my car. “I am not a good mom,” I told myself. I despised myself for loving school, for loving my job. I ritualistically apologized to my son quietly as he slept every night and obsessively reminded him of how much I loved him during his waking hours. In reality, I was not trying to comfort him; I was trying to soothe myself. I was atoning for my bad mothering.

Society promotes absurd and unrealistic mothering scripts that are unsustainable. A good mother cannot have hobbies, should not enjoy a night out with friends, cannot spend money on eyelash extensions, oh, and God forbid she dates. It is ironic and almost comical that single mothers are antagonized for being single but are simultaneously forbidden from dating. If you are a Latina mother, you are also expected to ser buena cocinera, maestra, enfermera, chofer, costurera, y mucho más. La madre latina is, in reality, a mythical figure that is half human, half goddess. She is one that morphs into many things and does so willingly, effortlessly and enthusiastically. If you are a Christian Latina mother, these beliefs tend to be exacerbated by erroneous and domesticated interpretations of biblical womanhood put forth by male-dominated narratives[2]. Our love for our children seems to only be acceptable when it is self-consuming. The Latina mother is idealized, but women pay a high price for this veneration. There is nothing glorious about withstanding abuse and being disempowered, but marianismo[3] appears in the Latina/o culture masked as love and admiration. Marianismo is, in reality, a toxic ideology that stems from machismo and demands that mothers sacrifice their selfhood in service of patriarchal ideals. All those who deviate in any way from these prescriptive mothering norms are immediately deemed bad mothers.     

“75% of mothers with children are employed full time.”

— U.S. Department of Labor (2016)

The image of the traditional housewife whose primary and sole responsibility is to take care of the home and children while the father “brings home the bacon” seems to have been irreparably imprinted in the minds of many individuals. However, the reality is that 71% of U.S. mothers are formally employed[4] (Pew Research 2014). Sound judgement would lead one to conclude that since the majority of modern mothers do, in fact, work outside the home, gender expectations regarding tending the home have shifted. Regrettably, this is not the case. Women, particularly women of color, have long endured the “double shift,” working full-time as paid employees and spending considerably more time than men in unpaid labor in the form of childcare and housework. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (2019), men work an average of 7 hours and 54 minutes in paid work per day, while women labor a total of 7 hours and 20 minutes. The number of paid hours worked amounts to a 34-minute difference. In the household, however, women work an average of 120 minutes more than men and Latina women work more than men as compared to women of other ethnicities. These statistics reflect normal circumstances: that is, pre-COVID 19. The pandemic exacerbated these conditions, leading to what is now known as the “double double shift.”

During the coronavirus lockdown, women with full-time employment, a partner and children worked 20 hours a week more than men in domestic labor. The consequences of the unequal division of home duties are manifold and produce a domino effect that affects nearly every aspect of a woman’s life. Carrying a larger workload means less sleep, no time for a jog, or coffee with friends. Enjoying a TV show, attending a Bible study or reading daily devotionals might seem impossible. Leisure and spiritual activities promote mental wellbeing by providing a balanced life that can help reduce stress, anxiety and depression. In a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the midst of the pandemic, 53% of women reported feeling worried or stressed, versus 37% of men. The gender gap is even more pronounced among parents of children under the age of eighteen: 57% of mothers versus 32% of fathers reported that their mental health has deteriorated due to the pandemic.

“Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.””

— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Moreover, increased household obligations impact women’s economic growth. The economic disadvantage that women have historically suffered has worsened since the pandemic. In September alone, approximately 865,000 women left the U.S. workforce, compared to 200,000 men (UN Women 2020). These figures are not coincidental; they reflect the heavy burden placed upon women’s shoulders who are forced to renounce paid employment in order to devote themselves to unrewarded and underappreciated unpaid care work. Women’s monumental efforts and hard work are not only undervalued, they are overtly punished. Formally employed mothers suffer monetarily in the form of reduced wages through what is known as the “motherhood penalty.” Women of color, who are disproportionately at the bottom of the pay scale, are punished the most. Conversely, fathers are rewarded with a “fatherhood bonus.” “Fatherhood is a valued characteristic of employers, signaling perhaps greater work commitment, stability and deservingness,” explains Dr. Michelle J. Budig. Professor Budig’s research shows, “That is the opposite of how parenthood by women is interpreted by employers. The conventional story is they work less and they’re more distractible when on the job.” In short, fatherhood is seen as an asset whereas motherhood is considered a liability.

“In 40% of all households with children, women are the breadwinners.”

— Pew Research Center (2013)

We analyze the statistics and they are disconcerting. We hear women’s first-hand experiences and we are disturbed. We live out these injustices in our own flesh and yet we continue to do the bidding of an oppressive system that pollutes our soul. I want to be transparent, but it pains me to write this: my most fervent accusers were not men – they were women. Machismo tactically utilizes us, women, as weapons against ourselves and each other. We become machismo’s most faithful little soldiers. We point the gun at each other and shoot relentlessly, not realizing that those bullets are ricocheting and piercing our own bodies. We surveil each other, we play the comparative game, destroy each other in hopes that machismo will honor us as la más santa – mejor que fulanita o zutanita. I, too, have internalized sexist mothering notions, not only by allowing guilt to completely consume me but also by being highly critical of other mothers. I attempted to liberate myself from the shame and guilt that suffocated me by condemning other mothers, as if obstructing their airways would help me breath. I sought liberation, not by destroying my shackles, but by placing them on someone else. This is perverse. “Being female doesn’t stop us from being sexist, we’ve had to choose early or late at 7, 14, 27, 56 to think different […] act different […] to change other women’s minds, to change our own minds, to change our feelings, ours, yours and mine […] The basis of our unity is that in the most important way we are all in the same boat, all subjected to the violent, pernicious ideas we have learned to hate, that we must all struggle against them.[5]” Sexism is the norm; it is how we are socialized. However, God did not create us to be oppressors of each other; our prosperity as God’s children is not based on how much suffering and punishment we inflict on one another. On the contrary, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26, NRSV). We must labor daily against our own social conditioning that incites us to endorse and perpetuate sexist ideals.

In order to overcome our conditioning, we (men and women) need to become aware and be intentional. We should, for example, examine the ways in which our daily expressions unconsciously sustain sexist assumptions. Mi esposa me ayuda con los niños (My wife helps me with the kids) is a phrase that I have never heard in my life. Mi esposo me ayuda con los niños (My husband helps me with the kids) is one that I hear often. The message that we transmit is that fathers “help” mothers while mothers simply fulfill their “motherly” duties. In the church, women are overrepresented in children’s ministry and vacation bible school and underrepresented as preachers and teachers. This rigid division of labor based on gender disadvantages everyone by restricting individuals from utilizing the fullness of their spiritual gifts.

Perfect mothering does not exist and “good mothers” come in many different shapes and sizes. The same can be said about fathers. Humans have an innate desire to be socially accepted but this approval should not cost us our livelihoods. One of my father’s parenting strengths was that he himself rebelled against cultural scripts that commanded him to place his two daughters in a gendered box. He refused to “play his part” and by doing so, allowed us to flourish and taught us a valuable lesson: to question and vigorously resist toxic gender scripts. About two years ago, I was in the car with my dad on our way to our favorite restaurant and I don’t recall the full context of our conversation but I vividly remember him saying something that no one had ever said to me explicitly, “Itzel, you’re a great mom.” A tear rolled down my cheek and I believed him.

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About Dra. Itzel meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel

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Footnotes

[1] The Mexican National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women (Comisión Nacional para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia Contra las Mujeres) defines machismo as, “certain behaviors and beliefs that promote, reproduce and reinforce various forms of discrimination against women. It is constructed through the polarization of gender roles and stereotypes that [strictly] define masculinity and femininity. Its main characteristic is the degradation of the feminine; its major form of expression, violence in any of its types and forms against women” (2016).  

[2] In Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified and Marginalized Women of the Bible, Sandra Glahn states, “In addition to maligning some Bible women, we have marginalized others wrongly downplaying or even ignoring their contributions” (15).

[3] “In many Latin American or Hispanic cultures, an idealized traditional feminine gender role characterized by submissiveness, selflessness, chastity, hyperfemininity, and acceptance of machismo in males” (APA Dictionary of Psychology).

[4] I use “formally employed” as opposed to “working mothers” because the latter term erroneously implies that mothers who take care of the home are not, in fact, “working.”

[5] Rosario Morales, We’re All in the Same Boat (1981).

Do We Have To? Engaging Pro-Trump Family

Many black and brown people faced a familiar dilemma in 2020: To engage or not to engage; that was the question. Since so many of our friends, family, and co-workers have been “doing the work,” reading (or at least buying) the bestselling books and watching carefully curated “Representation Matters” collections, we feel we have a responsibility to engage conversations about race, politics, and justice. These conversations are always exhausting, often infuriating, and sometimes they make matters worse. 

But is it ok not to engage? Especially for Christians, isn’t the burden of hard conversations the necessary price for “gospel unity?” Sometimes, maybe. In the wake of 2020’s presidential election, a previous World Outspoken article gave an example from the gospels of why Latin@s, for example,  should engage Trump-supporting family members. But every conversation with a Trump-supporter and/or racist is not a conversation with a Zaccheus. In this article we present three gospel principles for not engaging conversations about race with those who are committed to ignorance, misunderstanding, and white supremacy.

1) Scope Out the Situation: “Who All Over There?”

As any black potential party-goer will tell you, the wrong answer to the question “who all over there?” may result in the unfortunate response: “I’ll let you know” (i.e. definitely not going). The thought of interacting with a certain person or people is enough to detract from any potential good the party might have to offer. The situation must be scoped out. The words of Jesus in Matthew 7:6 express a similar sentiment. Jesus says, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” 

While we might hesitate at the thought of naming friends and family members dogs or pigs, the idea is this: discernment must be exercised before deciding who to give the gift of conversation, relationship, and some of the most personal aspects of our existence. Not just anyone can presume to have access to our time and energy. And we need not feel guilty about saving these precious pearls for those who know how to value them. We gotta scope out the situation before deciding whether to go.

2) Shake It Off: “Aight Imma Head Out”

Many of us—whether subconsciously or not—still feel like we’re inconveniencing people when we talk about the problems of white supremacy. In reality, we’re offering a gift, a miracle really—freedom from the burden of whiteness and an invitation to a better form of life together. When this gift is treated as a burden by those who can most benefit from it, we sometimes find ourselves begging for their attention. But Jesus has a word of advice for those with a miraculous gift to give when they are not received: shake it off and head out like the Spongebob meme.

In Luke 9:5 Jesus says, “And as for all who do not receive you, when you leave that city, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” Those with stiff necks without ears to hear from their fellow humans about the realities of injustice and oppression do not deserve more attention; they deserve less. And those of us with a gift to give can exercise the confidence and resolve of Spongebob. There’s no reason to stay in that conversation. Shake it off and head out, fam.

3) Don’t Even Try: “Woooooooow…. ok.”

Sometimes the ignorance is appalling. It’s not even funny. You hear something like, “Hasn’t every culture had slavery? What was so different about America?” and you start looking around for hidden cameras and Ashton Kutcher. The levels of empathy, education, and attention that would be needed to have anything like a fruitful conversation are so absent that the invitation to engage almost seems patronizing. In such a circumstance, sometimes all you can say is “woooooooow…….ok.”

Jesus faced a similar situation in Mark 6:6. Faced with crowds who couldn’t believe that he was who he said he was and came to do what he said he came to do, Jesus refused to give in to their patronizing. When the passage says that Jesus “could not do any miracle,” it was not a reflection on his ability. The clue is in the next verse, “he was amazed at their unbelief.” Jesus effectively said “woooooow…….ok” and worked his miracles only among a select few. With the rest of them, he didn’t even try. It wasn’t worth his attention. And it’s not worth ours, either.

Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list of potential responses to interactions about race, politics, and justice. The earlier article gives a good example of when and how we might choose to engage. But we should know that engaging is not the only gospel response possible. Many who pretend to want to learn and grow don’t deserve our precious time and attention. And we do not always endanger gospel unity when we choose to withhold our engagement. Like Jesus taught, we might need to scope out the situation, shake it off, and sometimes, not even try.

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About Michael Yorke

Michael Yorke holds a degree in Historical Theology from Wheaton College Graduate School in Illinois. He thinks and writes at the intersection of race, history, and Christian theology with a view toward a liberative and antiracist future. He is married to Chelsea and their first child will be born in December.

A Word on Trump-Supporting Latinos

It should already be common knowledge. It should not need repeating. Still, the obvious truth of the “Latino community” was, for lack of a better word, discovered by many on election night. With surprise and disbelief, political analysts spent the days after the election discussing a simple truth: Latin@s are not a monolith. We already know this. It was not news to us, but what the election did reveal was the deep divisions disintegrating the Latin@ community. Some news outlets were quick to simplify this division, pointing to generational distinctions to explain who voted for Trump or Biden. Others proposed it was a difference of regionality. A few thought it could be reduced to nation-of-origin. In all cases, these simplifications are reductions of reality that prove more about the analyzing world than they do about nuestra gente.

I am not going to explain why an increased number of Latin@s voted for Trump. Political scientists and sociologists will do enough of that in their writing. My concern is for those Latin@s who are feeling betrayed by these voters. Among our supporters and friends, fellow activists, and nonprofit workers, many are angry. In the moment, many of my colleagues were tempted to fury, and some took to social media to lacerate their familia with “prophetic speech.” I understand this frustration well. For a decade now, my work in Christian Higher Ed has been in entrenched, white, evangelical spaces. Many of the Latin@s I meet along the way are actively working against the pursuit of justice, and at times, I retaliate too. There is, however, a person the Spirit keeps bringing to my attention since the election. His story is worthy of reflection because it is a story of empire, betrayal, and Christ’s response to both.

Passing through Jericho

Of the four gospel writers, Luke stressed the upside-down Kingdom of God and revealed Jesus as the liberator. Jesus came to “proclaim the Good news to the poor… to proclaim liberty to the captives… to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Lk. 4:17). Jesus subverts the religious and political establishments of Israel and Rome. Like Moses, He is a deliverer. On His way to Jerusalem to make His ultimate sacrifice, Jesus passes through a borderland city named Jericho. At the time, this border city served as a customs station, an outpost of the Roman empire. The shock of Jesus’ passage through Jericho was who Jesus visited while there.

Luke tells us that Jesus stopped for one person in Jericho, Zacchaeus. He was a rich man, the chief tax collector, a publican. Zacchaeus was responsible for the extortion of his own people. Therefore, he was hated and despised by most Israelites and barred from religious practice because of his betrayal. In fact, Jesus’ words at the end of the story suggest that the Jews considered Zacchaeus’ sin so severe, he was no longer one of them (19:9); They disowned him. Yet despite his service to Rome and his role in oppressing the Jews, Jesus called Zacchaeus down from the tree to dine with him in his home. The scandal of Jesus’ choice caused the crowds to grumble. How could Jesus welcome this man? Worst, why would Jesus choose to dine in his home?

¿Y que con el Publicano?

Many of my ministry friends think of Trump-supporting Latin@s as modern-day tax collectors. Their view is that Latin@s in power have reached their position by following the path of Zacchaeus. By aligning themselves with the empire, they are elevated from among their own, only to support a structure that oppresses their people. And indeed, some have done that. But the story of Zacchaeus is instructive for our moment. Jesus’ words to the Jewish crowd bear repeating to the angry Latin@: “the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (19:10). What transformed Zacchaeus was not judgment – of which he got plenty from fellow Jews – but kindness. Jesus did not resist Zacchaeus, He welcomed him. His welcome changed this man. The minute Zacchaeus’ feet hit the ground, he reversed his injustices, paying back what he stole beyond what the Law required.

This Thanksgiving we have an opportunity to bear witness to the gospel as we (virtually) dine with Trump-supporting family. Our welcome and embrace, despite their betrayal, is an echo of Jesus’ love for Zacchaeus and His love for us. As we pray prayers of thanksgiving, pray as non-innocent tax collectors, not self-righteous Pharisees (Lk. 18:9-14). Remember what Paul asked self-righteous Jews later in Rome: “do you presume on the riches of [God’s] kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4). It’s kindness, not judgment, that transforms the tax collector.

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ABOUT EMANUEL PADILLA

Emanuel Padilla is President of World Outspoken, a ministry dedicated to preparing the mestizo church for cultural change through training, content, and partnership development. He is also an instructor of Bible and Theology at Moody Bible Institute. Emanuel is committed to drawing the insights of the Latina/o church for the blessing of the wider church body. He consults with churches on issues of diversity, organizational culture, and community engagement.

Are Black Bodies Cursed? Dominican Racial Identity and the Life of Oscar Wao

“The family claims the first sign was that Abelard’s third and final daughter… was born black. And not just any kind of black. But black black – kongoblack, shangoblack, kaliblack, zapoteblack, rekhablack – and no amount of fancy Dominican racial legerdemain was going to obscure the fact. That’s the kind of culture I belong to: people took their child’s black complexion as an ill omen.””

— Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, 248

During the early stages of this project on Afro-Latin@s, I had a conversation with my cousin about Dominican racial identity. My cousin worked at a bank and often perplexed Dominican clients when she asked them to mark their race. “Dominican,” they’d respond. “No, your race.” The confused client would look at the list in front of them for a moment, read past the more common designations: White… Black, and self-identify as “Indio.” Not Black. Not White. Indio.

I recently had a similar conflict filling out the U.S. Census for me and my son. After looking over the list for far too long, I circled “other” and wrote “Hispanic/Dominican.” Dominican, and especially Dominican-American racialization is a complex subject mixed with a variety of understandings and histories.[i] Ginetta E.B. Candelario notes that “for much of Dominican history, the national body has been defined as not-black, even as black ancestry has been grudgingly acknowledged. In the place of blackness, officially identity discourses and displays have held that Dominicans are racially Indian and culturally Hispanic.”[ii]

To many observers, this racial identification is a denial of what is visually undeniable (“Dominicans are Black”) and proves that Dominican histories, social hierarchies, and political policies have and continue to contribute to Dominican anti-Black sentiment - see Haitian immigration and citizenship in the Dominican Republic. Historians, sociologists and ethnographers have substantiated this claim to one degree or another. Literature also provides a unique lens to examine Dominican racial identity and its role in establishing anti-negritud (anti-Blackness) in our people. This article will consider the topic in conversation with the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscao Wao by Dominican-American author, Junot Díaz.[1]

The novel tells the story of Oscar de León, an overweight Dominican nerd living in Patterson, New Jersey. The novel goes to great lengths to explain that Oscar was not a “normal Dominican.” And yet his story unfolds within the landscape of the Dominican experience. Though he is the protagonist of the story, his story is told alongside the stories of his sister Lola, his mother Beli, and his abuelo Abelard Luis Cabral. Our characters are set in New Jersey, then in Dominican Republic and back again. And because this is a Dominican story, Rafael Trujillo and el Trujillato (The Era of Trujillo) shape the lives of our primary characters. But this isn’t typical historical fiction. This story is a Fukú story.

The Fukú: A Curse on Black Bodies

The narrator of the story is Yunior, a “proto-typical” Dominican who ends up dating Lola and rooming with Oscar in college. Yunior provides commentary throughout the story. In the first chapter he explains the prevailing belief in Fukú in Dominican culture. “Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú – generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World.”[iii] The Curse came from Africa, but to Dominicans, Rafael Trujillo is its high priest. Yunior helpfully notes, “It was believed, even in educated circles, that anyone who plotted against Trujillo would incur a fukú most powerful, down to the seventh generation and beyond.”[iv] So this is a story about a family that crossed Trujillo so badly, they had incurred a Fukú for at least three generations. Given our limited space, our focus will be on the curse itself rather than Abelard’s offense against Trujillo.

Throughout the novel, two realities are linked together. Our primary characters have black skin, and the unfolding of their lives suggests that a generational curse has in fact been placed over their lives. With the exception of Abelard and La Inca, attention is given to each of our primary characters’ black complexion. In school, Beli’s black complexion is noted by a classmate. “You black, [a classmate said], fingering Beli’s thin forearm. Black-black.”[v] Lola observes that she has her mother’s complexion which means “[she] is dark.” In D.R., a boyfriend calls her “his morena.” Oscar too is notably of dark complexion. His afro, along with his other “non-Dominican traits” confuse those around him and they question whether he actually is Dominican or not. Alone, these descriptions might seem insignificant: evidence of family resemblance. But they serve a more significant role in the novel and its examination of Dominican racial identity.

To family members, Beli’s dark complexion was evidence that the family had been cursed. Shortly after her birth, her mother stepped in front of a moving truck and her two sisters each died under unusual circumstances. Beli was left an orphan. “She was so dark [that] no one on Abelard’s side of the family would take her… and no one outside the family wanted the darkchild to live.”[vi] Beli was eventually sold to strangers to work as a servant girl. She’s eventually rescued by La Inca, a cousin of her father who discovers that the girl is alive and being kept in a chicken coop after she is burned by hot oil for “skipping out on work to attend classes.”[vii]

A few years later, Beli falls for Dionisio who is married to none other than Trujillo’s sister. When la hermana Trujillo discovers the affair, she has Beli taken out to a sugar cane field where she is nearly beaten to death. Yunior reports that “they beat her like she was a slave. Like she was a dog.”[viii] While laying there she slides into a deep lonliness “[where] she would dwell forever, alone, black, fea.”

These descriptions are not accidental. The author intends for us to recall the slaves who worked the sugar cane fields during early Spanish Colonialism. During the Spanish conflicts with France and England, the economy of the Island of Hispanola collapsed. Eventually many Spanish Whites left the island. In their place descendants of White men and Indigenous and African women “ascended the social ladder.” Together with freed Blacks they became the “blancos de la tierra.” The term black “came to be used in Santo Domingo only in reference to those who were still enslaved.” Beli and later Oscar, in his final moments, become stand-ins for the the histories of Blacks who received violence in Sugar Cane fields on this island.[ix]  

The lives of these primary characters seem to confirm a sinister truth: our Black protagonists were under the fukú; they were cursed. It isn’t always clear whether their Blackness was the Curse itself or the evidence of their being cursed, but the problem remained. They were Black, and black bodies in the Dominican Republic have often been subjected to marginalization, violence, and trauma.

The novel also demonstrates another side of the Dominican racial imaginary: the identification as non-Black and more importantly non-Haitian. Throughout the novel, to be Haitian is viewed as an insult. When Oscar returns from his first trip to Santo Domingo, his uncle greets him, “Great… now you look Haitian.” Later, on his return trip to the Island, Oscar notices a group of peddlers on the street. “So dark,” he noticed, and his mother said, dismissively, “Maldito haitianos.”[x] On that same trip, Lola and Beli have an interesting exchange at a restaurant. The waiters look at their group strangely, Lola teases her mother and says “Watch out Mom… they probably think you’re Haitian.” In response her mother retorts, “La única haitiana aquí eres tú, mi amor.”[xi] Anti-Haitian rhetoric was a strategy implemented throughout Dominican Republic’s history, especially during Trujillo’s reign. Haitians were Black, not so Dominicans.

Fukú vs Zafa

Yunior began the story by framing it as a fukú story. But at the end of the first chapter he introduces a second folk word: the zafa, or the counter spell. The novel, as a whole, is tragic. Upon first reading, one is left with the impression that the fukú will remain over this family for generations to come. But when Lola’s daughter is introduced in the final pages of the novel, Yunior hints at the possibility of a more powerful magic: a zafa of sorts. Lola’s daughter is dark like her mother, uncle and grandmother before her. But on her neck she wears three pendants: “the one that Oscar wore as a baby, the one that Lola wore as a baby, and the one that Beli was given by La Inca… powerful elder magic.” Yunior is not completely convinced it will work. He imagines eventually she will hear the word fukú. Maybe then, he imagines, she will come to see him and he will bring out old photographs and papers. Yunior doesn’t name it, but I suspect behind this little dream of his, is the counter spell itself. In those photographs and the pendants is connection and memory.

Together the opening and close of the novel suggests a way out from under the Curse of the New World. The Curse isn’t Blackness. It is the racialization that we’ve experienced and participated in throughout our histories. The Curse is the trauma and the silence of a people who experienced violence and marginalization under Trujillo and then again in the Diaspora. The Curse finds expression in our loss of memory and our erasure of all of our history, especially our African history.

Junot Díaz has often noted that his life and writings have been shaped in large part by silence caused by trauma.[xii] Throughout the novel, his characters are also made silent. Beli never says a word about her childhood trauma. She never tells her children about Dionisio, nor about the night she was almost beaten to death. Oscar doesn’t get the chance to finish his own story. His last correspondence to Yunior and Lola are lost. So what is the counter spell? The counter spell is connection and memory. Yunior is right when he suspects that the book is his own sort of counterspell. The act of storytelling, when it is honest and embracing of the good and the bad parts, can become our counterspell.

Our racial histories are complex. How can they not be when we are the fruit of the “new world?” How can they not be when we are the heirs of Trujillos’s Santo Domingo? How can they not be when we are the Diaspora, seeds planted in United States and all over the rest of the world? We cannot deny our afrodescendencia. Nor can we deny our own complicity in anti-negritud. So we must speak the counter curse. We must break the silence of our past traumas and our own acts of violence and tell our full history.

About Kerwin A. Rodriguez

Kerwin A. Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor of Pastoral Studies at Moody Bible Institute. He teaches in the areas of preaching, cultural dynamics, spiritual formation, and Bible interpretation. He is currently a PhD in Preaching student at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary. His doctoral research will be on Caribbean Latin@ preaching with a particular focus on the Dominican Republic. Kerwin and his wife, Meredith live in the Humboldt Park neighborhood in Chicago with their son Ezra Joél, where they serve in their local church, Good News Bible Church.

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Footnotes

[1] Note: It should be acknowledge that in May 2018 Junot Díaz was accused of sexual misconduct and verbal abuse by multiple women. In a statement made to the New York Times, Díaz stated, “I take responsibility for my past.” He later amended his statement and told the Boston Globe, “There is a line between being a bad boyfriend and having a lot of regret, and predatory behavior.” This article is not the place to give extensive commentary on the serious allegations made about Junot Díaz’s conduct. It should be noted that shortly before the allegations were made public he wrote about his own experience as a victim of sexual abuse, and a prominent theme throughout his writings is the relationship between sexuality and trauma.

[i] Milagros Ricourt, The Dominican Racial Imaginary: Surveying the Landscape of Race and Nation in Hispaniola (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016).

[ii] Ginetta E. B. Candelario, Black behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 18.

[iii] Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, 1.

[iv] Díaz, 3.

[v] Díaz, 84.

[vi] Díaz, 252.

[vii] Díaz, 255.

[viii] Díaz, 147.

[ix] Ashley Kunsa, “History, Hair, and Reimagining Racial Categories in Junot Diáz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 54, no. 2 (2013): 211–24.

[x] Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, 273.

[xi] Díaz, 276.

[xii] Junot Díaz, “Junot Díaz: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma,” The New Yorker, accessed October 12, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-silence-the-legacy-of-childhood-trauma.

Erasing Afro-Latinos? Pt. 2

Intercultural competence is a difficult skill to teach. In a single classroom of 20 students, there is a myriad of complex possibilities. Each person is an intersection of theological beliefs, regional culture, family patterns, personal temperament, conflict style, previous trainings … the list is difficult to exhaust. Of course, the main challenge is the variety of racializations and experiences with racism each student brings to the discussion. To measure the range of skill present in the class, I use an assessment tool called the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). This tool measures intercultural competence on a spectrum consisting of five levels, the third of which is called “Minimization.” According to the IDI, minimization is a mindset that “highlights commonalities in both human Similarity (basic needs) and Universalism (universal values and principles) that can mask a deeper understanding of cultural differences.”[1] In other words, those who minimize tend to flatten difference and reduce conflict by emphasizing – often overemphasizing – what a group shares in common. “We are all the same in Christ,” a minimizer might say, dismissing the differences between believers. Imagine my discomfort when I discovered my use of mestizaje was perceived by some as minimizing.

There is a history of minimization in Hispanic communities in the US, and I unpacked it in a previous article. Minimization is about keeping peace. For minorities relying on this intercultural strategy, it is about “going along to get along;” it is about building rapport between people of different backgrounds. Minimization often works, making it harder for people to want to try a different, more complex form of intercultural engagement. Perhaps many of the scholars who wrote about mestizaje in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, those Dr. Santiago-Vendrell and others critique, did not go far enough. Perhaps they believed minimization was sufficient for their task. Perhaps they were unaware of their minimizing, as is often the case. Regardless, looking back on over thirty years of discourse built on Elizondo and others’ use of mestizaje, it becomes quite apparent that their intentional minimization introduced problems they did not foresee.

Nestor Medina, in his book Mestizaje: Remapping Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/O Catholicism, writes an extended critique of US-Latina/o theologians who “constructed a romantic version of mestizaje that naively promised the inclusion of all peoples but effectively silenced the rich diversity of the U.S. Latina/o population.”[2] He evaluates the work of several major cultural and theological scholars and demonstrates ways their use of mestizaje continues to exclude, homogenize, and at worst, reinscribe racial hierarchies present in the Spanish colonial empire. The groups most affected by the dominant use of mestizaje, according to Dr. Medina, are the living Indigenous and Afro-Latinas/os present in the diaspora and in Latin America. Detached from the history that birthed the language of mestizaje, scholars too often present a utopian vision that is not grounded in present conditions or history. Therefore, Medina recommends US-Latina/o theologians engage in a self-critical examination of mestizaje and mutual conversations with Afro-Latina/o and Indigenous theological partners without demanding their acceptance of the language.

This article is an attempt to do the first of Dr. Medina’s recommendations by presenting an intercultural theology of mestizaje. I am going to rely on a foremother who introduced a use of mestizaje that avoids the minimization tendencies of other scholars. Both habits of minimization (e.g. flattening difference and reducing conflict) will be dealt with directly, focusing on the particularity of the discussion and those having it. After surveying each minimization tendency and how it affects our theological discourse, I intend to provide my own construal of mestizaje, defining the term and the two theological themes key to my understanding of it. World Outspoken is also taking up the second recommendation, so this pair of articles will be followed by a series of explorations of identity, history, and theology written by Afro-Latina/o ministry partners.[3] The goal is to expand our theological horizons to account for the great wealth present in our whole community. To that end, I present my views here as an open invitation for dialogue.

Flattening Difference

“Seeking to present a united front among U.S. Latina/o theologians and scholars, mestizaje-intermixture quickly became characteristic of the U.S. Latina/o communities and obscured the “unmixed” and “differently mixed” indigenous and African voices among U.S. Latina/o populations.”[4]

There are Latinas/os who are not mestizas/os (i.e. mixed children of Spanish and Indigenous blood). There are also mixed heritage Latinas/os who do not identify with the term. Part of the problem that developed as mestizaje became the dominant theological category to describe intermixture and promote a future vision of peace and unity is that it absorbed – in what I imagine felt like an act of force – the unmixed indigenous, unmixed Afro-Latino, differently mixed Afro-Latino, and others into an identity designation that historically did not include them. Furthermore, in some places in Latin America, the term is presently associated with their disenfranchisement. It is reasonable, then, for non-mestizos to resist the use of mestizaje to describe their experience and/or identity.

The error committed by Elizondo and others was to construe mestizaje as a single global process that has already or would eventually produce a future, mestizo people.[5] I agree with Dr. Medina’s claim that, “Mestizaje must be seen in the plural sense and qualified in light of the historical contexts from which those plural meanings emerge.”[6] In the post-colonial world, there are many processes of intermixture, each described with terms contextualized to capture certain nuances (e.g. mulato, creole, metis, sato, etc.).  It is an oversimplification to suggest that Latina/o theologians and scholars have an agreed upon definition of mestizaje. Even in limiting the scope to the U.S., there are competing and even contradictory notions of what mestizaje means in this context, so it should be noted that not all scholars reduced mestizaje to a single process tied to a single identity. While this is the dominant understanding of mestizaje in the US, there is an alternative worth strong consideration.

The Foremother of Mestiza Discourse

I previously introduced Elizondo as the leading voice on mestizo scholarship, but there is an alternative, arguably as influential voice that deserves credit for defining the uses of mestizaje in the US. Her name is Dra. Gloria Anzaldúa. She was a Chicana scholar, focusing on feminist theory, cultural studies, and LGBTQ+ advocacy. Her books have been studied in a wide variety of disciplines, demonstrating her influence on several academic fields. For my purposes, Anzaldúa’s book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, is of particular interest. The book is a collection of essays and poems building a framework for understanding the experiences of those who live in the borderlands. Anzaldúa grew up miles from the border between Mexico and the US, and she used her borderlands experience as a metaphor for describing several kinds of tensions in the complex development of identities. “For Anzaldúa, the borderlands are important not only for the hybridity that occurs there, but also for the perspective they afford to their inhabitants.”[7]

What is unique about Anzaldúa is that she does not reduce the community of the borderlands to one identity. As a lesbian woman, she recognized the need for multiple identity markers that shift and rearrange in dialog with one’s context. The borderlands reveal that all category designations for people are social constructions. For Anzaldúa, mestizas gain the ability to see “the arbitrary nature of all social categories,” and their life in the borderlands builds in them the ability to “hold multiple social perspectives while simultaneously maintaining a center that revolves around fighting against concrete material forms of oppression.”[8] The borderlands is also home to Afro-Latin@s. It is the dissonant home of all those who experience nepantalism, “an Aztec word meaning torn between ways.”[9] More recently, my friend Dr. Chao Romero recaptures this idea in his use of the term Brown.[10] Dr. Chao Romero is careful to stress:

As a metaphor for racial, cultural, and social liminality, brown should be considered a fluid “space” as opposed to any body of static, essentialized cultural characteristics.  In this sense, “brown” is an apt descriptor for many cultural and ethnic groups in the United States—such as Asian Americans, South Asians, Pacific Islanders, Middle Easterners, and the fast growing mixed race community-- who also find themselves in the liminal space somewhere betwixt and between that of Black and White.[11]

This metaphorical place, the borderlands, is a powerful and useful tool for theological reflection. It supports one of the two theological themes fundamental to my understanding and use of mestizaje. It indicates that mestizaje is an exilic process.

Mestizaje as Exile

In Scripture, the exile is carried out by a violent enemy of Israel. The people of Israel are dislodged from their land, separated from loved ones, and absorbed – by force – into a foreign kingdom. Those left in the homeland are, in some ways, impoverished by this separation, and there would later be conflict between them and those who return from the exile because of it. This displacement and disenfranchisement profoundly shaped God’s people for the rest of the story, and the exile even becomes an identity marker for the Church (1 Peter 2:11). Mestizaje is a process that produces exiled people.

Like the Israelites in the OT, Chicanas like Anzaldúa lost their tie to the land when an enemy of Mexico occupied it. This occupation produced similar dissonance for those now exiled Mexicans. They are disassociated with the land, separated from their families, and absorbed – by the force of war – into a country not their own. Describing Anzaldúa’s context, Dr. Medina writes, “the political barrier between the two communities strained and oftentimes ruptured the connection of Mexican Americans with their ancestral land. This break forced Mexican Americans to find new and creative ways of asserting their identity as people.”[12] For Anzaldúa, this meant taking on Chicana, Mestiza, Mexicana, and other identities as were appropriate for her context. On the east coast, among Puerto Ricans, this exile from the homeland caused some Ricans to take on a black identity. 

Anzaldúa argues that the exile forced the production of multiple new identities. Rather than flatten the borderlands experience, a better understanding of mestizaje is that it indeed produces a multiplicity of “between world” identities. It also demonstrates that this does not happen peacefully or without power differentials. “The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision.”[13] Later, in attempt to describe the creative power of the Mestiza, Anzaldúa writes, “though it is a source of intense pain” the energy of a mestiza consciousness comes from the continual breaking down and rebuilding of identities and making room for ambiguity. For many, mestizaje opens old wounds, but Anzaldúa leverages these wounds to resist the duality of the world around her. She is not like the Mexican, nor is she like the Anglo American. She is neither. The exiled mestiz@s make their home in the borderlands, and that place includes others as well (Afro Latin@s, Indigenous, etc). But, as Anzaldúa demonstrates, the borderlands themselves are not without conflict.

Reducing Conflict

“We can learn from the “mistakes” of mestizaje about constructing alternative societies based upon the celebration of difference and diversity without making universal, homogenizing claims and without erasing or silencing the histories and stories of other people groups by bringing premature resolution to internal conflicts through superficial unity that forecloses those conflicts.”[14]

In their introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Anzaldúa’s book, Cantú y Hurtado write, “[Anzaldúa’s] frequent visits to Mexico … also made her keenly aware that oppression was not the exclusive province of one country or another, of one racial group or another, or even of one ethnic group or another.”[15] Their description of her experience hints to the conflicts between Mexican and Mexican Americans produced by the exilic experience. Medina elaborates this reality, writing, “There were differences and tensions between Mexicans and Mexican Americans: to the former, the latter had sold out to the U.S. culture and were not true Mexicans; the latter were oblivious to the social and political plight of the former.”[16] The borderlands are charged with internal conflict among the exiles who call it home.

The sad truth of life in the borderlands is that many Latinas/os in power have reached their position by following the path of Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector. By aligning themselves with the empire, they are elevated from among their own, only to support a structure that oppresses their people. In Brown Church, Chao Romero uses a different biblical illustration, comparing these Latinas/os to the Sadducees and the Herodians, sell-outs who colluded with the Romans. He writes, “In the 21st century it is the Ted Cruzes of our community—those who leverage their education, money, and light pigmentation to gain honorary membership in the white social club of privilege.”[17]  Afro-Latin@s and the Indigenous have more than sufficient evidence of the ways “white” Latinas/os have not been their allies or brethren.[18] This reality is part of the reason Afro-Latin@s and Indigenous communities resist mestizaje.

As I demonstrated in part one of this series, in Puerto Rico mestizaje was a process by which some Latinas/os pursued whiteness and supported the oppression of blackness. In describing this wickedness, I think Anzaldúa provides a corrective for mestizaje not by denying this evil but by naming it as part of the mestiza identity. Here too, Justo González presents a key theological contribution to the use of mestizaje. For both scholars, the mestiza/o is someone marked by impurity, marked by non-innocence.

Mestizaje as Impurity (Non-Innocence)

Anzaldúa has a remarkable and distinct voice on conflicts in the borderlands. Rather than distance herself from the conflicts, she commits to using some of her energy to serve as a mediator.[19] She believed she could serve as a mediator because the mestiza consciousness “serves as a mode of self-critique.”[20] Anzaldúa resisted the idea of simple two-sided conflicts where one group is oppressor and the other is oppressed. She believed “no one is exempt from contributing to oppression in limited contexts.”[21] This idea that all mestiza/os are complicit in and inherit guilt is echoed in the words of Justo González. González did something masterful when redeeming mestizaje for theological readings of Scripture and history. One of the first elements in his theological account is this idea that mestizos carry a “noninnocent history.” For Dr. González, this is about challenging the myth intrinsic to white readings of history. He writes,

“Our Spanish ancestors took the lands of our [Native] ancestors. Some of our [Native] ancestors practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. Some of our Spanish forefathers raped our [Native] foremothers. Some of our [Native] foremothers betrayed their people in favor of the invaders. It is not a pretty story. But it is more real than the story that white settlers came to this land with pure motivations, and that any abuse of inhabitants was the exception rather than the rule. It is also a story resulting in a painful identity.”[22]

Both writers argue that mestiza/os are never beyond guilt. They are instead, quite comfortable confessing the guilt they inherit, and their complicity in current injustice. The heart of the colonizer is never far away for the mestiza/o because they know its in them. Indeed, this is true of exiled Israel too. The reason Israel was exiled was because they had Babylonian hearts; they built a nation of oppression and injustice in connection with their idolatry. The notion of inherited guilt must be extended to include what is missing from dominant understandings of mestizaje. If Dr. González is right that the mestizo identity is a “painful identity” marked by inherited guilt, this has to include the ways mestiza/os have made every attempt to move up the scale to white and away from their black heritage. Surely our inherited guilt does not stop with our earliest ancestors. Those mestizos, criollos, mulatos, and satos that assimilated whiteness at the expense of their black family incur an additional weight of guilt that only complicates our history and further marks our identity. We cannot deny our status-hungry ladder climbing nor the ways whiteness encouraged it.

Para el Mestizo y la Afro-Latina

Given the complexity of these discussions, its best to refer to a plurality of mestizajes than a singular mestizaje. Scholars like Medina and others invite those of us who use this language to be open to dialog with those who resist it. There are multiple identities experiencing the exile of the borderlands. Those marked by these identities have been marginalized by an outside empire, but they also marginalize one another. Therefore, all the borderlands exiles need the great deliverer to rescue them and bring peace among them. Anzaldúa admonishes all the residents of the borderlands to know each other more deeply. She writes, “we need to know the history of their struggle, and they need to know ours … each of us must know our Indian lineage, our afro-mestizaje, our history of resistance.”[23] In this set of articles, I attempted to make myself more clear and better known. I invite the readers to stay close to World Outspoken as the next articles in the series will introduce the histories of Afro-Latin@s who share space with us in the borderlands.

ABOUT EMANUEL PADILLA

Emanuel Padilla is President of World Outspoken, a ministry dedicated to preparing the mestizo church for cultural change through training, content, and partnership development. He is also an instructor of Bible and Theology at Moody Bible Institute. Emanuel is committed to drawing the insights of the Latina/o church for the blessing of the wider church body. He consults with churches on issues of diversity, organizational culture, and community engagement.

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Footnotes

[1] Hammer, Mitchell R. Intercultural Development Inventory Resource Guide, (Olney, MD: IDI LLC, 2012), 31.

[2] Nestor Medina and Nstor Medina, Mestizaje: Remapping Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/O Catholicism (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2009), 59.

[3] There are additional writings planned with Indigenous ministry partners, but these will publish at a later date. 

[4] Medina and Medina, Mestizaje, 82.

[5] It is worth remembering that for Elizondo, mestizas/os were those who lived in a dual culture, dual conscious environment.

[6] Medina and Medina, Mestizaje, 137.

[7] Gloria Anzaldúa, Norma Cantú, and Aída Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4th ed. Edition (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2012), 7.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 100.

[10] Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity, n.d.

[11] Romero, Brown Church, 26-27. Quoting Asian American theologian Sang Hyun Lee, Chao Romero defines liminality as “the situation of being in between two or more worlds, and includes the meaning of being located at the periphery or edge of a society.” (see pg. 26).

[12] Medina and Medina, Mestizaje, 61.

[13] Anzaldúa, Cantú, and Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera, 100.

[14] Medina and Medina, Mestizaje, 132.

[15] Anzaldúa, Cantú, and Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera 5.

[16] Medina and Medina, Mestizaje, 62.

[17] Romero, Brown Church, 163.

[18] Derrick Bell calls this racial ladder climbing “advanced racial standing.”

[19] Anzaldúa, Cantú, and Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera, 107.

[20] Medina and Medina, Mestizaje, 75.

[21] Anzaldúa, Cantú, and Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera, 8.

[22] Justo L. González, Manana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective (Abingdon Press, 2010), 40.

[23] Anzaldúa, Cantú, and Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera, 109.