Blue Ivy is my Savior. My friends and acquaintances constantly hear me refer to the child of Beyonce Giselle Knowles and Shawn Carter as my Lord. To be honest it started as a joke. I really enjoy performing irrational ‘Yonce stan. I love the utter ridiculousness of the Beyhive. As time progress my reasoning for calling Blue Ivy my savior also progressed. It was my way of drawing attention to the “irrational” concept of needing a savior and what I deem the arbitrary yet fanatic way Black people revere Jesus Christ. In order words what makes one baby divine and another not. I firmly believe that salvation comes from within and often we as a people spend too much time looking for an external savior.
However there is another reason Blue Ivy is my Savior. I remember the first time I heard someone refer to God as a she. I remember how outrageous I thought that was. How sacrilegious the concept seem to be. Never had I in my 20 years of life, ever even considered God as a woman. I immediately wrote this young lady off as some heathen who would burn in hell. How dare she refer to God as a woman? I later realized my reaction said a lot about my own conception of myself and beliefs about women. Growing up in a very patriarchal world, which was heightened due to my intimate experiences in a patriarchal religious environment. I was taught and believed that women were less then. If I had the time or desire I could describe the ways in which I saw women demonized in both scripture and in religious spaces. Hell, the fall of men was blamed on Eve, and that’s the first book of the Bible.
He can’t do nothing for me
The concept of Jesus’ Blackness was a less radical thought. However, I still spent much of my adolescences in a church with a mural of a white Jesus on the wall. I was still raised in a world that painted and depicted Jesus the Christ, Savior of men as a white male. The history of white males with blonde hair and blues eyes (as Jesus is so often seen as) have a history of never seeing me or treating me as equal in this country/world. So what does it mean that I was to think of these depictions as images of someone who could and would save me? The pictures that do show Jesus with hair and skin like mine are always labeled “Black Jesus,” calling attention to their deviation for the norm- that is the real Jesus-the white one.
When I say Blue Ivy is my savior I am affirming a feminine divinity. I am making a conscious effort to affirm my own femininity in my conception of a Savior. When I say Blue Ivy is my savior I am affirming a savior that has skin like mine, who has hair like mine. I am affirming my Blackness in a very anti-Black world. My femininity in an anti-female world. The research on Black girls show that are more likely than their counterparts to be suspended, that they have low self-esteem, they are deemed a problem, they are more likely to be sexually assaulted, less likely to fit in at suburban schools. Black girls are often seen as the problem. When Black girls grow up, they can look forward to articles with titles like “Why Black women are single.” When I say Blue Ivy is my Savior I am proclaiming that Black girls are not the problem they are the solution. That if I am to have any external savior not only must they look like me, but I am proclaiming that I am the only one that can save myself. The only way the little Black girl inside of me can be redeemed, is through me. As stated in my favorite book The Color Purple “The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it.”
I am a big fan of liberation theology. The idea that Jesus came to liberate the oppressed and through the liberation of the most oppressed in society we all shall be liberated.
So when I say my Savior is Blue Ivy- in my head and in my heart I am saying that my Savior is Black and Female. Girl-child and Queer. Misunderstood and Powerful. I am saying that my Savior is me.
“I found god in myself / and I loved her / I loved her fiercely”. ~ Ntozake Shange
What does your Savior look like?
~Just Tab
Just Tab's 