Sisters in Spirit

Sisters in Spirit, USF’s interfaith dialogue, featured three panelists, Toni Battle, Bhawana Kamil, and Mary Waskoviak, dialoging about their respective Native-American/Black Baptist, Muslim, and Catholic faiths. After the three panelists shared a bit about their work and backgrounds, a student moderator asked them to respond to the following questions: (1) How does being a woman affect your work? and (2) How does your religion affect your work? I thought Toni Battle’s response to the first question was one of the most relevant to our class. For her, strong interpersonal skills (which are generally associated with women) have been integral to her work educating young African American and Native American youth about their heritage.

Like the women in Cynthia Cockburn’s From Where We Stand, Toni sought open dialogue with the opposition (or in her case, a descendant of the opposition). Although Toni, whose family has lost not one, not two, but three men to lynching, confesses that she would be more comfortable staying far away from the descendant of a lyncher, she draws on her strong interpersonal skills and maintains regular contact with her in order to promote healing. She uses the wisdom she gains from the relationship with the lyncher descendant in her education of African American children, who if it weren’t for Toni, would have no idea about the United State’s atrocious lynching history.