From the Pulpit to the Prayer Room: Examining the Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Religion

• In Event: Know Thyself: Reflections of Emerging Black Female Scholars Through Critical Race Theory

Abstract

From birth to adulthood, we are immersed in a raced, gendered and classed system, racialized and socialized by mainstream society according to our identity markers and the values assigned to them (hooks, 2013; Leong, 2013). While race, gender, class and other identities are often interrogated from separate lenses, more attention has been given to examining the relationship of these overlapping identities and the interlocking structures that work together to “uphold and maintain cultures of domination” (hooks, 2013, p. 4). Grounded in critical race theory (CRT) and critical race methodology, this analytic narrative reflects on my personal journey from girlhood to womanhood from sociohistorical, cultural, and political contexts, offering a more nuanced understanding of my Black female existence in a white, patriarchal society.
For me, the centrality of race and racism, the signification of skin color, the romanticization and vilification of the female body, and the intersectionality of race and gender, converge and interact in different ways and across different settings (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). Whether it be researcher, teacher educator, social worker, student, or athlete, the spaces that I occupy overwhelmingly succumb to my Blackness and femaleness. What tends to get lost under society’s racial and gendered eye, however, are other elements of my identity, namely my religion. That being so, the point of this paper is not to suggest that religion on the whole is understudied from race-based theories, frameworks, critical perspectives or pedagogical approaches. Rather, the focus of this work is to examine the ways in which non-Eurocentric faiths and expressions, as it relates to intersectionality, occupy an unassuming space within the academy and society, further complicating my existence as a Black female scholar.
Historically, the church has served as a critical social institution for Black families and communities in learning how to navigate various contexts of life (Al-Fadhli & Kersen, 2010). For many, the church is a cathartic place of solace, guidance and worship as well as a space that helps one understand who they are in relationship to their ethnic, racial, national and gender identities (Abrams, 2014; Brice & Hardy, 2015). I would also argue that this is true among other non-Eurocentric faiths, including Islam. Born to two Muslim-converts in the Deep South, one parent with roots from the Gullah and the other previously raised in the African Methodist Episcopal church, my upbringing and current existence was/is informed by my race, gender and family’s religiosity. The point is, more space is needed in discourses to include religious contexts as it relates to other group identities. Like race, gender and class, religion too shapes positionality, ideology, epistemology, research and practice (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2015). As such, the significance of this paper is to shift the conversation to consider how non-Eurocentric religions and religious expressions intersect with the more visible badges of identity, like race and gender, and how such “potentially conflicting, overlapping identities, loyalties and allegiances” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 10) construct a more complex existence that goes beyond my Blackness and femaleness.

Author

• Effat Id-Deen, Michigan State University