Raca in the Aisle: A Negro Woman’s Encounter with Diasporic Disdain

There are wounds that language cannot easily describe, but the Bible offers one such word; Raca, a term of contempt that Jesus warns against in Matthew 5:22 KJV.

It means “empty one,” a slur of spiritual arrogance hurled to diminish, to belittle, to erase.

I believe I encountered that wordless violence recently while standing in a grocery store aisle.

I was wearing a beautiful African dress, made by an African-American woman in the United States, when a woman of African descent approached me and said,

“Beautiful African dress. Are you African?”

“No,” I replied.

She smiled slightly and said,

“Thank you for joining us.

”I responded, “Thank you.”

And she ended with, “You’re welcome.”

To a bystander, this might sound harmless, even kind. But to me, it felt like dismissal cloaked in civility.

A reminder that in her eyes, and perhaps her son’s watching quietly beside her, I was a guest in a lineage I was not born into; or at best, I am ignorant and unaware of my lineage.

A woman tolerated, but not embraced.

This was not an isolated moment. It reopened a wound from a past relationship with a man whose family saw me, a Negro woman, not as kin, but as inferior.

They called us “niggers.”

They believed we were poor, ignorant, and disposable.

I endured financial exploitation, verbal degradation, threats, and fear tactics; all in the name of cultural hierarchy.

I was never good enough.

Not African enough.

Not cultured enough.

Not enough.

So when that woman in the aisle said “thank you for joining us,” I heard the same script playing again: You don’t belong. But you’re permitted to pretend.

What many don’t understand is that African Americans, Negroes, carry a unique pain.

We are descendants of the dismembered, the forgotten, the forcibly severed.

Our languages lost, our rituals buried, our surnames assigned: And yet, we have survived being unpersoned. Yes, unpersoned!

We have created beauty, brilliance, and culture under the crushing weight of displacement. But still, even within the broader Black diaspora, we are often treated as less than; the ones without a homeland, without nobility, without lineage.

This is not a cry for pity. It is a declaration of truth.

Diasporic disdain is real, and it thrives in subtleties. It hides in compliments. It passes as etiquette. But its sting burns and uproots.

.

To my fellow Negro women: my sisters, my daughters, my mothers, and my neighbors: you do not need anyone’s permission to belong to the sacred.

You are not guests in Blackness. You are its foundation. You are the altar, and the flame.

And to those who look down on us from within the Diaspora:

The children of them; the ones who Raca the Negro.

In John 8 KJV, Jesus challenges a group’s reliance on ancestry for moral authority.

Though they claim Abraham as their father, their hearts and actions reveal a different allegiance; one hostile to truth, one that cannot receive the Word.

The children of them, the ones who Raca the Negro, channels that same energy.

It names those, past and present, who wield cultural, religious, or ethnic superiority to demean, erase, or displace the Negro.

These are not just people with different traditions.

These are people whose actions reject the Spirit of Truth, though they invoke the names of ancestors and divine lineage.

The words spoken to our children, whether in aisles or in homes, shape how they see themselves and others.

What is intended as culture can sometimes carry the weight of exclusion.

May the words spoken be rooted in awareness, not assumption; in kinship, not comparison.

As for me, I choose to name it.

I choose to write it.

I choose to breathe through it.

This is my healing.

This is my witness.

This is my Raca in the aisle.

“We Are the Children of Joseph”

Just as Jesus was called the son of Joseph, so too are we; Negroes of the diaspora, the spiritual and historical children of Joseph, the son of Jacob.

This isn’t about lineage: It’s about pattern, purpose, and prophetic identity.

We, too, are carriers of dreams.

We were buried in dungeons of oppression,Yet we carry the grain; the nourishment of nations.

We speak wisdom in unfamiliar tongues.

We hold forgiveness in our marrow and fire in our bones.

We are not a cursed people; we are a preserved people.

Not abandoned, but hidden for such a time as this.

Like Joseph, we may have been forgotten by men, but we were never forgotten by God.

Closing Benediction

So yes! call us Negro, but do not call us lost.

We are the sons and daughters of Joseph.

Dreamers.

Survivors.

Interpreters of mystery.

We were clothed in sorrow, but we are rising in glory.

We are Joseph’s prophecy fulfilled.

And as Joseph said to his brothers:

“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” Genesis 50:20 KJV