The Joy Of Being Black In Challenging Times

by Darryl L. Fortson, M.D.

I would like to say I am proud to be Black (and I am), but that’s not really the point. Moreover, I don’t think I should be proud of something I had no input in determining. Like all of us, I am what I am because God made me what I am; however, I can choose to be humbled. I can choose to be honored. And most importantly, I can choose to be joyful.

There are times (often when I am listening to music such as above) that I am moved nearly to tears of joy about being Black in America. Some would say that such an emotion is indicative of an almost perverse denial of the state of Black people in America, and if I were not keenly aware of our inferior state after a childhood on the South Side of Chicago, an education in not one but two HBCU’s, and a medical career spent in the urbanscapes of Chicago, Illinois, as well as Gary, Indiana and Las Vegas, it would be perverse indeed.

I am not ignorant or unaware, nor am I devoid of empathy for the injustice, violence, and suffering that surrounds both the history and the present circumstances of my people. But I want joy, and I shall have it. I see the light of it through a crack in the wall of oppression that surrounds us, and so I walk toward that light. I soak in its warmth and view all that it illuminates in my field of vision. That light has a name, and its name is “Purpose.”

It is a great joy to have Purpose; to be a component in the mechanism of God’s will for yourself and the Universe He created. We all have such a Purpose, but we don’t all know what it is, and even if we do, we do not always walk and act in that Purpose. Whatever Purpose other individuals or groups of individuals may have, it is clear to me that Black people in America have a great and noble collective Purpose, and that Purpose is to overcome.

It is not a fun Purpose. It is not a Purpose of leisure or whimsy. It is filled with pain and peril. It means abiding and surviving wave after wave after wave of hazards, wounds, thefts, denigrations, and indignities both gross and subtle from without the Black community as well as within it. But to overcome these things is Purpose nonetheless. It means that you are in the Plan, in the mix, in the scrum of God against the forces that perpetually oppose Him. And if you are in God’s plan, then you are on God’s team, and there can be no greater joy than this, since the rewards of being so are as boundless as they are eternal.

This is not at all to say that people who are not Black have no Purpose or that they are not on God’s team. But when evil deeds of hate, racism, and oppression are fighting against you rather than with you, you can rest assured you are in the better place, regardless of how it feels to you or looks to the external observer.

So I say to Black people everywhere — you have Purpose: to “fight the good fight of faith,” to be hated and to love anyway, to insist on your dignity and your humanity in order to bear witness to the Creator in you and those similarly situated, and to inspire all who see you to reveal and lift up the Creator in themselves. Your Purpose is not merely to better the state of Black men and women, but in doing so, use your Purpose to unlock the shackles of past shame and the fetters of present fear that enslave the very people in this country who, in days past and present, have enslaved and oppressed you.

So whether your pants are up or saggy; whether your “kitchen” in the back of your head is combed or uncombed; whether you say “we were” or “we was,” the Almighty Himself has imbued you with profound Purpose just by allowing you to survive “over and a way that with tears have been watered.” So embrace your Purpose with great joy! And if God has superlatively blessed you with education, wealth, fame, or any combination of the three, then engage the struggle to overcome all the more. Walk it out for your family and your neighbor and your co-worker and the world and its Creator to see! Read and listen, be kind and be strong, fear the Lord only; forgive yourself, me, and your oppressors. Pray us all along.

You are Black. You are truly beautiful. God loves you. So do I. “We shall overcome.” What a joy!