What happens when you combine James Cone’s black liberation theology and Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks”?  You end up with Aaron McGruder’s irreverent new show Black Jesus on Adult Swim.  From the creator of The Boondocks, McGruder takes the cliché question of “What Would Jesus Do?” and places it in the heart of South Central Los Angeles.   The show’s premiere was welcomed with both anticipation and criticism as it has already inspired a change.org petition requesting its cancellation.

     Within the first few minutes, Black Jesus decked out in a dusty robe and crown of thorns has already used the n-word, dropped an f-bomb, and is sharing a blunt with his new disciples.  Shocking, jarring, and irreverent? Yes. Is it blasphemous? No.  The idea of Christ returning to Compton among “the least of these” to use the language of the Gospel of Matthew or James Cone’s notion of God’s co-suffering and experiencing blackness when he stated, “Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism,” is within the bounds of Christian tradition (albeit at the very edge of that boundary line). Whether portrayed in the Gospels as a reluctant Galilean rabbi turning water into wine or as South Central’s resident Son of God transforming water into premium cognac Jesus in both cases is relating to the condition of the “least of these”.  In just the first episode, the Black messiah is subject to police brutality and by all accounts is an unemployed, homeless, black man.

     African American Religious Studies scholars Yolanda Pierce and Juan Thomas-Floyd shared their thoughts with NPR about the theological possibilities raised with by the program.  I fully concur that there are important issues and topics that can be addressed by envisioning a returned Black Jesus who is situated in the Black community on multiple levels.  It is not simply skin color that makes the show so provocative but how the other characters in the show relate to a returned Black Jesus that should catch our attention.  You see people in a depressed economic area react to an incarnation of Jesus in many of the same ways that they do to a heavenly Christ.  Residents of Compton want their ‘daily bread’ as Black Jesus is asked for lotto numbers and is requested to serve as the get-away driver for a drug deal.  How many times has the name of Jesus been invoked in a convenience store lines as someone plays the lottery or as the gangster kisses his crucifix before engaging in some unsavory activity?  The modern incarnation of Black Jesus in these episodes operates as an indictment of our own ways of trying to manipulate divinity to “make a come up.”

     McGruder consciously focuses on the human element of Christ nature with his Black Jesus character.   The great paradox of the Trinitarian Creed is that Christ is both equally divine and equally human.  We tend to downplay this aspect of Christ’s character as it can lead to many unsettling questions.  However, for McGruder this means that our very human Black Jesus is prone to cursing, acknowledges a nice looking young lady, and many other mundane human attributes that are ignored in the veneration of Jesus as a divine being.  Another subtle attribute of MaGruder’s Black Jesus is his Christological standing regarding being co-equal with God the Father.  There are hints that McGruder’s Black Jesus shares a non-Trinitarian (almost Arianist) black folk understanding of Christ’s divinity as being a divine being but not the Supreme Being.  All of the language of Black Jesus regarding his “Pops” is subordinate language; this may change in later episodes but was quite noticeable in the first episode.

     Aaron McGruder has a noted track record of holding a sobering mirror up to Black America and asking us deep questions about our collective selves. For example in the episode, “Return of the King” from The Boondocks , Martin Luther King, Jr. awaken from a 32 year  coma only to find that his memory has been used to justify all forms of debauchery tells a room full of rowdy African Americans “Will you ignorant niggas please shut the hell up?!"  There are plenty of opportunities for Black Jesus to challenge American notions of faith and religiosity in a non-judgmental manner and school us on what a 21st century Black messiah struggling to make it in the hood might do?  On a final note, however, hopefully Black Jesus will not get bogged down in over-the-top vulgar language and scenarios for the sake of shock value and lose its important function as cultural critique.

When hip hop mogul Jay Z appeared at a Brooklyn Nets game with a medallion sporting the symbol of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earth, the media went into a frenzy trying to interpret what it meant to the one-time minority co-owner of the team.  The New York Post controversial title, “Jay-Z bling from ‘whites are devil’ group” is certainly meant to gain readers and tarnish the image of the Brooklyn-born rapper.  Of the several reprints of the story, nearly all include words such as “controversial” or “radical” in their title or bylines to suggest that Jay Z is supporting some type of fringe hate group. 

The fact a person of Jay Z’s stature is seen representing what is considered a “radical” group by media outlets obsessed with caricatured representations of black men as “gangstas and buffoons” might shock the senses.  For historians of the hip hop genre, Jay Z’s nominal association with the Five Percent nation is neither surprising nor shocking.  As Felicia Miyakawa, professor of musicology has discussed in detail the early period of hip hop was inundated with Five Percent lingo, symbols, and icons.  Record labels were packed hip hop groups either with direct affiliation or sympathetic to Five Percent teachings in their lyrics, sported Islamic kufis and fezes, and implored listeners to gain knowledge of self, avoid vices such as alcohol, pork and drugs, and criticized the policies of the Reagan-Bush years.  But we know how that story ended: the mid-nineties witnessed the explosion of gangsta rap music in the mainstream media as “What’s up G?” went from meaning “God” to “gangsta”.  Rappers hung up their kufis and Africa medallions for Los Angeles Raiders hats and gold chronic (marijuana) charms.  Hip Hop artist who remained faithful to what would be labeled “conscious” hip hop (Common, Mos Def, Taalib Kweli) were moved to the margins as more funk-laden hardcore songs took over the airwaves and cable music video programming.

Into this musical sea change we find a young Jay-Z who like many East Coast rappers of the time reflected both the conscious Five Percent-inspired hip hop and then dominant West Coast hardcore rap scene.  Jay Z’s meteoric rise can be attributed to his mastery of certain principles for hip hop success: simplified lyrical content and catchy musical production.  However, Five Percent teachings still can be found in numerous instances beginning with his alternate moniker J-Hova (in reference to Jehovah) and his lyrics as he proclaims his divine status in numerous songs.  An example of this is seen in the Usher collaboration Hot Tottie:

They call me King Hov, copy?
Big ballin’ is my hobby
So much so they think I’m down with the illuminati
My watch do illuminate
My pockets are tottie
But I’m God body, ya’ll better ask somebody
I was born a God
I made myself a king
Which means I downgraded to a human being

For the uninitiated these lyrics might simply be construed as boastful verses of his dominance of the hip hop industry.  For a younger conspiracy minded generation of listeners without knowledge of the pivotal role of Five Percent doctrines in the genre, they are proof that Jay Z along with other successful black entertainers have pledged their allegiance to demonic forces.  In his most recent musical offering Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay Z muses on the criticism of his faith stance with “Heaven”.  The song starts with a nod to Five Percent teachings and a swipe at conspiracy theorists,

Arm, leg, leg, arm, head - this is God body
Knowledge, wisdom, freedom, understanding - we just want our equality
Food, clothing, shelter - help a [n-word] find some peace
Happiness for a gangsta, ain't no love in the streets
Conspiracy theorist screaming Illuminati
They can't believe this much skill is in the human body

So what is to be made of Jay Z’s nominal Five Percenter allegiance?  Is Jay Z secretly harboring anti-white hatred that he now feels comfortable expressing in public?  I think that the obsession with the critique of whiteness found in the Five Percent Nation teachings and other black nationalist oriented religious traditions found in the African American community misses the point entirely.  A question that is not often asked is, ‘what should the religious mythologies and theology of Black folk reflect if not a response to the experiences of…well…Black folk?’   The fact that after centuries of racial enslavement, brutal and oppressive Jim Crow segregation that some aspects of Black religiosity responded to it in theological and even in mythic terms should not be surprising.  To equate whiteness and white society as the function of some demonic force hell-bent on oppressing and enslaving black folk is just as logical an conclusion as those who generations earlier believed that enslaved Africans due to their circumstances were the recipients of a divine curse (a la curse Of Ham).   The more intriguing question to be asked given the historical circumstances of enslavement and racial violence during the late 19th and earlier 20th century is, ‘why didn’t the belief that the white man is the devil became more widespread in the African American religious worldview?’ 

Perhaps, it is a function of white privilege that African Americans and other non-whites can be subjected to yearly doses of white Jesus films and other re-enactments that are supposedly historical in nature that feature the whitest of actors playing biblical figures in order to reinforce the sacredness of whiteness.  The fear and angst exposed towards the teachings of the Five Percent Nation is a cosmos in which whiteness is not revered.

The Five Percenters and its parent group the Nation of Islam offer is a normative religious cosmos for black existence.  This is often overlooked in favors of criticizing the elements which are unpleasant to white ears.  But lets us imagine that ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Jebusites, and all the other “ites” from the Hebrew Bible could be resurrected; would modern Jews abandon their faith in order not to offend their one-time foes?  And even as the Catholic Church and mainline Protestant denominations have officially abandoned the charge of deicide against “the Jews” there still exists a sizable number of Christians who hold Jewish people responsible for the death of Christ.   This gets at the crux of the matter, religion as a human phenomenon responds to the human experience with particularity rather than universalism.  The ethical and moral universalism of religion is filtered through historical and cultural myths, rites and rituals that give meaning to the particular religious community.  For most whites, black religion operates as what noted historian of religion Charles Long calls an opaque theology.  The inability to comprehend a reflective inner life for Blacks which sacralizes its historical experiences leads to an obsession with the elements that openly criticize whiteness (i.e. white man is the devil).  Therefore the traumatic slaveocracy and Jim Crow segregation that produced the “blue eyed devil” myth is ignored or marginalized and black religious groups are treated as irrational hate-mongerers.   

Throughout the black religious cosmos, various traditions have removed whiteness from its hallowed perch. The most obvious is the Nation of Islam’s myth of Yacub, however, Black Hebrews have long identified whites in general (or Ashkenazi Jews in particular) as Edomites (the descendants of Esau, enemy of the Israelites), and Rastafarianism has long critiqued whiteness and western society as Babylon, the adversary of the saints of Jah.  The sum total of these traditions is not there castigation of whiteness and western society, it larger role is to serve as compass to lead African Americans to what noted humanist theologian Anthony Pinn calls complex subjectivity.  Complex subjectivity is an attempt to assert agency is a world filled with racial terror that began with the Middle Passage and carried through to the 20th century in the religious diversity of the urban Black America created by the Great Migration where religious traditions like the Five Percenters were born.

Also, the elevation of blackness from demonic in the western imagination to divine in the black religious cosmos has led to charges of reverse racism and black supremacy from media outlets and organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Although, there has not been a history of racial violence committed against whites by these religious groups they continued get catalogued as the black “versions” of white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Christian Identity movements respectively.  The rhetorical violence to whiteness as a symbol that Five Percenters, Black Hebrews, Rastafarians, and the Nation of Islam engage in is constantly offset by demands to be law-abiding citizens in its doctrinal teachings.  To believe that black flesh can inhabit the divine, or can be the chosen of the divine is indeed a radical departure from the traditional western framework.  At a time when an Oscar winner celebrating her dark skin is seen as a monumental feat, perhaps claiming to be a god in Black flesh is too much for the average American to handle.

Certainly, it would be more comforting for whites and many blacks to only hear messages of racial brotherhood and reconciliation and to overlook the demands and calls for cosmic justice that has been equally a part of the African American religious tradition.  But as a human expression, religion is a chronicle of the interaction between human populations and societies at critical junctures in their historical and spiritual journeys and to censor black religious traditions for exposing some of the unpleasant episodes during this modern epoch would be violation of the very creed of the Five Percent nation: Freedom, Justice, and Equality.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land. - Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing
    
So says the last stanza of the Negro National Anthem. It assumes that there is a sympathetic heavenly being actively watching out over black folk since our ancestors were first thrown into the tragic circumstances of enslavement and racial oppression.  It is at the root of theistic forms of Black religion.  Anthony Pinn in Why Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology discusses black folk's attempts to rationalize their circumstances in the language of redemptive suffering.  It posits a benevolent, loving, all-powerful deity who is offended at the mistreatment of black folks and will eventually end that suffering in an act(s) of divine justice.  The reasons for this ethnic suffering range from being the instrument of instruction to teach America to be more just society to the erroneous belief that black folk have merited this suffering by some act of divine disobedience.  But what all of this "God-talk" (as Pinn calls it) does is beg a critical question that was posed by William R. Jones at the height of the black liberation theology movement, "Is God a White Racist?"  Essentially, Jones ask Black Christians in particular and black theists more broadly to provide evidence that God is on the side of the oppressed.

Today all across America various versions of the redemptive suffering trope are being sermonized in Black churches especially the one that the parents of Trayvon Martin decided to attend this morning.  Black folks will be told that the justice of God in light the Zimmerman acquittal should not be questioned. That this tragedy is a part of God's greater plan.  Some might argue that it was necessary for Trayvon's death and Zimmerman's acquittal to solidify the push for a new authorization of the recently gutted Voting Rights Act or perhaps as President Obama has opined the need to pass new gun control legislation , or to move black people on a host of other social and political issues.  That seems like an unreasonable burden for a 17 year old child.  It almost reeks of human child sacrifice. In order to move God of our weary years and silent tears to act we must continue to offer our children up as unblemished offerings to gain (and keep) the basic civil rights of an American citizen and human rights in general.  Did somehow the lives of Emmett Till, Cythnia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, and Denise McNair (and countless others) brutal deaths no longer satiate this deity and now required the lives of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Rekia Boyd, Marissa Alexander, and Aiyanna Stanley?  Crazy and insane logic you say? That's exactly what is being argued each time black people invoke that these deaths are a part of some divine plan of redemptive suffering for black freedom.

More importantly, what type of God is this that requires black folks to offer up their children to the cult of white supremacy to access a public bathroom or a voting booth?  I argue only a God that is a cruel unashamed, unsympathetic white racist; or more accurately African Americans have unconsciously constructed a deity that is a white racist and looks to it for their liberation from oppression.  Either way, this deity can never be the source of black folks struggle to lead more meaning lives as human beings. 

When it was the time to go buy a hoodie and some Skittles I kept my money in my pocket.  I have not changed my profile picture to the various Trayvon Martin inspired pictures over the past year.  And today I will not "black out" my profile.  Do I do this because I am not in solidarity with the millions of people who are sickened by the tragedy that ended the life of Trayvon Martin.  Not at all. I have resisted what I consider symbolic Trayvonism that has swept over the social media world which substitutes real actions with endorphin producing symbolic gestures of support.  In other words I don't want to be more comfortable with the death of 17 year old black boy for simply being black.

Some have compared symbolic Trayvonism to wearing different colored ribbons that signify the different forms of cancer. I beg to differ. Cancer is an impersonal disease that chooses its victims without regard to class, race, sexuality or gender.  We act in solidarity because we have come to know it can and will strike anyone's family.  Secondly, people usually participate in activities or donate money, time, and resources to the curing of cancer.  While some only wear a ribbon many don't stop with the ribbon.  The end goal is 'The Cure'.  Are the hoodies a symbol of ending anti-black racial violence or a commodification of it? 

Which brings me back to hoodies and profile pictures.  Neither of these gestures has lead to the reduction of the chance that another young black male will not be the victim of white vigilantism (whether in the form of police brutality or Stand Your Ground laws).  Rather it has commodified Trayvon's image as a symbol of black suffering in the same way Christians wear crosses around their necks.  Black folk have internalized a cult of black martyrdom that kicks in whenever these tragedies occur.  We have become somewhat adjusted to the reality that black life is not guaranteed in the same way as white life.  We recall all the past African Americans who have met violent ends at the hands of white racial violence and create a longer list of names. Now along with the names Emmett, Medgar, Martin, and Malcolm we have added Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin and countless others.  The sad reality is we are in denial about what confronts us. 

Just take the mission of the Trayvon Martin Foundation:
The Trayvon Martin Foundation was established to create awareness of how violent crime impacts the families of the victims, and to provide support and advocacy for those families, in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin. The scope of the Foundation’s mission is to advocate that crime victims and their families not be ignored in the discussions about violent crime, to increase public awareness of all forms of racial, ethnic and gender profiling, educate youth on conflict resolution techniques, and to reduce the incidences where confrontations between strangers turn deadly.

This was not simply a violent crime. Trayvon was not the victim of a mugging or gang violence. He was the victim of racial violence.  George Zimmerman could not know if he smoked weed, posted inappropriate things on his social media accounts, known his g.p.a. in high school. All he needed to know was he was a black male and therefore suspect.  What technique does one use to stop a white vigilante?  How do you reduce incidences of confrontation when your skin color is the source of confrontation on the part of white racists?  While the mission of the foundation is admirable it misses the deeper issue which has existed persistently in the minds of racist whites: the presence of black folk and their right to exist as total human beings.

I must admit I was one of those who downloaded the Magna Carta... Holy Grail app for my Samsung Galaxy S III.  But I was relatively late to getting around to listening to the most recent offering by Hova.  I have long been by intrigued by the career of Sean "Jay-Z" Carter as much as his music.  As expected what I heard was a forty-three year old rapper trying to come to terms with being an adult rapper in a world that regards his genre as permanently immature.  Track after track boasts, laments, reflects on being a successful black male who is married and a father but still demands respects as a MC. As hip hop has aged obviously many of its artist have gone on and had families, but that usually signifies the end of ones career in a way that is uncommon in any other music genre.  As Lewis R. Gordon, has noted in "The Problem of Maturity in Hip Hop" the general audience of hip hop expects a perpetual child-like state for its artists. Consider former label mate and later employee LL Cool J decision to leave Def Jam largely because of the relative fast rise of Sean Carter to the position of president of Def Jam Records.  However, when one thinks of James Todd Smith as LL Cool J it is still as a twenty-something not quite mature rapper, a persona that he wears quite proudly.  As the photo in this post suggest Jay-Z desire to become a owner of the means of production is quite a departure from the current drone of songs about poppin mollys, guns, cars, and women.  It is the fact that Sean Carter maintains his Jay-Z persona and continues to rap that makes him different than other rappers and requires an interrogation of him as artist and business man.  

I feel comfortable making this declaration. Jay-Z is the first successful rapper. Granted there have been plenty of rappers to make substantial earnings and parlay that into another career choice. Will Smith, Percy "Master P" Miller, Sean "Diddy" Combs are all relatively wealthy and are staples in the global consumerism of all things hip hop related. But there is a qualitative difference between how Carter and other rappers have treated fame and wealth. Perhaps the poster child for squandered wealth is MC Hammer who in the early 90s became a brand name but was not successful at translating that into ownership potential. And rappers have long been product endorsers ever since Run-DMC requested a packed Madison Square Garden crowd to hold their Adidas in the air. Rappers have endorsed everything imaginable from cereal to vitamin water. However, Jay-Z has held to true to his word in not simply being "a business man, I'm a business man."  He has turned his name and persona into a brand which he has cultivated into many successful business ventures.  But as his lyrics suggest ( Label owners hate me I'm raisin' the status quo up, I'm overchargin' niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush. Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hold us.  We can talk, but money talks so talk mo' bucks) he has always been cognizant of fate of hip hop artists as income earners with a limited shelf life.  In essence, Jay Z desire to a successful black capitalist in manner is informed by the synthesis of black nationalism and black capitalism of the late 1970s.  It is the same ethos that animated Earl Graves and his Black Enterprise magazine and what one finds in the current crop of African American CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. 

Magna Carta... Holy Grail has been criticized by many such as the Washington Post for being an exercise in base consumersim. Imagine this accusation being leveled at Phil Knight, ceo of Nike for treating consumers as consumers.  Perhaps it is society's desire to see rappers as underprivileged urban blacks with insatiable consumer desires and never as a producers and entrepreneurs hence the criticism of Jay-Z's deal with Samsung to bulk order one million download units of Magna Carta for its customers.

With that said, Jay-Z's success should not escape our critique as there are many areas that require engagement.  His unabashed capitalist ethos is problematic to say the least considering Jay-Z considers his path the "blueprint" to success for any aspiring rapper.  Also, his ambivalent relationship with President Obama as co-symbol of post-raciality in the minds of many younger Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds require holding Jay-Z accountable for the narrative that his music and business persona has carefully crafted to present a image of African American success.  But before we engage Jay-Z, let's admit he is a different kind of rapper.