Readings
From the cover story of US News and World Report of April 19th, 1993 titled Rage on Campus. (race relations on college campuses:
It was the high summer of American idealism, and at its apogee the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stood before the Lincoln Memorial to recount his dream of a nation free from the injustice of racism and the humiliation of segregation. In a voice resonant with the stirring cadences of the black churches in which he was raised, King envisioned the day when "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."
Since that incandescent moment during America's quest for simple justice, legal segregation has been purged from the body politic. Yet while Plessy v. Ferguson is no more, its doctrine of separate but equal has been visibly reborn on college campuses. Sadly for the memory of King, felled by an assassin's bullet a quarter century ago last week, the sons and daughters of former slaves and former slave owners are still sitting at separate tables.
With the often active consent of administrators who in their youth may have marched with James Meredith to integrate the University of Mississippi or to support the entrance of Charlayne Hunter-Gault into the University of Georgia, all too many black and white students live apart, eat apart, play apart and eventually grow apart. Further complicating the situation: vocal organizations and suborganizations are seeking separate-but-equal privileges for Hispanics, Asian-Americans, native Americans and other minorities.[1]
From an article in The Black Collegian February 1995 titled "Voluntary Segregation:" It's not so simple.
As a student at Syracuse University, I have faced many instances of racism and ignorance. In one of my classes, we read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and the teacher asked for comments. No one answered her request. Instead, everyone looked at me, the only Black student in the room. Since it was a book by an African-American author, they assumed I had some special insight. I was the telescope on the Black experience for students and professors who viewed the world through a European lens.
It angered me that students could spout names like Ishmael from Moby Dick and Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter, but did not know of Celie from The Color Purple or Blake from Martin Delany's novel of the same name. To be considered educated, I had to know the names of White literary figures, but White students did not have to know about Black literature.
Similar feelings lead Black college students across the nation to sit next to each other in class, engage in their own activities, and live in common housing. Some journalists and scholars have labeled this behavior "voluntary segregation." But that term provides a simple analysis of a complex problem. When Black students group together, it is not only a choice to remain apart, but a response to the many slights they face through campus-wide oppression.[2]
Finally, from a private email message to me by someone I only know as Peggy, after asking for comment about my sermon topic on an African American discussion list on the internet:
You have approached this issue the way white people approach EVERY issue involving themselves and black people in particular. First, you (white society) don't want us to participate in the life as you know it in America, then when we do, you criticize us for not BEING LIKE YOU. Why is it that whites always EXPECT blacks to come to you, participate in YOUR way of life, etc. Why don't you white separatists come to the black community and participate in OUR way of life. Do you see my point? Again, you make it about you, i.e., "why aren't the black people more open and want to be around white people?" Your approach is wrong.
SERMON
Since the days of the Abolitionist movement in the early 1800's, racism has been on the American national agenda. The ending words of the pledge of allegiance, "with liberty and justice for all", are a vision that Americans hold dear. Everyone should have the freedom and opportunity to build a life and home for themselves free from discrimination and injustice. Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech is so powerful because it so beautifully expresses that vision on which this nation was conceived.
A large percentage of Unitarian Universalists brought this vision into the civil rights work of the 60's to desegregate the schools and the south. These were heady times for us as Black and White joined together to challenge systemic racism. We held the banner of integration high as we envisioned a society without color barriers. A society where people of all races could sit down together seeing each other first as human beings.
Well, these are not good times for integration. Yes, we have taken down the legal barriers of segregation, but integration has been slow to take hold in the thinking of the general population. White flight from integrated schools is in the process of destroying our public school system. A Harvard University study shows public schools in the U.S. are becoming about as segregated today as they were in the 1960's. "This report reflects what may be the beginning of a historic reversal," said Gary Orfield, a Harvard professor who directed the project. "The civil rights impulse from the 1960's is dead in the water and the ship is floating backward toward the shoals of racial segregation.[3]"
The excitement about the possibilities of integrated schools creating a new generation of young adults free of the stigma of racism is clearly not happening. To be sure, there is likely much more interracial mixing than may have occurred in the past. But that mixing may have also created more hatred as well as more harmony.
From the readings earlier, one detects a lack of enthusiasm among African American students to be the advocates for integration. In fact this has been a cause of much angst among those who fought for civil rights. It appears that non-Caucasians are not often interested in integration and are following a path of voluntary segregation. African American students often sit together in class, eat at different lunch tables, choose segregated groups for recreation, live apart in segregated dorms and, so the thinking goes, grow apart. With the increasing segregation on some campuses, there is almost the evolution of two universities - one black and one white - existing side by side on the same campus.
"We have a campus of 25,000 students and there is no mixing across cultural and racial lines," reports Christine Romans, 22, the thoughtful editor of the student newspaper at Iowa State University, scene of bad racial skirmishes in the spring of 1992. "Afterward," she adds, "they had a rally for unity, but all the blacks clustered together and all the whites clustered together.[4]"
Shelby Steele, an African American himself, has made some interesting observations on this trend toward voluntary segregation. He remembers going through his own process of delayed anger from having to go to segregated schools. Today's segregation, he believes, arises from desire for power motivating a politics of difference. He says:
Is there any conceivable difference between black and white power? When you demand power based on the color of your skin, aren't you saying that equality and justice are impossible? Somebody is going to be in, someone else out. Somebody is going to win or lose, and race again is a source of advantage for some and disadvantage for others. Ultimately, black power was not about equality or justice, but, as its name suggests, about power.
When blacks began to demand entitlements based on their race, feminists soon responded with enthusiasm, "We've been oppressed, too!" Hispanics maintained, "Were not going to let this bus pass us by," and Asians stated, "We're not going to be left out either." Eskimos and Native Americans quickly hopped on the bandwagon, as did gays, lesbians, the disabled, and other self-defined minorities.
By the 1970s, the marriage of race and power was firmly established again. Equality was out; the "politics of difference" was in. From then on, people would rally around the single quality that makes them different and pursue power based on that characteristic. It is a very simple formula. All you have to do is identify that quality, whatever it may be, with victimization, which is itself, after all, a tremendous source of moral power.[5]
The politics of difference are pervasive in our society today as victims clamor for redress of grievances. Even our own Bob Hansman, perhaps feeling a little left out, has picked up the banner for short men who suffer all kinds of discrimination and lack of respect. The discovery of the moral power of being a victim of discrimination has unleashed a societal factionalization as each disadvantaged grouping seeks redress of past wrongs, looking for some kind of advantage.
I'm not sure if the force behind the voluntary segregation on campus is really about the desire for power, though there may be people who are using it for that end. I'm more persuaded it has to do with comfort, security and self-respect.
Hear the voice of another Black student:
When I entered other English classes and saw Black students, I smiled and sat next to them. I didn't always know them, but I immediately felt supported and understood. Their mere presence gave me strength and reassurance. With them beside me, I no longer stood alone.[6]
This person found support, understanding, strength and assurance with other Black students. Recall her words: "With them beside me, I no longer stood alone." The feeling of being alone and isolated is not an unusual feeling at all for anyone leaving home for the first time to attend a university. For a student who perhaps grew up with the same set of friends in elementary, middle and high school, the move to a large University setting can be more than a little intimidating - especially if no one looks like you. For an inner-city minority kid, just going to a University means having to counter both internal and external racial stereotypes.
Part of the problem of being an African American student is the feeling of always being on trial and expected to either conform to or disprove racial stereotypes. Like the Syracuse student who was expected to understand Ralph Ellison's book and interpret it, these students feel like they are not treated as equals but as representatives from an alien race. They are expected to become fluent in European culture but few if any white students have any awareness of the common African American culture the White students share.
Right here is one of the central issues. The Caucasian vision of integration is the assimilation of Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans into the European culture just like others who have come to our shores, shedding their cultural heritage within two or three generations. The issue is much deeper than simply fitting in. [Black] students do not want assimilation, [into] a society in which they have to shed their color and their culture in order to belong.[7]
I don't think this means most non-European students want to completely rework our American Civilization into their image although there may be a few who champion this. I think what it all boils down to is respect. Every race has made vital contributions to our society and we need to make more than a token effort to recognize those contributions. To build a sense of self-worth and importance, we need to see faces like our own everywhere society gives honor, to inspire the dreams of a new generation of youth seeking a way to make a contribution in this world. We shouldn't manufacture them if they aren't there but if they ARE there and we don't remember them, we allow ourselves to be lulled into an inauthentic racially elitist view. As I speak these words, I realize I too could challenge myself to seek sources more often from African, Latino, Native American and Asian sources. This is the challenge I take on as minister in a faith that intentionally values diversity. Remembering Martin Luther King today is a way I try to keep us engaged with the issues of race relations in our congregation.
I've asked an African American professor named Lodovich Kimble to speak at our Southwest Florida UU cluster meeting from an academic standpoint on the retreat from federalism and the redistribution of power and authority back to the states. I told him about this sermon and asked him about what was happening on the Edison Community College campus where he teaches.
He observed there was a clustering of racial groups on campus but with much less organization than, for example, in Syracuse. In his mind, much of the clustering is caused by fear and fear causes affiliation often for security. To be young and Black is to feel very vulnerable.
Geoffrey Canada makes a similar observation in this month's UU WORLD. The fear on the streets of our inner city is partially rooted in the lack of any sense of community where people get to know each other. He says:
In a community where adults know the young people, you have an awful lot less violence going on. It doesn't mean adults have to go in and stop problems…We try to connect up those generations so that those seven or eight kids that stand on that corner, that this woman who walks by used to assume were selling drugs -- when she comes to the center, she finds out these are kids who have no place else to go and so they stand out there, but they're not bad kids. And they know she's Mrs. Jones, and she knows that's Tony and that's Ralph. It totally changes what that community feels like, and it makes the community a lot safer for Mrs. Jones, as well as for those young people.[8]
This simple act of people meeting and getting to know each other is at the heart of what is needed to redress the deteriorating state of race relations in America and on campus. Sensitivity and racism training as is done on a number of campuses for incoming freshman may have some value, but having four or five friends of different races will do a whole lot more to instill sensitivity and combat racist attitudes.
Unitarian Universalism seeks to be one of the places people can feel good about meeting each other in a safe and supportive atmosphere to build this kind of cross-racial community. Although this generally has a higher priority in urban congregations, it is still important for us as we have a growing racial diversity right here in Charlotte County. The more we are able to recognize each other as Mrs. Jones, Tony and Ralph, the more we can begin to move beyond race and see each other not as category but human person.
I sang in an interfaith gospel choir organized partly by the Unitarian Church of Oakland, California. In it I sang with several Black men with fantastic voices. All we did was sing together, and that was enough to build a sense of connection. This choir went into the Black community and into churches I would never have entered for any other reason before joining the choir, and made further connections in those places.
My hope for this congregation is that it too can be a place where these connections are made. I don't know how to do this here, but perhaps you do. Let's meet and talk. We all have so much to gain.
I'll end with Shelby Steele's insightful words:
Even the most humble experiences unite us. We all have grown up on the same sitcoms, eaten the same fast food, and laughed at the same jokes. We have practiced the same religions, lived under the same political system, read the same books, and worked in the same marketplace. We have the same dreams and aspirations as well as fears and doubts for ourselves and for our children. How, then, can our differences be so overwhelming?[9]
Copyright (c)1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore, All Rights Reserved.