African Theology, Philosophy, and Religions

bodies in the United States.The result, for Harris, is that the true consciousness of the Black human being is simultaneously hidden from the White oppressor and from the Black oppressed.The self-consciousness and self-identity of the slave in chattel American slavery "goes unacknowledged" (65), while the slave's consciousness is experienced and known primarily through the lens of the oppressor.The slave is conceived of as a dehumanized other, without agency over her/his own identity and consciousness.This deep othering continues into postbellum, Jim Crow America.The danger is that the enslaved/oppressed person has a separate self-consciousness that is not validated by the oppressor, or the larger society.This refusal to acknowledge the self-consciousness of Black souls is the "veil of racism" to which Harris repeatedly refers.Reading Harris missionally, we should be reminded of the ways in which we operate in alterity; caught "in a matrix of despair and hope" (11).As individuals and communities seek to partner with the Holy Spirit to engage the Missio Dei, we must be ever-mindful of the ways that our broken systems 'other-ize' individuals and communities.It is precisely in this othering that we construct our own veils that blind us from the visceral realities of our fellow humans, and mute their cries of pain and suffering.Harris argues that to address the pain, we first need to hear and acknowledge it.His work calls us to this awareness and action

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• African Religions and Philosophies

  J Deotis Roberts, John Mbiti et al.•Philosophy East and West•1972

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