Dr. Evans describes himself as growing up in fragmented settings that led to attending Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran churches. As a teenager lost in various destructive circumstances, he drew strength from biblical teaching he remembered hearing as a boy in a revivalist camp. He then moved into new life as he cried out to Jesus, “Help me.”. He has worked in various ministry contexts. While living in Washington,
DC, David was the Junior/Senior High Director of an out-of-school time program
on Capitol Hill. Later he served as Community Development Resource coordinator
with MCC East Coast. Most recently he was co-pastor of Boonton United Methodist
Church in New Jersey. Professor Evans is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the History of Christianity at The Drew Theological School. He has academic degrees from Spring Arbor College in Michigan, Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and Drew University in New Jersey. Professor Evans is interested in how white Protestant American forms of Christianity have been perceived through the eyes/experiences of people who live in the national, religious, and racial margins of the United States. He is currently working on a project exploring Methodist missionaries’ perception of Italian immigrants in early twentieth-century America as racial others. He currently is a faculty in Mission, Intercultural and Interfaith Studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.
PART 1: IN SEARCH OF A BLACK IDENTITY
PART 2: THEOLOGICAL & MISSIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS >>
Yago: David, you are welcome to this
blog where we are exploring different ways to name, own, lament and put to rest
the energies of enslavement present in today’s world. You grew up as an
African-American in a marginalized position in the American society. You have
suffered in many ways these oppressive energies. Discrimination was very real
to you. You have been in a constant search trying to understand and deconstruct
all these oppressive energies. Your will to share with us your own journey is
greatly appreciated. I would like to divide this interview in two parts. The
first one will cover your understanding of race and your liberation journey as
an African-American in the context of an oppressive social system. The second
part of this interview will focus on the theological and missiological implications
of your deconstruction process.
David, please, what does it mean
to you to be an African-American living in the States?
David: My status and role as an
African-American signifies both a raced— pseudo-scientific, politically,
socially, and systemically enforced and constructed category attributed to
somatic features —identity and a chosen cultural identity. I first recognize that in the United States
other people and institutions identify my dark skin and family heritage with
the Black race. I choose to use this political and social nomenclature to
remind people of the invisible racial force of whiteness as the hegemonic power
that defines itself over and against the Black race. But my social identity is
not merely an product of white oppressive force, it is also the product of resilient human response to oppression that created new music notes, art
forms, speech patterns, Christian spirituality, and family structures that
provided the strength to overcome the terror, trauma, and stigma of being black
in the United States.
Yago: In your house there was always
this understanding that you were descendant of slaves, you were descendant of
people who were oppressed. There was the invisible presence of slaves. How
African-American families have been influenced by the multigenerational trauma
from the time of slavery? What could be the role of memory and imagination in
the perpetuation of trauma?
 |
| Toni Morrison |
David: Both the implied presence of
slaves and the history of slavery in cinema and texts was very much a part of
my younger years. I could not understand myself, or my family, without their presence.
In a way perhaps reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, slaves haunted
us. That is not to say that I was ever
able to trace my family of origin back to slaves. Whether or not we had slaves
in our history, it was a narrative upon which we built our self-understanding.
Whereas white kids were able to trace their genealogy to famous world United
States’ leaders or British royalty, my family tree ended with my grandparents’
generation. This meant that I was fascinated with black history and felt obligated
to watch black history movies and read black history texts. When I saw other
people with skin my hue or darker I cheered for them, felt kinship with them,
and felt welcomed by them. In this way, I felt pride in my connection to
slavery. We were the people who overcame the insurmountable.
All of this
history was a kind of prosthetic memory. I knew nothing first hand of Africa,
the Middle Passage, Sharecropping, or the Great Migration. I was an inheritor
of that history; it was given to me. By calling my memory a prosthetic, I don’t
mean to suggest that it was false, but in a manner of speaking, it was someone
else’s that I made my own. But there was a trauma involved with identifying so
strongly with a memory that belonged to someone else. Without first hand
experience of this memory, I was vulnerable to the propaganda of white history
that named Africa as the dark continent, supposedly void of knowledge,
civilization, technology, beauty, health, or dignity. I oscillated between
self-hatred and racial pride. It was not until I was almost 18 years old that I
learned Africa had cities and organized governments. Until that point, I believed
what my white text books had told me, that Africa was a savage place where
people like me hid in bushes and ran from lions. The images I saw on television
of my contemporary racial relatives from Africa were of starved, malnourished
children who relied on the white world to save them. White people seemed to
imagine that dark skin signified savagery and need. They patronizingly tried to save Africans, which is probably the only
way that one can conceive of saving another. Songs like “Nothing but the Blood”
repeated phrases like “What can wash me white as snow?” And because
colonialists had epidermailized blackness and whiteness, it was very easy to
hate the “one dark blot” that was in myself. Because I was written into this
racial community and I in turn imagined myself into this racial community, I
was traumatized each time a white teacher, fellow church member, peer, television
show, novel, or stranger terrorized me by questioning my capacity to learn,
questioned my origins in the biblical narrative, called me a “nigger,” or made
my race a perpetual minstrel show, I felt deeply and personally afraid and
enraged. I was afraid that the power they spoke from their lips, encoded in
their rules, and enforced with their violence would keep me in proverbial
chains so that I would never realize the liberty that I longed for.
But for
black history month and the role of my family grandfather as educator,
grandmother as politician, mother as hard worker/provider, I may have never
known I was capable of being anything other than what white people had imagined
for me. I, however, had the counter racial propaganda of Black scientists,
Black artists, Black musicians, Black preachers, Black inventors who taught me
that I could pursue my dreams. Folks
like these encouraged me to dream that there was something beautiful, powerful,
and creative about my flesh. Black was beautiful and I was more than the sum of
what white supremacy said of people like me. Martin Luther King Jr’s dream gave
me permission to dream that the American Dream was my dream as much as it was a
dream that belonged to my pale skinned stringy haired friends.
Yago: Your adolescence was quite
difficult. You lived in the inner city. You were in an internal struggle with
yourself, at war with yourself. You say that you rejected your very humanity.
Could you share with us your struggle to find your own identity during that
time? How did you internalized the systemic oppression of the American Society?
David: My childhood was difficult, but
Lansing, MI did not have an inner-city like Detroit, MI. Moreover, my mother
raised us on a middle class neighborhood surrounded by white people. I say that
Lansing was a difficult context because it was a city deeply defined by
unresolved racial tension. This was the city in which Malcolm X was raised and
learned that his father had been brutally murdered by the Lansing equivalent of
the Ku Klux Klan, called the Black Legion. I learned here that the word
“nigger” was to be feared. In Lansing I learned that white fathers threatened
to disown their daughters if they dated black men and I also learned that those
white fathers would follow through on those threats. I learned here that white
people suffering from white supremacist pathologies could literally kill you
and simultaneously deny that racism was a factor.
At the same time, I was
encouraged to be successful. Success is not a universal concept. What one
society defines as success is not necessarily how another society will define
the term. In the United States, success meant what Wendell Berry identifies in
his book The Hidden Wound as “getting somewhere.” This getting somewhere is an
abstract concept that most people would agree has something to do with making
enough money so that someday you will be free from the obligation to engage in
hard labor ever again. This was the mentality that drove white people to
enslave Black labor. To have slaves meant that you were successful, because you
were free of hard labor. That is to say, someone else was doing it for you! I
was pushed towards success, which meant I was pushed towards whiteness. I was
taught to talk white, dress white, play white instruments, worship God in white
styles, see white women as epitomizing beauty. I was taught to participate in
the ideology that threatened most to destroy me.
I lived a bifurcated
existence: I was told that I “talked white” when I used proper grammar, called
an “oreo” (a chocolate sandwich cookie with a white cream filling) when I
dressed in my bow-tie and cummerbund for stringed orchestra concerts. But in
the sea of my white honor student peers I was very aware that my kinky hair,
wide nose, and dark skin communicated to them that I was black and would never
truly belong to their cliques. I learned to pursue whiteness, not consciously,
but I wanted success. I wanted to be accepted, profoundly so. I wanted to have
the wealth and respect that white Americans had so I dressed like white people,
pursued white romance, longed to live in
white neighborhoods, and embraced white music for a number of years until I
began to recognized that white people would never accept me in full, because I
would always be black no matter how hard I tried to be other. So I embraced
white propagandized views of blackness and lived into them. It wasn’t until
college that I discovered what had happened to me. I was reading W.E.B. DuBois’s Souls of Black Folk when I read:
 |
| W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) |
“After the Egyptian
and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born
with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which
yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through
the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this
double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the
eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in
amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro;
two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one
dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
I fell to the floor under the weight
of history. I was aware in that moment that Du Bois’s experience 100 years
earlier was mine as well. I could not escape the reality that I saw the world—I
saw myself—first through the eyes of the white world. This double-consciousness
was a gift, but it was also further evidence of my inner divided self, black
and white. And the war that would ensue for years would rage inside of me. For
years, I fought the white gaze that I had internalized and then I struggled to
embrace not only my dark flesh, but my true self which was shaped by and
transcended my racially constructed world.
Yago: Your being black has formed you in multiple ways. You
say that you had a “black cultural education”. What do you mean by that? How
would you define it?
David: Identifying with black culture resulted
in friends, family, and leaders in various black communities introduced me to
writers, inventors, pastors, educators, politicians, slaves, share croppers,
blue collar workers, movies, books, videos, dances and artifacts that are
products of African experiences in the Western world. I felt an obligation to
know everything that pertained to blackness and was often required by my white
peers to speak for every aspect of Black culture/society that may be related,
or unrelated, to the conversation at hand. The same impulse I had to
acknowledge the presence of another Black person on the sidewalk drove me to
learn all that I could about black pop culture as well. I also learned that
there was what Ralph Ellison would call “lower
frequencies” of history and myth that were unacknowledged by white structures of power. And probably more
likely were impossible to acknowledge due to the refusal of people intoxicated
by white supremacy to see that racism is
more than an individual prejudice, but rather that it is a systemic power that
affects every social and cultural system in the United States. Black culture
acknowledges the systemic power of racism in language, art forms, and community
building. When Black communities speak of “the man” they are conjuring the
image of powerful white institutions that deny access to resources and rights
to people of color which negatively affects their quality of life.
I learned
that Black people must work together to keep resources within their communities
and create aesthetics that help form positive self-efficacy within Black
children. Some of this learning was overt, like when my mother would purchase
Black Encyclopaedias or take us to Black Churches like the Church of God in
Christ. Other lessons were less formal: fraternal handshakes in the hallway at
school, “neck check” greetings on the street, fear in the eyes of my caregivers
when interacting with governmental officials. African American society
represents what some have called a nation within a nation. And like any other nation, this African
American nation has lessons to teach.
Yago: You say that many of the
African-Americans are not trying very hard to hold to history. History has a
hold on them. Why? How do you experience it?
David: Ellison has said that, “Too
often history dances to political arrangements.” Given the politics of race in
our nation and where black people find themselves, if we take Ellison’s
statement seriously we might conclude that official histories have a role to
play in the subjugation of the black race in the United States.
 |
| James Baldwin (1924-1987) |
James Baldwin suggests that white people in the United States “imagine a history that
flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it).” In light of this,
what incentive would African Americans have to hold onto a history that has
only existed to legitimize white domination? This revisionist history does have
a hold on African Americans because it is a history that authorizes police
forces to racially profile and so-called criminal justice systems to disproportionately
incarcerate African Americans to such an extent that the United States now
holds a higher percentage of it’s minority population in prison than any other
nation in the world.
Yago: You say that race is more about
being raced, being named, that is about choosing. You say that race sometimes
becomes a stigma. Could you say more about that? How?
David: In almost every context in
United States discourse, darkness signifies something ominous, ignorant,
backwards, evil, sad or depressing. The symbols of Christianity in the United
States reinforce this idea. There’s a salvation bracelet that kids make at some
Christian campgrounds that signifies sin as black. Demons throughout the
history of Christianity have been described as dark imps. Conversely, most
characters in the Bible, especially Jesus, are represented as white people. Children
and adults spiritually formed in such a context implicitly learn that darkness
is something to avoid. This racial manicheanism adds cosmic significance to
racial folk beliefs and stigmatizes dark skin. The epitome of this phenomenon
can be seen in those who teach the so-called “Curse of Ham.” Though the curse
was on Canaan, they believe that not only was Ham the father of all dark
skinned people on earth, but that he was stigmatized with dark skin because he
looked upon Noah’s nakedness and cursed.
Yago: Can we say that a good part of
African-Americans have taken the stigma of being raced and turn it into
something that gives them a positive sense of identity?
 |
| From the film "12 Years a Slave" |
David: One of the greatest miracles and
beautiful stories of American history is the story of African descendants
taking on the religion of their oppressor. That is not to suggest that all
African descendants became Christians. But for those whom did, not only did they
adopt a God whom they were told mandated their slavery/oppression, but they
were able to see through the oppressive elements of that story and embrace a
liberative element. Many of these courageous Christians constructed a
liberative hermeneutic and a liberative theology that not only helped them
survive chattel slavery, but also transformed the United States of America in
the post-Civil War and Civil Rights eras. The spirit to love dark flesh in the
face of a society that persistently denied that anything dark could be lovely
is a demonstration of the resilient spirit of humanity. I think this the kind
of history that led James Baldwin to say, “American history is longer, larger, more various, more
beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it..”
Yago: Could we say that the identity
foundation of the African-American has still to be found?
Yago: You couldn’t trust white people,
as a group, and as a social entity. You needed to know what they think the
people who wanted to destroy you. You needed to be aware of what they were
about. Could you share with us the main insights of this process? What
methodologies did you use to get to know? What did you discover?
David: Social location implicitly
served as the first “method” of knowing white oppressors, if it could be called
a method. The fact is that people who live on the margins of society—have less
power, less access to resources, less choice, etc…— often know about the people
who have more power better than those powerful people know themselves or their
context. In my academic career, however, I have become more deliberate about
knowing and learning about white society. To do this, I engage in a deliberate
study of the history of white religion in the United States. While American
historians have studied white people for a long time, they have only been
studying them as white people for around 25 years. The insights of Du Bois,
Baldwin, Ellison, and Morrison have served as theoretical tools for my study.
Yago: “Evans” was the name that the
slave master gave to your ancestors. The only thing you know is that you are
from the enslaved population. Here we are talking of the quest for home. You
don’t know who you are in that sense. Could you share with us how important is
to have a home?
David: One of the difficulties of with
identifying with the African American narrative is that home is an elusive
concept. There can be little doubt that the United States of America is “home.”
But the history and present reality of this nation is that an African American
can expect to be discriminated against in her homeland because she does not
look like a European-American. Her ancestors were forced here in the Middle
Passage. She may identify with Africa, but it is likely that she has never been
there. Her culture, then, is purely American, but America denies her. Malcolm X
used this disoriented experience to recommend that blacks could not know who
they are, because the white man had robbed them of that knowledge. I think he
is right to an extent, but what he is right about is true of everyone. Identity
is constructed. Some of us may feel more stable in our identities than others,
but we all have multiple origins and relationships with space, race, and
nation. “Who am I?” may prove to be one of the most basic questions of human
existence, yet those who live on the margins may feel the anxiety of that
question more acutely than others.
Yago: You say that trauma is the past
but it is also very much the present. The black body is still being used as a
commodity. Could you share with us
how the dominant history related to slavery keeps shaping today’s social,
economical and political structures? Can we say that there is a new Jim Crow in
today’s USA?
David: Since John Winthrop declared the
Massachusetts settlement to be a city on a hill European Americans have
suggested to their European competitors that they have a more equitable
society. They have done so by exploiting a population of underclass people not
formally recognized as citizens. Today those people are immigrants from Latin
America. Every racial minority group has served this purpose at some point in
United States history: American Indians, Africans, Asians, and today’s Latin
Americans. That exploitation and oppression takes on many forms. You have
rightly identified Michelle Alexander’s concept of the New Jim Crow as one of
these. By stripping convicted offenders of their right to vote and visible
status in the United States, white America has once again found a way to
exploit the labor of a large segment of the minority population by mass
incarceration, the largest of any nation in the world.
Yago: You talk about the importance of
naming and owning white institutional structures very much present because of
its invisibility. We are talking of internalized organizational cultures that
we don’t put into question. How important is to develop an organizational
intelligence in the process of deconstructing white mentality?
David: It is essential. We live in an
age where it is likely that racism thrives because of institutional policies
and practices far more than because of individual or personal prejudices. But
if we are only trained to see bad behavior and pejorative language, then we
will perpetuate systems and institutions that negatively affect the quality of
life for millions.
 |
| Howard Thurmon (1899-1981) |
Yago: Howard Thurmon says that “hatred
begins when there is contact without fellowship.” What does it mean, in
practice, to be diverse within an institution?
David: The fact of diversity is just
that, a fact. But being diverse says nothing about the quality of that
diversity. Is it an integrated diversity? Is diversity celebrated? Does
everyone recognize the diversity within themselves or is diversity only
perceived of as something outside of themselves? The truth is that diversity is
a fact of life. For a diverse environment to thrive everyone must recognize
that diversity is an essential component of a healthy ecosystem and this
diversity must be welcomed and celebrated. The alternative is precisely what
Thurman described here. Contact without fellowship will engender resentments
between those who have more and less power. This is likely the cause of much of
the conflict in the world.
Yago: You say that there are some
segment of white society believing that they are just as much victims of racism
as black folks. For you this is very disturbing. Why this segment of white
population feels to be victim? Why is it disturbing to you?
David: As the United States attempts to
move in the direction of providing equal access to goods, resources and rights,
those who have attempted to hoard access for themselves feel threatened. What
they often fail to know is why they feel threatened or how much power they
have. Most of them have been taught to ignore power differences and to believe
that everyone has the same opportunities.
By paying attention to power and
attempting to create a more equitable society some policies in the United
States appear to favor a minority group over a historically empowered white
group. From the white perspective, this gives people of color unfair
advantages. In a vacuum this analysis would make sense. Historically, however,
whites have constructed a society of unfair advantages from the beginning, they
lose nothing but the ability to exploit their neighbors by correcting these
injustices. What I find disturbing is that white society has more power than
their any other group and have discovered that there is power in claiming
victimhood. By denying that they have power, but using power to dictate the
conversation they have created a very hostile relationship between diverse
groups across racial, political, religious and economic lines. The failure to
see this could have catastrophic consequences.
