Yup, I admit it! I am a Buppie Princess. (Buppie = young, upwardly mobile, black professional). My father was a very prominent African American lawyer, then judge, then Appellate Court Justice and my mother was a teaching assistand and an office administrator at city hall. And so, I was raised in a solidly middle class black family, who lived in a  predominantly-white neighborhood. Typically, I was the only black child in my classrooms, that is until the busing act came into effect. I learned to navigate diversity in race and class from a very young age.

Bridgeport, CT, my hometown, was a city that while I was growing up was transitioning from being a thriving steel-industry town to becoming very economically depressed when the steel mills and other factories closed. 

Every year, like clockwork, race riots would break out in the springtime. It was almost an expected event. It was the Portuguese and the whites fighting the Puerto Ricans and the blacks. As a straight-A student headed towards being valedictorian of my class, I strategically kept my distance from the skirmishes. However, this experience made me see how cultural hatred can fester and grow and had a lasting impact on my thirst for justice and right-ness for all people.

After high school I went on to attend the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study architecture. Everywhere I went, I wanted people to know I went to MIT. It validated my worth and proved that I was not your stereotypical black woman (read: lazy and poor). In fact, whenever I went off campus, I would intentionally wear MIT gear. I was highly invested in what anti-racist scholar, Ibram Kendi, calls “uplift suasion” or trying to convince people who hate me to validate my worth as a human being in spite of my skin color through hyper-achievement. One evening, my roommates and I were walking off campus right across the river in Boston. I, of course, was wearing my MIT sweatshirt. A group of rowdy white boys drove by, and one of them yelled out the window calling us the n-word and saying “MIT sucks!!” This caused me to dig my heels in and grew the gritty determination I had to succeed in spite of racism.

Item desMy mom suffered with cancer all through my high school years and she died my first semester at college. I did not know how to process this grief and in fact became very angry at her. How could she be so weak? How could she leave me to fend for myself without a mother? I did not feel compassion for her during her illness even refused to cry at her funeral!  I had gotten straight A’s from kindergarten through 12th grade and was determined to continue to present as perfect. But the guilt of that sin weighed heavy on my soul. For years I carried that burden. The straight A’s became almost a constraint on my humanness. It was not until I confessed this guilt to Jesus himself, believing that He died for my transgressions on the cross,  and receiving the grace of his forgiveness, that I was set free. (Hallelujah!!) And so, even though I am a liberation theologian and social justice preacher, I fully believe in personal soul salvation and personal piety.

However, God used some very conservative channels to get me saved. And as a baby Christian I stayed in those circles, quite enamored of the conservative evangelical world. I became very hopeful that the body of Christ was the answer to racism and inequality in America. I felt so free and presumed that my white brothers and sisters felt that freedom from earthly categorizations and castes as well. Because the bible declares that we are all one in Christ Jesus and vividly assures us that each person is of sacred worth to God, my mind reasoned that therefore Christians should be innately anti-racist. This prompted me to write my first book, The Sin of Racism: How to be Set Free, which was published in 2006.

Things shifted for me in 2008. When Barack Obama became president of the United States, I noticed the vitriolic response from the very conservative Christian radio personalities and groups that I had been following. I began to pull away from that identity and those teachings. In 2010 I began seminary, which is sometimes jokingly called “cemetery” because it adds a heavy dose of academia that can threaten to kill the spiritual vibe.  In seminary, I was introduced to liberation theology. I struggled quite a bit as the teachings did not seem to center the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, but more so the life of Jesus as resistance to injustice and power abuse. During that time, as I read the entire bible, I discovered that God indeed does have “a preferential option for the poor,” as South American liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez, proclaimed. My heart was opened to other liberation theology greats such as James Cone, Elsa Tamez, and Howard Thurman. But I was still concerned that they were only about social justice and were missing the soteriology, or soul salvation, piece.  And so I remained hesitant to be all in, until one professor cleared it up for me. . . .

My first full-time appointment was cross-racial. One month in to shepherding this predominantly white congregation, Michael Brown was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri. Massive protests erupted and that town was set ablaze (literally). A month after that, Baltimore, which was nearby, was also on fire because of protests of the Freddie Gray murder. I was compelled to preach about racial inequality and the reasons behind these protests. We also had a series of after-church discussion about this topic. 

At my next appointment, which was multi-cultural, another series of high-profile police shootings occurred in rapid succession, beginning with Alton Sterling. Once again I found myself preaching on this topic and compelled to share my perspective on race in America as it relates to our faith. I began to understand why liberation theologians said that Jesus’ murder was politically motivated. Jesus went around to those who were oppressed, distressed, and cast out and showed them how much God loved them and told them God’s kingdom was with them!

Thankfully, by the time the George Floyd revolution came about, I was serving a historically black congregation. God has allowed me to not only preach liberation integrated with salvation, but also to do good works towards mercy and justice.