That's happened in really flippant ways in social media. I think it makes it very easy for them to go to the trope of the angry Black woman versus listening to the facts, the data, the history, and so certainly in my teaching capacity that has happened. And I think the main reason is because if I'm speaking to something in my work around anti-racism, people get in their feelings very quickly on that topic. It would be great to hear some sort of an acknowledgment of that and also a refutation of colorism and a condemnation of it.Ĭhristina, you recall being "angry Black womaned," by people who think you fit a certain stereotype.Įdmonton: I made up that word, angry-Black-womaned, but I thought that Black women would resonate with that lived experience. What I would love to hear from the pulpit is just even a recognition that this is a very real, lived reality for many people within the church context. It also impacts those various facets of our lives for dark-skinned people. And that impacts income level, employment status, our interaction with the criminal justice system, marriageability options and dating. Uwan: It's a dynamic that occurs intraracially, although it can happen externally too, whereby dark-skinned people are discriminated against and where light-skinned people are preferenced over against dark-skinned people.
Can you explain briefly what colorism is and what you'd like to hear preached about it? We also wanted to reinforce that idea that we see ourselves as an echo.Įkemini, you wrote about colorism and describe it as "the offspring of white supremacy" and say in the more than 15 years you have been a Christian, you have not heard it addressed in a sermon in a Black church. I think we see ourselves as standing in a very, very long tradition. And so we wanted to be clear about that and name that, from the outset, to let Black women know we see you, we know you, and we love you.Įdmondson: Even before we get to the part about those who consider leaving the church, we pay homage to grandmothers and aunties and mothers and spiritual mothers. Uwan: It was important for us to be able to rightly identify the ways Black women have often felt like they just simply were not enough, or maybe too much, in various church contexts. RNS : Your book is dedicated, in part, to "Black girls who considered leaving the church when their imago Dei wasn't enough." Why did you choose to make that declaration as you started the book? The interview has been edited for length and clarity. The two, who are promoting their book while Higgins is on medical leave, spoke to Religion News Service about the challenges and joys for both single and married Black women, countering white supremacy and their hopes for the future of Black American Christians. Louis." Uwan and Edmondson, while continuing with the sixth season of the "Truth's Table" podcast, are also co-hosting a second podcast, "Get in the Word With Truth's Table," in which they are reading the entire Bible during 2022. The trio announced in December that Higgins, a justice activist who leads a United Church of Christ congregation, was leaving the podcast "to continue her movement and ministry work in St. "So I really think there is a benefit and a gift to people who don't identify as Black Christian women to listen respectfully to these stories and narratives in the same way that I pick up books by authors who are outside of my own demographics all the time." "It's hard for us to see ourselves, actually, culturally, unless we engage cross-culturally," said Edmondson, 42, a scholar-in-residence of a multiracial Presbyterian Church in America congregation in Nashville, Tennessee. "We see y'all, but the sisters are at the table," said Uwan, 39, who attends an African Methodist Episcopal church in the Washington metropolitan area and is the Black Christian Experience Resource Center's 2022 inaugural theologian-in-residence.Įdmondson added that, though their focus is on Black Christian women, they also read and learn from the stories of people who do not share their gender or culture.