Ron Karenga, you said that ‘The fact that I am Black is my ultimate reality.’ But then on page 34 of the same book, you wrote that ‘Christianity begins and ends with the man Jesus—his life, death and resurrection.’ Which do you really mean? Blackness or Jesus Christ? You cannot have it both ways.” This is an important matter, and perhaps the place

of freedom expressed in this spiritual?

My point is that one's social and historical

the

same for blacks and whites, because blacks and whites do not share the same life. The lives of a black slave and white slaveholder were radically different. It follows that their thoughts about things divine would also be different, even though they might sometimes use the same words about God. The life of the slaveholder and others of that culture

reality and truthfulness of the proclaimed word. It is the equivalent of “That's right!”

But when blacks went to church and experienced the presence of Jesus’ Spirit among them, they realized that he bestowed a meaning upon their lives that could not be taken away by white folks. That's why folks at Macedonia sang: “A little talk with Jesus makes it right”—not that “white is right,” but that God had affirmed the rightness of their exis

The record shows clearly that black slaves believed that just as God had delivered Moses and the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, God also will deliver black people from American slavery. And they expressed that theological truth in song.

my basic theological perspective—that the God of biblical faith and black religion is partial toward the weak.