God and Blackness: Race, Gender, and Identity in a Middle Class Afrocentric ChurchBlackness, as a concept, is extremely fluid: it can refer to cultural and ethnic identity, socio political status, an aesthetic and embodied way of being, a social and political consciousness, or a diasporic kinship. It is used as a description of skin color ranging from the palest cream to the richest chocolate; as a marker of enslavement, marginalization, criminality, filth, or evil; or as a symbol of pride, beauty, elegance, strength, and depth.