for oppressed persons, whose identity is made known in and through their liberation. Therefore our definition of the human being must be limited to what it means to be liberated from human oppression. Any other approach fails to recognize the reality of suffering in an inhuman society. Black theology cannot affirm a higher harmony of the universe which sidesteps the suffering of blacks. We are reminded of Dos- toevski's Ivan Karamazov and his rejection of God because of the suffering of children: I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to "dear kind God!" To experience the sufferings of little children is to reject the universal human being in favor of particular human beings. It forces you to say something that takes seriously the meaning of human suffering. Whites can move beyond particular human be- ings to the universal human being because they have not experi- enced the reality of color. This is the meaning of Maulana Ron Karenga's comment: Man is only man in a philosophy class or a biology lab. In the world he is African, Asian or South American. He is a Chinese making a cultural revolution, or an Afro-American with soul. He lives by bread and butter, enjoys red beans and rice, or watermelon and ice cream.* The inability of American theology to define human nature in the light of the Oppressed One and of particular oppressed peoples stems from its identity with the structures of white power. The human person in American theology is George Washington, Tho- mas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one and polished up a bit. It is a colorless person, capable of “accepting" blacks as sisters and brothers, which means that it does not mind the blacks living next door if they behave themselves. It is at this very point that American theology ceases to speak of the human person in any real sense. Actually, only the oppressed know what human personhood is because they have encountered both the depravity of human behavior from oppressors and the healing powers revealed in the Oppressed One. Having experienced the brutality of human pride, they will speak less of human good- ness; but also having encountered the meaning of liberation, they can and must speak of human worth as revealed in the black community itself affirming its blackness. I have defined my point of departure as the manifestation of the Oppressed One as he is involved in the liberation of an oppressed community. It is now appropriate to ask, "What is the human person?" That is, what is it that makes human beings what they are, thereby distinguishing them essentially from everything else that exists?" The question about the human person is not answered by enu- merating a list of properties; a person is not a collection of proper- ties that can be scientifically analyzed. Rather to speak of the human being is to speak about its being-in-the-world-of-human- oppression. With the reality of human suffering as our starting point, what can black theology say about human nature? The Human Being as Endowed with Freedom 1. Freedom as Liberation. If the content of the gospel is libera- tion, human existence must be explained as "being in freedom," which means rebellion against every form of slavery, the suppres- sion of everything creative. "A slave," writes LeRoi Jones, "can- not be a man." To be human is to be free, and to be free is to be human. The liberated, the free, are the ones who define the mean- ing of their being in terms of the oppressed of the land by partici- pating in their liberation, fighting against everything that opposes integral humanity. Only the oppressed are truly free! This is the paradox of human existence. Freedom is the opposite of oppression, but only the oppressed are truly free. How can this be? On the one hand, the concreteness of human existence reveals that human beings are not (fully) human when their creativity is enslaved by alien powers. To be (fully) human is to be separated from everything that is evil, everything that is against the "exten-- sion of the limits of humanity." But on the other hand, human existence also discloses that the reality of evil is an ever-present 08 The Human Being in Black possibility in our finite world, and to be (fully) human means to be identified with those who are enslaved as they fight against human evil. Being human means being against evil by joining sides with those who are the victims of evil. Quite literally, it means becoming oppressed with the oppressed, making their cause one's own cause by involving oneself in the liberation struggle. No one is free until all are free. Paul Tillich expresses this paradox in his analysis of the relation- ship between being and nonbeing. On the one hand, being is the opposite of nonbeing. To be is to participate in Being, which is the source of everything that is. To exist is to exist in freedom-that is, stand out from nonbeing and be. But, on the other hand, finite being "does not stand completely out of non-being." Always present is the threat of nothingness, the possibility of ceasing to be. The human person, therefore, is a creature who seeks to be in spite of nonbeing. The power to be in spite of nonbeing is what Tillich calls courage: The courage to be is the ethical act in which man affirms his being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with essential self-affirmation.10 Inherent in freedom is the recognition that there is something wrong with society, and those who are free will not be content until all members of are treated as persons. There comes a time in realize life when Society that the world is not as they dreamt, and they have to make a choice: submit or risk all." Being free means that the only real choice is risking all. Those who are prepared to risk all when they perceive the true nature of society and what it means to the oppressed. Those who come to this recognition also realize, as does Ignazio Silone's Pietro Spina in Bread and Wine, that freedom must be taken: Freedom is not something you get as a present. ... You can live in a dictatorship and be and be free on one con one condition: that you fight the dictatorship. The man who thinks with his own mind and keeps it uncorrupted is free. The man who fights for what he thinks is right is free. But you can live in the most democratic country on earth, and if you're lazy, obtuse or servile within yourself, you're not free. Even without any coercion, you're a slave. You can't beg your freedom from someone. You have to seize it-everyone as much as he can." 12 It is not difficult for the oppressed to understand the meaning of freedom. They are forced by the very nature of their condition to interpret their existence in the world contrary to the value- structures of an oppressive society. For the oppressed, to be is to be in revolt against the forces that impede the creation of the new person. This is what Karl Marx had in mind in his definition of the human being as praxis, which means "directed activity."³ Praxis expresses human freedom. "Freedom," writes Marx, "is the es- sence of man.' "14 It "is not something outside one who freely is, it is the specific mode or structure of being," and inherent in it is action. Marx says: "The coincidence of the changing circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionizing practice [praxis]." He elaborates on the inseparable relationship of freedom and liberative activity. To be (fully) human is to be involved, participating in societal structures for human liberation. As Petrović puts it: The question of the essence of freedom, like the question of the essence of man, is not only a question. It is at once participation in production of freedom. It is an activity through which freedom frees itself." Freedom, then, is not an abstract question. It deals with human existence in a world of societal enslavement. We cannot solve the question of freedom in a college classroom, theoretically debating the idea of "freedom versus determinism." Freedom is an existen- tial reality. It is not a matter of rational thought but of human confrontation. It is not solved by academic discussion but by risky human encounter. As Silone's Spina says, "Man doesn't really exist unless he's fighting against his own limits." 18 To be free means that human beings are not an object, and they will not let others treat them as an "it." They refuse to let limits be