contributed photos
I am rooted in the southern African philosophy of Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu: I am, because you are. This spirit of Ubuntu is togetherness, fellowship, closeness, interconnection, kinship. Totally counter to Ubuntu are the forces of prejudice, bias, discrimination, and injustice. We are social beings: “One finger cannot pick up a grain.” We are all connected, and we succeed by taking care of one another.
It is a concept central to a successful life. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it, “You might have much of the world’s riches, and you might hold a portion of authority, but if you have no ubuntu, you do not amount to much…”
I am currently experiencing the communal beauty of Ubuntu in megawatts. Even in these circumstances – social distancing necessitated by COVID and the physical limitations of my current medical journey – the spirit of Ubuntu thrives. When a community is attuned to the practice and living of it, it transcends temporal boundaries. I don’t know what I would do without this community, which has come forward and carried me through these recent challenges. That story is to be shared another time; but suffice it to say that spirit strengthens, connects and heals.
Geographically, I was born into a loving and supportive proud Black community in New Haven. The Dixwell community. I attended a school – Winchester – in which there were several outstanding Black teachers, including Sylvia Hare. My godfather, Charles Twyman, was vice principal. With the support and example of my family, and these role models all around me, I never even began to doubt the strength, the talent, or the blessing of people of the African Diaspora.
I am so grateful for that foundation which was concretized by the teachings and the workings in my community, the churches I attended, and our social networks. My friends and playmates were Black and white, Christian and Jewish, children of first-generation immigrants and well-established middle class Black families. We Black people were living in the neighborhoods in which we were allowed.
During my adolescence, we moved to a majority-white suburban shoreline community. I had no concerns. My playmates had always been diverse, and I had always had white friends. Also, I knew the town. My mother’s childhood friend and her husband lived there. In fact, his Black family had lived there for three generations. The only change in my life, so I thought, would be angling to get to New Haven for sporting and other social events.
What a shock! I found myself in a community where I was the curious “other.” And It seemed all of my communications with my classmates were about my ‘otherness.’ “What do you people _____?” Fill in the blank: feel? eat? do? like? think? etc.
I could forgive the ignorance of my classmates, but not of the educators. Every day, it seemed I was subjected to the provincial paradigms of many of my teachers. So I took on the responsibility to “read,” challenge, and teach my teachers. (Not the most strategic formula for a successful academic journey.) And although I was secure in who I was as a young Black adolescent, it came at a great cost to me.
Where once my school days had been filled with a hunger for intellectual stimulation, now they were filled with a wariness. Certainly, New Haven had not been free of racism or ignorance. However, children of the Disapora were not expected to represent an entire race and educate their peers or teachers. I needed some help.
I formed a Black Student Union for me and the other five Black students in the school (of 2,000 plus). We met regularly and planned school programs – many of which we would never get to present. We lobbied for and won a Martin Luther King Jr. Assembly where we presented a play by a Black playwright. The assembly wasn’t mandatory, but still – it was a tick, a micro step. We created some pathways of communication; not enough, but a start. We had been heard. We were not invisible.
We strategized together about how to thrive in an environment that was rife with both intentional and unintentional racism. We felt the togetherness, even though we came from varied political and social backgrounds. We felt the Ubuntu, a closeness we shared without knowing the word. We built friendships that have sustained us through more than fifty decades.
No one asked me to carry the load of educating and building bridges – though I also burned more than a few in the process. But I followed what I had seen modeled by Black men and women in New Haven and in my household: Stand up, Speak up, Support, Reach back, Lean forward. Understand that the freedom for one to breathe is inextricably linked to the freedom of all to do so.
I don’t know when I first became aware of Ubuntu as a distinct African principle, core to a nation of people. But when I did discover it, I knew it was my core too. And given the sudden contrast and very rude awakening in my teenage world, it’s no accident that many decades later, I would be working to specifically build Ubuntu – through social activism, anti-racism, writing, speaking, storytelling.
Weaving throughout all of these roles and more have been three unstoppable forces of nature: pride in the legacy of Blackness, the responsibility to fight for fairness and justice, and educating and connecting communities within and without to propel the goal of equity and access.
The social unrest and miscarriage of justice we have witnessed in the past year has elicited in many of us a need to know more, do more, be more. I see it in individuals, in policy, communal and societal. I witness the many ways vulnerability (and the strength of it) in storytelling deepens our understanding and empathy of and for others. I see us engaging, opening, awakening hearts. I see us remembering to listen – within and without.
In this time when many seek to know what they can do to dismantle the institution of racism, I know that hearing and processing each other’s deep histories can inspire us to gather the courage and knowledge to make a difference, to take personal responsibility and to be a part of collective action.
I believe completely in the way storytelling helps us mirror our shared humanity for each other. We tell and hear of our joys and triumphs, disappointments, encounters with racism and prejudice and more. Deconstructing stories can unlock our hidden assumptions, learned beliefs and untruths about race and racism. We can learn together and teach one another.
And when a story ends, the connection between teller and listener remains. So in this way we are all members of our version of “Indaba.” A Zulu term, Indaba is a council at which indigenous peoples of southern Africa meet to discuss important questions. And it is with this spirit that we can use storytelling to examine race and racism, and create Ubuntu in the process.
See you at the next council gathering, where we can choose to take another step.
To reach Denise directly, learn more about Ubuntu Storytellers and Indaba (which will be recruiting its first cohort in the greater Madison area for a fall program launch): info@ubuntustorytellers.com