This weekend was busy as hell but I still found time to watch something black history. This wasn’t a documentary, not even a true story to my knowledge; but I’m sure it was inspired by the past. The movie was called Sankofa. I watched it on Netflix.

The movie starts with a black lady having a photoshoot, her photographer is a white man. This woman is selling sex honey! The photo shoot is happening at a coastal castle in Africa. You know like the one the took them to in Woman King before they go back to America with their cargo. There is this elder there praying honoring the ancestors whose blood was shed there. He broke up everything with a strong presence. I mean everything: the shoot and even the tourists with a tour guide were afraid to continue. In that moment he enchanted the black model to go back and revisit the past. And she did just that, she ended up a house slave.

Any movie about slavery pisses me off a bit especially when considering how it still effects our people today. We still get handled like we are subhuman by things like food deserts, police brutality and racism but this movie helped me understand how we think. It’s the brain washing for me! They did it so effectively our people still are! It’s embedded in our DNA.

The lady said:

it’s easier to accept being a slave when you were born into it, you accept that this is just the way it is.

They programmed our strong men to be our abusers, our beautiful women to be nothing but sex-toys, our lighter skinned people to believe themselves superior to their darker counterparts, they programmed us to turn our backs on one another, they programmed us to abandon our God all by threatening us with beatings and in some cases sure death. They orchestrated the toxicity that exists in our community but now that we know what do we do?

I know one part I started with was my relationship with Spirit. I grew up a church girl. I sang in the choir, went to Sunday school, bible class. I was involved in youth ministry. I loved church. It was legit the social environment I had outside of school and the neighborhood. My mom is a minister in a family of ministers, my wasband is Baptist Minister.

Needless to say it was easier to accept because I was born into it. I felt connected with Spirit. I never doubted the validity or existence of a Higher Power something always told me church was making up stuff. The first thing was the dress codes, fees regardless of financial situation, and what did it for me was the Baptist Church Covenant (BCC). All that shit was contracted by the Bible. Dressing a certain way don’t change a heart, biblically alms should be withheld if impoverished and half the BCC sounds like the rule book to a cult. But it’s not following that’s only extreme. It’s the hate and fear towards African spirituality.

“you’re playing with the devil” “if it ain’t in the Bible…” and my all time favorite “I love you too much to let you go to hell”

That’s what I hear often from often well meaning black people who see my way of practice. I’m approached about the crystals, herbs, yoga, meditation, my altar and the ancestor altar. I watched those men beat a house slave for “association” with the slaves known to worship African Gods. The good church boy killed his own momma because she was working with the devil and he had to defend God, at least that’s what his master taught him. Our people are still afraid to learn of our God because of the consequences back then.

It’s a trauma response so we have to do some work to fix it. First thing is to realize our life isn’t in danger if we begin to learn or practice in the way of our ancestors. It’s not the devil or darkness, it rendered us too powerful so they had to take it away. Think about what untapped power our people possess saddens me. And Hell is even a topic of debate amongst the church folk so i can’t be saved from a hypothetical space, I’ll focus here. Spirit was never born so it never dies, this I know, where my spirit goes is up to the Most High.

On one hand we as a people claim pride in ourselves and denounce slavery but in this area we are stuck. I get why not, my spiritual practices have always helped me through trying times. Not having Jesus was scary until I relearned spirituality. My prayers and belief in it happening changed things. I know I have learned a lot but have been too afraid to truly study any ATR or get initiated, I always pointed to not wanting a new religion, it may be because I was afraid of my history.

Black History