WORKS CITED NEO-SEPARATIST MOVEMENT

1 “Declaration of Independence” (U.S., 1776).

 2 For much of America’s post-Civil War history black people suffered de jure, or legal discrimination such as lacking: the express right to “vote, even in most Northern states,” equal protection from violence under the law, and equal access to public spaces such as stores, churches, hospitals, and well-funded schools. See: Francis L. Broderick, “The Gnawing Dilemma: Separatism and Integration, 1865-1925,” in Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, ed. Nathan Irvin Huggins, Martin Kilson, and Daniel M. Fox (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 93. See: James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1986), 25.

 3 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: New American Library, 1969), 45.

 4 James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America : A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 3.

 5 Ibid., 3–4.

 6 “…either by returning to Africa or by going to some other place where they can create sociopolitical structures that are derived from their own history and culture.” See: Ibid., 4.

 7 According to King, “social gospel” theologian, Walter Rauschenbusch “left an indelible imprint on [his] thinking by giving [him] a theological basis for…social concern.” See: Martin Luther King, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson (New York: Intellectual Properties Management in association with Warner Books, 1998), 18.

 8 Cornel West, Prophetic Fragments (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1988), 4.

 9 Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America : A Dream or a Nightmare, 125.

 10 Ibid., 126.

 11 Ibid.

 12 West, Prophetic Fragments, 5.

 13 King recalled that, as he knelt in prayer, he heard a voice say, “stand up for justice,” “stand up for truth,” which for King was expressed in love, and to “fight on,” because of the hope that God “promised to never leave [him] alone.” See: Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America : A Dream or a Nightmare, 126.

 14 West, Prophetic Fragments, 10.

 15 The centrality of “Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross,” is what “separated him from liberal theology and placed him solidly in the heart of the black religious tradition.” See: Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America : A Dream or a Nightmare, 128.

 16 Kenneth Bancroft Clark, ed., “Malcolm X Talks with Kenneth B. Clark,” in The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Talk with Kenneth B. Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 26.

 17 Such as nonviolent: boycotts, sit-ins, protests, and freedom rides, etc. See: Kenneth Bancroft Clark, ed., “Martin Luther King Talks with Kenneth B. Clark,” in The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Talk with Kenneth B. Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 39–40.

 18 West, Prophetic Fragments, 11.

 19 “King declared about Chicago, “[I had] never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today.” See: David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross : Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1st Perennial Classics (New York: Perennial Classics, 2004), 500.

 20 King, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., 291.

 21 Garrow, Bearing the Cross : Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 546, 568–569. See: Martin Luther King, A Testament of Hope : The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Melvin Washington (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 233.

 22 “By the 1960s, millions of blacks had been systematically segregated through deceptive practices such as redlining and restrictive covenants.” See: Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid : Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993).

 23 Manning Marable, Malcolm X : A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011), 7.

 24 Even after breaking with the NOI, Malcolm confessed, “I still credit Mr. Muhammad for what I know and what I am.” See: Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” (Speech, Detroit, MI, April 12, 1964), americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/mx.html.

 25 (e.g., the bombing of his childhood home, racist killing of his father, being told by a white teacher that his childhood dream to become a lawyer was “no realistic goal for a nigger,” and a racist white judge’s excessive punishment for being romantically involved with white women) See: Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, ed. Alex Haley (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), 79–80, 118, 242.

 26 Marable, Malcolm X : A Life of Reinvention, 91.

 27 Ibid., 77.

 28 Ibid., 133.

 29 “The total number of blacks in congress was five. The number of black elected mayors was zero.” See: Manning Marable, Malcolm X’s Political Thought and Legacy, The Malcolm X Project (Columbia University), accessed May 3, 2014, columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/videolectures.html.

 30 Interview with Malcolm X, vol. 22, Sociology 1-A (Berkeley: University of California, 1963), archive.org/details/cabemrc_00001.

 31 Marable, Malcolm X : A Life of Reinvention, 133.

 32 “Segregation,” said Malcolm, “is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors,” the modern ghetto. See: Malcolm X, “Malcolm Explains the Difference between Separation and Segregation” (Interview, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, January 23, 1963), ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/mxp/speeches/mxt14.html.

 33 X, “The Ballot or the Bullet.”

 34 Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America : A Dream or a Nightmare, 290.

 35 In Malcolm’s eulogy, Ossie Davis reflected, “Malcolm had stopped being a ‘Negro’ years ago…and he wanted—so desperately—that all his people, would become Afro-Americans too.” Ossie Davis, “Eulogy of Malcolm X” (Faith Temple Church of God, New York, NY, February 27, 1965), malcolmx.com/about/eulogy.html.

 36 Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America : A Dream or a Nightmare, 292.

 37 Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 23.

 38 In 2009, 36.3% of the total black population lived in high-poverty places, while 49.2% of black or African Americans below the poverty line were concentrated in neighborhoods with poverty rates greater than 20%. For all Hispanics, 23.9% lived in high-poverty places, while 33.3% of below-poverty Hispanics lived in these communities as well. Only 11.1% of non-Hispanic whites lived in “high-poverty” neighborhoods. See: Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, and Michael C. Taquino, “The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty,” Social Problems 59, no. 3 (August 1, 2012): 364–88.

39 Only “18 percent of white students” attend high-poverty schools See: John R. Logan, Elisabeta Minca, and Sinem Adar, “The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools,” Sociology of Education 85, no. 3 (July 1, 2012): 288.

 40 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York; [Jackson, Tenn.]: New Press ; Distributed by Perseus Distribution, 2010).

41 Mid-90s: 23 of 80 U.S. largest cities had black homicide arrest rates that were more than 10x higher than whites. See: Gary LaFree, Eric P. Baumer, and Robert O’Brien, “Still Separate and Unequal? A City-Level Analysis of the Black-White Gap in Homicide Arrests since 1960,” American Sociological Review 75, no. 1 (February 1, 2010): 94. “Data from 2001, homicide and violent index crime rates: (Black: rates per 100,000 of 15.81and 1,311.48, respectively), (Latino: 6.39 and 505.63), (White: 2.85 and 331.52).” See: Jeffery T. Ulmer, Casey T. Harris, and Darrell Steffensmeier, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Structural Disadvantage and Crime: White, Black, and Hispanic Comparisons*,” Social Science Quarterly 93, no. 3 (September 1, 2012): 810. 

My Confessions

I am writing this message as an open letter to whoever will listen, as an apology to those who I have hurt, as a cry for help, and as a vision statement for my own life and future. I have had to overcome great shame and anxiety to even begin to write these “Confessions.”

For about a decade now (since 2013), I have had a dream, a vision, a desire to see a Transitional Living Worker Cooperative that is designed to help and hire those people who society regularly forgets, namely the so-called undeserving poor, the “junkies,” the formerly and currently incarcerated, and the homeless. I fit into each and every one of those categories, at one point or another in my life. My dream is for this Transitional Living Worker Coop (TLWC) to take in the people that I just mentioned, especially when they are at their “worst,” when they are at their “bottom.” By “take in,” I mean literally to provide housing in a large apartment complex with separate units for individuals, roommates, couples, and even families with children.

The TLWC will have programming of course: e.g. educational, job training, external counseling services, and peer coaches to help individuals with making it to all of the different appointments that are necessary to get one’s life back on track, be it going to public assistance appointments, court dates, or probation appointments, etc.

But unlike any program I have ever attended, we will not wish to be primarily funded by donations or government grants. I wish for this to be a for-profit worker cooperative where the residents of the program are also worker-owners in the coffee roasting business attached to the non-profit.

The goal is to help each incoming individual with a highly individualized plan to overcome whatever struggles they may have that contribute to their situation, be it addictions or mental health issues or just bad financial planning, while also addressing the structural injustices that keep marginalized people down. Namely, the goal will be for each individual to start working as soon as possible as a worker owner who literally owns part of the business and works to own their own housing unit as well.

Pay will be structured in such a way where the highest paid employee will not make more than three times the lowest paid employee. This is a far cry from most companies that have CEOs making up to 200 and 300 times their lowest paid employees. Even the lowest paid employees will immediately share in profit sharing. As such, there will not actually be any “employees,” because everyone will be a co-owner of the worker cooperative.

The theory is that when workers are treated well and are literally paid fairly and justly, that they will tend to give it their “all.”

When people have co-ownership of not only the business, but the housing that is tied to the business, then their job will not be “just a job.” Rather, it will be a community—a family to which they belong.

For so many people who are struggling with addiction or even depression (such as myself) the lack of a real tangible supportive community is a key factor in maintaining the hopelessness and isolation that keeps a person down. By belonging to this community, the individual will also feel a connection to a purpose that is greater than the individual, because we will all share in the profits, and we will all share in collective services that we choose to fund as a community—such as housing and shared automobiles.

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By having a just pay structure I hope to address the income inequalities that plague the racist history of this country.

As people may know, drugs do affect everybody, rich and poor, black, brown, and white, etc.. But the consequences of long term drug addiction absolutely do not affect everyone equally. Sure, a rich white kid may be just as likely as anyone to do drugs; but that rich white kid is much less likely to get convicted for stealing for drugs, for example.

As such, like most programs I have attended where most of the residents are poor, they will also statistically be more likely to be black or brown—that is, black or brown drug users are more likely than white drug users to suffer the legal and financial consequences of drug addiction or mental illness.

Therefore, by having both a just pay structure and a resident population that is disproportionately black, brown, and lower income (starting off), then we will also be addressing the racial wealth gap.

My dream is that going forward, in this day and age, that people will want to buy the coffee that we sell, because literally it will be financially supporting those people who not only have suffered from an unjust system but who may have lost hope and may have even become unwitting co-instruments of our own oppression.

This is my dream. This is my vision.

Sadly, I must confess that I am in no position to see this dream come into fruition…RIGHT NOW…

But I have to start somewhere…

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So I am starting with a confession, accountability, and with a call for help. As cliché as it sounds, I see that:

I can’t help anybody if I can’t help myself.

Unfortunately, up to this time, I have been of little help to myself.

For several months, if not for the better part of the last year or so, I have struggled with undiagnosed depression, where I literally believed that “there is no way that I could ever achieve anything more than a minimum wage job.” I had believed that “I reached my peak in 2013 when I graduated from Wheaton College,” as the first person in my family to graduate from high school, earn a bachelor’s degree and pursue a master’s in seminary. I believed that when I relapsed back in 2015 that “I permanently lost all hope for my future.” I believed that “there is no way I could bounce back a second time.”

In 2008, I was at rock bottom, a convicted felon incarcerated at the Cook County Jail for retail theft related to my drug addiction. But I overcame that challenge; between 2008 and 2013 I remained clean and achieved many accomplishments, which culminated in studying under two of my heroes, Dr. James Cone and Dr. Cornel West at Union Theological Seminary.

In 2014 I had the privilege and honor of resisting racist and brutal police violence in Ferguson, Missouri alongside many of the grassroots activists who lived there.

But in 2015, when I underwent surgery for a burst appendix, I was prescribed opiates for the pain.

This was the beginning of the end for me…or so I had thought.

I quickly lost everything during my relapse, and in 2017 I was homeless with my wife in Chicago, Illinois. I had asked so many people for help and money via Facebook Messenger, and I am truly grateful for their help. But I am also sorry that I was not fully honest with those people that in addition to being homeless, I had also been struggling with an active addiction. Even though I used the money that people gave me to pay for shelter, it was still a waste to pay those gouged motel prices without a plan for attaining sustainable housing…and for that, I AM SORRY.

In 2018 I got clean again from drugs, but I never quite recovered psychologically. Furthermore, my wife and I lost our unborn child, just two days before he was scheduled to be born. Jerusalem Malcolm Qaddoumi-Aguilar was completely healthy according to tests and doctors. We were told, “these things happen,”—freak accidents resulting in stillbirth. Still, we pressed forward, determined to keep our recovery from drugs despite this tragedy.

Today, I have come to admit that for the past two years I have lived a very mediocre life, by not trying to apply to jobs that would utilize my full potential. I have been so debilitated by fear and shame that my mental voice would tell me that there is “no way that I would ever overcome the financial consequences of my 2015 relapse.” I have not posted a single Facebook or blog post in several years for the same reason of feeling inadequate and unworthy.

---

But something happened the other day that has affected me greatly. I had a conversation with a friend who knew me when I was rising above the challenges of my addiction that ended in 2008. This person just needed to remind me that I do have what it takes to overcome the challenges I am facing today. He reminded me that I am worthy of love and belonging and that I am capable of achieving my dreams or at least, I am capable of making a valiant pursuit of those dreams.

Admittedly, I am still not in a stable financial situation right now, but neither is much of the country due to COVID-19. So I must be considerate of that fact. At the same time, my situation is drastic, as I am struggling each and every day just to make enough money to have a place to sleep at night.

This time, I am not homeless because of drugs, but because after losing my job in 2019, I had been debilitated by shame and fear to the point where I believed that it was not worth trying to apply for jobs anymore. Some may see that as a cop-out, but it was not, for I truly and sincerely felt hopeless and unworthy.

But today, I am committed to trying everything I can to start somewhere, be it minimum wage, entry-level, or otherwise.

I will start somewhere and I will face each challenge as it comes, and I will grow. I will not give in to the inner voices that tell me to “give up.”

I will not give up, and I will not settle for mediocrity.

I will continue to write and I will share my writing with the hopes of getting better at this craft, so that one day it may be the beginning of the funding for my dream of the Transitional Living Worker Coop.

Please, if anyone knows of any job opportunities, I am desperately looking for work.

I do have a past, but I am not defined by my past. At the same time, I am driven by my past…driven to overcome the challenges I face, because I have overcome them before…and I am driven to build something that will help others overcome those same challenges as well.

I am also looking for housing. Currently, I am doing everything I can to hustle to pay for a motel in Rockland County, NY, but this is not sustainable. Therefore, unlike in 2017, I do have a plan to attain sustainable housing: This week I overcame my anxiety and negative inner voices, and I applied to several jobs in Rockland County…and I will continue to apply to many more. I hope to hear something from those jobs soon. I have sought help with Catholic Charities in Rockland County and with the Department of Social Services (DSS), but those were dead ends for continued housing assistance.

At this point, I need to find a person who is willing to accept payment from DSS in order to receive rental assistance from social services. They will cover up to $500 per month for rent.

I hope and pray I find both housing and employment soon.

I will do everything I can to help myself today, with the dream of doing everything I can to help others like me tomorrow.

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A Personal Prayer of Repentance

Class with Dr. James Cone today awakened something in me that had been dormant for a couple years now.

This is my confession, that in my righteous desire to reject the anti-Christianity of conservative white evangelicalism (and even some “liberalism” that has no sense of urgency for the liberation of Oppressed Peoples), I became arrogant and self-righteous in my demeanor towards my God who instilled in me the only faith that could rescue me from the horrors of heroin and crack addiction.

This faith was the very simple faith that a lowly Nazarene named Jesus loved me enough, and deemed me worthy enough, to sacrifice his life so that I may have life to the full.

Yes, in my justified effort to rid myself of a dead religious tradition, I turned my back on the One who saved me quite literally from spiritual, emotional, psychological, and even physical hell on earth.

It was a deep abiding faith in the power of Jesus’ sacrifice for me, which is rooted in divine love for me, that empowered me to love myself enough to believe in myself enough to surrender my understanding and my will to my God who was the only One who could get me through hell 100x’s stronger than I was before.

It was faith in Jesus’ love for me that kept me from giving up on life as I sat in a sunless jail cell for 18-hours a day during the first three weeks of my five-month stay at the Cook County Jail.

It was a faith that was given to me, not by any merit of my own, that emboldened me to hope for a better future for myself and for the people I encountered.

It was faith in the cross and the Resurrection of Jesus that gave me a peace that surpasses all understanding, because it made no rational sense for me to have been given the hope that despite being a three-time convicted felon, despite burning every bridge with everyone who had loved me—somehow—my God would make a way out of no way—and somehow—not only would I survive but I would thrive beyond anything I could ever ask or imagine.

I’m here to testify that, even though I can’t explain theologically or rationally how it happened, my God delivered me from hell.

Somewhere down the road, I became unfaithful.

As I achieved many of my dreams such as earning a bachelor’s degree and going to graduate school, I became ensnared and enamored by some of the glitter of a privileged rejection of faith.

Well, it caught up to me, and the conviction hit me hard today that I mustn’t turn my back on the One who’s never let me down.

I think it’s a combination of a few months of really intense activism (to say the least) and a couple of years of wrestling with questions about God, along with the simple truth (which James Cone spoke in class) about a simple faith in the Jesus who identifies with the oppressed, which have brought me to this prayer of repentance.

To be clear, I STILL reject the white Jesus of white western Christianity;

I still have no desire to fully embrace as “Truth,” the Christian creeds which were created by flawed human beings who were influenced by the Roman Emperor Constantine;

I still believe that no one religion is the “chosen” religion of God;

I still believe that divinity is manifested in myriad ways to different people, including through non-theistic, non-“religious” experiences;

I still believe that diversity of religions is actually part of a divine order.

However, as for my personal experience, all I know now is that I need Jesus.

Thanks be to God that divine love, forgiveness, and grace are everlasting.

Amen.

http://www.facebook.com/HolyWeekOfResistance

Related Links:

The Evangelical Ethic and The Spirit of Colorblind Racism

Addicts Need Treatment Not Jail

Towards a Black-Womanist Theology of Mass Incarceration

#FergusonOctober: a glimpse of a movement for real justice

Dear Judges of America’s Justice System: Addicts need treatment not jail

**Below is a letter I recently submitted to the Second Municipal District Court in Skokie, Illinois, on behalf of my brother who was awaiting sentencing for drug-related charges. I am sharing this because I believe it applies to so many of our brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, cousins, mommas and daddies who are plagued by addiction. While most people who use illicit drugs do not get addicted, this letter is written on behalf of those who do.

January 2, 2014

To The Honorable Judge William T. O’Brien:

My big brother Bobby and I were once one and the same. We grew up under the same conditions inside of the same home. Yet, today our lives seem to be irreconcilably different, as he is awaiting judgment in your courtroom and I am on the first winter break of my first year in graduate school. I believe the key to my brother’s successful rehabilitation and reentry as a productive, addiction-free, member of society can be found in my and Bobby’s divergent paths.

I snorted my first line of heroin with Bobby on the night our father was arrested and subsequently sentenced to 18 years in prison. I was 13 years old and Bobby was 18. Fortunately for me, I was eventually admitted into a residential school for “at-risk” youth called, Mooseheart. Here, I discovered my knack for academics. I graduated at the top of my class, but what I had in “book smarts,” I lacked in common sense. My flirtation with heroin at 13 paved the way for my illicit affair with it at 18.

During my years of active addiction, Bobby and I were virtually inseparable until I was incarcerated at the Cook County Jail in 2008. I completed the HRDI rehabilitation program in jail, but after seven years of heroin and cocaine addiction, a four-month program behind bars would have hardly been enough to keep me sober without a long-term, voluntary, aftercare program. Unfortunately, most people who cannot afford the legal representation that is necessary to avoid jail-time come from communities with little-to-no access to the resources of the middle and upper strata of society.

The key to my success was completing a transitional living program called the Koinonia House in Wheaton, Illinois. At the K-House, I gradually transitioned into “freedom,” while still having protections and support groups around me to keep me safe from myself. During the 15-month program I enrolled in community college courses and stayed “plugged-in” to productive sectors of society. Upon graduation from the program, I received the Chuck Colson Scholarship for ex-prisoners at Wheaton College in Illinois. Earlier this year I earned my B.A. in Sociology and now I am at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Bobby has the same desire and ability that I did to achieve long-term sobriety and build a positive, productive quality of life. However, Bobby will neither receive the full treatment that he needs for recovery inside of jail nor overcome his addiction without a long-term gradual and therapeutic transition into “freedom.” You may ask why I was able to get “clean” and Bobby has not, but the hard answer is that heroin and cocaine addictions are unpredictable and relentless beasts.

I know that having a sincere heart and will power was not enough for me to achieve long-term sobriety. I am only here because of the 15 months that I spent gradually transitioning into freedom, in a therapeutic, supportive, and in my case religious community. Bobby is no different from me in this regard. I would humbly plead that your Honor would grant Bobby this chance to free himself from his own prison of addiction via a long-term residential TASC program. Indeed, as I am sure you know, he has three little girls who desperately need him to get his act together…but he cannot and will not do it alone. Thank you for your time and work.

Respectfully submitted,

Daniel I. Aguilar

Towards a Black-Womanist Theology of Mass Incarceration

My experience as a formerly incarcerated convicted drug felon from a low-income brown family has led me to ask the question, what does God mean for those under the oppression of mass incarceration? To speak of mass incarceration is to speak of a system of racial oppression.[1] It is also to speak of the failure of that system to rehabilitate persons, and the victims this failure creates. To speak of mass incarceration is to speak of the creation of nonpersons out of criminally convicted persons by replacing names with inmate numbers, personal histories with criminal histories, and by withholding social and political power through felon disenfranchisement laws and the institutionalized legal discrimination of criminal offenders.[2]

In this essay, first, I will describe and employ the task, sources, and Christology of black theology to locate God’s liberating work in the efforts of those who are working to dismantle mass incarceration at an institutional level. Then, I will describe and employ both the survival/quality-of-life tradition and Christology of womanist theology to locate God’s involvement with those who are not liberated, but have to endure through the struggles of mass incarceration instead.  Finally, I will explore the tension between these theologies and offer a third way to see the meaning of God amidst mass incarceration. The goal of this essay is to utilize the aforementioned elements of black and womanist theologies to argue that God is involved in the dismantling of mass incarceration and in ensuring the survival and quality of life of those who have to endure it.

BLACK THEOLOGY AND MASS INCARCERATION

The task of theology, according to James Cone, is to investigate the meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ in such a way that all those who are oppressed would believe that God is both with them in their suffering and in their struggle for liberation.[3] This is so because Yahweh sided with the poor and oppressed of Israel, and because Jesus sided with “the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors.”[4] Therefore, theology must articulate how God sides with the oppressed nonpersons in society today. In light of slavery, Jim Crow, segregated ghettoes, and continued racial disparities in the U.S., the best description of oppression in America is found in the “ontological symbol and visible reality” of blackness. [5] Since white supremacy has been and still is the source for the racial oppression of blacks, then whiteness, in black theology, is a symbol of the oppressor. In other words, Christian theology in the U.S. must either be identified with those who are oppressed by white supremacy, in general, or identified with the black community, in particular. Therefore, in relation to a system that is at least operating in the form of a racially discriminatory system creating nonpersons disproportionately out of the black community, black theology affirms that God is on the side of those who oppose this system. We can now examine the sources and norm of black theology that affirm this idea.

One of the sources of black theology is the black experience in America.[6] Cone asserts that among other things, “The black experience is police departments adding more recruits and buying more guns to provide ‘law and order,’ which means making a city safe for its white population.”[7] When Cone wrote those words in 1970, the prison population was one-fifth what it is today.[8] However, according to Cone, black experience is not just “encountering white insanity;” it also includes God’s work in empowering black people to strive for their social and political liberation in the face of that insanity, such as in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. As outlined in Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, the current system of mass incarceration was conceptualized by the Nixon administration as an effort to appeal to disgruntled racist white voters in the South who felt they were being disenfranchised by the gains of blacks during the Civil Rights Movement. Nixon regularly associated the Civil Rights Movement with “lawlessness” by alluding to the race rebellions and civil rights protests in major cities across the country. In other words, white supremacy was the initial force behind the “tough on crime” mentality that galvanized mass incarceration. Since mass incarceration was an attempt to quell the events of liberation in the black community, specifically, and it reinforces white supremacy via the disproportionate criminalization of black and brown people, generally, then black theology must identify God’s presence in any community that is affected by, and attempts to dismantle, this system.

Revelation, as a source of black theology, urges black theology to take seriously the system of mass incarceration. As evidenced by the exodus, revelation for the Christian faith is God’s work “in human history for the oppressed of the land.”[9] Therefore, for black theology, “Revelation is a black event – it is what blacks are doing about their liberation.”[10] In a more general sense, revelation of God occurs when “a condition of oppression… develops into a situation of liberation.”[11] In relation to mass incarceration, revelation provides a source for describing God’s work not only in opposing mass incarceration on the institutional level, but for transforming the lives of individuals who have been affected by it as well.

Prisoner reentry and rehabilitation have the potential to be some of the most fertile processes for the manifestation of God’s revelation in the lives of individuals. Criminal behavior such as the selling and using of drugs, theft, and other crimes can be the result of internal oppressive forces. Even before being literally incarcerated, addiction was my metaphorical prison. If God’s revelation occurs when the oppressed are set free, then God’s revelation occurs whenever a habitual criminal or addict changes her or his life around for the better. In this sense, the fact that 7 out of 10 released prisoners are rearrested within three years[12] can be interpreted as the rate at which God’s revelation is denied in the life of criminally charged or chemically dependent persons. Exploding prison populations and the lack of decline in drug use demonstrate that the system is not helping to free drug offenders from the throes of addiction or associated lifestyles such as drug dealing. For this reason, black theology must describe God’s revelation as present in the process of opposing the system of mass incarceration through the rehabilitation of criminals and successful prisoner reentry programs.

Finally, black theology affirms that the person of Jesus Christ is the manifestation of God’s revelatory event. Cone asserts that “black theology takes seriously the historical Jesus” because Jesus was “the Oppressed One whose earthly existence was bound up with the oppressed in the land.”[13] Because of the resurrection of the oppressed Jesus, it means that Jesus is not only “present today” in oppressed communities fighting for liberation, but he identifies with those communities as well.[14] Therefore, Jesus is identified with the oppressed black community. In other words, Jesus is black. Today, prisoners who are working to liberate themselves and their families can find hope and strength in the Jesus who identifies with their struggle to be liberated from: the self-oppressive chains of addiction (or some other self-destructive behavior) and the oppressive forces of a system that disproportionately incarcerates low-income black and brown people in the United States.

WOMANIST THEOLOGY AND MASS INCARCERATION

While black theology is useful for describing God’s work of liberation through the dismantling of mass incarceration, Delores Williams’ womanist theology can best describe the experiences of those who are not liberated by God. Williams asserts that the norm of liberation in black theology does not work for the experiences of African-American women.[15] Instead, she finds the representation of black women in the story of Hagar in Genesis. First, like the experiences of many female African-American slaves in the U.S., Hagar was a female African slave “who was forced to be a surrogate mother” for her slave master.[16] Similar to African-American slaves who ran away, Hagar also ran away. Given the high chances of infant mortality during her day, especially if she was to give birth in the wilderness, Williams believes that God directed Hagar to return to her oppressor’s house because it was the only way for Hagar and her child to be saved. Thus, for Williams, God seems more concerned with survival than liberation. Finally, after Hagar and her child (Ishmael) were exiled into the wilderness, God promised that their “descendants will be numerous,” and that Ishmael would be a warrior and skilled hunter. This suggests, for Williams, that liberation “is not given by God; it finds its source in human initiative” through resources for survival and strategies to improve one’s quality of life.[17] Williams names this reinterpretation of Hagar’s story the survival/quality-of-life tradition of African-American biblical appropriation.[18]

We can see God’s response of survival and quality of life to Hagar’s predicament as parallel to God’s response of survival and quality of life to persons behind bars. This is evident through my experience of being incarcerated at the Cook County Jail. Prior to my arrest, I was shooting heroin into my veins daily and smoking innumerable amounts of crack cocaine. At best, my life as a drug addict on the street was rapidly approaching death. Though under radically different circumstances to Hagar, my time behind bars can be interpreted as God being more concerned with my survival than my liberation. At that time, there may not have been any other way for me to escape inevitable death other than to be incarcerated. Despite the fact of unjust enforcement of laws, most people behind bars have serious issues they need to overcome, and maybe they can find hope in the fact that God is still concerned with their survival despite the fact that they are behind bars.

Next, I believe the prison experience is similar to the wilderness experience of Hagar. In the wilderness, Hagar had “serious personal and salvific encounters with God… which aided Hagar in the survival struggle of herself and her son.”[19] Like Hagar, inmates enter into a situation that seems grim and hopeless. But it is in this state of being that I believe persons are most able to encounter God – at least that was my experience. Behind bars, in a seemingly grim and hopeless situation, I believe I had a personal and salvific encounter with God. This type of encounter is not unusual and is sometimes referred to as a “jailhouse conversion.” The problem is that many times, inmates may have a personal encounter with God in prison, but will fail to take the human initiative to acquire skills for improving their quality of life. Granted, the system does very little to help this initiative, but neither did Abram and Sarai do anything to help Hagar in the wilderness. The Hagar story does not justify mass incarceration, but it does say that despite this injustice, inmates can find hope for survival and improved quality of life by taking human initiative. When they take that step to improve their quality of life, in the same way and with the same faith that Hagar did, inmates and released prisoners can trust that God is with them.

Finally, we can see the meaning of God in the reality of mass incarceration by understanding the Christology of womanist theology. Williams would agree with Cone, that there is redemption in the person of Jesus Christ, but in contrast to Cone, she rejects the salvific and redemptive power of the cross.[20] According to Williams, to glorify the cross by portraying Jesus as a surrogate who suffers in the place of others, all too often results in the exploitation of black women who are told that God intends for them to suffer as Jesus suffered. Williams says black women must reject the notion of Jesus’ surrogacy as a redemptive act. However, Williams believes that redemption can still be found in Jesus Christ through his ministerial vision. According to Williams, Jesus did not intend to redeem humanity through death on the cross, but through a “perfect ministerial vision… giving humankind the ethical thought and practice upon which to build a positive, productive quality of life.”[21]

In dealing with mass incarceration, it is important for the loved ones of criminal offenders to reject the surrogacy role and to embrace the ministerial vision of Jesus. I know from personal experience that the loved ones of both literally and metaphorically incarcerated people often believe that they must stick by their loved one no matter what. Especially when a person is behind bars or in some sort of trouble, there is the potential for their loved ones to feel they have to personally fix all of their problems. Often times this results in a sort of surrogacy role for the men and women who suffer right alongside their loved ones in prison. In dismantling mass incarceration, theologians must affirm that there is no redemption in senseless suffering. This does not mean that people should abandon their incarcerated loved ones, but if abuse is any part of that relationship, then nobody should believe that God intends for them to suffer in that relationship in order for the other person to be redeemed or liberated.

JESUS, LAZARUS, AND THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

There is a clear tension between black and womanist theologies in addressing the issue of mass incarceration. In the former, liberation comes through systemic changes and programs that would eliminate the oppressive nature of mass incarceration and provide rehabilitative services for criminal offenders. In the latter, redemption and salvation comes from human initiative, in which those who are directly affected by the system, such as inmates, see that God is with them when they take the human initiative to change their lives for the better. I believe a melding of these visions can be seen through the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in chapter 11 of the Gospel of John.

After receiving the news about Lazarus’ illness, Jesus told his disciples that he would go to him in Judea. The disciples, deeply concerned, questioned the efficacy of going into dangerous territory to help Lazarus, but Jesus was not deterred. When Jesus came to Lazarus’ sister, Mary, she was deeply worried that it was too late to save her loved one because “he had already been in the tomb for four days,” but Jesus comforted her by reminding her that he is the resurrection. Even though Jesus knew that he would raise Lazarus from the dead, upon witnessing the pain of Mary and the community of those who loved Lazarus, “Jesus wept.” Finally, Jesus told members of the community to remove the tombstone. Then, he called out to Lazarus, and Lazarus responded by coming out of the tomb. Finally, Jesus called on the community once again to unbind Lazarus and to let him go!

In this story, Lazarus is the prisoner. As a former drug addict and inmate, I can attest that being in this bondage can feel like one is spiritually dead. Like Lazarus’ loved ones, even the loved ones of inmates can sometimes lose hope that the inmate can overcome being “dead.” But like Jesus, the Christian community is called to be compassionate and to empathize with the pain of others—indeed, even weeping alongside those whose pain would otherwise not directly affect one’s self. Jesus did not raise Lazarus from the dead alone; members of the community were involved in removing the stone. As such, the Christian community must be involved in removing the structural barriers that keep inmates ‘dead’ and going in and out of prison (i.e. advocating for macro social prison reform). Like Lazarus, inmates must respond to Jesus’ call by taking the human initiative to walk out of the tomb. This is similar to the human initiative to improve one’s quality of life in womanist theology. Finally, Jesus calls on the Christian community to help Lazarus and the inmate re-enter into society by “unbinding” Lazarus and helping him to remove the vestiges of his former state of being. In this story, we can see that God’s involvement in mass incarceration involves structural changes, human initiative, and a Jesus who is the resurrection and raises the dead (i.e. rehabilitates individuals) even before and after the event on the cross.

CONCLUSION

 I believe we have an adequate answer to the question: What does God mean for those under the oppression of mass incarceration? Cone’s black theology showed us that God sides with the community that is working to dismantle an oppressive system that is in the business of creating perpetual nonpersons out of poor and disenfranchised racial and ethnic minorities. As evidenced in the book, The New Jim Crow, this system is truly massive and oppressive and without a theology that attempts to overthrow social structures for the liberation of the oppressed, we will not fully address the problem. Similarly, Williams’ womanist theology is crucial for giving hope to those who do not receive liberation, but who endure a prison sentence, either as an inmate or an inmate’s loved one, instead. This womanist approach is crucial for addressing the reality that despite the oppressive nature of mass incarceration, criminal offenders must take some responsibility for working to improve their own lives as well. Without this view we would not fully address the problem of mass incarceration, either.  Instead, I’ve offered a potential melding of these two theologies by showing how each uniquely addresses the problem and by offering a third tradition of Jesus, Lazarus, and the Christian community to demonstrate that the work of dismantling the system of mass incarceration is the work of doing God’s will.

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[1] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York; [Jackson, Tenn.]: New Press ; Distributed by Perseus Distribution, 2010).

[2] Ibid.

[3] James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, c1986.).

[4] Ibid., 6.

[5] Ibid., 8.

[6] Ibid., 24.

[7] Ibid., 25.

[8] Alexander, The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

[9] Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 31.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 48.

[12] Alexander, The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

[13] Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 118.

[14] Ibid., 31.

[15] Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness the Challenge of Womanist God-talk (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, c1993.).

[16] Ibid., 2.

[17] Ibid., 5.

[18] Ibid., 6.

[19] Ibid., 3.

[20] Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness the Challenge of Womanist God-talk.

[21] Ibid., 165.

© Daniel Aguilar and thetatteredrose.wordpress.com, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Daniel Aguilar and thetatteredrose.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.