Isaiah's Rock
By Nya Hardaway and Patrick Jimenez
“Are you Black? Are you a Black girl?” Pastor Charleen King of Isaiah’s Rock, a food pantry, and church based organization asks Nya Hardaway, putting Hardaway between something of a rock and a hard place. That hard place is the intersection created by too many people who want to help out and put down. Pastor King goes on to tell Hardaway that she always notices hair, and Hardaway’s is “beautiful.”
Pastor King and Hardway sat down via Zoom, and were meant to have a professional interview, where King would be able to speak about her organization, achievements, and the milestones they’ve reached. Instead, here we have Pastor King not tending to her flock, but speaking with an intelligent student journalist. Hardaway has been reduced to a “Black girl” and been offered the grace that her hair is pretty. If communication is needed in food pantries, non denominational organizations, and societies to serve the cause of justice, it can also be used to reinforce racial and other hierarchies.
Pastor King does not seem to be focused on tearing down hierarchies, but rather, on acting benevolently within the hierarchies she benefits from. It seems without them, she would not have anyone to save. Prior to Isaiah’s Rock, Pastor King described fears of loneliness and rejection. Now she mentions she has about eight women living at her house. There are alway people at her “little blue house.” Between five and twenty five people show up for the meals her organization puts on from her house according to her. She mentions that the number varies depending on when people have received their welfare checks.
The audio of the interview has us wondering, how would Pastor King have avoided her fears of rejection and loneliness if those welfare checks were enough to feed families all throughout the month? What if we took political action to make sure that the social income disparity was lessened? While politically engaged individuals might disagree on exactly what needs to be done (building more affordable housing, unionization, a more substantive safety net, tackling racism, et cetera), it seems we are not going to move forward on any sort of reform if most people do not care about the hungry, and if some, like Pastor King care a lot about having the hungry to have. “I love Skid Row, it's my most favorite thing” the Pastor says when Hardaway asks her what she wants others to know about her organization.
Pastor King has two adopted Black daughters in their twenties, she mentions after asking Hardaway if she is a “Black girl”. She brought them home from the hospital a few days after they were born. One’s mother was on drugs, the other was mentally ill, she says. She then talks about how one of her daughter’s is mentally ill, and that she is raising her Black grandchild. All we learn from Pastor King about her children is that they are Black, and that she is rather unconcerned about why they were taken from their biological parents.
That sort of overt discrimination also comes when we objectify African Americans and make a journalist or “Black girl” someone merely to be patronized as having nice hair. Food pantries to help those who need it have an important role to play given the inequality and need in our society. We have to struggle to make sure that we are not reliant on that need and inequality persisting to fill the void in ourselves we fear. Food pantries cannot fulfill a benevolent role if they do not foster discussion of why they are needed in the richest nation on earth in the first place. Discussions of “Black girl” hair must be taken off of the menu to make room for this progress.
You can view part of the discussion here, where Pastor King speaks for herself: