Socialization: A Way To Heal From Soul Trauma
Since the early 17th century, the people of African descent have an unsettled debt beyond an agricultural and economic remuneration. The psychological, social and emotional damage that has occurred due to the continual systemic assault on Black identity, Black bodies, and Black life; it must be assessed and repaired. It is necessary to recognize the value in the original African ways of being and the indigenous social practices of both African people and the descendants of African people in that assessment and repair. In the African worldview, there is no separation of the sacred and secular such that their spiritual being inextricably connected to the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the person and community. Without this assessment the perpetuation of this assault, identified in this project as Soul Trauma, continues.
“In the African worldview, there is no separation of the sacred and secular...”
Soul Trauma occurs when dominant forces interrupt, diminish or in some instances, destroy the soul - the very spiritual nature that under-girds African culture. K. Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, an African tradition specialist, states:
“The greatest challenge that faces the people of African descent displaced from our grounding in the Motherland is social fragmentation, disconnectedness and axiological or value confusion. The spiritual strength of our enslaved Ancestors brought us through the brutal and inhumane disruption of the MAAFA. They did this by finding ways to raise their children and teach them values. Indeed, the only source of resistance available to us was the strength of our spirit – our "Soul Force" (Leonard Barrett) – which we used to recreate community continually. This sense of community was always a strong and powerful force on which African descendants have depended during the major historical periods of our saga in this forced Diaspora.”1
This continued social fragmentation, disconnectedness and axiological/value confusion inflicts trauma upon the lives of people of African descent. This trauma deteriorates our cultural consciousness and our being, as individuals and community, thus inflicting Soul Trauma. Soul Trauma is forced upon African Americans by sustaining systemic issues through furthering violence and evil vis a vis colonization, genocide, dismantlement of the sense of community and essence of family. Soul Trauma imbeds fear and distrust within our community.
As people of African descent, we inherently understand Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu, which means a person is a person because of people. We also locate our humanity, our being and our soul by the way we live between compassion and justice. Our healing from Soul Trauma and reconstruction of the African culture begins with Sankofa, the “reclamation of those processes which become the threads of our mended cultural quilt;”2 while the spaces of discourse, visioning, and action of Pan-Africanism is created for our new generation of African American youth.
The repair of Soul Trauma comes through reframing education as a spiritual task. Education as social transmission draws out or taps into the ingenuity of our Creator that resides within. The effects of systemic white supremacy and hegemony (the trauma) are countered by an educational process that “touches the spirit." This idea aims to deactivate the assault and consequence of Soul Trauma by repairing the purpose of education. Thus “drawing out” or “touching the spirit” of Black women activist in ministry as a way of being more than just a response to tools of this assault. This is framed by examining the theological research and analysis on how the theology of Kindezi impacts community.
How does the theology of Kindezi impact community? According, K. Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, the author of Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting, this Bantu word, Kindezi means a “holistically schooling other people's children with love and an eye to the future of our village.” The African civilization valued this framework of a spiritual community to be a “never-ending process of growth, development, transformation, and accountability. The well-being of the community depends on the health and wholeness, the successful maturation of the persons who constitute its membership.”2 As we seek to understand and practice the theology of Kindezi, we, in turn, will realize that "our indigenous socialization practices help us to clarify our purpose and vision"3 as a community of Africans, both the people of the diaspora and continent. To that end, community is the primary transmission of socialization. It is how values, customs, traditions and history are transmitted.
As the fundamental driver of socialization, when a community lacks unity and commitment to its foundational theology, such as the theology of Kindezi, our healthy way of being is destroyed and Soul Trauma materializes. Thus, mental and social confusion occurs which suppresses all evidence of African consciousness making it challenging to attain freedom. For example,
“the MAAFA separated Africans from traditional spiritual values, family, culture, and land; forcing a total disconnect with a healthy African foundation. Africans were tortured and killed for practicing traditional religion, speaking traditional languages, using African names, and more. By the time Africans had gained a semblance of freedom to reclaim traditional practices, anti-African propaganda machines had already succeeded in enforcing a mental disengagement between Africans an anything African.”4
Therefore, the dismantlement of the community produced by the disruptions masked as racism, classism and gender discrimination caused the socialization of that said community to shift from their cultural way of being too accepting and normalizing colonization and oppression. When community is broken, the colonized cultures dominate and create genocidal systems to destroy and tear apart the mental, emotional, spiritual, financial health and family dynamics of the oppressed culture. These tactics of genocide on the people of African descent are the already seen horrors and effects of the enslavement of our ancestors that had,
"stripped all but the most crude gender identification from the Black body…the New- world, diasporic plight [of Black people] marked a theft of the body…[W]e lost at least gender difference in the outcome, and the female body becomes a territory of cultural and political maneuver, not at all gender-related, [or] gender specific. The materialized scene of unprotected female flesh – of female flesh ‘ungendered’ created an indeterminate social terrain for the articulation of Black gender identity…The Black female body, because it was the conduit through which enslavement passed to her descendants, was historically deemed the ground-zero site for the propagation of Black inferiority.”5
Furthermore, the effects of ownership and exploitation of Black women during slavery territorialized her body.
“Territorialization marks and names the scale of the body, turning ideas that justify bondage into corporeal evidence of racial difference. Once, the racial-sexual body is territorialized, it is marked as decipherable and knowable-as subordinate, inhumane rape-able, deviant, procreative placeless.”6
To that end, the traumatization caused by these erroneous acts, impact Black woman, specifically Black woman minsters/seminarians that are activists because we share the implications of the territorialization but also, we are required to serve, pray for/with, counsel and preach to our sisters and brothers in our state of pain and trauma. We advocate against the practices and systems as we dismiss our need to heal. We live with the issues of our households, marriages, singleness and vocations while leading lectures and panels on the injustices of women as the trauma to our soul continues to fester and destroy the essence of our being. We sit helplessly as we cater to all the others while no one checks on us. We are judged and marked as emotional, unstable or unreliable as a result of our trauma, yet we still show up to lead a Bible study or preside over a service, while we are not our optimal best self. In our trauma, Black women minster/seminarian activists continue with our regularly scheduled lives dismissing the need to breathe, exhale and heal because we have normalized this trauma and our way of life as we maneuver with it.
Asa Hilliard states, that:
“Africa is the mother of civilization, and the land where the very foundations in socialization practices were laid; influencing cultures all over the world… [and with] fully functioning cultures of people who were in control of their own destiny.”7
I am suggesting that socialization is the path towards healing for Black women ministers/seminarians in the movement. The task of reclaiming, remembering and reengaging the indigenous socialization practices of Africa is advantageous to the health and survival of Black woman minister but also the community of people of African descent.
Romans 12:2 states, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will,”8 supports how socialization, the use of native practices, rituals, and perceptions of community, the ancestors and God is for the enhancement and betterment of community. During the time of this text, the early Christians had the opportunity to spread the gospel from one synagogue to another without retribution from the central authority because the Jews in Rome were a diverse community of individual structured congregations. Eventually, tensions increased between Christians and Jews which led to public confrontation and the expulsion of all Jews including the Christians Jews from Rome.
While the Jews, were no longer allowed to assemble in synagogues, the small number of Gentile Christians continued to meet in homes. Laster, in AD 54, the Jews were allowed to return, yet the Jewish Christians came back to a different church. The Gentile Christians, no longer affiliated to the structures of the Jews or synagogue, had developed in number and assumed leadership roles in the church. Although the early Christians grew in number, the fact remains that Christianity grew out of the Jews traditions and was shaped by Roman culture and political structures. The Roman culture was often infused and repurposed in the lives of Christians. Instead of the early Christians being socialized to,
“Love… Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patience, in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality…Live in harmony with one another…”9
The early Christians socialization was more rooted in and manipulated by the Greco-Roman law and philosophy instead of fully adopting, claiming and conforming to the ways of Christianity.
When a community is deeply influenced by another culture, that community becomes the oppressed group. This was the case with the early Christians who profoundly shaped by Judaism and Roman cultural institutions. The early Christians like the people of African descent, more specifically Black women, were the oppressed and marginalized people and were operating in a lifestyle that was not conducive to their being, thus their soul. The Christians were living in a place of mental, spiritual and dare I dare emotional bondage. They were not aware of the damage occurring within them. The ideals of law and philosophy were not for the believer of Christ no more than the ideals of a white supremacist narrative are for Black women.
As “the most vulnerable and the most exploited members of the American society” Black women have been influenced by “the structure of the capitalist political economy [of the United States] …combined with patriarchal contempt for women has caused the Black woman to experience oppression that knows no ethical or physical bounds.”10 Another institution that has influenced Black women while suppressing them is the Church. The Church, specifically the Black Church, has been socialized by Western religious beliefs/theology that implies God first created Adam. He first walked the land, lived amongst creation and named the creatures. Then Eve was created from Adam’s rib, and he named her too, thus give Adam authority over Eve. This idea of the Creation story supports and is the genesis theory (pun intended) of inequality of men and women. However, imagine if Adam and Eve were twins. They were created by God at the same time, walked the land together, lived amongst the creations together and named the creatures together. Suppose Adam and Eve were the first co-caretakers of the earth? Well, this notion described by Oba T’Shaka in his book, Return to the African Mother Principle of Male and Female Equality, drastically shifts the principles of creation and sets up a different kind of socialization as it shows Adam and Eve coming into this world as equals. So, when Paul states, not to "conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind," Paul has not only given us the path to our healing from Soul Trauma but permission to remember Sankofa.
The interpretation of Paul’s appeal to be transformed by the renewal of the mind is critical to understand what the renewal of the minds entails; especially as Black women are in the process of transitioning into their journey of healing. An examination of commentaries revealed immense diversity in the way this phrase has been interpreted. For example, the mind has been understood as,
“the whole soul [that] is thought as the metaphysical and moral self-consciousness. While the Greek term nous, mind in English, means “to sniff” which suggests a “way of acquiring knowledge through the sense of smell” and in early Greek Literature, nous referred to a function which was defined as the ability to realize fully “the true nature or essence of a thing against its surface appearance. While, in Greek philosophy, “the main function of the mind was to discover the real character of the world as a whole, in contrast to other erroneous beliefs of most human beings.”11
However, the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Scriptures translates the nous, which the Lord has given to humans (Job7:17) and which God can fully understand (7:20) appears to the spirit of a person (7:15).
“The growing connection between the concepts of spirit and nous during the intertestamental times can be seen in the Apocrypha, and Philo suggested that the mind could not have made so straight an aim if there was not also the Divine Spirit guiding it to the truth. The person who is a faithful impress of the Divine image is the one who lives according to the Divine breath or Spirit.”12
As, people of African descent we are a people of both the head and heart, mind and spirit.
Culturally, we do not separate the two, and when Paul uses the term renewal or anakaino in Greek, the concept of renewal was often linked with God's Spirit and often described a new act of creation. For instance, in the Old Testament Jeremiah looks forward to the day when God makes a new covenant with Israel by putting his laws into their minds and writing them upon their hearts. Ezekiel also proclaims God’s promise to give his people a new heart and to put God’s Spirit in them. While this concept of the renewal of the mind reflects a myriad of interpretations, I believe and suggest the above mentioned provides a more cultural sound comprehension of the value and necessity of indigenous socialization, thus the theology of Kindezi. This perception completely changes, for the better, the mental, emotional, and spiritual state of the oppressed. It inserts a new holistic way of thinking of self and embracing one’s own culture, traditions and beliefs that lead the downtrodden to a path of mental, emotional and spiritual freedom so that healing can begin.
Lastly, the renewal of the mind is communal. It is a call for community ethical discernment. I am suggesting that Paul was not only referring to the renewal of individuals minds but to the way the church as a community perceived God and test God’s will. In 1 Corinthians 1:10, Paul calls on the church to be “united in the same mind (nous) so they can judge together what is right. A critical issue for the church in Rome was how Jewish and Gentile Christians could together discern God’s will for their lives. The renewal of the mind is a call for the shared perception and testing of God’s will. Ethics is a function of the church as a community. Individual ethics must always be understood in the context of community and in the light of one’s accountability to God (Roman 14). We have a responsibility to ourselves and collectively to practice dominant ethics and Black faith and liberation ethics.
NOTES
K. Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau and A. M. Lukondo-Wamba, Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting (Baltimore: Imprinted Editions, 2000), Introduction.
2Itihari Touré, interview by author, Chicago, IL, December 28, 2018.
3Iva E. Carruthers, “The Ideation of Blackness: Re-Centering A World Order” (Lecture, Lilly Foundation paper, March 2017).
4K. Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau and A. M. Lukondo-Wamba, Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting (Baltimore: Imprinted Editions, 2000), Introduction.
5Asa Hilliard and Nana Baffour Amankwatia II, African Power Affirming African Indigenous Socialization in the Face of the Culture Wars (Gainesville, FL: Makare Publishing Company, 2002), 3.
6Asa Hilliard and Nana Baffour Amankwatia II, African Power Affirming African Indigenous Socialization in the Face of the Culture Wars (Gainesville, FL: Makare Publishing Company, 2002), 3.
7Brittney C. Cooper, Beyond Respectability the Intellectual Thought of Race Women (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 20.
8Cooper, 20.
9Asa Hilliard and Nana Baffour Amankwatia II, African Power Affirming African Indigenous Socialization in the Face of the Culture Wars (Gainesville, FL: Makare Publishing Company, 2002), 2.
10 Cannon, Katie G. Black Womanist Ethics. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006.
11Doug Heidebrecht, “The Renewal of Perception: Romans 12:2 and Post Modernism,” Direction 25, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 55-62, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed January 16, 2019).
12Heidebrecht, 55-62.