What do we do now?
The day after the election, like many of the 92%, I felt defeated, I felt betrayed, I felt hurt and despair. For America to vote for a felon, sexual assaulter, liar, and manipulator was a slap in the face—a stark reminder that as much as people say they want change, they really don't. Especially if that change is to come by someone who looks like me.
Madame Vice President Kamala Harris was the first time I saw a potential Presidential candidate who looked like me: a Black woman and a fellow Historically Black College and University (HBCU) graduate. Her campaign for President represented to most black and brown young girls that God can do all things and that you are created for such a time as this. That when you keep God first and pursue God's calling on your life, you can walk in rooms, doors, and be placed in positions beyond your wildest dreams.
The election results forced many to confront the reality that despite decades of progress, America still struggles with embracing transformative leadership from diverse backgrounds. For the 92% of Black women voters who consistently show up for democracy, this moment carries a particular weight. Many have taken to social media to express not just disappointment but also exhaustion. As seen online discourse from black women, the recurring pattern of being called upon to “clean mess and fix what white male leadership and patriarchy has run to the ground” has taken its toll, often at the detriment of their own health and well-being. Examples of this can be seen in the deaths of Joanne A. Epps of Temple University and Dr. Orinthia T. Montague of Volunteer State Community College as well as the resignation of Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay, and the suicide of Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey of Lincoln University.
With grief and disappointment, during my prayer time, I was reflecting on my scripture for the year, 1 Corinthians 2:9: “But, as it is written, 'What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him'” (NRSVUE).
And it hit me—with this new administration, we have to turn to the wisdom of God. We have to give God our fears, worries, trust and stand on that even in the turmoil God will show us. We have to remind ourselves daily that we are the spiritual. As the spiritual, we have God's spirit within us and can interpret spiritual things for what they are. We must make a strong commitment to avoid toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing over the next four years. Our communities and people will be hurting and will need a prophetic word. They will need words and people to let them feel but also give them hope. We have to remember that to have the mind of Christ, that is to believe and live in the ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.’ And with that calls for a different leadership model and strategy.
The Call for New Leadership Models as Hope
The day after the election, I turned to my Professor Dr. Walter E. Fluker’s book, Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community and my 2020 term paper for his MLK Ethical Leadership class, “Gender Equity-the Hope for the Future: Lessons for the Ethical Leader Examining Martin Luther King, Jr’s Patriarchy,” to figure out where do we go from here? What is the strategy to move our community forward as faith leaders?
Fluker defines the ethical leader as one who possesses the principles, practices, and traits of Character, Civility, and Community. To which Character is the integrity, recognition, and courage of the personal dimension of the leader. Civility is the Empathy, Respect, and Justice of the public dimension of the leader. Hope, reverence, and compassion are the spiritual dimensions of the Community within the leader. In addition, Fluker calls for "the development of a new generation of ethical leaders who possess competencies and skills rooted in character, civility, and community—leaders who dare to stand at the dangerous intersection where vast, impersonal systemworlds meet and often collide with our fragile and precious lifeworlds and who help us to negotiate and transform the traffic."[1] (Fluker, 189)
The hope I offer for the future is a charge for faith leaders to re-evaluate the strategies and methods they use in order to lead. Below I offer a brief historical understanding and then develop a Womanist Group Centered Leadership Model, based on African American women’s leadership during the civil rights movement, to offer a way forward.
Re-envisioned leadership characteristics through the eyes of the black women mobilizing and organizing within the civil rights movement can provide us with four qualities of a leader.
First, they show us that a leader must first recognize the Imago Dei in all those of the community and group, recognizing that all peoples were made in the image of God and are worthy dignity and respect as human beings. Secondly, they show us that the leader must recognize the human's agency and initiative towards survival, liberation, and freedom of the community. In other words, the leader must recognize that they are called to be full participants in seeking new visions, survival resources, freedom, and liberation strategies while simultaneously recognizing that their participation and language must include the entire community. The leader, including the entire community, consists of them recognizing the humanity of all without objectifying those who have traditionally been dehumanized. This includes those who identify outside of the traditional categories of gender and sexuality.
Also, the leader must be willing to witness and testify on behalf of the group and community. They must recognize that the divine is at work in the community as well as bear truth to the experiences of all those in it. Lastly, black women of the civil rights movement show the leader that they must lead from two virtues that Dr. Katie Cannon calls quiet grace and unshouted courage. Quiet grace is the persistent struggle for human dignity in defiance of degrading oppression. Unshouted courage is the capacity to constantly confront threats to survival in the face of reprisals for one's determination to survive.[2] (Ross, 7)
The leader must recognize the divine at work in the community as well as bear a spirit of truth-telling. An example of leadership that encompasses these leadership traits can be witnessed in the leadership of Ella Baker.
Ella Baker's quote, "Strong people don't need strong leaders," was popularized after she responded to King's rush to release a press statement. In King's press statement, he urged the students to form an organizing organization. He stated, "Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community"[3] (Wynn-81). King and Baker had two different understandings of the community. Whereas King viewed the community as being one that was male lead and dominated, Baker viewed the community as one that came together and leads from within. Her model of leadership focused on developing strong people so that it was group centered and not based on one individual. Developing strong people, for Baker, was based on the understanding that everyone is of value and worth and have something to contribute to the group. Everyone understands their agency and capacity to witness and testify to their experience; however, their collective agency as a community, and the group would bring change.
Her model of leadership is best understood in her formation of SNCC (The Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee). When she gathered the students in Raleigh for a sit-in, she advised them not to become a part of SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and to form their organization. The students listened to Baker, and at the Raleigh Conference they voted to establish only a temporary coordinating body. They drafted a statement that reflected Gandhian nonviolence similar to SNCC's, but they did not align themselves with SNCC. The month after the gathering, they chartered themselves as an independent organization at Fisk University.[4]
Baker's role as their advisor and one of their primary funders allowed them to have many accomplishments. They instituted Freedom Rides that consisted of the diversity and inclusion of the community. Those who participated in the Freedom Rides were black, white, women, and men. SNCC embodied Baker's desire and leadership model that all who were in the group were leaders and called to serve. As the freedom rides continued throughout the South, more students began to join the movement. Ella Baker and the success of SNCC lets us know that group-centered leadership can be a model for community change. Her model recognizes the human agency of the body and does not objectify those who have traditionally been dehumanized. It allows the marginalized to participate in leadership and freedom for all.
Hope Through Collective Action
Places and sites evoke memory and call to new commitments when we take what we congregate to remember, conjure new meaning, and conspire to reimagine. Memory is a spiral in which it continues to be reformed and reshaped. By expanding on the Ethical Leadership Model to now be considered an Ethical Womanist Group Centered Leadership Model, a new beloved community can be created that includes and respects every human being. Leadership does not reside in the one charismatic leader, leadership includes the collective. Group Centered Leadership is a model that many churches and traditionally patriarchal and chauvinist organizations can benefit from. I believe that the call now is that faith leaders remember their history of disruptions and provide a new model of community and space that is held together through their belief and dependence on the divine.
What would it look like for faith leaders of churches and organizations to adopt this model where there is no hierarchy, and everyone is included, valued, and able to witness and testify to their experience? King asked the question "Where do we go from here?" I would change that question to "What do we do now?" What do we do now as faith leaders in a world that seems not to have advanced the way that we envisioned?
The answer lies in disrupting traditional hierarchies, removing gendered and patriarchal language, and acknowledging the divine image and agency in all bodies regardless of their race, gender, and sexual identities. The future of our beloved community depends not on the emergence of another charismatic leader, but on our collective willingness to embrace new models of leadership that honor the dignity, agency, and potential of all people.
As we move forward, we must remember that the responsibility for change cannot rest solely on the shoulders of Black women who have carried this burden for generations. The path to transformation requires active participation from all segments of society, particularly those who have historically benefited from existing power structures. Only through this collective commitment to new forms of leadership and community building can we create the beloved community that generations have struggled to achieve.
———————————————————————-
[1]Fluker, Walter Earl. Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 189.
[2]Ross, Rosetta Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion and Civil Rights (Minneapolis: Fortres Press, 2003), 7.
[3] “Beyond Patriarchy,” Linda Wynn in The Domestication of Martin Luther King, Jr., 81.
[4] Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). (2018, June 5). Retrieved May 4, 2020, from https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/student-nonviolent-coordinating-committee-sncc
