Danté Stewart is a writer and speaker whose works have been featured on Christianity Today, The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, Fathom Magazine, and Faithfully Magazine. Visit him at dantecstewart.com and @stewartdantec.

 

Posts By This Author

Do We Have the Courage To Make the World a Loving Place?

by Danté Stewart 09-26-2024
Looking at James Baldwin and Richard Avedon’s 1964 ‘Nothing Personal’ through a 2024 lens.
Author and activist James Baldwin speaks at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, 1963.

Steve Schapiro / Corbis / Getty Images

THE LAST PICTURE in Richard Avedon and James Baldwin’s Nothing Personal, an exploration of American identity through the photographer’s eye and the essayist’s heart, holds a haunting some 60 years later. Two young boys look solemnly into Avedon’s lens. It is as if they stare into the soul of the watcher. It is as if in their innocence they wonder about the world in their silence. It is the children’s eyes that I can’t stop thinking about.

Their eyes are still our eyes, their gaze, still our gaze — weary, longing, determined, and despairing. Baldwin writes in the 1964 book, “Despair: perhaps it is this despair which we should attempt to examine if we hope to bring water to this desert.”

Baldwin and Avedon’s friendship and work together can be instructive for us because what we face as a nation is not much different from the Civil Rights years. We are presently dealing with a lack of trust; the forces of polarization are deepening within and without. There is, writes Baldwin, an “unspeakable loneliness” that we feel, wondering if anyone can feel what we feel and are angry about what we are angry about and are sad about what we are sad about. Then there is the kind of loneliness that takes root when “we live by lies.”

When Everything Feels Fragile

by Danté Stewart 08-19-2021

A man searches the site of a collapsed hotel after Saturday's 7.2 magnitude quake, in Les Cayes, Haiti Aug. 16, 2021. REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo

The earth quakes. It rumbles. It trembles, sort of like a roar, a shiver. I didn’t see it; I’ve never experienced it, but I heard the news. “1,900+ Haitians are believed to be dead,” the faint voice of the news reporter says over my car radio, “and hundreds are believed to be missing.”

Another headline reads: “The latest on Afghanistan as Taliban take charge.”

Another: “13-year-old Mississippi girl dies of COVID-19.”

Our Bodies Remember

by Danté Stewart 05-25-2021

People take part in a march calling for justice for those killed by police officers near the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., May 24, 2021. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

I recently spoke with a good friend who was in the gospel choir with me at Clemson University. He sang. I played drums. During our time there — in between meals and practice and concerts — we felt the suffocation. That suffocation was in between the Black gospel choir and white Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings, between Black Clemson and white classes. It was not the type of suffocation that kills you; it was the kind that smiles in your face and puts arms around your shoulders and waves hands in praise and sways your body side to side while never getting rid of slaveholding names and memories and theologies. It was the type of suffocation that enjoys the feeling of your presence but fails to embrace the fullness of your humanity.

Witnesses to the Miracle of Blackness

by Danté Stewart 02-24-2021

Congregation of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. Photo from collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Monica Karales and the Estate of James Karales. 

Our stories — and our futures — are the ways we have stood up for what’s right and kept on living when dreams were deferred, hopes unrealized, lives lost, and bodies wearied, and our hearts beating fast as our feet moved across red carpets in old churches rejoicing that we are given of life. These stories are our shining joy. They have become gospel to a people bent and broken.

Radical Endurance Is Forged in the Fire

by Danté Stewart 01-26-2021
The struggle in the country that is sick.
Illustration of a family holding hands, walking out of a cave.

Illustration by Jamiel Law

“To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world. Remember that: I know how black it looks today, for you. It looked bad that day, too, yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none of us would have survived. And now you must survive because we love you, and for the sake of your children and your children’s children.”

— James Baldwin,
The Fire Next Time

I ENTERED THE doctor’s office, met by the smiling face of the receptionist. “May I help you?” she asked, as I tried to maneuver my lips to smile to cover how terrible I was feeling. “I need to get tested.” She didn’t ask me what test I needed, or where I had come from, or what I was feeling. She checked me in and pointed me to the waiting area—a cold and lonely and familiar place.

I wondered if they knew how terrified I was for me, for my wife, for my son, for our baby not here yet. I wondered if they knew that my body was on fire, that my mind kept alternating between anger and regret for letting my friend in the house with no mask. I wondered if they knew how my stomach emptied the chopped carrots, old celery, and the warm chicken noodle soup into their clean toilet.

“Danté Stewart,” the nurse called out to me, “right this way.” I could hear my heartbeats through my ears as I took the steps through the cold and lonely and familiar clinic. She called in the other nurse. They took my pulse. They put the little white and blue device with the red numbers on my left middle finger. 97. Good. 106 bpm. My heart is racing. As I felt the blood pressure cuff tighten its grip on my arm, the nurses gave that look.

Their Lives Are Defended. Ours Are Ruined

by Danté Stewart 01-07-2021

Man sits in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office after invading the U.S. Capitol building with a mob of Trump supporters. Jan. 6, 2021. Photo by Saul Loeb / Getty Images

I have tried to find ways to speak about this country and its failure — failures that we have tried to preach about and write about and pray about; failures we sometimes try to ignore to salvage what little peace human beings can be afforded. This week, I witnessed the same terror so many of us did. I witnessed it all, and I am afraid, and I am angry.

Christian Unity Isn't Possible While White Supremacy Rots the Foundation

by Danté Stewart 11-04-2020

In America, too many white Christians say the solution to racism is public acts of prayer and unity while they simultaneously deny the enduring power of white supremacy and their complicity in it. As recently as last month, a high-profile Southern Baptist seminary decided to offer $5 million of their $89.7 million endowment to scholarships for Black students while holding on to the racist narrative, legacy, and structure of their slaveholding founders. As Joseph Gerth in the Louisville Courier Journal points out, pollster Robert P. Jones calls this “the White Christian Shuffle” — white Christians publicly engage in acts of charity while simultaneously holding on to the white supremacist rot that lays at the foundation.

Don't Believe The Lie: The Black Freedom Struggle Never Ended

by Danté Stewart, by Andrew Wilkes 08-05-2020

Mourners of the late Rep. John Lewis, a pioneer of the civil rights movement and long-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives, hold a vigil in his memory in Atlanta, uly 19, 2020. REUTERS/Lynsey Weatherspoon/File Photo

For many today, the Black freedom struggle has become a myth. Our ancestors are memorialized in their death while crucified in their life. For many, it has become a symbol of progress: a symbol of the progress of America, particularly white America, to finally “get it.” It is a powerful myth. 

In Search of a Better Country

by Danté Stewart 06-19-2020

Protesters in masks activists march with signs against police shootings and racism, Honolulu, Hawaii, June 6,2020. Photo by Oscar Sweep / Shutterstock.com

The phrase "Black Lives Matter," like Joseph’s request to take his bones wherever his people go, is to keep memory alive. To keep it alive is to fight for us when we can't fight for ourselves. It is to remind us that though our world may forget us, there is One who does not. So even as people shout loud “look how much progress this country has made; be grateful,” we understand that, as Angela Davis writes, “freedom is a constant struggle.”

The Tipping Point: From Sympathy to Solidarity

by Danté Stewart 06-11-2020

An artwork by Banksy is seen in this image obtained from his Instagram account on June 9, 2020. Instagram/@banksy via REUTERS

Today, we must realize that because someone is aware of the struggle for black freedom in America doesn’t mean they have been moved to action. They may have the right language — even write books, give addresses, give statements — but their actions show a commitment to the status quo rather than social justice.

Black Rage in an Anti-Black World Is a Spiritual Virtue

by Danté Stewart 05-29-2020

Photo by Oladimeji Odunsi on Unsplash

I can remember when it first happened — when my dungeon shook and my chains fell off. I had recently gone through a horrible experience and felt there was nowhere to turn, no one who could give voice to my ache, my pain, and my rage.

Solidarity Is the Soil of Lament

by Danté Stewart 04-09-2020

Credit: Shutterstock. 

Easter Sunday is coming. But Saturday is here and it's dark.