Personal identity matters because it influences how we see ourselves, make decisions, and interact with others. Identity shapes how we think, feel, choose, love, and hope—from what we eat to where we live to how we dream. Strong identity ties us to community, family, culture, and faith. A clear and healthy identity strengthens self-esteem, confidence, and our sense of God-given purpose.
This article
encourages African American Christian men to recognize that a positive racial
identity as an essential part of a whole and grounded Christian identity. To
understand where we are, we must begin where Scripture begins—with God’s
questions.
After Adam and Eve sinned, God asked Adam, “Where are you?” God was not confused about Adam’s physical location; He was calling Adam to recognize his changed moral and spiritual condition. God’s question invited Adam into self-reflection: Where am I in relationship to God, my community, and to myself? Who have I become? Why?
Later, God asked Jacob, “What is your name?” Again, the question was not for God’s information but for Jacob’s transformation. Before Jacob could become Israel—a man with a new identity and purpose—he had to confront the distorted identity he had lived into. My brothers, God requires no less of us?
As sin
distorted Adam’s identity, America’s sin has marred ours. Racism has left deep
spiritual, emotional, and psychological wounds across our communities. As Jacob wrestled, so must we. We must grapple
with the long history of lies, miseducation, and terror that still impacts us. Only
then can we fully become the men God envisioned when He meticulously and
lovingly made us.
For more than 400 years, our ancestors have survived brutal slavery, lynchings, degrading racial segregation, fire-bombings, the theft of labor, land, and life. We’ve lived with public humiliation and private trauma. Countless times we’ve been reclassified, redefined, and renamed: slave, negro, colored, mulatto, quadroon, griffe, octoroon, Negroid, etc.
Even our attempts at self-definition—Afro-American, Black American—reflect a long wrestling with God’s perennial question: What is your name? We cannot answer truthfully without confronting the forces that tried to name us something less than human.
How Identity
Gets Distorted
At first glance, identity appears simple. But in a society where schools, media, politics, and culture bombard us with negative images of Black life, it is easy to lose a healthy sense of self.
In the Garden of Eden, the serpent sought to rob Adam and Eve of their position in God’s family. In the United States, enslavers sought to rob us of our place in humanity. White supremacist culture relentlessly distorts Black personhood at its core—spiritually, morally, psychologically, and physically—it then manipulates the world into believing it is innocent.
Racism destroys self-esteem, self-respect, and hope. Its goal is dependency and division, so victims unknowingly rely on racist ideologies for direction, validation, and identity. Dr. Carter G. Woodson wrote: “If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to concern yourself with his actions.” Claude Steele confirms that repeated exposure to negative portrayals of Black people produces low self-esteem, expectations, motivation, and self-doubt. Du Bois called this psychic fracture double consciousness:
“One feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts… two warring ideals in one dark body.”
White people are simply “Americans.” We, on the other hand, are “the other” —American enough to pay taxes and fight wars, but denied equal citizenship. Black soldiers were expected to stand and fight for our nation’s freedom, but were beaten for sitting at a lunch counter. They recited “with liberty and justice for all,” then were lynched in their uniforms. More recently, Colin Kaepernick was labeled a traitor for kneeling against injustice, but Robert E. Lee—who fought to enslave our ancestors—was honored at the Pentagon.
Racism gaslights its victims. It turns communities against themselves and then feigns innocence. Donna Bivens explains:
“As people of color are victimized by racism, we internalize it… we develop ideas, beliefs, actions, and behaviors that support or collude with racism.”
How often do we
hear this among ourselves:
- “I used a Black mechanic once. Never again.”
- “Black banks? Girl, the ATM wasn’t even working.”
- “I only date light-skinned people. I want kids with
good hair.”
- “We’re just not gifted in those areas.”
Meanwhile, similar mistakes by white professionals are dismissed as human error—not evidence that all white people are incapable. Fractured identities persist because racism distorts the mirror we look into. Dr. Franz Fanon notes that personal identity is shaped by broader cultural narratives—by the stories a society tells. As a result, the oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.
Uncritically embracing the stories of our oppressors is an act of spiritual suicide. Embracing our full identity as children of God requires a fearless examination of the narratives handed down to us as “history.” Healing begins with reclaiming the truth: we are capable, beautiful, relevant, powerful, and made in God’s image. This is not pride. It is not opposition. It is healing. It is truth-telling. It is the recovery of what was stolen.
Who are you?
What’s your name? These questions are not rhetorical—they are answered in
the lives of those who came before us. Each of these men and women demonstrates
the truth of who we have always been: capable, inventive, courageous, and
divinely created for purpose.
- Onesimus, an enslaved African, introduced
smallpox inoculation to the colonies, saving Boston from the 1721 epidemic.
It later helped Washington’s army defeat the British.
- Dr. Halle T. D. Johnson was the first licensed
female doctor in Alabama—of any race.
- Dr. William J. Knox, Jr. supervised an
all-white team at Columbia University working on the atomic bomb.
- C. R. Patterson and Sons, a Black-owned auto manufacturer,
began production in 1915. The
company manufactured cars, trucks, and buses. Unfortunately, it did not
survive the Great Depression.
- Dr. Solomon Fuller’s research undergirds our
modern understanding of Alzheimer’s.
- Dr. Matilda A. Evans was the first Black
female doctor in South Carolina. Her public-health model for Black
children was adopted statewide.
- James Armistead, under the guise of a British
spy, passed intelligence to George Washington which led to the defeat of the
British at Yorktown in 1781, and our national independence.
- Julian Abele designed Duke University’s entire
main campus, including Duke Chapel and the historic Cameron Indoor Stadium.
He designed or contributed to the design of over 400 buildings,
including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Harvard's Widener
Memorial Library.
- Dr. Charles Henry Turner proved that insects can
hear, learn by trial and error, and that bees see in color and recognize
patterns. The French naturalist Victor Cornetz later named the circling
movements of ants returning to their nest tournoiement de Turner (“Turner
circling”), a phenomenon based on one of Turner’s discoveries.
- Dr. Marie Maynard Daily disclosed the relationship between high cholesterol and clogged arteries and increased our understanding of how foods and diet affect the health of the heart and the circulatory system.
From the
ironing board, to the designs for the original Ford Mustang, to life-support
systems for the Apollo 13–era space suits: God continues to ask, “Who are you?”
The Power of Knowing Who You Are
Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman wrote about a powerful experience he had in Daytona Beach with his young daughters. They saw swings on a school’s playground but were not allowed to use them. The girls asked him why.
Thurman explained:
“I said, ‘It is against the law for us to use those swings, even though it is a public school. At present, only white children can play there. But it takes the state legislature, the courts, the sheriffs and policemen, the white churches, the mayors, the banks and businesses, and the majority of white people in the state of Florida – it takes all these to keep two little black girls from swinging on those swings.
“That is how important you are! Never forget, the estimate of your own importance and self-worth can be judged by how many weapons and how much power people are willing to use to control you and keep you in the place they have assigned to you. You are two very important little girls. Your presence can threaten the entire state of Florida.”
Knowing who you
are—and knowing who your people have always been—is a form of liberation. It
threatens white supremacy.
God’s questions echo across generations:
“Where are you?”
“What is your name?”
We cannot answer these questions truthfully without understanding the story we come from—its pain, its glory, its struggle, and its divine resilience. A positive, truthful racial identity is not separate from our Christian identity; it strengthens it. God has always been in the business of restoring names, healing wounds, and calling people into wholeness.
To know our
history is to reclaim our identity.
To reclaim our identity is to heal.
And to heal is to walk fully into the men God created us to be.
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