Larcenia Floyd and Representations of the Divine: The Path to

Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology

Volume 6, Issue 1

ISSN 2380-7458

Editorial

Larcenia Floyd and Representations of the Divine: The Path to Justice

is Black, Feminine, and Interfaith

Author(s): Ayanna Grady-Hunt

Source: Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology 6, no. 1 (2020): 4-9.

Online article published on: December 12, 2020

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Editorial

Larcenia Floyd and Representations of the Divine:

The Path to Justice is Black, Feminine, and Interfaith

Ayanna Grady-Hunt

Managing Editor (2020-2021)

Graduate Theological Union

Berkeley, California, U.S.A.

Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology, Vol. 6, No. 1

On May 25, 2020, the world watched in horror, fear, disgust, rage, and

spiritual despair as a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, a

Black man, in cold blood, on a crowded street in broad daylight. I was with

my 97-year old grandmother—a regal Black woman born in the South, with

memories both precious and harrowing. Together we sat and watched the

news unfold, in sickened silence.

Floyd had been arrested for suspicion of a nonviolent offense.

Despite this, and despite his compliance once detained, the officer, Derek

Chauvin, lodged his knee into Floyd’s windpipe for eight minutes and 46

seconds, cutting off his air supply, and ending his life. Eight minutes and 46

seconds. Later, I read that bodycam transcripts revealed George Floyd

cried out “I can’t breathe” more than 20 times. Chauvin’s mocking

response was: “It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.” Chauvin was

training a new recruit that day, showing him the ropes.

As George Floyd was dying, he used his last breaths to call out to his

mother, Larcenia Floyd. “Mama, Mama. I love you.” Larcenia Floyd

preceded her son George in death by two years. George Floyd’s devotion to

his mother, Larcenia, struck me as a holy utterance. More on that later.

For those who believe in a Divine origin of life, George Floyd’s

murder by police in the public square was a spiritual transgression. A

complete hollowing of the soul. For those who believe in democracy, in the

rights of all people, regardless of color, gender, class, caste, religion,

politics, or sexual preference, George Floyd’s murder was a deep breach in

the human contract. For those who truly endeavor to be community, as

defined by Malidoma Some

, the murder of George Floyd was a barbaric,

inhumane display of inbred White supremacist ideology. For those who

believe, George Floyd’s murder demands a systemic rebuke.

Derek Chauvin deserves to spend his life in prison, multiple times

over, but a larger evil is at work, much more sinister and cunning. Derek

Chauvin represents the recurring cycle of overt racism that rises every

generation in this country. The ideology that formed Derek Chauvin—that

fuels Make America Great Again, the current Republican Party politics, the

behavioral amorality of the conservative religious right, the President of

the United States—is a disease that has metastasized and it has infected

every facet of U.S. life, including religious discourse.

Beginning with the earliest days of this country’s illegal “founding,”

to the removal of indigenous North Americans, chattel slavery, Jim and

Jane Crow, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration of Black and Brown men

and women, and now, the murder of Black men and women by police, this

country has willingly allowed itself to be governed by a violent White

supremacist ideology—Melanie Harris has defined this as the “logic of

domination”

—in service to its own self-image.

However, just as cycles of evil rise, so do theoethical justice

paradigms rise to counter them.

The Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Plantation Politics

Many White citizens in the United States, and global citizens abroad, were

shocked by the brutality of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the

police. Black citizens worldwide are, unfortunately, not unused to

embodying these tragedies on a recurring basis. Case in point, Breonna

Taylor, Ahmaud Aubrey, Rayshard Brooks, and Daniel Prude were all non-

violent, unarmed Black men and women killed by police or former police in

Malidoma Some, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community: The African Teachings of

the Dagara (New York: Penguin/Arkana, 1997).

Melanie Harris, EcoWomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths

(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017).

the first six months of 2020. Black citizens have no realistic expectation that

the full measure of justice in any of these cases will be served.

The history of violence against Black and Indigenous Americans in

the United States is as cunning as it is devastating in its longevity.

Meticulous research has uncovered the insidious routes the legacies of

slavery, Jim and Jane Crow, and segregation have taken to maintain White

supremacist power, all while under the guise of being post-racial. Research

has also revealed how police departments across the country have been

enforcers of that hidden code.

In her stunning 2016 documentary, 13

, Ava DuVernay exposed the

hypocrisy embedded within the 13

Amendment. DuVernay’s documentary

exposed the amendment’s fine print which reads, “Neither slavery nor

involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party

shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”

DuVernay linked the legacy of this amendment to the staggeringly

disproportionate rate of imprisonment of Black men and women compared

to Whites. The mass incarnation of Black people in the United States is a

moral epidemic hiding in plain sight.

The 1619 Project, published in the New York Times Magazine in

August 2019 and curated by Nikole Hannah-Jones, is an investigative

religio-social-cultural examination of U.S. slavery and its lingering imprint

on existing social structures, ideologies, and policies. In a recent dialogue,

Jones connected the legacy of pre-Civil War slave patrols with modern day

policing. Jones says: “Whites were deputized to police enslaved

communities, to ensure slaves were only in the places they were allowed,

to put down slave insurrections, and gave them practically unlimited power

to stop, question, and even execute enslaved people.”

As I listen to Jones speak, I am reminded of the 2015 stalking and

murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman, a judge’s

son, claimed to be part of the Neighborhood Watch when he killed

unarmed Trayvon, 17 years old. At the time, I held a mother’s fear for my

CBS News, “Nikole Hannah-Jones on protests and the roots of racism in the U.S,”

accessed September 20, 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/video/nikole-hannah-jones-1619-

project-roots-of-racism-slavery/.

then-15 year old son, who reminded me in so many ways of Trayvon

Martin. I held and hold the fear of all Black mothers.

The Theo-ethics of Divine Black Mama

Following the murder of George Floyd, White people in large numbers

began protesting all over the globe. I believe the economic and physical

moratorium that the novel coronavirus ushered in created mental,

spiritual, and emotional space for people to see and hear what Black

people have been trying to show them for years: a searing and acute

awareness of the systemic killings of unarmed Black men and women by

police.

My grandmother and I watched as people all over the world

protested police brutality. Black Lives Matter slogans and mantras were

seen and heard in major cities all over the globe. Night after night for

several weeks, protests filled with many White and young adult faces, were

displayed on news screens.

I found myself lingering on George Floyd’s final words. The

wrenching, raw despair within them, but, also, the inherent hope they

offered. When he called out for his mama, in his abject isolation, he

connected to an instinctual awareness of who Mama is. For most of us, she

is our first experience of love and protection. George Floyd—in a state of

semi-consciousness or, as African religious traditions believe, already

existing somewhere between the ancestral realm and the material realm—

drew on his most profound awareness of that protection and love.

George Floyd’s sacred utterance holds crystal clear specificity—

Larcenia Floyd was a Black mama. George Floyd cried out to the one who

knew. In her collection of essays, “Christ Our Black Mother Speaks,”

Christina Cleveland writes: “Unlike most of society, Christ our Black Mother

does not need to be convinced that we’ve been wronged, that we’re

hurting, that amends need to be made. We don’t need to beg her to see

our humanity, our bruises, our bleeding.”

I believe Larcenia Floyd was with her son in his final moments—as an

African ancestor and a Divine presence. I also believe that she delivered a

message. As a scholar, I merge womanist thought, African Traditional

Religions, and archetypes of the Feminine Black Divine toward a praxis of

radical self-love and theo-ethical, inter-religious dialogue. I found George

Floyd’s sacred utterance to Larcenia Floyd to illuminate seeds toward a

generative path to inter-religious dialogue, particularly through a theo-

ethical interpretation of the Black Mother as Divine Love, Protection, and

Justice.

Using a womanist hermeneutic, I interpret George’s invocation—

Mama, Mama. I love you.—to encompass very specific attributes of Divine

Black Mama and point us toward Her particular theo-ethical paradigm.

She is fierce protection. A ubiquitous expression from mamas in the

Black community is “Get inside before the street lights come on!” That is

mama protecting her children from the real life monsters that hide in the

dark. She remembers the laws of “sundown towns” that sanctioned the

beating, arrest, and murder of Black people who were outside once the sun

set. She can also go full “mama bear” to protect her young from predators,

and the myriad systemic injustices and micro-aggressions Black children

face daily. Mama’s protection becomes the backbone of a child’s social and

emotional welfare.

She is instruction, formation, and wisdom. When we are young, she

warns us against touching a hot stove or running into the street, and we

are chastised when we don’t obey. As we get older, her warnings turn to

wisdom, for example, when she forbids us from certain places and people.

Her lived experience has taught her how to trust her instinct and be

vigilant. This shrewd intuitiveness is what she attempts to pass on to her

children.

She is balance and reciprocity. She is constantly at work to keep the

family together, forcing us to “talk it out” when there is discord. Those who

remain silent in the face of injustice, or allow discursive hegemonic

narratives to dominate dinner discussions, could invoke the theo-ethics of

Divine Black Mama to challenge white supremacy within their own families.

Divine Black Mama births us daily into right relationship with

ourselves, each other, and the physical earth. She sees and bears witness

to injustice, recorded and unrecorded. She demands restoration. Her mere

presence demands that we do right by the human family.

Divine Black Mama is religiously diasporic and called by many names.

Ma’at, Mami Wata, Nana Buruku, Odu, Yemoja, Ma Kali, Black Sara, Oya,

Olokun, Wadjet, Auset, Aida Wedo, and Nut. She is the Black Madonna of

Montserrat. She is Larcenia Floyd, existing as an African ancestor, watching

over her son.

Worship of a Black Feminine Divine has been buried in religious

discourse. Not because it is implausible, but because discursive narratives

and perverted imagery of the Divine reveal Whiteness as God’s primary

attribute. If we embraced Divine Black Mama and interpret her theo-ethics

within our own context as members of the human family, imagine the

countless ways we might show up for ourselves and each other more justly.

As we enter this new season of scholarship and study amidst a global

pandemic, a bizarre Presidential election, and a growing, searing

comprehension of systemic evil, I would like to see the BJRT plumb even

deeper wells of religious and spiritual experience. Theo-ethical narratives

generated from primordial truths that shock and dislodge us from rigid silos

into embracing the radical religious and spiritual diversity we bring to our

scholarship and our theo-ethical praxis. Our location at the GTU provides us

with unique opportunities to experience the colors, tastes, sounds, feels of

the Divine from multiple locations. This season is a rare moment for us to

be different with one another. Let us not squander it! Divine justice is at

work in the world in a big way.

Bibliography

CBS News. “Nikole Hannah-Jones on protests and the roots of racism in the U.S.”

Accessed September 20, 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/nikole-

hannah-jones-1619-project-roots-of-racism-slavery/.

Harris, Melanie. EcoWomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring

Faiths. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017.

Some, Malidoma. Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community: The African Teachings of

the Dagara. New York: Penguin/Arkana, 1997.