Rosetta E. Ross a a Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. To link to this article:

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1 This article was downloaded by: [Rosetta Ross] On: 23 June 2012, At: 15:49 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: Registered office: Mortimer House, Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious Education Association Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: Overcoming Misinterpretation and Irrationality: Doing Ethics at the Intersection of Social Justice, Liberation, and Civil/ Human Rights Rosetta E. Ross a a Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Available online: 07 Jun 2012 To cite this article: Rosetta E. Ross (2012): Overcoming Misinterpretation and Irrationality: Doing Ethics at the Intersection of Social Justice, Liberation, and Civil/ Human Rights, Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious Education Association, 107:3, To link to this article: PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

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3 OVERCOMING MISINTERPRETATION AND IRRATIONALITY: DOING ETHICS AT THE INTERSECTION OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, LIBERATION, AND CIVIL/HUMAN RIGHTS Rosetta E. Ross Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, USA MISINTERPRETATION AND IRRATIONALITY: THE CONTEXT OF BLACK WOMEN S ACTIVISM Historian of religions Charles Long uses the term American cultural language to identify discursive challenges to democracy and social justice in the Unites States. The American cultural language, Long says, is the misinterpretation of humanness and freedom conveyed when the term American used to signify citizens of the United States is constructed as applying only to persons of European descent (Long 2004, 149). The Puritan errand in the wilderness and Jeffersonian constitutional language are primary sources of the misinterpretation. Embedded in the Puritan errand in the wilderness, Long writes, is an assumption that [t]he aborigine is a wilderness creature who, like the wilderness itself, must be conquered. The conquest of the aborigine began in the seventeenth century and continues into the present. The linking of the aboriginal cultures with the wilderness and the subsequent conquest of both raise issues of race and ecology. Engrafted in Jeffersonian constitutional language is accommodation of compromise. The compromise over slavery at the beginning, in the formation and promulgation of the Constitution, Long writes, is the archetype of that long series of compromises concerning the freedom of black Americans within the American national community. This first compromise sets the tone for what is almost a ritual language concerning the nature of black freedom and, consequently, the meaning of freedom in the American Republic (Long, 164). In a related observation, British cultural studies scholar Paul Gilroy (1993) says modern Western philosophy discourages uniting the good and the right in constructions of justice. This occurs as separation of the moral from the legal by distinguishing substantive and procedural justice, by privileging expediency and detaching morality from politics, and by separation of economic activity from both Religious Education Copyright C The Religious Education Association Vol. 107 No. 3 May June ISSN: print DOI: /

4 242 OVERCOMING MISINTERPRETATION ethics and politics. This tradition had maintained the idea that a good life for the individual and the problem of the best social and political order for the collectivity could be discerned by rational means, Gilroy writes. He continues, Though it is seldom acknowledged even now, this tradition lost its exclusive claim to rationality partly through the way that slavery became internal to western civilization and through the obvious complicity which both plantation slavery and colonial regimes revealed between rationality and the practice of racial terror (Gilroy, 39; italics added). Long and Gilroy s discussions of misinterpretation and irrationality explain some origins of exclusionary conceptions of freedom and civil/human rights. In exclusionary conceptions, freedom is limited because civil rights apply only to persons constructed as members of the human community. As assertions about how life together in society is conceived, Long and Gilroy s discussions help define the context of black women s religious activism. Exclusionary conceptions are incongruous with assertions that equality and social solidarity are required elements of a good society. Black Women s Activism: Social Engagement for the Common Good Many black women activists envision the common good as entailing equality, social solidarity, human well-being, freedom, and democracy. Emerging from convictions that U.S. society can and should respond to and include all its citizens, Black women s activism has challenged discursive and concrete practices that support inequality or narrow the meaning of well-being. The women often articulated their convictions as desire to realize congruity of inner visions, ideals, or beliefs with what they saw and experienced in the world. 1 Their 1 Examples of black women activists articulating such convictions are evident in statements such as these: Pernessa Seele: I just didn t understand why I had to be dealing with people who were dying and I was... praying, saying God come on... and in that moment I got an idea. Loretta Ross: I would suspect that most people who do human rights work do it from a deep well of faith versus religion or spirituality. I use the word faith because we have to powerfully believe in both the possibility of change and the capability of people to make that change. Victoria DeLee: But there was so many people who couldn t git what they wanted, and they couldn t stand up for themselves;... that s the people I wanted to do something about. So I take and, uh, and that was in my mind, to make changes there. Clara Muhammad: Allah has asked us, in His holy words, to help solve this problem. I know we can help because Allah would not have asked this of us if it wasn t possible to do. Ruby

5 ROSETTA E. ROSS 243 desire for congruity relates to community responsibility and social obligation that is linked to a strong sense of identity with and loyalty to specific communities. In most cases their communities were places where the women became persons and felt themselves and others to be valued without attribution of deficits. Conceptions of faith, belief, or religious identity emerged within the communities and encouraged, or sometimes thrust the women into, social engagement. While faith, belief, or religious identity propelled their activism, the women identify ongoing, self-conscious participation in patterns of piety (personal and community rituals and practices) as important to their work. These patterns of piety (such as, meditation, communal worship, self-help, and community-building activities, etc.) become nurturing rituals and practices that continued to shape and sustained the women s inner convictions and social activism. Nurturing rituals and practices cultivated inner faith, belief, or religious identity and preserved connections to and identification with communities. For many persons the nurturing function of community rituals and practices reaches fulfillment in preserving their community connections and identification. For black women activists, however, there is another element of the nurturing function, a connection of women and communities through activism. The communities rituals and practices are extended in the women s lives through social engagement; activism is a witness to their convictions and may be identified as a kind of spirituality. Spirituality for these women is seeking to maintain a sense of integrity through both piety (self-conscious adherence to rituals and practices) and social engagement (activism). Hurley: A brief could be written about the unconsitutionality of all the segregation laws, but that is another story which we will save for the courts. However, we must say that it is sad that minds should be warped and souls made sick year after year for want of applied Christianity. Septima Clark: I don t consider myself a fighter. I d prefer to be looked on as a worker, a woman who loves her fellow man (sic), White and Negro alike, and yellow, red, and brown, and is striving with every energy, working not fighting in the true spirit of fellowship to lift him (sic) to a higher level of attainment and appreciation and enjoyment of life. See Author s Telephone Interview, Pernessa Charlise Seele, New York, New York/Atlanta, Georgia, October 8, 2004; Author s Interview with Loretta J. Ross, Atlanta, Georgia, April 6, 2007; Author s Interview with Victoria Way DeLee, Ridgeville, South Carolina, August 8, 1992; Clara Muhammad, An Invitation to 22 Million Black Americans, 19 (copied in FBI File Memorandum, SAC, Chicago to... Correlation Clerk, March 19, 1968); Marion E. Jackson, Sports of the World, Atlanta Daily World, October 2, 1953, 7; Septima Poinsette Clark, Echo in My Soul (New York: Dutton, 1962), 132.

6 244 OVERCOMING MISINTERPRETATION Long and Gilroy frame misinterpretation and irrationality as incongruities of colonizers that negated the humanity of colonized persons; however, the widespread reach of incongruity in the Western and American psyche suggests its influence on all populations in these contexts. In the face of social, political, economic, and cultural practices that contradicted their convictions and challenged the meaningfulness of their self-affirmation black women s religious activism included taking actions to overcome neglect, exclusion, and negation of themselves and other persons. Piety and engagement appear to be mechanisms that helped them strive for congruity (including striving for self-affirmation amidst disaffirmation) and keep incongruity at bay. BLACK WOMEN S ACTIVISM, MY RESEARCH, AND MY WORK My work as a teacher and scholar has been most empowered and shaped by recognition of the clarity of vision and presence of mind necessary for black women to maintain long-term identities as civil/human rights activists. Their persistence in taking up and continuing activism, and in developing, strengthening, and engaging practices that nurture their identities and public presence, models the kind of focused intentionality that made the United States more democratic. Researching black women activists has made me a better teacher. Their purposefulness helped me become more purposeful and intentional in teaching for transformation. This included developing pedagogical strategies to deepen student learning and, more importantly, to encourage students work in identifying, shaping, and preserving their own senses of integrity as persons who contribute to the common good. Researching black women activists also has made me a better scholar by challenging me to craft and sustain a vocational identity as a scholar/activist who strives for congruity of my vocational self-understanding with my teaching and scholarly practices. For me, being a scholar/activist includes interrogating discursive misinterpretations and expressions of irrationality, and ensuring that ideas affirming social justice and the common good always are is embedded in my scholarship. Being a scholar/activist also means that I am intentional about grafting practices that advance social justice into my teaching and service contributions. My commitment to social justice preceded development of my scholarship; the commitment, in fact, guided my scholarship on black

7 ROSETTA E. ROSS 245 women s activism. Today this scholarship reminds me of my commitment to social justice and, similar to communal rituals and practices for black women, it deepens my commitment and encourages further scholarship. Rosetta E. Ross is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Spelman College. rross@spelman.edu REFERENCES Gilroy, P The black atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. Boston: Harvard University Press. Long, C Significations: Signs, symbols, and images in the interpretation of religion.aurora, CO: Davies.