Tag: Ruby Sales

The Realities of a Democratized Base

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

RubyFrom the Front Porch of Mother Ruby Sales (June 11, 2019).

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

You continually say that impeachment will divide the country. Madame Speaker the country is already divided from White nationalism and White heterosexist elitist White Christian patriarchy.

Further there can not be unity when Trump carries out a reign of terror against Black and Brown adult and child refugees who seek refuge at the gates of US. Nor can there exist unity when Black women’s babies are dying at the birthing stool from medical neglect in a medical industrial complex where our bodies matter less than all other women. Continue reading “The Realities of a Democratized Base” →

Freedom Movements

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

RubyFrom the front porch of Mother Ruby Sales (May 19, 2019).

Do freedom movements seek to build a new table or do they seek to gain more seats at a broken down one? Do they create new powerful people or do they create new token elites? Do nonviolent movements use the same language to talk about ourselves and lives that we learn from the guardians of power or do we speak in new and multiple tongues that express the largeness of our individual and collective lives?

A Logical Outgrowth

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

RubyAnother throw down from the front porch of Ruby Sales (originally https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fruby.sales.1%2Fposts%2F2390576024310162&width=500“>posted February 23, 2019):

What does it say about White Americans that they see Donald Trump as a viable candidate despite all of the spiritual decay and social rot gut that surround him. He degrades the office of the presidency with degrading, threatening and dehumanizing speech, conspires with Putin against his country to erode the pillars of democracy, upholds sexual and racial crimes and policies, film flams ordinary people and sells America to the highest bidders.

For White Americans to see Trump as a viable President and candidate is a problem in White culture that speaks volumes about the social death and spiritual nihilism that grip them. Moreover Trump is a logical outgrowth of hundreds of years of a culture of Whiteness where its guardians and beneficiaries have feasted and waxed fat not on only these malformations but on the lives, labor and bodies of Black and Brown peoples always and women sometimes.

The Culture of Whiteness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

RubyA Ruby Sales Ted Talk? Hell yes. This is just an excerpt. Watch and listen to the entire talk here.

Now that we’ve touched the hurt, we must ask ourselves, “Where does it hurt and what is the source of the hurt?” I propose that we must look deeply into the culture of whiteness. That is a river that drowns out all of our identities and drowns us in false uniformity to protect the status quo.

Notice, everybody, I said “culture of whiteness,” and not “white people.” Because in my estimation, the problem is not white people. Instead, it is the culture of whiteness. And by culture of whiteness, I mean a systemic and organized set of beliefs, values, canonized knowledge and even religion, to maintain a hierarchical, over-and-against power structure based on skin color, against people of color. It is a culture where white people are seen as necessary and friendly insiders, while people of color, especially black people, are seen as dangerous and threatening outsiders, who pose a clear and present danger to the safety and the efficacy of the culture of whiteness. Continue reading “The Culture of Whiteness” →

An Indivisible Pedagogy and Theology of Somebodiness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

rubyAnother brilliant epistle from the front porch of Ruby Sales. 

On this day as we remember King please accept this gift of recapitulation, restoration and remembrance of a southern African American story.

Every year I listen in absolute horror as White liberals rob King of his connection and roots to the Black South. His are deep roots as are mine that extend all the way back to the first organized non-violent southern freedom grassroots movement when members of the community of enslaved Africans ran away. He and I descend from enslaved ancestors who fashioned a radical and liberating Black folk theology in southern fields where they were forced under state sanctioned violence to labor like beasts of burden to enrich the economic lifestyles of southern Whites. In the heat of those fields they carved out a theology of pragmatic optimism that blended their transcendental impulse –ancestors’ aspirations — with transactional acts of resistance and accommodation towards citizenship. The folk impulse of our enslaved ancestors radically departed from the White transactional view of us as property to our transcendental view of our being children of God and therefore legitimate heirs of the promise of democracy.
Continue reading “An Indivisible Pedagogy and Theology of Somebodiness” →

Why Did She Wait?

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Subverting Empire1 Comment

Ruby SalesAnother post from the front porch of Ruby Sales (September 17, 2018):

Republicans ask with hypocritical self righteousness that if Christine Ford’s allegation that charges Kavanaugh with sexual terrorism and attempted rape is true why did she wait thirty six years to go public?

She remained silent for the same reasons that thousands of women did not speak out. We lived in a White male patriarchy that blamed women and dismissed us as aggressive sexual predators and whores for sexual crimes against us. Sadly even women internalized this view and believed that we provoked men to commit these acts against us. Continue reading “Why Did She Wait?” →

Backpacking With Hope

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

Ruby SalesBy Ruby Sales, Another Love Letter From The Front Porch, August 31, 2018)

Have you ever had to navigate the waters of systemic trauma of White supremacy and find ways to swim without drowning? How do we name the trauma that we endure from White supremacy without becoming the trauma that we endure? How do we speak the truth of our lives without being silenced or demonized by the tyranny of White denial? How do you stand tall as a European American without being pulled down by the seductive drug of Whiteness? Continue reading “Backpacking With Hope” →

Liberation

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

RubyFrom the prophetic front porch of Ruby Sales–a re-post from social media August 11, 2018.

What is liberation for people of color around the globe?

What should be the goals of our movements for liberation?

Should we imagine liberation as the right to exist and live in the world like the guardians of Empire power? Is liberation the right to sit at the Empire’s table and become an envoy for them and their interests? If the answers are no then how should our resistance and movements reflect no? How does no determine how we speak about liberation and how do we speak about our mission and common struggle and destination.

Finally what does liberation mean for White people? Does it mean the right to keep ownership of the table and maintain the power to put a few more seats at it for people of color who meet your requirements and with whom you feel comfortable? Does liberation mean the right to stay in the small and perverse space of Whiteness or does it mean the right to live fully in the world without a shriveled humanity that is constantly poised for battle and wallowing in inferiority and meaningless? If the answers are no then what should be the mission of your liberation struggles and how should it change your discourse, common struggle and destination?

A Mourn-In and Day of Fasting

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Uncategorized1 Comment

Carvans to the BordersFrom Ruby Sales and Rev. Jacqui Lewis, who, today, begin the Caravans to the Borders Movement by facilitating a Mourn-In and a Day of Fasting at the Cayuga Center in New York City to shed light on the inhumane conditions, deprivation and homelessness that asylum seekers and refugees endure in 21st century sites of terror called detention centers, in addition to shedding light on the sexual crimes against Brown and Black girls by guards and others in the immigration industrial complex:

We fast to begin Caravans to the Borderlands where we navigate the terrain necessary to redeem the soul of America from its historical sins: the dehumanization, commodification, captivity, fragmentation, criminalization, state sanctioned rape, psychological terrorism, spiritual injury and economic exploitation of Black and Brown bodies. These assaults bind us together because they invade all of our lives despite our social location. Therefore, this is the common ground that will shape and universalize our movement.

We will not only mourn and fast, we will celebrate and resurrect the cultural resources that generations of all colors have developed and used in freedom struggles. We will unveil a list of demands to the government, and we will not rest until they are met.

Continue reading “A Mourn-In and Day of Fasting” →