While I love
Black History Month I am beginning to have my reservations about the
celebrations. Don’t get me wrong I love being able to talk about race,
decolonisation and creating a more racial diverse community. I think it is
vital to celebrate and know one’s history my reservations come from a different
place. I am a Christian and a woman of colour. In woke black circles those two
identities seem an anathema. To be a Christian in politically conscious black
circles is seen as a being of lower intelligence. I have been told I am a
brainwashed person who follows the colonisers religion the theology (or rather
lack of) to support that argument is shoddy at best.
Christianity in
Africa and Asia go back to the early era of the religion. I wont elaborate on
this point now but use your common sense. My issue with equating my religious
identity with colonisation colludes with right wing elements in the global
south and takes agency away from my decisions. One of my on going problems with a lot of post colonialism
has been the way agency has been taken away from colonial subjects, this does a
great injustice to post colonials who devoid of agency can only be thought of
in relation to their colonisation. Never being able to exert ones free will or
take ownership of one’s decisions the west becomes a site of untold anxiety.
As a Christian
woman from the global south I embody those anxieties. I have never been
patriotic enough for the country of my birth nor assimilated enough. In the UK
I am an anomaly as my ethnic identity is not congruent with my religious
identity to most people. In black circles I can only be an enemy of all things
libratory. The exclusion hurts because it shuts off all dialogue, it colludes
with those who kill Christians because they are too foreign, too anti national,
too different.
