As featured in the May/June 2003 issue of New Age Retailer magazine:
Crossing the Color Line
Transcending the boundaries between the African-American and
New Age communities requires understanding, intention, and effort.
by Ray Hemachandra
Page 1 of 4
The promise of the New Age is colorblind. Whether creating a safe place for individuals to explore the truths of the universe or their inner selves, pushing the frontiers of ancient or brand-new religions or methodologies, or purposefully seeking to raise human consciousness, the promise of the New Age knows no racial or ethnic boundaries.
But how to realize that promise for all? Crossing boundaries of culture, history, assumption, and habit requires more than good intentions. It requires action — by retailers, by publishers and other wholesalers, by authors and other artists. The uncomfortable possibility is that the noble ideal of colorblindness means New Age is turning a blind eye toward communities that live in a society in which color is seen vividly — avoiding issues that determine New Age’s relevancy to these communities and disparities that need to be addressed. Colorblindness becomes akin to willful ignorance.
At its best, New Age breaks down the barriers between communities and cultures to get at universal truths. But conscious attention to color — to race and ethnicity — might well be needed to achieve true universality. Consciousness about race and the New Age, about what the New Age community looks like and why, can help the New Age community clarify and amplify its intentions and help it proactively seek out and be informed by the diversity — of individuals and communities with different backgrounds and perspectives — that is as important to the human condition as that which we share. Part of raising human consciousness is having a conscious awareness of what “human” means.
The African-American community generally is segregated from the New Age community. The reasons why include the perceived irrelevance of the New Age to challenges facing the black community; the prominent Christian and also Islamic spiritualities of African Americans — spiritual paths that often consider themselves at odds with the New Age; and the historical segregation between the New Age and black communities being a self-reinforcing condition, with a mutual lack of dialogue and interest. The ways to transform the relationship can only be matters of opinion. But it is by voicing these opinions that dialogue begins and approaches and solutions for transcending the boundaries can be born.
Part of the misunderstanding that occurs between communities comes from them treating each other as monoliths, rather than acknowledging, respecting, and learning about the diversity of voices and opinions within communities. In this article, we’ll try to better understand what separates the New Age and African-American communities and explore ways to bridge the gap precisely by presenting a panorama of individual voices from people in the New Age and African-American communities — including numerous authors, publishers, and retailers — and letting them speak for themselves and share their individual stories, experiences, and opinions. Together, hopefully we’ll get a better sense of the challenges African Americans face in accessing and offering New Age ideas and spiritualities and those the New Age community faces in integrating African Americans as participants — and how to start addressing these challenges.
A black author tries to break through
When Oloye Ifa Karade started marketing a book on Yoruban spirituality in the early 1990s, spiritual publishers went running fast in any other direction. Finally, the late Betty Lundsted of Samuel Weiser Inc., now Red Wheel/Weiser/Conari Press, took a chance on Karade’s The Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts, which was published in 1994. The success of that book, which since has been translated into three other languages, was followed by the releases of Ojise: Messenger of the Yoruba Tradition (Samuel Weiser Inc., 1996) and Imoye: A Definition of the Ifá Tradition (Athelia Henrietta Press, 1999). All three books remain in print.
Born in South Carolina, a graduate of Rutgers University with a focus on African studies, and a resident of East Orange, N.J., Karade is a babalawo — a high priest, or father of mysteries — of the Ifa faith. He is open to New Age spiritual approaches, but he fears that New Age retailers will trivialize — and exploit — the traditional African teachings he can offer.
“I love the New Age music and meditation. I have also been a student of yoga, and I am still a student of tai chi. But I don’t feel as though I’m understood by the New Age store owner,” Karade says.
“When I read New Age magazines, or when I hear New Age people speaking or the people who frequent New Age stores speaking, I don’t get the sense that they would take me as seriously as I feel I need to be taken.”
Specifically, Karade charges New Age store owners with focusing on the practical utility of his faith, taking pieces of a full-bodied religion to use for specific ends.
“The downside of the New Age bookstores is that they tend to lean more toward the practice, and my leaning is more toward the understanding,” Karade says. “For example, the New Age bookstore may be more concerned with spells or more concerned with astral traveling, whereas my concern is the knowledge base of the spirituality, which in my humble opinion is embedded within the religion and the philosophical way of a people. New Age bookstores seem to lean toward a dismissal of the historic and philosophical elements and just want to capture the spiritual aspect.”
Karade’s experience with store owners has reinforced these concerns.
“They say, ‘Let’s start with spells. Let’s start with anything you can present to the people that they can actually work with,’” Karade says. “Work with? I’m a diviner. People come to me to have issues resolved through a communion with divine forces. I’m a high priest. If I walk into a New Age bookstore and say, ‘Look people, this is what you do with these tools,’ and then I just walk away, there’s no telling what they’re going to do with it. So rather than give people a quarter truth, I’d rather not give them any at all.
“The people in New Age bookstores don’t have any experience in this faith, and, for the most part, they don’t seem to want any. They want the sensationalism. They want the capacity to do. They don’t want the discipline and the capacity to deepen self. The using of other people’s faith and religion to better one’s own small gain is inappropriate.”
What would Karade like to hear from a store owner, perhaps one asking him to do an in-store presentation? “What I’d like to hear from a retailer is, ‘I’m looking for you to come and educate people in the way of your religion and tradition. No “hands-on” — I want you to come and discuss the philosophical basis of your religion,’” Karade says. “And I’ll say, ‘I’ll be there.’”
Another challenge Karade has faced is lack of publisher support — “zero” support, he says — although he is unsure whether this failure has been due to his skin color, his subject matter, or the current state of affairs for authors and publishers generally.
“Publishers are not assisting the process,” Karade says. “Most or all of the work in that regard has been generated by myself and my wife.” Karade’s first two books were published by Samuel Weiser Inc., and his third book was published by Athelia Henrietta, a black publishing company. When initially shopping for a publisher, Karade says he found publishers’ lack of interest in African subject matter “disheartening.” Although his books sold well, Karade remains dissatisfied with the publicity support he received from both houses.
Karade has faced obstacles bringing the Ifa religion to the United States generally and even to African-American audiences, which he says have been biased by the mischaracterization and denigration of African religions by American Christian and Islamic leaders. Karade believes in the universality of spirituality, however, and remains hopeful that what is shared between faiths will help him bridge cultural chasms and make his teachings more attractive and intriguing to New Age and other audiences.
“When I study religions — and prophets and saviors and priests of all faiths — there seems to be very little difference in the energy and attitude,” he says. “Even without cultural division and even without the enslavement that black people have endured, people in general seem to have difficulty reaching divine consciousness. I’m coming to find that more people of all racial backgrounds are attempting to gain knowledge of humanity’s experience.”
However, teaching about African religions to New Age audiences will require overcoming the historic mutual disinterest between the African-American and New Age communities, Karade says.
In his own words:
An author’s story — Oloye Ifa Karade
“I remember frequenting Weiser’s store in New York. I remember the theosophical societies and the books thereof that I read and books on Asiatic lore, but it disturbed me that there was nothing there from Africa. When I involved myself with the Himalayan Institute in Pennsylvania, which is a yoga institute, it disturbed me when I would walk into its store and see works of Indian sages, works of Europeans, and works of people of Asian descent — but I didn’t see anything of Africa.
“I think the pendulum swings both ways. New Age people don’t seem to be very interested in what serious African philosophical tenets and beliefs are. Topics of interest to African Americans in general don’t seem to be a part of their conversation. And New Age is not something that people of African-American descent generally speak about.
“I was ordained in Africa. I write and lecture from the heart of that experience. It’s a completely different experience than the mutated African religious tradition that has been evolving here in the Americas. There’s a different sense of religiosity. There’s a different sense of being in a valid faith — of not practicing the religion as opposed to being the religion. The grace has been to help people, and particularly people of African descent, understand what the tradition is really about — not what Hollywood has made it or those sensational aspects playing on the dark side because of Christianity or even Islamic influence. They both down traditional African spiritualism.
“I’m fully aware of the dangers of presenting too much too quickly and of expecting to have a large following with a new idea. Any sage would humble himself or herself to the fact that it’s going to be small in terms of numbers of people embracing the African traditional religions that I echo — you know, I didn’t create any of this — even if it is African Americans’ own heritage. These teachings are the inheritance of a people who once had a stable and great civilization but — due to enslavement — lost it. Not only have they lost it, but they have had to deal with replacement icons and replacement ideals and concepts, religiously and spiritually speaking, and have even embraced the demonization of people of African descent and African spirituality, religions, and philosophical bases. The challenge of breaking through 500 years of restructuring is beyond words.”
Blacks and the New Age:
Creating good karma
Karade’s reluctance to market to, and his negative experiences with, New Age stores and customers is by no means universal among African-American authors. Charles Richards, Ph.D., is author of the book Karmic Relationships: Healing Invisible Wounds (Jodere Group, 2002) and the spoken-audio recording The Way of Karma (Jodere Group, 2002). A San Diego, Calif., psychotherapist, Richards uses soul journeys to help patients heal relationships by resolving traumas that have occurred in past lives, between lives, and at other times. He has taught graduate courses in psychology, trained executives in Fortune 500 companies — and spoken to New Age audiences.
Richards’ work in karma, reincarnation, and healing destructive patterns has been received warmly in the New Age community, he says. He has attended the International New Age Trade Show as a breakfast speaker and appreciated the very positive response he received.
“My work certainly falls under the New Age umbrella, but it works regardless of belief,” Richards says. “Certainly there are different assumptions and considerations when speaking with a predominantly New Age audience. Most of these audiences are already quite familiar with the concepts of karma and reincarnation and ask questions that reach deeper into the core of my work and its transformation effects.
“Also, the interactions with New Age audiences are usually more heart-centered, because the concepts do not necessarily challenge their current beliefs.”
Richards views his own personal characteristics — as an African American and as someone whose upbringing was rooted in Christianity — more as opportunities than as obstacles in promoting his work.
“I was raised as a Southern Baptist and also attended a Catholic elementary school,” he says. “I suspect that this early experience with two branches of Christianity has made it natural for me to build bridges between traditional religious beliefs and a more New Age perspective.”
As a black man, too, he believes he is in a good position to bring ideas traditionally considered New Age, at least in the United States, to African-American audiences. “Certainly I think the African-American community hasn’t had the interest and exposure to as many New Age concepts as has the larger Anglo community,” Richards says. “One of the reasons is the lack of representation among African Americans presenting New Age concepts. We all tend to identify initially with people most like ourselves.”
Richards has not felt limited by the color of his skin when approaching publishers. “As a new author, at present my experience hasn’t reflected any apparent limitation based on my ethnicity,” Richards says. “It’s my hope that the response to my work and book will continue to transcend the specifics of race and culture. The message itself is certainly universal in scope.”
While emphasizing the universality of spiritual approaches and truths, Richards nonetheless suggests New Age retailers take a good look at their relevance to the African-American community. “It’s important to present New Age material to African-American customers from credible sources they can identify with in some way,” he says. “The material and the events should address issues that are important to African Americans from a New Age perspective.”
Richards believes the coverage of spirituality topics by prominent African-American television personalities has made New Age topics more palatable to African-American audiences.
“Certainly Oprah (Winfrey) and also Montel (Williams) have done a great service to African Americans and also the public at large in promoting alternative strategies for health, healing, and awareness,” Richards says. “Oprah has even expanded the significance of literacy with her show and book club. They both have been great pioneers, and I’m hopeful that the audiences they’ve touched will also be receptive to my own work and message.
“Again, role models are all-important. There is a great need for more African Americans all over the country who can deliver a broader and fresh message of hope and understanding to our communities. If more movie, TV, and radio celebrities who are African American are exposed to and give voice to New Age concepts, such concepts will get wider acceptance among the black community. It would be the same with any ethnic community.”
Richards is just such a figure, an African American who is bringing New Age concepts to the black community — and hearing applause, not derision. “I recently did a book signing at Eso Won Bookstore, which is the largest African-American bookstore in Los Angeles,” he says. “There I received a very warm reception. My experience is that once New Age concepts are exposed by credible sources, people of color give serious thought to them.”
So what is karma, anyway? “We’ve all heard the statement, ‘What goes around comes around,’” Richards says. “When a student asked his teacher, ‘What is karma?’ the teacher picked up a pebble and threw it in the air over his head. When the pebble came down, bouncing off the teacher’s head, he said that was karma.
“The teacher added, ‘It would have also been my karma if I’d picked up a large rock and thrown it over my head.’ When we fully understand this principle, we learn not to throw rocks.”