Centering

Toward an Anti-Racist Unitarian Universalist Association
1997 Business Resolution (adapted)[1]

(skipping seven whereas statements)

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the 1997 General Assembly urges Unitarian Universalists

• To examine carefully their own conscious and unconscious racism as participants in a racist society, and the effect that racism has on all our lives, regardless of color.
  
• To engage in ongoing anti-racism training, to examine basic assumptions, structures, and functions, and, in response to what is learned, to develop action plans;
  
• To develop an ongoing process for the comprehensive institutionalization of anti-racism and multi-culturalism, understanding that whether or not a group becomes multi-racial, there is always the opportunity to become anti-racist.
  
• To enter into relationships of sustained engagement with all people of color with a goal of opening up authentic dialogue that may include, but is not limited to, race and racism.
  
• To establish relationships with other international and interfaith organizations that are working to dismantle racism.

I must begin my remarks with a critique of the anti-racist programs described by the Journey Toward Wholeness Path to Anti-Racism, the information packet developed by the UUA's Faith in Action Department for Diversity and Justice. The packet itemizes the steps we need to take to develop an anti-racist UU identity, none of which we're told, can be skipped if one wishes to become an anti-racist. The first step is to take an anti-racism training workshop led by an authorized trainer.

I took one of these workshops and read the accompanying material. As a result of these experiences, I learned three things:

• One. All whites in America are racists.
  
• Two. No blacks in America are racist. They're prejudiced just like everybody else, but they lack the power of institutional resources to force other racial groups to submit to their will. Thus they can't be racist because racism in this conceptual scheme is defined as prejudice + power.
  
• Three. Whites must be shown that they are racists and confess their racism.

• First. They violate the first principle of our UU covenant together to actively affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person;
  
• Second. They make an erroneous assumption about the nature and structure of power in America; and
  
• Third, they misinterpret actions resulting from feelings of shame and powerlessness as evidence of white racism.

Sermon

While we've made important strides against racism in our society, there is much more work to be done. I don't think I'll have to argue with much vigor to persuade you that while blatant racism is seen much less today than it was in the days of segregation, racism is still pervasive in our society. The complete lack of African American Judges in our judicial district and the low numbers of African American policeman in Albany tell a story that cannot be ignored. The color blind, completely integrated society advocated in the sixties has not come to pass.

Being against racial discrimination has been a prominent theme in our history for a very long time. Back as far as 1784 Universalist Benjamin Rush was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. In 1833 Unitarian Lydia Maria Child wrote "An Appeal in Favor of That Class of American called African." Many of the supporters of Abolition were drawn from Unitarian and Universalist churches. In 1909, the Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes was a founding member of the NAACP. In the 1960's many of us were actively involved in the civil rights movement, marching along side Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 March on Selma. I would venture to say that all efforts at ending racial discrimination have had Unitarian Universalist representation and participation.

Our Principles and Purposes reflect our history. Our first principle honors "the inherent worth and dignity of all people." Our second principle directs us toward "justice, equity and compassion in human relations." From our history and our principles we are quite ready to take on racism within our congregations and in society at large.

But our record hasn't been spotless. Although Meadville Theological School admitted its first African American student in 1870, it took till 1961 for the Rev. Lewis McGee to be settled as the minister of the Chico Unitarian Fellowship in California. When McGee first approached the American Unitarian Association in 1927 he was told by then president Curtis Reese, "If you want to be a Unitarian you'd better bring your own church." African American Ministers have had difficulty finding settlements that continue to this day.

Yes, our record hasn't been spotless and our attempts to respond to the cries of suffering and rage emanating from the Afro-American community in the late sixties were disastrous. Some of you here this morning may vividly remember the Black Empowerment Controversy when the Black Affairs Council staged a massive walk out of the 1969 General Assembly. It was a turbulent time of demands and counter demands that nearly split apart our Association. The legacy of that failure still haunts us today. There is strong desire in our Association, to heal, to resolve and to accomplish what could not be done in 1969.

John Buehrens, the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association cares deeply about racism. As a young man, he was in the front lines of racial justice work. Upon becoming President, he helped begin a four year process throughout our association to look at the issue of racism and encourage our congregations to make a commitment to action. I read you the gist of the final result of that initiative.

I went to all of those General Assemblies and participated in some excellent programs and workshops on this topic. I took what I learned back to my congregation about racism and white privilege and tried to stimulate people's interest. I hope the ministers who came before me here in Albany kept you informed and engaged you in this process as well. I've followed the program like any good liberal should. In fact, I drew and still draw some great inspiration for my ministry from beginning to see the potential for spiritual growth in embracing diversity. There was a light in the eyes of the speakers at spoke at General Assembly that communicated more than their words.

The enthusiasm for becoming anti-racist has cooled from1997 when the resolution was passed. I think for many congregations the resolution signaled the end of something rather than the beginning. With significant exceptions, most of the members of my congregation in Port Charlotte had little interest in confronting their own racist attitudes and becoming an anti-racist force in our community. "If it means I might have to feel guilty or change the way I lead my life, then I don't want to go there." Was the unspoken message.

Then Thandeka, an African American Unitarian Universalist theologian teaching at Meadville-Lombard, stepped up to the podium at General Assembly last June and spoke against the UUA approach to anti-racism. Her words both shook Beacon Street and found a warm reception from the packed Euro American audience. Her words seemed particularly remarkable coming from someone I would have classed as "an insider." Thandeka is someone who has been involved in the UUA anti-racist initiative. She presented an excellent play on racism for General Assembly in 1995. She cares deeply about seeing the end of racism in our society and believes we have taken a wrong turn.

The core of Thandeka's critique of the UUA approach to anti-racism can be found in this extended quotation from her talk at General Assembly:

One day, over lunch, Dan [a well heeled, goodhearted, liberal, white, Boston Presbyterian minister] recounted an experience that helped shape his racial identity as a white. In college during the late 1950s, Dan joined a fraternity. With his prompting, his chapter pledged a black student.

When the chapter's national headquarters learned of this first step toward integrating its ranks, headquarters threatened to rescind the local chapter's charter unless the black student was expelled. The local chapter caved in to the pressure and Dan was elected to tell the black student member he would have to leave. Dan did it. "I felt so ashamed of what I did," he told me, and he began to cry. "I have carried this burden for forty years," he said. "I will carry it to my grave."

The couple at the next table tried not to notice Dan's breakdown. The waiter avoided our table. As Dan regained his composure, I retained mine. I could see his pain. I felt empathy for his suffering but was troubled by his lack of courage. Dan's tears revealed the depth of the compromise he had made with himself rather than risk venturing beyond the socially mandated strictures of whiteness.

I realized that being white for Dan was not a matter of racist conviction but a matter of survival, not a privilege but a penalty: the pound of flesh exacted for the right to be excluded from the excluded. Dan's tears revealed the emotional price of his ongoing membership in the "white" race.

Although he is not a racist, Dan might make a confession of racism to a UUA anti-racism trainer because this would be the only way to mollify the trainer and also because racism is the only category he would have to express a far deeper loss and regret: his stifled feelings and blunted desires for a more inclusive community. But Dan did not cry during our lunch together in the restaurant because he was a racist. He cried because his impulses to moral action had been slain by his own fear of racial exile.

Thandeka argues in the talk and in her book, Learning to be White: Money, Race and God in America, that no Euro American is born "white." Euro Americans must trade in a little of their humanity to join white culture. The cover of her book states her thesis visually by portraying a young family with paintbrushes putting white paint on their faces. White culture really isn't defined by skin color, it is defined by class. The people with the money, the white Anglo Saxon Protestants in the upper 1% of society have defined the social agenda. The rest of us wage slaves choose to join that culture to survive and pay a terrible price as Dan did.

Thandeka argues that creating guilt and shame in Euro-Americans for their alleged racism and white privilege targets the wrong group. While African Americans are the unwilling victims of racism, Euro Americans are the willing victims. Rather than create the system of oppression, through lack of courage and conviction they join the system and pay a price.

Now I don't see that she is all that far from the position of the UUA's Jubilee Working Group, the group formed in 1997 to advance the cause of anti-racism within the UUA. Both of them share the goal of working towards building an anti-racist society. In a response to her talk they note:

Thandeka agrees with us in several particulars:

• Whites are harmed by racism (just as men are hurt by sexism and straight people are harmed by homophobia/heterosexism);
  
• Racism and classism are linked (as are indeed all oppressions)
  
• All anti-oppression work must be grounded in our UU history, traditions and principles.

There is more to both Thandeka's criticism and the response by the working group that is very interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't some personality conflicts going on as well. The core issue I want to be sure to deal with, in the limited time I have with you this morning, is an emotional one.

In my experience, and I hope in yours as well, the barrier to effective work on racial issues is primarily emotional. Those who have white privilege, created for Euro Americans by their ancestors and colluded with by their own choices, experience discomfort and emotional pain if their awareness is raised to that privilege. That awareness is very painful to live with. Most Euro Americans with that privilege would rather not see it--so they collude with each other not to see it.

Thandeka has a powerful technique to demonstrate how that collusion is silently operating. For one week, whenever you mention a friend who is Euro American, mention that they are white. "I went out last night with my new white friend. We are having our white friends over for dinner tomorrow." Notice how you feel when you do it. I'll wager good money few Euro Americans can actually get all the way through the week. When I suggested we might do this to Philomena and Andy at lunch, Andy got very upset and told me not to talk about it. The collusion starts at a very young age.

Working on racism is profoundly difficult because so much of white identity is wrapped up in it. Thandeka is concerned that Euro Americans get paralyzed by their feelings when they encounter the pain and discomfort many African Americans live with every day--pain and discomfort invisible until one begins opening one's eyes and see it. To keep whites engaged she shows them a way to join people of color against a common enemy. She sees the primary culprit as class, the working group sees it as institutional and systemic racism throughout society.

I'm sure Thandeka will agree with the UUA Jubilee Working Group in the shared goal of dismantling racism. I'm sure they both will agree that Euro Americans will experience pain as they see their subconscious collusion with the institutional, systemic and cultural oppression already in place. I think they both will agree that people of color collude too, often in profoundly self destructive ways. Until we all see our collusion, feel the pain it causes us and witness what it does to others, we can't begin to move toward stopping that collusion and starting to behave in ways that lay the groundwork for a new social contract for our society.

Key to all of this is to refrain from placing blame. The forces that support racism transcend all the individuals and ethnic groups involved including the elite at the top. At the root of racism is fear. If we respond to the pain we experience when confronting racism with fear then all is lost. No good can come from a place of fear. But if we respond to the pain we experience witnessing our collusion with love and forgiveness, there is hope. Moving through pain and finding love is both transformative and redemptive. This is the real work of anti-racism.

I'll close my remarks with these excerpts from a great sermon by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. titled "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" delivered at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on the 31^st of March 1968:

It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle--the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly--to get rid of the disease of racism.

The hour has come for everybody, for all institutions of the public sector and the private sector to work to get rid of racism. And now, if we are to do it, we must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation.

Why do we do it this way? We do it this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

And I submit that nothing will be done until people of goodwill put their bodies and their souls in motion. And it will be the kind of soul force brought into being as a result of this confrontation that I believe will make the difference.

We're going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. And so, however dark it is, however deep the angry feelings are, and however violent [the] explosions are, I can still sing "We Shall Overcome."

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

[1] To see the full text go to http://www.uua.org/actions/racial-justice/97uua.html
[2] to see the full text of her remarks go to http://www.uua.org/ga/ga99/238thandeka.html